Meanwhile, penny-pinching was the most painful in relation to their parents. The less than luxurious care home they found for Kay’s mother didn’t smell like pee or anything, but it had the atmosphere of a budget hotel—all plastic chairs and curling fake-wood laminate. Even so, when the money from the sale of the house in Maida Vale was used up, Kay insisted that her brother Percy pitch in his share of the fees. Objecting that his aggrieved ex-wife had secured an outrageous settlement in the divorce and his husband was a skint journeyman actor, Percy was resentful, which turned the siblings’ relationship frosty.
Once Cyril’s mother died of viral pneumonia, they also made the painful decision to let the jovial live-in Jamaican go. Kalisa might have become one of the family, but Norman could manage mostly on his own, and Cyril’s sister Fiona, who lived nearby, could regularly pop in to check on her father. The economics of the decision were cut-and-dried—a full-time salary year after year quickly adds up—but Fiona didn’t appreciate having the responsibility dumped on her by merit of proximity, and she was understandably convinced that her father’s care fell solely to her because she was the girl. That sibling relationship didn’t prosper, either. Worse, although Norman had seemed to manage the loss of his wife with impressive resignation, losing his cheerful Christian companion—who sang whilst she worked, and served up not only a mean plate of plantains but a better than passable sausage lasagne—was more than he could bear. He needed Kalisa more than they realized. Weakened from losing weight, he fell prey to flu and died at eighty-one—which was beginning to seem young.
The Wilkinsons did extensive research on assisted living facilities, which varied enormously in quality, availability, and solvency. At last they settled on a high-end outfit in Suffolk, just outside Aldeburgh—close enough to London to easily visit friends and family so long as they were still able to travel. Journey’s End was on the coast, which would allow for leisurely beachcombing during the period they remained ambulatory. Its amenities were flash: a gym, a pool, a games room with two snooker tables, a common area with pneumatic, attractively upholstered sofas and colourful cushions. The dining room for functional residents was kitted out like a restaurant, and its menu, as various as The Ivy in Covent Garden, catered to all manner of dietary requirements. They tried it out for lunch, and Cyril was impressed with the steak and ale pie, whereas Kay found it a good sign that they made their chips fresh from proper potatoes.
Typically for the posh establishments, residents progressed through three tiers. To begin with, if you could dress, wash, and feed yourself, and you were not incontinent or noticeably away with the fairies, you could live in a private flat, to which you were welcome to import your own furniture, wall hangings, and knickknacks. As medical needs escalated, you shifted to a more hands-on situation with greater assistance, and then finally to full-time nursing care. Residents in the last tier were not, Kay noted, trotted out to meet prospective customers. Their tour guide merely opened a door and closed it again, eager to move rapidly on to the in-house cinema.
Talking up Journey’s End as if it were a swanky country club, the more independent residents they met tended to be highly educated professionals or successful entrepreneurs, so the social situation seemed promising. Though the fees were eye-watering, there was a waiting list—to which, putting down a substantial deposit, the Wilkinsons added their names.
To Hayley’s consternation (their youngest was loath to lose free childminding in London), the couple took Journey’s End’s advice and shifted to the facility well before being hit by any major health crises at the ages of seventy-one and seventy-two. Early admission allowed them to take advantage of amenities like the rowing machine that might later merely taunt them. Arriving in good nick also allowed them to be admitted at all—for the facility did not accept new residents already wearing nappies or previously diagnosed with dementia. Cyril was grumpy and standoffish at first, but Kay threw herself into the wine tastings, book groups, and lectures by visiting artists and academics. She grew popular. Anyone with energy was at a premium—that is, anyone who could induce the illusion, however briefly, that they were somewhere else.
Five years in, the national referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union generated its own energy, since residents were divided, and arguments in the dining hall grew fierce. Naturally Cyril was vociferous, so much so that he was taken to task by a staff member who chided that deriding his companions as “cretinous dunderheads” and “knuckle-dragging bigots” was unacceptable. Kay focused on helping other residents attain and fill out their postal ballots, whichever way they voted. Never daring to tell Cyril, she flirted with the idea of voting Leave, but inevitably came round to the more level-headed position that keeping matters just as they were was surely the safer course. In that she had imagined the British people as similarly small-c conservative, the referendum result was a shock. Perhaps the calculated caution that had characterized the conduct of their own lives for the last twenty-three years had made risk-taking of any kind inconceivable. Fair play to the narrow majority of the electorate willing to go out on a limb, then, so Kay put her foot down: Cyril was forbidden from making a rashly sizable contribution to the campaign to hold yet another referendum, as if the state could bludgeon the people into delivering the “correct” answer by making them vote over and over until they surrendered from exhaustion. Whatever happened to the UK either way, Kay argued, in due course they weren’t even going to be here, and they had to safeguard
