I looked at the names. There were so many, we had to lift our heads to see the people at the top.
‘I don’t think any of these men had a choice,’ she said.
‘No.’ I read their ages as I spoke. ‘I don’t think they did either.’
‘Brave is just a word we use about them to make ourselves feel better,’ she said.
There were holes in everyone’s lives after the war. There were gaps in the landscape long after it had ended, gaps where young men should have been. We did our best to close the gaps, to rearrange ourselves and shuffle along, and become different people, but the space stretched beside us as a constant reminder. It was never more obvious than on a Saturday night. A town hall filled with women, dancing amongst themselves, searching for a mend-and-make-do partner in a world everyone was trying to adjust to. They didn’t realise in old age they would mirror their younger selves, and waltz out their lives together again, thieved of their husbands, and searching once more to make sense of it all.
‘You used to dance?’ said Jack.
‘We did,’ I said. ‘Elsie liked the foxtrot, but I preferred the tango. You know where you are with a tango. Foxtrots can end up all over the place.’
‘That’s half the fun.’ Elsie sat back, and sunlight from the window marched on to her face and found all the wrinkles. ‘Although you wouldn’t always dance with me. Sometimes, you refused point blank.’
Jack tapped his stick on the carpet. ‘I used to do a mean foxtrot,’ he said, ‘before this got in the way.’
‘It’s important, to know when to sit a dance out,’ I said.
The locksmith arrived. Elsie said I asked him too many questions. Jack made another cup of tea and tried to draw me away. I knew what he was up to. I’m not daft. There were things I needed to know, though. Where the locks come from, how many keys there were, and if the locksmith people kept a copy. The locksmith stopped answering after a while, and when he drank his tea, he stared at the same page in the newspaper without ever moving his eyes.
‘I wasn’t overly fond of him,’ I said, as soon as the front door closed.
Jack watched the man make his way down the steps. ‘He had all the right paperwork. I checked.’
‘He’ll hear you!’ Elsie said.
‘I don’t much care if he does,’ I said. ‘And he’s made a mess of the carpet.’
He hadn’t, but I couldn’t think of anything else to pick on. Jack gave it a brush anyway, and started a conversation about how there are no craftsmen left in the world any more, so at least we all had something to agree with.
The three of us sat back down and watched the key, which waited in the middle of the dining table, not realising the huge amount of trouble it had caused.
Miss Ambrose arrived at a quarter to. She peered at the new lock for a good few minutes before she spoke.
‘Are you happy now?’ she said. ‘All this effort to convince you, when no one is actually getting into your flat in the first place.’
I didn’t shift my eyes from the radiator.
‘This isn’t helping your case, you know. I hope this will be an end to it?’
The words curved into a question, but I decided not to reply, and Jack just stared at his hands.
Miss Ambrose left, and I looked up from the radiator just as the door clicked shut.
‘It won’t make any bloody difference,’ I shouted.
Elsie pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes.
‘You know what he’s like,’ I said. ‘When he was younger, he could pick a lock and get in anywhere he wanted to. He had a talent for it. Failing that, he’ll just get a copy made. Of the new key.’
‘And how is he going to manage that?’ Elsie said, without shifting her hands. ‘He can’t magic one up from thin air.’
‘Miss Ambrose keeps them all in her office. In a little tin cupboard on the wall,’ I said.
Jack frowned. ‘She does?’
‘Next to the filing cabinets.’
He sat forward. ‘What’s in the filing cabinets?’
‘Us,’ I said.
We were sitting in the day room, eyeing up Miss Ambrose’s office.
‘I’ve never been a criminal before,’ I said.
Elsie glanced over. ‘Try to sit normally, Florence.’
‘I am sitting normally.’
I knew I wasn’t. I sat on the very edge of my seat, and when I looked down at my hands, my knuckles were bone white. I could hear the rain, hammering against the French windows, asking to be let in. It was the kind of rain that joins everything together and makes it difficult to see a way out.
‘Perhaps she’ll be in there all day,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we won’t get a chance.’
I straightened one of the cushions and looked back towards the office. Miss Ambrose sat at her desk, and she studied the wall in front of her, as though the answer to all of life’s problems lay within its plaster.
‘She has to move at some point,’ Elsie said. ‘Everyone does.’
The day room was empty, apart from Mrs Honeyman, who was dozing off against the trelliswork where Miss Ambrose was attempting to grow ivy up the walls. No one really knew why this was, except Miss Ambrose. Jack waited on the seat by the noticeboard, and we all looked at a television screen without watching. It was a gardening programme. Someone was standing on a patio in clean wellington boots, explaining how to plant seeds.
Jack pointed at the screen with his walking stick. ‘At our age, it’s an act of optimism, planting seeds.’
I went back to whitening my knuckles.
‘It’ll go off in a minute,’ Elsie said. ‘It’s antiques next. What’s It Worth? Everyone likes antiques.’
‘Perhaps if I was a roll-top table, I might get more visitors,’ I said, and everyone stared.
Even Mrs Honeyman.
MISS AMBROSE
Anthea Ambrose peered out into the day room. General Jack was laying down the foundations of an opinion, and Florence Claybourne had spent the last twenty minutes staring at her. Now Jack was joining in, turning in his chair and frowning.
Miss Ambrose took out her notebook. She was writing down things of her own, because she wasn’t convinced Handy Simon was to be relied upon. Plus, it wasn’t something you could necessarily put down in words. Words were not always adequate. This was more of a feeling. A sense that things were not quite as they should be, and it troubled her.
‘I wonder if I might trouble you?’
A voice sent the pencil flying from her hand, and she scrambled around on the floor to retrieve it.
‘Mr Price. Not a problem. What can I do for you?’
Gabriel Price didn’t reply until she had found the pencil, repositioned herself on the seat, and brushed a stray piece of hair from her top lip.
‘It’s a delicate matter, I’m afraid.’ He glanced into the day room through the chequered glass. ‘May I speak with you privately?’
She hesitated for a moment and said, ‘Of course,’ and he reached back to close the office door.
Miss Ambrose felt the day room disappear. It was strange how just a click sent everyone else an ocean away, rather than just the other side of a pane of glass. The television threw out images of antique furniture, Mrs Honeyman still dozed in the corner, and Jack waved his walking stick around at no one in particular. Even the rain had stopped, and the silence made it seem as if the world was a very elaborate play, written and performed for her entertainment, and yet one in which she was only ever going to be part of the audience.
‘Miss Ambrose?’
‘Sorry, I drifted off for a moment. What were you saying?’
‘The tall woman.’ He nodded at the day room. ‘You must excuse me, I’ve not quite got to grips with everyone’s names yet.’
‘Miss Claybourne?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that would be the one.’ He checked the door again. ‘The thing is, I think she might be having a few problems.’
‘Problems?’
‘With the old upstairs.’ He tapped a finger against his temple. ‘Short on the marbles.’
‘I’m sorry?’
He sighed and put his hands on the desk. ‘I think she might be getting a bit confused.’
‘Really?’ Miss Ambrose looked over at her notebook. ‘Whatever gives you that idea?’
‘You know I’m not one to complain.’
‘Of course not.’
‘But she’s been – how can I put this nicely – spying on people.’