“From Charlotte?” Clara’s voice rises like a Chinese sky lantern. “Why?”
The coffee table is nice and shiny, and I really should move on to the kitchen. But I get out my bottle and give it another spray. I’ve missed my daily gossip sessions with Jazz. Hearing about who has had Botox, who is leaving her husband for the personal trainer. While this conversation isn’t anywhere near so scandalous, I feel myself getting sucked into it. I’d have expected someone like Clara to talk to her sister every day, to send cards and gifts and exchange photos of respective grandchildren. But by the way she’s acting, you’d have thought Laurie had said Satan himself was coming to visit.
“Enid comes every year,” Laurie says slowly. “Why not this year?”
Clara shrugs. “It’s a long way for her to travel, is all.”
“As you point out every time. Now, are you going to get all worked up as usual, planning activities for every solitary second of her trip, or are you going to let her have a nice visit this time?”
Clara narrows her eyes. “Since when are you so worried about my sister getting a nice visit?”
“Staying out of it,” Laurie says.
“You do that.”
Clara thumps down her book and heaves herself out of her chair.
“Where are you going?” Laurie asks.
“Where do you think? I’m going to call Enid. Get this visit planned and over with.”
Clara disappears and the room falls silent again, apart from my humming. Laurie starts whistling, so comfortable as to his place in Clara’s life, he doesn’t need to waste his time worrying. I’d always thought that one day, Richard and I would be old and comfortable in our ways, after a lifetime of marriage. We would have been. But Richard ruined it.
I finish dusting some books on the coffee table, then tuck my cloth into my apron. That’s when I notice Anna.
“Anna?” I say cautiously, edging toward her. “Are you … all right?”
Her face is slick with tears. She’s staring right at me, but unseeing, so I squat down in front of her and take her hands. “Anna?”
Finally she sees me. Her eyes go round, panicked. “They’re having us followed.”
“Who is having you followed?”
She tips her head toward the doorway. “Them.”
I look at the doorway, which is empty. I shake my head. “No one is having you followed, Anna.”
“They are,” she says. Her hands are fists, pounding against her knees. Her face becomes twisted with frustration. “And soon, I’m going to forget him.”
She isn’t making any sense. I glance around, looking for Carole or Trish or Eric, but they’re nowhere to be seen.
“Anna, I promise you no one is—”
“They are!” In a sudden movement, she throws her hands up, and I lose my balance and tumble backwards onto the rug. I’m just getting up again as Carole and Eric come jogging in.
“See?” Anna says, pointing at them. Her face is almost victorious. “I told you! They’re following us. Where’s Jack?” she asks Eric snippily. “Where’s your partner in crime?”
Eric runs over to me. “Are you all right?”
I stand upright. “I’m fine.”
“It’s all right, sweetie,” Carole says to Anna. She approaches her quickly, getting right up in her face. “Everything is all right.”
“No, it’s not!”
Unlike my push, which I think was unintentional, this time Anna gives Carole an almighty shove. Carole hits the ground with a thud, landing awkwardly on her elbow.
“We need to restrain her,” Eric says. “Trish?” he calls out.
“Oh no,” I say, “I don’t think—”
But Trish is already jogging into the room.
“Anna is getting agitated,” Eric says. “She’s just pushed Eve and Carole.”
“She didn’t mean to push me,” I say. “It was an acciden—”
“Do you need a tranquilizer?” Trish asks.
“No!” I say at the same time as Eric says, “Probably best to be safe.”
I can’t believe this is happening. Anna still seems agitated, but she’s not exactly wielding a knife. She’s just in her chair, looking at her lap, muttering quietly. I hear what she’s saying, but it doesn’t make any sense. It sounds like “beat the bomb, beat the bomb.”
Before I know what’s happening, Trish is back with a syringe. She approaches Anna from the side, so she doesn’t see it coming. When she drives the needle into her arm, Anna lets out a high-pitched, pained wail.
My hands find my mouth. I want to look away, but for some reason, perhaps out of solidarity with Anna, I can’t. Help me. They are following us. Beat the bomb. I search her words for a common thread, a clue to what she’s trying to tell me. But they just sound like the words of someone at a disconnect with reality. Someone with Alzheimer’s.
“There you go, sweetie,” Trish says as Anna sinks back into her chair. Anna continues to stare at me for a few seconds with something like pleading in her eyes. But as the tranquilizer works its way into her system, her expression dulls away to nothing.