inside one of his suitcases. He couldn't imagine denying himself his sugar-free sweets but he could well picture the faces of those officials staring at their screen, shaking their heads, laughing at the chav who wanted his sweeties in a luxury Italian hotel.
But he would have to take them if he was not to suffer deprivation. Only vaguely aware of what withdrawal symptoms might be, he nevertheless thought he had them. He had his own kind. Finishing the modest lunch he was eating in a bistro in the Haymarket – Ella had phoned to say she couldn't make it – he had begun to feel the craving that came to him most acutely when he had been eating something savoury. His mouth went dry. Drinking water only served to bring him another manifestation of his longing – a need for some sweet but sharp flavour on his tongue. The waitress had brought him two very small biscotti with his coffee. He ate them disconsolately.
Beginning one's packing at least a week before one went on holiday was a habit Elizabeth Cherry's mother had instilled in her some seventy years before. You spread a sheet on the bed in one of the spare rooms, laid your suitcase on the sheet and began. Her mother hadn't used suitcases but a cabin trunk made of thick, polished, brown hide, lined in silk and with cedar wood hangers. It was immensely heavy even before there was anything in it but that didn't matter as you never carried it yourself. Porters did that, it was their job. Elizabeth used one modest case and a carry-on bag but she still spread out the sheet and laid her luggage on it. Whenever she bought something wrapped in tissue paper she saved the paper for her packing. A sweater or blouse was laid flat on one sheet, another laid on it before it was folded and a third on top. Then all was placed inside the case. Shoes were put inside plastic bags. She prided herself on not taking too much. If what she took with her turned out to be inadequate, she reasoned, she could always buy something. She never did.
The packing done, she opened the drawer where, in envelopes, she kept foreign currency. Since the widespread use of the euro, the number of envelopes had much decreased. She would need euros and, as she would be passing through Switzerland, Swiss francs. This drawer was visited no more than twice a year and it always surprised her. How had she collected so many US dollars? Nearly five hundred? She couldn't remember how it had come about that such a lot had been accumulated. And there were far more euros than she wanted to carry on her. Better take one of the credit cards from the desk downstairs for use in a cash machine. It was years since she had been to Canada yet here were more than three hundred Canadian dollars. They could stay where they were, as could the American money.
Remember to close all the windows, she told herself. Not that she had opened any with all this rain falling daily. The child who had got in and eaten the cake might come back. Window locks might be a good idea but arranging for these to be fitted would have to wait until after she came back. How about her jewellery? She only thought about her jewellery when she was about to go away on holiday. The rest of the time the two bracelets and the eternity ring her dead husband had given her, her mother's rings and heavy gold chain, remained in the jewel box and were never looked at. But the evening before going away for two weeks she worried about them. They were insured, after all. Every time she went away she considered taking them all with her. But considering was all she did. Imagine the nuisance going through security, that arch thing you walked through beeping so that some grim-faced woman in uniform searched you. Imagine putting them all in one of those plastic trays so that everyone could see exactly what you'd got. No, best leave them where they were. They had always been all right and they would be this time.
No mention was made of the jewellery when Elizabeth went next door at six o'clock to remind her neighbour to water her house plants and take in any parcels that might arrive at number 25 in her absence. As she always did when Elizabeth called, at any rate after four, Susan said she was just about to have a small sherry and would Elizabeth join her. Elizabeth was fond of sherry, a civilised drink that seemed to be fast disappearing from all but the drinks cabinets of those over seventy, and she sat down.
When told that Elizabeth was going to Salzburg and Budapest, Susan asked if she would be meeting her 'friend' en route. Elizabeth said she would, but at Waterloo for the Eurostar, not at an airport. Like everyone else, Susan assumed that Elizabeth's friend was a woman and she never enlightened them nor did she say that holidaying with a woman would hardly be her idea of fun. She merely nodded and smiled when Susan referred to the friend as 'she'.
'It's very kind of you to do this. I doubt if there will be any parcels. The most important thing is to water the maidenhair fern every day. But I know you won't forget,' which was a nicer way of putting it than, 'Please don't forget.'
'Have a lovely time,' said Susan after a second small sherry had been drunk by each of them.
Elizabeth was due to leave the house very early for a flight which went from Gatwick at eight and she slept badly, as she always did the night before starting her holiday. The alarm was set (unnecessarily) for five and at ten to she dreamed that the child came into the house as he did last time. No, not quite as he did last time. She was standing at the window in the half-dark and she saw his thin little body squeeze itself out of the mouth of the drainpipe and pull itself up on to all fours. A child of seven or eight. He scuttled across the area of flat roof and skylight, and slipped in through the casement she had left open in her bedroom. Except that she had no casements and no flat roof. This realisation woke her. She switched off the alarm and went into the bathroom to have her shower.
The blonde in a rather too short beige jersey dress introduced herself as Joel's mother – 'Call me Wendy'. The dress was very plain but decorated with a good deal of gold jewellery, diamonds on her fingers and on her ear lobes. She was very polite to Ella and very pleasant. It was hard to tell whose side she was on in the family quarrel. She spoke of it as if a father refusing to see his son for years on end but paying for him to live in comfort was quite normal behaviour. Joel, she said, must pull himself together. There was no reason why he should remain in his flat. If he wanted company and attention he could go into a hotel for a while. His father would be content with that. As for her, she couldn't possibly move in with her son. 'No, doctor, it's out of the question. I can't
Wendy Stemmer had come to the medical centre. Ella had expected her to refuse her request to come and had been surprised at her acquiescence, reluctant though it was. She looked wonderingly at her surroundings as if she were in some far country she was surprised to be visiting, then said, 'I lived in Notting Hill as a girl but not around here of course.'
Ella could think of no answer to that. 'I could find a carer for Joel,' she said.
'Yes, that seems a good idea. I don't know how much these people charge but you could have the bills sent to my husband.'
'Is there a possibility of him coming to see me?'
'Oh, goodness, no. He's at the office.'
Ella had long ago learnt that women of Wendy Stemmer's kind, when speaking of a husband's absence at work, always say he is at the office. As if, she thought, there were only one office in the world or only one of importance.
'I see. Leave it with me. I'll see what I can do and get back to you.'
Later, she phoned an agency. It called itself Caregivers Inc. in the American way, could offer Ella Noreen or Linda, both thoroughly reliable kindly women. Whichever one came would stay in the flat from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. The cost staggered Ella but she wasn't paying. Joel's father was and he never seemed to mind what things cost so long as he was paying for his son's absence from his life. She phoned Mrs Stemmer and then Joel, and told him, half expecting him to say he didn't want anyone staying overnight so that she would have to cancel the whole thing and think again, but he agreed to the presence of Noreen or Linda, his tone limp and indifferent.
'I won't have to make up beds or anything like that, will I, Ella?'
'She'll do that.'
'I wish it was you coming,' he said.
It was her afternoon off, no calls to make, no evening surgery. She went to Knightsbridge, clothes shopping for Como, telling herself that she was walking there because at last after all the rain it was a fine sunny day, not to help her lose weight. Too many of her patients moaned continually about the pounds they had put on and their increasing waist measurement. If she really meant to reduce her ten stone to nine she should have done something about it months ago, not when her wedding dress was half made. The sun made her feel cheerful. Eugene liked her the way she was and that was what mattered. She bought a long dress in darkblue lace to wear in the warm Italian evenings.
