see a film,' Gerald announces.
'You'll have to make your minds up. I can't be in two places at once. I'm just me.'
Once she and her brother have done giggling at some element of this Geraldine says, 'Grumpo.'
I'm saddened to think she means me, especially since Gerald agrees, until I see it's the title of a film that's showing in the complex. 'You need to be twelve to go in.'
'No we don't,' they duet, and Gerald adds 'You can take us.'
Because they're so insistent I seek support from the girl in the pay booth, only to be told I'm mistaken. She watches me ask, 'What would your parents say?'
'They'd let us,' Geraldine assures me, and Gerald says, 'We watch fifteens at home.'
Wouldn't the girl advise me if the film weren't suitable? I buy tickets and lead the way into a large dark auditorium. We're just in time to see the screen exhort the audience to switch off mobile phones, and I have the twins do so once they've used theirs to light the way along a row in the absence of an usherette. The certificate that precedes the film doesn't tell me why it bears that rating, but that's apparent soon enough. An irascible grandfather embarrasses his offspring with his forgetfulness and the class of his behaviour and especially his language, which even features two appearances of the word I ignored most often on the train. The twins find him hilarious, as do all the children in the cinema except for one that keeps poking its head over the back of a seat several rows ahead. Or is it a child? It doesn't seem to be with anyone, and now it has stopped trying to surprise me with its antics and settles on peering at me over the seat. Just its pale fat face above the nose is visible, crowned and surrounded by an unkempt mass of hair. The flickering of the dimness makes it look eager to jerk up and reveal more of its features, though the light is insufficient to touch off the slightest glimmer in the eyes, which I can't distinguish. At last the oldster in the film saves his children from robbers with a display of martial arts, and his family accepts that he's as loveable as I presume we're expected to have found him. The lights go up as the credits start to climb the screen, and I crane forward for a good look at the child who's been troubling me. It has ducked into hiding, and I sidle past Geraldine to find it. 'You're going the wrong way, grandpa,' she calls, but neither this nor Gerald's mirth can distract me from the sight of the row, which is deserted.
Members of the audience stare at me as I trudge to the end of the aisle, where words rise up to tower over me, and plod back along the auditorium. By this time it's empty except for the twins and me, and it's ridiculous to fancy that if I glance over my shoulder I'll catch a head in the act of taking cover. 'Nothing,' I say like Grumpo, if less coarsely, when Gerald asks what I'm looking for. I bustle the twins out of the cinema, and as soon as they revive their phones Gerald's goes off like an alarm.
In a moment Geraldine's restores equality. They read their messages, which consist of less than words, and return their calls. 'Hello, mummy,' Geraldine says. 'We were in a film.'
Her brother conveys the information and hands me the mobile. 'Dad wants to speak to you.'
'Bertie. Forgive me, should we have — ' 'I hope you know we came to find you on the beach.' 'Gerald didn't say. I do apologise if you — ' 'I trust you're bringing them home now. To your house.' I don't understand why he thinks the addition is necessary. 'I'm afraid we're in trouble,' I inform the twins as Geraldine ends her call. I have to be reminded that it's Gerald's turn to control the lift at the railway station. At least our train reaches the platform as we do, and soon it emerges into the open, at which point I recall how close we are to Beryl's house. As the train passes it I turn to look. There's nothing at her window.
The tenant must have moved the window box. It does no good to wonder where the item that I glimpsed is now. I'm nervous enough by the time we arrive at the end of the line and I lead the twins or am led by them uphill. They seem more eager than I feel, perhaps because they've me to blame. I'm fumbling to extract my keys when Paula's husband opens the front door as if it's his. Having given each of us a stare that settles on me, Bertie says 'Dinner won't be long.'
It sounds so much like a rebuke, and is backed up by so many trespassing smells that I retort, 'I could have made it, you know.' 'Could you?' Before I can rise to this challenge he adds 'Don't you appreciate my cuisine and Paula's?'
'Your children don't seem to all that much,' I'm provoked to respond and quote a favourite saying of Jo's. 'It isn't seaside without fish and chips.'
