She took half a day to reacquaint herself fully with her apartment, tottering slowly from room to room, reminding and reassuring herself that everything was as it should be – I tried not to view this as her checking I hadn’t stolen anything. Finally she sat down on her tall, upholstered chair and let out a little sigh. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to be home.’ She said it as if she had half expected not to make it back. And then she nodded off. I thought for the hundredth time about Granddad and how lucky he was to have Mum caring for him.
Mrs De Witt was plainly too frail to be left alone, and apparently in no hurry to see me go. So, with no actual discussion between us, I simply stayed on. I helped her wash and dress and cooked her meals and, for the first week at least, walked Dean Martin several times a day. Towards the end of that week, I found she had cleared me a little space in the fourth bedroom, moving books and items of clothing one at a time to reveal a bedside table that was usable or a shelf on which I could put my things. I commandeered her guest bathroom for myself, scrubbing it thoroughly and running the taps until the water was clear. Then, discreetly, I set about cleaning all those areas of her own bathroom and kitchen that her failing eyesight had begun to miss.
I took her to the hospital for her follow-up appointments, and sat outside with Dean Martin until I was asked to return for her. I booked her an appointment at her hairdresser and waited while her thin, silvery hair was returned to its former neat waves, a small act that seemed to be more restorative than any of the medical attention she had received. I helped her with her make-up, and located her various pairs of glasses. She would thank me quietly and emphatically for my help in the way you might a favoured guest.
Conscious that, as she’d lived alone for years, she might need her space, I would often go out for a few hours in the day, sit in the library and look for jobs but without the urgency I had felt previously and, in truth, there was nothing I wanted to do. She would usually be either sleeping or propped in front of her television when I returned. ‘Now, Louisa,’ she would say, pushing herself upright, as if we had been mid-conversation, ‘I’d been wondering where you were. Would you be kind enough to take Dean Martin for a little stroll? He’s been looking rather concerned …’
On Saturdays I went with Meena to the library protests. The crowds had grown thinner now, the library’s future dependent not just on public support but a crowd-funded legal challenge. Nobody seemed to hold out much hope for it. We stood, less chilled as each week passed, waving our battered placards and accepting with thanks the hot drinks and snacks that still arrived from neighbours and local shopkeepers. I’d learnt to look out for familiar faces – the grandmother I’d met on my first visit, whose name was Martine and now greeted me with a hug and a broad smile. A handful of others waved or said hi, the security guard, the woman who brought pakoras, the librarian with the beautiful hair. I never saw the old woman with the ripped epaulettes again.
I had been living in Mrs De Witt’s apartment for thirteen days when I bumped into Agnes. Given our proximity to each other, I suppose it was surprising that it hadn’t happened earlier. It was raining heavily and I was wearing one of Mrs De Witt’s old raincoats – a yellow and orange 1970s plastic one with bright circular flowers all over it – and she had put a little mackintosh with an elevated hood on Dean Martin, which made me snort with laughter every time I looked at it. We ran along the corridor, me giggling at the sight of his bulbous little face under the plastic hood, and I stopped suddenly as the lift doors opened and Agnes stepped out, tailed by a young woman with an iPad, her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail. She stopped and stared at me. Something not quite readable passed across her face – something that might have been awkwardness, a mute apology or even suppressed fury at my being there, it was hard to tell. Her eyes met mine, she opened her mouth as if to speak, then pressed her lips together and walked past me as if she hadn’t seen me, her glossy blonde hair swinging and the girl close behind.
I stood watching as the front door closed emphatically after them, my cheeks burning like a spurned lover’s.
I had a vague memory of us laughing in a noodle bar.
We are friends, yes?
And then I took a deep breath, called the little dog to me to fasten his lead, and headed out into the rain.
In the end, it was the girls at the Vintage Clothes Emporium who offered me paid employment. A container of stuff was arriving from Florida – several wardrobes’ worth – and they needed an extra pair of hands to go over each item before it hit the shelves, sew on missing buttons and make sure everything that went out on the rails was steam-pressed and clean in time for a vintage clothes fair at the end of April. (Articles that didn’t smell fresh were the most commonly returned.) The pay was minimum wage but the company was good, the coffee free, and they would give me a 20 per cent discount on anything I wanted to buy. My appetite for purchasing new clothes had diminished along with my lack of accommodation, but I said yes gladly and, once I was sure Mrs De Witt was stable enough to walk Dean Martin at least to the end of the block and back by herself, I would head to the store every Tuesday at ten a.m. and spend the day in their back room, cleaning, sewing and chatting to the girls during their cigarette breaks, which seemed to happen every fifteen minutes or so.
Margot – I was forbidden to call her Mrs De Witt any more: ‘You’re living in my home, for goodness’ sake’ – listened carefully when I told her of my new role, then asked what I was using to repair the clothes. I described the huge plastic box of old buttons and zips but added that the whole thing was such a chaotic mess that I often couldn’t find a match, and rarely more than three of the same type of button. She rose heavily from her chair and motioned to me to follow. I walked very close to her, these days – she didn’t seem completely steady on her feet, and frequently listed to one side, like a badly loaded ship in high seas. But she made it, her hand trailing the wall for extra stability.
‘Under that bed, dear. No, there. There are two chests. That’s it.’ I knelt and wrenched out two heavy wooden boxes with lids. Opening them, I found them filled to the brim with rows of buttons, zips, tapes and fringes. There were hooks and eyes, fastenings of every type, all neatly separated and labelled, brass naval buttons and tiny Chinese ones, covered with bright silk, bone and shell, sewn neatly onto little strips of card. In the cushioned lid sat sprays of pins, rows of different-sized needles, and an assortment of silk threads on tiny pegs. I ran my fingers across them reverently.
‘I was given those for my fourteenth birthday. My grandfather had them shipped from Hong Kong. If you get stuck you can check in there. I used to take the buttons and zippers from everything I didn’t wear any more, you know. That way if you lose a button from something nice, and can’t replace it, you always have a full set that you can sew on instead.’
‘But won’t you need them?’
She waved her good hand. ‘Oh, my fingers are far too clumsy for sewing now. Half the time I can’t even work the buttonholes. And so few people bother with fixing buttons and zippers these days – they just throw their clothes in the trash and buy something awful from one of those discount stores. You take them, dear. It would be nice to feel they were useful.’
So, by luck and perhaps a little by design, I now had two jobs that I loved. And with them I found a kind of contentment. Every Tuesday evening I would bring home a few items of clothing in a chequered laundry bag of plastic webbing, and while Margot napped, or watched television, I would carefully remove all the remaining buttons on each item and sew on a new set, holding them up afterwards for her approval.
‘You sew quite nicely,’ she remarked, peering at my stitches through her spectacles, as we sat in front of Wheel of Fortune. ‘I thought you’d be as dreadful at it as you are at everything else.’