I manage not to laugh. How old does he think I am? Then again, if he’s in his mid-twenties, as he looks, perhaps it’s not so preposterous after all.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I say, wanting to be reassured. ‘I didn’t get a clear look. Perhaps it was just the wind in the shadows, a trick of the light.’
‘It’d be easy to mistake,’ says the younger one, with a sympathetic smile.
But even as they start moving to go, the scene flashes in my mind again, and stays there, a picture I can’t banish, as I wave them goodbye, and shut and lock the front door: that tall, still shape in the garden, tipped by a pale oval, against the dark.
A thought occurs to me now. When I switched the lamp off the shape moved, back into the bushes.
But until that moment, as I’d stared out of the window, the light framing me in my house as I looked out? Someone was looking right back at me.
18
It’s funny how different things can seem in the daytime. Morning has worked its usual magic, and I feel much better: even if there was someone there, and I wasn’t mistaken, the police officers were surely right. It would just have been opportunistic, someone trying to find out if any of these houses have been left empty for the summer. Well, now they’ll know mine isn’t.
I checked all the locks before I went to bed, twice. It’s a solid house, locks on the windows and double glazing, and bolts on the back door. And it still feels so safe up here, compared to London.
But I know this house could be a target, here on the fringes of the village, off a drive that could hide a car from the road. So I’m going to get an alarm sorted, soon, on top of all the locks. It’ll be absolutely fine.
Still, it was a long night. I didn’t fall asleep until the sky started to lighten through my window and I read, instead, resolutely not allowing my imagination to wander. I didn’t want to take a pill. Just in case I didn’t hear something.
This morning I woke up late, groggy and off balance, then I remembered what had happened. Then my next thought came: Lily. Now I find myself hurrying to get ready.
I want to check on her myself. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but I don’t bother showering, just pull on my running kit, and take the shortcut through the bushes between the plots again, quick as I can.
There’s an anxious minute after I knock and then let myself into Lily’s house, stepping slowly through the hall.
‘Lily? It’s me. Are you there?’
It’s quiet. Perhaps she can’t hear me? I can feel my heartbeat quickening.
But she’s in her sitting room as usual, in her comfortable chair, and my shoulders relax.
‘Oh hello, dear,’ she says, turning towards me with a smile. ‘This is a bit early for you, isn’t it?’ I normally come in the afternoons.
‘I just thought I’d pop by on the way to the supermarket, see if you needed anything.’ I’ve already decided I’m not going to mention last night. ‘I haven’t seen you for a bit. How have you been?’
‘I’m fine, dear. How are you?’ No, she definitely wasn’t disturbed in the night, I can tell.
I ask her what she’s been up to these past few days: how was her coffee afternoon at the church last week? She makes me laugh at how another of the ladies, Violet, is pursuing the lone gentleman Sidney – she seems to be wearing him down.
But I’ve heard this story before, down to her withering verdict. ‘She’s a trier, that one. I’ll give her that.’ I wonder how much of the last gathering she actually remembers. She doesn’t mention me coming round at the weekend, finding her sleepy and disorientated after her nap.
Yet she does seem more like the old Lily now, more alert and herself than she’s been for a while. Younger, even. Perhaps she’s better in the mornings.
We chat for a while, talking about her soaps, then there’s a lull.
‘I wanted to ask you something, Lily.’
She tilts her head a little. ‘Yes?’
‘About Nancy.’
‘Who, dear?
‘Nancy. The girl you mentioned the other day, who looks like my Sophie?’
There’s a beat, then she shakes her head, slowly. ‘I don’t think I know a Nancy.’
‘Nancy Corrigan? You know, she used to live in the big house. Years ago, now.’
‘No, dear, I don’t know.’ Her pause is almost unnoticeable. ‘I do hope I haven’t forgotten again.’
I decide to leave it, for now. I don’t want to push it further, and upset her by chasing yet another thing that’s slipped from her memory. Before I go, I head into her loo upstairs. I’m mulling over our conversation as I wash my hands.
So Lily doesn’t remember mentioning Nancy. Well, maybe she wasn’t even referring to the Nancy who used to live at Parklands. In fact, I ask myself, why would she even know about her? Nancy. Sophie. It could just be a coincidence, they don’t sound too dissimilar – a slip of the tongue.
I shake my head in the mirror. No, I don’t believe that. That’s too neat. I think the thought of Sophie the other day jogged her memory in some way – she remembered another girl who went away.
So at some point, she must have heard about Nancy. That would make more sense, if she’s lived here a while. People do talk. And then she forgot about it, I think, drying my hands on her embroidered white hand towel. Because she does forget things, all too often, nowadays.
But I feel cross that I’ve got no further. Frustrated. And now I feel the impulse, like an itch under my skin. I don’t need to. I shouldn’t. It would be an invasion of privacy. I don’t—
Before I can think about it any further, I just do it: I open the bathroom cabinet above the sink.
Yardley lavender scented moisturiser. Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass scent. That face cream she’s told me about, that Joanna Lumley uses. And her medicine bottles.
I pull out one of the brown glass bottles, filled with clear liquid. I don’t know the brand name, I don’t think – I squint at the smaller print label, wishing I had my glasses ‘… contains morphine’.
Jesus. I know what this stuff is. Liquid morphine, a powerful painkiller. I knew she had a bad hip but, wow. Poor Lily. She must be in real pain. And there’s so much of it – at least half a dozen of these bottles, some already near empty. How much morphine does she need?
I glance down again at the label: Mrs Lily Green, The Carriage House, Park Road, Vale Dean. It’s hers, of course. ‘To take as and when, for pain.’
There are pills too, I see, carefully easing out a packet: more of the same stuff in capsule form, with directions to take twice daily.
The doctors will know what you can take, of course they do. But even so … I frown. It’s trusting her a lot, with this stuff, to keep on top of her dosage and timings and the rest. Should she really have so much of it? They might not realise how she’s been, more recently. No wonder she’s been so dopey and confused – and if I’m right that she’s showing signs of dementia, as I fear, couldn’t all this be making it worse?
I glance at the bottle in my hand again. I’ve still heard nothing back from the council. I can’t ask Lily. She’ll think I’m prying and just won’t see the danger.
For a moment, a wave of hot emotion rises up over me: I feel so overwhelmed. I lean against the basin. I can cope, I can. But it’s all coming at once. Sophie. Lily. Nancy.
Lily pretending not to know about Nancy.
Why do I think that? ‘I hope I haven’t forgotten again.’
Why is that worrying at me? She didn’t seem distressed, like it touched a chord. Quite the opposite in fact: she was calm, resigned even. Even though she’d forgotten something. Again.
And then I get it. That was it: this time, she wasn’t the least upset.