over the horizon behind Rachel’s house, replaying Olive’s words in her mind. What sort of life do you want to live, Maddie Brown? Quite frankly, right now, she really didn’t know what kind of life she was even in.
24
Maddie sat down on the chair next to Olive’s bed and shifted the embroidery cushion beneath her. There was a silence in the room as if time had stood still. Her fingers found the stitching on the cushion and she traced the knotty bumps silently. Probably stitched by some old soul in their last days as a way to fill in the time between the drug rounds: embroidery, a morphine dose, embroidery.
Maddie studied Olive’s face: the wrinkles etched deeply across her forehead and the silvery, wispy hair lying limp on the pillow. Gone was the lip gloss, the glasses. They were folded, sitting neatly on the bedside table next to Olive. The props of Olive’s life lay still beside her, as the main act drew to a close. ‘Olive?’ Maddie gripped her bony hand and squeezed, willing her frail friend to squeeze back.
She glanced over at the tiny Buddha she’d brought back for Olive on the bedside table next to the glasses, with the mirrored mosaic covering his belly. The Buddha had a cheery, round face. Maddie inhaled the sour air of the nursing home and conjured up images of the Balinese beach, the foamy surf, neon bikinis teamed with batik sarongs, the sharp smell of chilli in the night air. She looked outside the window at the drops of rain, followed one down the pane, cast her eye over a wilting geranium on the patio below, brown and shrivelled in its pot of claggy soil.
The cycle of life marches on. One minute you are fretting over your baby: how much did they eat, did they sleep, what did they do today? The next thing you know, you are asking these questions about an aged relative: are they in pain, where does it hurt? Listen to that clock ticking on the wall. The minutes seem endless, much like the hungry silence of the dark night as you sit alone breastfeeding your baby, hours of your life slipping by. Then, silently and slowly, time creeps around you; it snakes up your body, claiming different parts as it burrows into your brain and steals the best bits.
Ageing? It’s a lottery. Will you be sprightly, dancing into the twilight of your life, or will life seep out of you, down the cracks in the floorboards, arms heavy as you lie listening to the sound of soft chatter, unsure what the future holds?
Olive had been vibrant and real. And now? It made Maddie’s heart ache to see such a spirited soul so limp. What was she thinking, imagining? Dreaming that she wanted to get away? To fight this awful disease? Maddie had been warned things would get worse.
‘Olive?’
The TV blared in the background as Olive dozed, a black-and-white film, the actors prancing around the screen, comic foils to the silent residents of the nursing home at dusk. The TV image was reflected in Olive’s glasses on the table, the actor’s energy mocking the gloom around them.
Maddie looked outside the window again at the dusky October sky, glanced at the little yellow boxes on the other side – windows of the other residents lit up with tiny lights. Everyone in their illuminated boxes, soft blankets on their knees, waiting for an unknown future to unfold.
25
Tim was sitting opposite Maddie at the village coffee shop, the Happy Hen, fidgeting with a white paper napkin. There was a russet-coloured happy hen on his napkin.
He put his cup down and started to fold and unfold the napkin. One minute the hen was there, the next, gone. She wanted to tell him about Olive, about how she’d taken a turn for the worse. Maddie had never seen her so inert before.
He stared at her across a cup of black coffee. She’d never understood why it was called the Happy Hen, but there were hen pictures on all the walls, all the paper napkins had a sketch of a hen on them and the menu featured little designs of eggs. There was too much cuteness surrounding her when she felt like ripping into Tim the way he was ripping up his napkin.
He was scratching his neck. Red welts formed where his fingernails had prised off some flaky skin. His hair was greyer at the temples, the lenses of his glasses smeared. He