key. She was being difficult, you see; she came over all agitated when she saw I’d found the book. She was pleased, I think—I mean, she must have been, it was she who’d wanted it in the first place—but she was snippy, too, quite irascible; you know how she can get.’
‘You’ve remembered now though?’
‘Oh yes, of course—it’s back in her bedside table.’ She shook her head at Laurel and smiled guilelessly. ‘Really, I wonder about my brain sometimes.’
Laurel smiled back. Dear, innocent Rose.
‘Sorry, Lol—you were asking me something … about the trunk?’ ‘Oh no, it was nothing. Just making conversation.’
Rose glanced at her watch then and announced that she’d have to leave to collect her granddaughter from nursery. ‘I’ll pop in later tonight, though, and I think Iris is in tomorrow morning. Between us we ought to be able to get everything packed for the move on Friday … You know, I almost feel excited.’ But then her face clouded. ‘I expect that’s a terrible thing to feel, under the circumstances.’
‘I don’t think there are any rules about such things, Rosie.’
‘No, perhaps you’re right.’ Rose leaned down to kiss Laurel’s cheek, and then she was gone, leaving behind a trail of her lavender fragrance.
It had been different with Rose in the room, another moving, bustling breathing body. Without her, Laurel was even more conscious than before of just how faded and still her mother had become. Her phone beeped with an incoming message and she leapt to check it, clutching gratefully at the lifeline to the outside world. It was a form email from the British Library, confirming the book she’d ordered would be available the following morning and reminding her to bring identification to complete her registration for a reader’s pass. Laurel read it through twice and then slid the phone reluctantly back into her bag. The message had offered a moment of welcome distraction; now she was back where she’d started, in the stultifying stasis of the hospital room.
She could stand it no longer. The doctor had said her mother would most likely sleep all afternoon due to her pain medication, but Laurel took up the photo album anyway. Sometimes the well-worn patterns and roles really were the best. She sat close to the bedside and started at the beginning, the photograph taken when Dorothy was a young woman, working for Grandma Nicolson at her seaside boarding house. She made her way through the years, recounting her family’s story, hearing the reassuring sound of her own voice, feeling vaguely that by continuing to speak in such a normal way she might somehow keep life in the room.
Finally, she reached a photograph of Gerry on his second birthday. It had been taken early, as they gathered the picnic together in the kitchen, just before they set off for the stream. Teenage Laurel—look at that fringe!—had Gerry on her hip, and Rose was tickling his tummy, making him gurgle and laugh; Iris’s pointed finger had made it into shot (angry about something, no doubt), and Ma was in the background, hand to her head as she regarded the contents of the hamper. On the table—Laurel’s heart almost stopped—she’d never noticed it there be- fore—was the knife. Right by the vase of dahlias. Re-member it, Ma, Laurel found herself thinking, pack the knife and you’ll never need to come back to the house. None of it will happen. I’ll climb down from the tree house before the man walks up the driveway and no one will be any the wiser that he came that day.
But it was childish logic. Who was to say Henry Jenkins wouldn’t have come back again if he’d found the house empty? And perhaps his next visit would have been even worse. The wrong person might have been killed.
Laurel closed the album. She’d lost the spirit for narrating the past. Instead she smoothed her mother’s sheet across her chest and said, ‘I went to see Gerry last night, Ma.’
From nowhere, as if a sound upon the wind—‘Gerry …’
Laurel glanced at her mother’s lips. They were still, but slightly parted. Her eyes were closed. ‘That’s right,’ she said more eagerly, ‘Gerry. I went to see him in Cambridge. He was so well, such a clever boy. He’s mapping the sky, did you know? Did you ever think that little boy of ours would do such incredible things? He says they’re talking about sending him to research for a time in the States, a tremendous opportunity.’
‘Opportunity …’ Ma breathed