“Right, well, I’ll be off now,” Viola said, glancing with relief at her watch. “I’ve got a taxi booked to pick me up.” She kissed Teddy lightly on the forehead, the proximity of escape making her almost affectionate. He was cool and dry to the touch, already half-embalmed and mummified. His hand twitched, but that was the only acknowledgement he gave her.
Downstairs, at the main exit door, an old woman, one of the walking dead, was treading water, looking out at what would have made quite a nice garden for the “residents” if it hadn’t been given over to staff parking. Viola recognized her as someone called Agnes. She had still been in possession of her mind when her father first moved to Poplar Hill and used to sit in his room and chat to him. Now she had the dead stare of a fish and was fluent in gibberish.
“Hello, there,” Viola said pleasantly. Experience had taught her that it was difficult to converse with someone whose eyes slid past you as if you were the ghost, not them, but she pressed on. “Would you mind moving?” she said. “I’d like to leave and you are a bit in the way.” Agnes said something but it was like listening to Bertie talking in her sleep. “You’re not allowed out,” Viola said, trying to nudge her out of the way, but Agnes stood her ground, immoveable as a cow or a horse. Viola sighed and said, “Be it on your own head then,” and keyed in the magic exit number on the security pad (“4-3-2-1”). Agnes slipped swiftly out, her speediness impressive, already halfway down the drive by the time Viola was climbing into her taxi. You had to admire her fugitive spirit.
The new nursing sister came jogging awkwardly out of the building and said to Viola, “You haven’t seen Agnes, have you?” Viola shrugged and said, “Sorry.”
She caught the last train to London and missed the sub-headline in The Press the next day. The news item was buried amongst photos of the weekend’s street parties and reports of the Jubilee celebrations and Viola did not read that “An eighty-year-old resident of a care home who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease has been reported missing. She was spotted by a motorist wandering on the hard shoulder of the A64 and police are trying to trace her whereabouts through CCTV. The woman, who has not been named, is a resident of Poplar Hill Care Home. A spokesperson for the care home said a full investigation is underway as to how the woman had been able to get out of a secure ward and declined to comment further.”
Viola was in Changi airport by then. Another fugitive.
She took a taxi from King’s Cross to the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. She had suggested to Bertie that they meet up while she was in town. “Dinner? At Dinner—the Heston Blumenthal place at the Mandarin?” (Talk about calling a spade a spade.) “My treat!”
“Can’t, sorry,” Bertie said. “I’m busy.”
“Too busy for your own mother?” Viola said lightly. (Sow and reap.) The horror of Saturday night came surging back. Gregory said she had “abandonment issues.” (“As in you abandoned us?” Bertie said.) She felt sick.
Give Viola three wishes and what would she ask for?
Her children back as babies. Her children back as babies. Her children back as babies.
Somewhere high over the Indian Ocean she remembered the powerful dream from last night. She was in a train station, not a modern one, it felt like the past, dark and sooty. Sunny was with her, five or six years old, wearing that funny little red duffel coat he’d had, a stripy scarf around his neck. (Yes, she had dressed him badly, she admitted it, all right?) The station was busy, people were rushing to catch the train, to get home. They were impeded by a turnstile and a ticket collector in a booth. There were steps that led down to the platform and the train, which were both out of sight. It was Viola and Sunny’s job to help the people catch the train, herding them like sheepdogs and shouting encouragement at them. And then the rush slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. They could hear the last of the train’s doors slam down below and the guard blew his whistle and Sunny turned to her and, with a beaming grin on his face, said, “We did it, Mum! Everyone got on the train.” Viola had absolutely no idea what the dream meant.