‘And?’
‘It got him,’ Jack said. ‘Blew him to pieces. He just vanished, Miss Ambrose. He just disappeared right there in front of me. It was as though he’d never existed.’
Neither of them spoke. Miss Ambrose watched a robin feeding on the bird table. Soft brown feathers with a brush of red. Eyes like coal. She wasn’t even sure how long she watched it for, and afterwards, when she thought back, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t just imagined it.
‘That must have been your long second, then?’ she said eventually.
Jack shook his head. ‘Oh no, it was when I persuaded the deserter to come back.’
‘Surely not? Surely the long second would be the man who saved your life?’
Jack smiled. ‘And who do you think that was?’ he said.
Miss Ambrose felt her throat tighten.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘This is the best place to do your remembering, when you need to.’
‘The Japanese Garden? I thought no one ever bothered with it?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Mrs Honeyman used to visit all the time, and Florence loves it in here. She likes watching the birds, and walking backwards and forwards across that fancy little bridge. You did a fine job, Miss Ambrose.’
Miss Ambrose’s throat tightened a little more. ‘Jack?’ she said.
‘Hmm?’
‘What time is it?’
He patted her arm. ‘Time I was gone.’ He smiled, and you couldn’t help but smile back, even though his smile was soft and unsure, and it trembled at the edges.
She watched him shuffle down the path, tapping his walking stick at the gravel, in a coat worn at the sleeves. Although perhaps she wouldn’t have a word with Chris after all. On second thoughts, perhaps Jack was completely fine just as he was.
FLORENCE
We sat in the day room, in front of a television programme. I said I’d stay, as long as it wasn’t anything to do with cookery, and so they found me something to watch where people were trying to push little counters over an edge and win money. My gaze wandered all over the room, although it wasn’t as bad as when it sits in the middle distance doing nothing.
‘Isn’t it exciting?’ Elsie pointed. ‘The postwoman from Leighton Buzzard is on the verge of winning a hundred and fifty pounds.’
‘I’m not really interested,’ I said.
Jack reached down the side of the settee, and pulled out a carrier bag. ‘In that case, I have just the thing to cheer us all up.’
I glanced over. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Miss Ambrose bought them for me from the jumble sale in Whitby. Don’t say I never keep my promises. Now, which one shall we watch?’
It was a stack of Harry Potter DVDs. The covers were shiny and filled with swirls and swords, and a boy in glasses who grew older with each progressive image.
‘I think we should perhaps see them in order.’ I began sorting through, trying to guess the boy’s age on each one.
‘That’s so typical of you,’ Elsie said. ‘Life always has to have rules.’
Jack picked up the one on the top of the pile. ‘I think there comes an age,’ he said, ‘when you have to worry less about following the rules, and more about living in the moment.’
And so we found Handy Simon, who put a disc in the little slot and sorted out the television, and we all watched the film together. Even Simon, who leaned against the wall for a while, before giving in to himself and sitting on one of the armchairs. Even Miss Ambrose came out of her office. She didn’t tell Simon off, but sat alongside him instead and opened a box of Terry’s All Gold. We escaped from the day room and from Cherry Tree, and into a world of wizards and broomsticks, and ordinary people who were not ordinary, but who were people who turned out, in the end, to be quite extraordinary after all. Because sometimes you need to run away. You need to believe in something without looking for proof. You need to enjoy a thing without finding a need to measure its value. You need to run away from a familiar life, into something quite unfamiliar. Even if you are so old, the only running away you will ever do again is in your mind.
I watched the film from the corner of the room. My eyes following the story, and my mouth following the words. I could remember a time when our whole lives felt like that. Unread chapters. Waiting stories. I didn’t want the film to end. I wanted it to keep on running, because I knew as soon as the credits began to roll, all my thoughts would return to Ronnie, and if I could just hold us all in this room forever, we could unremember everything that lay waiting for us on the other side of the door.
They found Jack the following morning. I was with Elsie when they told me. Simon said he looked really quite peaceful, and Miss Ambrose said dying in your sleep was the very best way to go.
‘But I never got a chance to say cheerio.’ I sat in Miss Ambrose’s office with a glass of water. ‘He never said goodbye.’
Although when I thought about it, perhaps he had. I just didn’t manage to hear it.
I looked for Jack over the next few days. I listened for the tap of his walking stick and the sound of his voice, interfering in other people’s conversations. It felt as though there had been a terrible mistake and someone would come running up to me and say it hadn’t really happened and it was all just a false alarm. The world seemed so incomplete without him there. So unlikely. I think the hardest part of losing anyone is that you still have to live with the same scenery. It’s just that the person you are used to isn’t a part of it any more, and all you notice are the gaps where they used to be. It feels as though, if you concentrated hard enough, you could find them again in those empty spaces. Waiting for you.
I thought the funeral might help us accept Jack had gone, but it all passed by in a moment. Elsie and I sat right at the back, because Elsie was worried I might need some fresh air. Miss Ambrose and Miss Bissell took it in turns to look over their shoulders at us, and when Chris left the church, he stopped and squeezed my arm.
We stood at the graveside afterwards, Elsie and me. The minibus waited in the car park, and for once, Miss Ambrose didn’t try and hurry us along.
I could smell the earth, resting against the October air, and the rain, gathered into pools on the plastic. It was the kind of cemetery where everything was tidy and careful. All the flowers were in vases and the edge of the grass was clipped. Even the dead waited in neat lines, as if even the afterlife required you to form some kind of orderly queue and take your turn.
After a while of silence, we walked along the path towards the car park, past rows of unremembered people, carved into stone and left behind.
‘Do you believe in life after death?’ I said.
Elsie answered without even looking at me. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘How can you be so certain?’
She smiled. ‘Doesn’t it make so much more sense, Florence?’
At least Ronnie had the decency not to show his face. We didn’t see him on the morning of the funeral, or even at the tea Gloria put on in the residents’ lounge afterwards. I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I stood in the corner for most of it, watching people move through the space where Jack used to be.
‘Are you sure we can’t tempt you?’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘A small plate of something?’
I shook my head. ‘I think I might go back to the flat,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll just go and find Elsie.’
Miss Ambrose took my hand. ‘Stay here for a while longer,’ she said. ‘Just until I’m sure you’ll be all right.’
After everyone had eaten, they drifted into the day room and sat around a television, searching each other for clues as to how they should behave. Miss Ambrose decided the best approach was to take our minds off it all. I heard her use those words to Simon, when she asked him to get the Activity Box down from the cupboard in the day room.
‘Give them something else to think about,’ she said. As though any thought in our minds could be taken out and immediately replaced with another.