'I'm afraid we believe in raising them more healthily.' 'Do you, Paula? In other words, not how your mother and I treated you?' When she only gazes sadly at me from the kitchen I say, 'It can't be very healthy if they hardly touch their food.' 'It isn't very healthy for them to hear this kind of thing.' 'Find something to watch for a few minutes,' her husband tells them. 'Maybe your grandfather can choose something suitable.'
I feel silenced and dismissed. I follow the children into the lounge and insist on selecting the wildlife show. 'I've got to watch as well,' I say, even if it sounds like acknowledging a punishment. They greet the announcement of dinner without concealing their relief, although their enthusiasm falls short of the meal itself. When at last they've finished sprinkling cheese on their spaghetti they eat just the sauce, and hardly a leaf of their salad. Though I perform relishing all of mine, I have a sense of being held responsible for their abstinence. I try not to glance at the mirror of the dresser, but whenever I fail there appear to be only the reflections of the family and me.
Once the twins have filled up with chocolate dessert, it's time for games. I vote against reviving the one in which the pallid head pops up, which means that Gerald vetoes his sister's choice of Monopoly. Eventually I remember the games stored in the cupboard under the stairs. The dark shape that rears up beyond the door is my shadow. As I take Snakes and Ladders off the pile I'm reminded of playing it with Paula and her mother, who would smile whenever Paula clapped her hands at having climbed a ladder. I've brought the game into the dining room before I recall playing it with Beryl.
Was it our last game with her? It feels as if it should have been. Every time she cast a losing throw she moved one space ahead of it. 'Can't get me,' she would taunt the snakes. 'You stay away from me, nasty squirmy things.' I thought she was forbidding them to gobble her up as if she were one of her snacks between meals, the powdered sponge cakes that she'd grown more and more to resemble. Whenever she avoided a snake by expanding a move she peered at me out of the concealment of her puffed-up face. I felt challenged to react, and eventually I stopped my counter short of a snake. 'Can't he count?' my aunt cried at once. 'Go in the next box.'
Once I'd descended the snake I complained, 'Auntie Beryl keeps going where she shouldn't.'
'Don't you dare say I can't count. They knew how to teach us when I was at school.' This was the start of a diatribe that left her panting and clutching her chest while her face tried on a range of shades of grey. 'Look what you've done,' my father muttered in my ear while my mother tried to calm her down. When Beryl recaptured her wheezing breath she insisted on finishing the game, staring hard at me every time she was forced to land on a snake. She lost, and glared at me as she said, 'Better never do anything wrong, even the tiniest thing. You don't know who'll be watching.'
Of course I knew or feared I did. I wish I'd chosen another game to play with Paula and her family. Before long Gerald pretends one of his throws hasn't landed on a snake. 'Fair play, now,' I exhort, earning a scowl from Gerald and a look from his father that manages to be both disapproving and blank. Perhaps Geraldine misinterprets my comment, because soon she cheats too. 'If we aren't going to play properly,' I say without regarding anyone, 'there's no point to the game.' Not addressing somebody specific gives me a sense of including more people than are seated at the table, and no amount of glancing at the mirror can rid me of the impression. I've never been so glad to lose a game. 'Will you excuse me?' I blurt as my chair stumbles backwards. 'I've had quite a day. Time for bed.'
My struggles to sleep only hold me awake. When at last the twins are coaxed up to their room and the adults retreat to theirs, I'm still attempting to fend off the memory of my final visit to my aunt's house. She was ill in bed, so shortly after the game of Snakes and Ladders that I felt responsible. She sent my mother out for cakes, though the remains of several were going stale in a box by her bed. There were crumbs on the coverlet and around her mouth, which looked swollen almost bloodlessly pale. I thought there was too much of her to be able to move until she dug her fingers into the bed and, having quivered into a sitting position that dislodged a musty shawl from her distended shoulders, reached for me. I took her hand as a preamble to begging forgiveness, but her cold spongy grasp felt as if it was on the way to becoming a substance other than flesh, which overwhelmed me with such panic that I couldn't speak. Perhaps she was aware of her overloaded heart, since she fixed me with
