‘I don’t think so.’
‘You know,’ she leaned towards him in a confidential manner, ‘she was never a real mother to me.’
‘Wasn’t she?’
‘No.’ She looked away then said, ‘Oh yes, she was a funny woman, my mother,’ as if she was dead.
After that they sat in silence, and he thought: they’ll never move. Never get them out of my house. And the rain went on and Madeleine returned and everything was awkward and they said it was getting late and they’d come back tomorrow. Harriet was staying in the Holiday Inn. She was wondering if there was any way she could get expenses from social services for all this but gave up the idea almost at once.
Anyway, she said, she couldn’t really manage more than one more night. She had to get back to work.
‘What do you do?’ asked Madeleine.
‘I’m a radiographer,’ she said.
‘What about the other sister?’ said Dan, and they both looked at him.
‘I didn’t know there was another sister,’ Madeleine said.
‘My sister died in a car accident,’ Harriet said.
‘Oh, how awful!’ cried Madeleine.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was. It was terrible.’
They left together but a couple of hours later Madeleine rang and told him all about it, what a sad case it was, the sister had been killed in a car crash and the mother had gone into some kind of weird state after that. Apparently she’d had a couple of peculiar episodes before. ‘She’s schizophrenic, you know. They get paranoid. You can’t trust anything they say. And then the father pissed off, and it was just poor Harriet and her mad mum till she left home and went to live with a friend. Couldn’t wait to get out. I mean, you have to sympathise. Some of the things I’ve seen. People’s lives are just so messed up. Really, you just wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t believe my files, some of the things I’ve got in my files. I could tell you—’
‘Sorry, Madeleine,’ he said. ‘Got to go now.’
He looked out. The yard was growing muddy from the rain and the tyre tracks had made a mess. With a face of granite, he pulled on his boots once more, got on his yellow waterproof and plodded off. The afternoon was uncomfortably darkening. He didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to do anything. I said I was going in first, that’s what I’m doing, he told himself. As he got deeper in the wood, the sound of rain was like a constant waterfall. He stood still and looked around, rain dripping from his hairy overhanging brow in spite of the shiny yellow hood. You could hear water streaming away into the shiny clay beneath, a great thirst slaking. It was still light enough to see the quivering shine on the ivy.
He went on towards the big rock, then stood still again. Yes, this was it. And there, if he was not mistaken, was the faintest warming of the gloom in the thickets on the left-hand side. Lamplight.
So he just called. ‘Hello-o-o-o-o…’ sounding ridiculous to himself.
A moment.
‘Hello-o-o-o-o-o…’
The rain fell harder.
There was a rustling in the gloom. The foliage parted and her wan face looked out. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
The face withdrew, he stooped, shoved his weight through the gap in the leaves, shoved his face on through the gap towards the light, my God, she’d got it all pretty tight, and into this place. It was a little room. She could just about stand up in the middle of it but he felt like a giant. He crawled in and crouched like a troll. It was a tent inside a tarpaulin inside a cave of leaves accessed by a short but twisting tunnel. An old red and brown patterned rug decorated the floor. A Tilley lamp stood in a cracked yellow mixing bowl. The fire risk! he thought.
‘Christ, I hope you’re careful with that,’ he said.
‘Of course I am.’
The walls, if you could call them that, were hung with jewellery, long strands of beads and bangles and jangly things, all sparkly in the light from the Tilley. Spilt cards. Not normal ones, Tarot cards. All that shit.
‘Your daughter’s here,’ he said.
Her face changed. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. Then she sighed. ‘You have unleashed chaos,’ she said, then gave a sudden unhinged laugh. ‘My daughter! Which one?’ and he froze, remembering that there was a dead one.
‘Harriet hasn’t bothered with me in years,’ she said then. ‘What’s she after?’
‘She’s brought your medication.’
‘You know, everything just gets too complicated.’ She turned away. ‘Why did you tell? You promised.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He was now, though he didn’t see any other way things could have worked out.
‘How did you find Harriet?’
A long pause. ‘When I looked in your pocket. That night – you know.’
‘My pocket? My purse, you mean. You must have gone in my purse.’
‘Yes, I did.’
A silence.
‘Well, that was a shitty thing to do,’ she said, then a bitter laugh. ‘I like that. Don’t go poking around in my house, you said. When you were the one who—’
‘Sorry. It seemed necessary.’
‘No, you’re not sorry.’ What else was in my pockets, she was thinking. What else does he think he knows? ‘She can’t make me move,’ she said.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m just letting you know. They’ll be here tomorrow.’
‘They?’
‘Yes, your daughter and…’
‘That woman.’
‘Yes.’
‘A social worker.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh well that’s that then.’ She sat up straight and started fumbling for a cigarette. He lit it for her.
‘They never leave you alone, those people,’ she said.
‘She’s only trying to help.’
‘Of course.’
This place was much too small to smoke in. It was like being a kid in a den, doing something forbidden. ‘Christ knows the state of your lungs,’ he said.
‘Christ knows the state of your liver,’ she replied.
He smiled. ‘Shouldn’t think yours is too brilliant either.’
She smiled too, without humour. ‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re right about your woman whatsername, she’s probably a lovely lovely woman and all that, but I do wonder –
