‘I don’t suppose you have a mobile,’ she said, setting the button in front of Iris. ‘But you can use this if you get into bother. You ought to wear it around your neck, you know.’
‘I’m not a fool,’ Iris said.
‘Right. I’m going.’ At the door she hesitated. The woman was a crusty old bag of wrinkled rudeness, but she was also a vulnerable member of the community. Bex had been brought up to believe that you looked out for people like that. No matter how annoying they were. ‘Is there someone I can call to check on you later? A family member?’
Iris shook her head, not able to hide the wince of pain the movement brought on.
‘Children?’
Iris lifted her chin and didn’t answer.
Bex was going to ask about nieces and nephews, cousins, anyone, but it struck her that perhaps Iris was truly alone. It was a chilling thought and it softened her towards the woman. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll call in later.’
‘You don’t need to do that,’ Iris said. ‘I’m never alone for long.’
‘That’s good,’ Bex said, trying to sound upbeat.
‘Someone will be along wanting help or a refill of their love potion.’ She smiled properly for the first time. ‘You’re never alone when you hold the keys to the town’s erections.’
Bex decided that she’d misheard the old lady. There was no way she’d just heard an octagenarian say ‘erections’.
***
Before her visitor, Iris had been happily dozing in her chair. When the door closed behind Rebecca, she allowed her eyes to drift closed again. She’d never had children of her own, but End House had been a family home once. When her sister had died, Iris had taken in her daughter, Gloria. For a while it had gone well, but as Gloria grew older, she’d grown angrier right alongside. Iris could still hear the sound of Gloria stamping along the landing, slamming doors and clattering down the stairs. Iris, the first to admit she wasn’t especially maternal, had been adrift. She had never been a teenager, either, as they hadn’t been invented when she was a girl. You were a child and then you were a young lady and that was that. Even if her mother hadn’t been spitting out diamond engagement rings at the breakfast table, there wouldn’t have been any room for nonsense.
Gloria, however, was all about nonsense. Boys and smoking and cheek and, worst of all, a total disregard for the old ways. She was a talented fortune teller, could read people’s future in just about anything she focused on, but she took it all too lightly. Didn’t have the gravitas necessary. Of course she didn’t, Iris chided herself now. She’d been sixteen. But it was too late to say those things to Gloria, too late to mend that particular bridge.
Iris felt herself nodding off, the pain in her back pleasantly receding to the background. At once, she was a young woman again. Still in her fifties and feeling strong. Gloria was on one of her rare visits with her girls and Iris was making skin softener and gout medicine. Gwen, the younger of Gloria’s girls, was hanging by the door of her work room. She’d been picking daisies in the garden and she offered a bunch to Iris. ‘Make yourself useful and collect me some chamomiles and marigolds,’ Iris said, holding up sample flowers. ‘I need a good handful more of both.’
The girl disappeared.
Iris continued pounding with her mortar and pestle and, after a few minutes, Gwen returned, staggering under the weight of an armful of greenery. Ten out of ten for effort, at any rate. Iris sifted through the plants, pointing out the stray weeds which had been picked by mistake and showing Gwen how to strip the petals from the flower heads and slice the stems, opening them down the middle with a fingernail and getting her to tear them into little pieces and put them in the mortar. She preferred a good sharp knife for that job, but things were strained enough with Gloria as it was without Iris arming her seven-year-old.
Gwen’s head bent over her task and she watched carefully as Iris showed her how to pound the mixture with the pestle and then stir in the melted beeswax and almond oil to make a cream. Iris approved of the careful, thorough way she combined the mixture, her hand made tinier still against the large mixing bowl and wooden spoon. She tilted the bowl while Iris scooped the mixture into a clean jar and poured a layer of oil on the top to keep it fresh. ‘This is good for dry or sore skin,’ Iris said, sticking a label onto the jar, ‘but you must never ever eat it. Poisonous.’
Gwen’s serious little face grew more solemn. ‘Poison kills people,’ she said.
‘Yes, it can. Or it makes you very, very poorly.’
Gwen stayed quiet, digesting this, so Iris continued. ‘But there are lots of things that are good for you in a little dose, or when you’ve got a particular thing wrong with you, that are very, very bad in other circumstances. Nothing in life is straightforward good or bad, healthy or poisonous.’
Gwen nodded. ‘I was sick last week.’
‘Were you?’ Iris had turned back to her plants. She had several batches to make and Gloria had said she’d pick the girls up in an hour. It must’ve been over that, by now.
‘Everything had to go into the washing machine,’ Gwen said. ‘Even Winnie-the-Pooh.’
‘Oh, well,’ Iris said.
‘His fur isn’t fluffy any more and one of his arms is empty.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The stuffing moved,’ Gloria said from the doorway. ‘In the machine. I’m sorry, sweetie.’ She dropped a kiss onto Gwen’s head. ‘I told you I was very sorry about that.’
Gwen looked solemn. ‘You didn’t know it would happen to Pooh bear.’
‘No,’
