‘People?’
‘Me, actually,’ he said. ‘With binoculars.’
Miss Ambrose sat back.
‘I wasn’t going to mention it. I don’t want to get Florence into trouble, and I’ve got no objection to being spied upon.’ He laughed, but Miss Ambrose had noticed that laughter never quite climbed as far as his eyes. ‘But I thought I’d better say something. Vulnerable, the elderly, aren’t they? When they get to that stage?’
‘They certainly are.’ Miss Ambrose frowned.
‘I’ll leave it with you,’ he said.
She expected him to go, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood, just for a moment, the not-quite-smile resting on his mouth, the not-quite-stare held in his eyes. Eventually, the door unclicked and he disappeared, and Miss Ambrose found that she could breathe again.
She needed to think, but any thoughts she had were eaten away by the tap of Jack’s walking stick and Mrs Honeyman’s snoring, and the sound of Florence Claybourne making one of her points, and so she took her notepad and her pencil, and a lipstick for good measure, and decided to go for a walk.
FLORENCE
‘She’s off,’ I said.
Elsie watched Miss Ambrose’s retreating back. ‘So she is.’
Jack took up his position in the corridor.
Miss Ambrose’s office reminded me of a jumble sale. Everything was on display. Drawers not quite closed, cupboards slightly ajar, all her belongings spread out on the desk like a shop counter.
‘Wherever do we start?’ I picked up a stapler, and its jaw hung open to reveal a set of silver teeth.
‘I wonder how she manages to work,’ Elsie said. ‘You’d think she’d be too distracted.’
I examined a collection of pen tops and paperclips, which leaked from a plastic box at the corner of her desk. ‘Perhaps it represents her mind?’
‘Busy?’
‘A bloody mess,’ I said, and Elsie laughed.
Through the glass, I could see the top of Jack’s cap wandering up and down the corridor. Elsie saw it too. ‘Let’s get a move on,’ she said.
We searched. Strangely, it is more difficult to search in a place that’s disorganised, because you can never quite be sure how familiar someone is with their own particular mess. It might be very personal, exactly where on the floor litter has fallen and how many inches a drawer lies open. We had to work carefully, but despite our best efforts, all we found were half a dozen Sainsbury’s receipts and last year’s staff Christmas card.
‘Doesn’t Miss Bissell look lovely?’ I said. ‘She really suits an elf costume.’
‘Don’t get distracted, Florence. Try to concentrate.’
‘It’s just a shame she’s not smiling.’
‘Florence! We’re supposed to be looking for evidence, remember? Something we can use to stop them sending you away. We’re running out of time.’
I put down the Christmas card. ‘Those are the filing cabinets I meant.’ I looked over at the far wall. ‘There’ll be something in there.’
The filing cabinets were in the corner of the room. Giant silver monsters. The kind of filing cabinet no one owns any more, with drawers you are only allowed to open one at a time, for fear of the entire thing crashing down and murdering an innocent bystander.
And they were locked.
‘All the best drawers are,’ I said, because I knew she didn’t have time to question me. We studied the room instead. There were so many hiding places for a key, the thought of looking for one was paralysing.
‘Imagine you’re Miss Ambrose,’ Elsie said. ‘What would you do?’
I looked around. ‘I’d probably tidy up a bit.’
Elsie put her hands to her face. ‘With the key,’ she said.
‘The key?’ I had to wait for my eyes to remember and then I said, ‘It could be anywhere.’
‘It’ll be stuck underneath the desk with a bit of Blu Tack.’ Jack appeared in the doorway.
I felt underneath the desktop.
Elsie lifted her eyebrows. ‘How did you know that?’ she said.
‘War makes a man of you.’ He winked at us both.
Elsie took the key over to the filing cabinet. ‘Let’s just see if it fits.’
It did. The first drawer groaned on its runners, as though we had woken it from a heavy sleep, and there we all were in our manila folders, rows of silent people with silent pasts, waiting to be listened to.
‘Shall we read about ourselves?’ I reached into the C tab and pulled myself out.
‘No we will not.’ Elsie put me back inside again. ‘We’re not going to read about anyone other than him, not even ourselves. You know everything there is to know about yourself; you don’t need to go reading about it.’
‘I thought it might be nice to be reminded,’ I said.
I closed the top drawer and pulled out the second one. I reached in. ‘P, Price, Gabriel.’
We began to read.
‘Ninety-seven?’
We didn’t get further than ‘date of birth’.
‘Isn’t Ronnie the same age Beryl would have been?’ I said.
It was the unexpectedness of it, I suppose, but Elsie’s eyes reddened at the sound of her sister’s name. People need to be spoken about, I think. Their names need to be brought into conversations and mentioned in passing. Sometimes, a name is the only thing we can leave behind, and if people are afraid to use it, to hear it spoken out loud, we eventually fade away and become lost forever, just because no one ever talks about us any more.
‘Don’t people usually lie the other way?’ I said.
Elsie opened the file, and a newspaper clipping tumbled to the floor.
‘I knew I’d heard the name,’ I said. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’
Have-A-Go Hero Rescues Mugging Victim (97)
Dan Carter (18) became a hero yesterday as he caught an attacker who mugged pensioner Gabriel Price (97) in broad daylight (both pictured below).
Mr Price had just collected his pension when he was pushed to the pavement. His cries alerted Mr Carter, who raced to his aid, and managed to restrain the attacker until police arrived. The story has appeared in the national press, and Mr Carter has even been interviewed by the BBC. ‘I just did what anyone would have done,’ he said.
Mr Price was unavailable for comment.
‘Anyone wouldn’t though, would they?’ I said. ‘It was a headline in one of my old newspapers, and it was on the radio. They had a whole programme on acts of kindness.’
There was very little else. A doctor’s letter about cholesterol. A dentist’s letter about having false teeth fitted. A brief note from social services. Inability to cope. Difficulties with activities of daily living. Poor self-care.
‘He looks like he can cope to me,’ I said.
We looked down the page.
‘Ronnie Butler wasn’t born in Whitby,’ Elsie said.
‘No, but perhaps Gabriel Price was. If Gabriel Price even exists.’
We looked again at the photograph in the clipping. It had been taken a few weeks earlier, but despite the grainy ink of the newspaper, there was no question that it was Ronnie who stared back at us from the page.
‘It’s a wonder no one spotted him,’ Elsie said. ‘Being in all the newspapers.’
I stared at the photograph. ‘Perhaps they did,’ I said.
7.10 p.m.
Funny things, photographs. They trap you in a moment forever, and you can never leave. There’s one on that little table in the corner. I don’t have many photographs, because no one ever bothered taking them of me, but this is from school. All of us in a row, staring down a camera lens into the future. There’s me on one end and Elsie on the other. Whenever I see an old photograph, I always look for myself.