Even though she and Tim didn’t always see eye to eye, they were a team. Someone to hold on tight to at night when the owls hooted outside and the shadows grew long and sinewy. Ever since her mother and father died within months of each other – first, her mother with an aggressive breast cancer, then her father’s diagnosis and decline with Alzheimer’s – she had felt like everyone she loved had abandoned her. Then along came Tim. She’d been bereaved and, soon after, awash with hormones the midwives had soothed. Yet one of the real reasons she’d cried herself to sleep for a year, holding that scarf in bed, remained her closely guarded secret.
She must have dozed off because an hour later she woke up and they were pulling off the roundabout into Little Rowland. It had started to drizzle. Maybe some time on our own without Ed is exactly what we need right now, she told herself. She glanced at Tim, willing herself to feel a tug from her heart. But as she watched him flick the indicator on theatrically and let out a sigh at the traffic on the junction, she wasn’t really sure that would be the answer at all.
3
Olive
Olive was just getting her hair washed when she felt it. Just a small bit, but it was definitely there. A leak. Right now, just when that lovely new hairdresser, Julian, had started at the nursing home. She crossed her legs in the chair a little bit tighter. He needn’t know. He was a bit of a fancy chap with his funny earrings and a nose thingy, but she could forgive him for that.
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Eh?’
‘A stroll, I said. Is that your hearing aid again, Olive?’
‘Don’t be so bloody cheeky. I’ve got an earful of soapsuds in my ears, course I can’t hear you very well! What did you say?’
‘I said it’s a nice morning, and you went for a stroll earlier, didn’t you?’
‘Stop being bloody patronising!’
She could feel Julian’s hands stop, mid-soap, on her scalp. That’ll teach him to be condescending to me! Then she felt a bit sorry for him. She twisted her turquoise beads around in her hand.
‘Yes, I did go for a “stroll” as you put it. I was taken around the perimeter fence by Nancy in one of the better wheelchairs – I like her, she’s one of the nicer ones – about eleven o’clock. Now, mind you don’t get the colour wrong. Last time you did my hair I ended up looking like one of the dancers on the Halloween set of Strictly.’
She heard Julian sniff indignantly. ‘Don’t you be cheeky, Olive Rose Hunter!’
‘I’ll be as cheeky as I like, comes with the territory at eighty-seven.’ She caught him grinning at her, as he smoothed on the colour over her fine hair in the sink. She liked to keep these young things in check. There were no manners today, not like in her day, when Stan had still been alive.
‘Right, you’ll need to wait ten minutes for that to work.’ Julian tucked a towel under her collar and wiped a splodge of colourant from her forehead.
‘Be a dear and pass me my iPad, will you?’
She watched Julian’s rear end sashaying over to the armchair, and smiled. When had she last enjoyed a male bottom, she wondered? Well, enjoy was the wrong word, but had a bit of, what did that magazine say, the one in the residents’ lounge – ‘eye candy’? Yes, that was it.
She wanted to check her emails to see if that niece of hers had been in touch. Last thing she’d seen was a one-line email telling her she was off to Exeter for some reunion. Olive couldn’t think of anything worse – why meet up with a whole lot of people you hadn’t seen for twenty years? Maddie seemed distracted lately, agitated. She worried about Maddie; she really did.
Olive knew well the stresses and strains of a marriage, but with Maddie there was something missing. Of course, anyone’s light would have gone out a little bit living with Tim for so long, but she wasn’t really sure if a light had ever been on for Maddie. And as for how he treated her, it was as if she owed him something. It had never been like that for her and Stan. She’d adored Stan – and they’d had adventures, real belly laughs. They’d had to. God had never blessed them with children, so they’d had