So she told Cyril that he’d sprung this idea on her all of a sudden, and given the gravity of what was at stake she had to think about it. Rising to stash the sherry in the fridge, she was dismayed to discover that they, or rather she, had finished the bottle. Lord, at only seven-thirty-five p.m. she was already squiffy, with no enthusiasm for making dinner, and in this condition she shouldn’t be trusted to operate a hot cooker anyway. No tipple before eight p.m.! Those rules of Cyril’s might have seemed rigid and arbitrary, but a few immovable markers in life provided the structure for productivity and purpose.
Within a week of her husband’s modest proposal, Kay was rummaging on the top shelf of the fridge in the confidence that they still had an open jar of mint sauce up there, when she encountered a small black box of sturdy cardboard nestled in the back left-hand corner. She recognized the container as the housing of a posh but ill-considered stainless-steel soap dish (stainless steel being an attractive material only when not mucked with bar soap), and in truth she’d saved the impractical accessory only for its classy box, whose top descended with a satisfying pfff. As Cyril had not yet accused her of being an agent for MI6, he had clearly not refrigerated a metal soap dish. Indeed, the moment she laid eyes on the box she was sure what it contained. It would be too strong to say that she was afraid of the box. She regarded it with a conflicted combination of curiosity and wariness, though the curiosity was not so intense as to move her to lift the top. She left the container undisturbed and resigned herself to opening a fresh jar of mint sauce.
* * *
That was spring. By autumn, Kay flung the same dark wool coat onto the Corian and dropped into the same kitchen chair. The reduction of her immediate family by one had not reprieved her altogether from Maida Vale, although these visits could now be scheduled in advance at seemly times of day. Cyril had Saturday hours at his clinic this month and had just arrived home.
“We’ve more or less concluded that Alzheimer’s has a strong genetic component, have we not?” Kay asked limply.
“‘Lifestyle’ appears to be a contributing factor—a nifty thumbnail gaining currency in the NHS that conveniently blames our patients for their own misfortunes—but, yes, dementia does seem to have a heritable aspect.”
“Because I found ten boxes of Weetabix in my mother’s cupboards. She’s always stocked her larder with the efficiency of an army mess. Now she says she goes to Sainsbury’s and can’t remember that she already bought cereal. As I refrained from pointing out, she also doesn’t remember that it was my father who ate Weetabix for breakfast, and she only has toast.”
“You’re understandably fearful. Are you leaping to conclusions?”
“I’m less leaping than making a little hop. In the course of an hour, she told me about the same chamber concert at St Mark’s three times. She kept asking how ‘Cyril’ is getting on at Barclays and how ‘Cyril’ likes his new flat, so I had to infer she meant Simon. Lastly, I found a stack of freshly laundered towels in her oven. That pact of yours, my dear?” Kay raised grimly. She hadn’t alluded to her husband’s macabre proposal since he’d first mooted the idea in April. “I’m all in.”
* * *
Thus Kay and Cyril Wilkinson’s deal was sealed in October of 1991. With the eternal arrogance of the present, the final decade of the twentieth century seemed to boldly advance into a brave new world, for the world is ever new, if not always brave. Like all the other eras before it, this one had the air of being terribly modern and full of astonishing innovations—computers cheap and compact enough that every household could have one—whose invention most people had played no part in, yet whose dazzling capacities appeared to reflect well on them personally.
Despite economic headwinds, it was a period of giddy optimism. In the UK, Michael Heseltine having poured cold water on his own party leader, the wicked witch had melted (although Kay had a soft spot for Maggie that she wisely concealed from Cyril). Mandela was out of prison and already forgiving what would have seemed the unforgivable, whilst multi-party peace talks got underway in Johannesburg. The six weeks of what was not yet known as the “first” Gulf War felt long at the time, yet soon cheerfully foreshortened to “only” six weeks. The Berlin Wall having crumbled to touristic souvenirs, tyrants in Eastern Europe were deposed or lynched, Germany was reunited, and a cascade of Soviet republics most Westerners had never heard of declared independence—all told, enticing a prominent political philosopher to posit “the end of history,” which, with two world wars still within living memory, was an appealing prospect.
Britain’s National Health Service was established when Cyril was nine, and the post-war cultural climate in which both he and Kay grew up was one of solidarity and sacrifice. Eager to take part in his country’s grand new socialist experiment, he’d resolved to become a GP by the age of fifteen. Thus, despite scandals like the contamination of the national blood supply with HIV and hepatitis C in the 1980s and the headache of spiralling costs, his professional commitment to what politicians and punters alike sentimentally dubbed “our NHS” had been unwavering. His first residency onwards, there’d never been any question: Dr Cyril J. Wilkinson was an NHS lifer.
By contrast, Kay’s decision to train as a nurse had been more a matter of opportunity. In the late 1950s, nursing was one of the few professions wide open to women. Yet she was not temperamentally suited to the job. She’d been squeamish as a girl, averse to needles, and was able to get past a perilous light-headedness when giving jabs only by imagining the patient’s arm
