Agnes looked at her oddly. ‘You could have just climbed over the wall.’
‘Do you know where Bridget lives?’
‘We lived next door to each other for forty years. She’s a great woman. A bunch of selfish good-for-nothings her children turned out to be. To hear them talk you’d think they think they’re royalty. Far from how they were reared, I’ll tell you that. She had a fall is all,’ she said angrily. ‘She tripped. Who doesn’t take a tumble now and then? But oh no, it was off to the nursing home for poor Birdie just so that lot could sell that house and spend the money on another skiing holiday.’ She grumbled to herself, her mouth moving up and down angrily, her false teeth sloshing around inside.
‘Do you know which nursing home she’s in?’
‘St Margaret’s in Oldtown,’ she said, sounding angry at the whole of Oldtown.
‘Have you visited her?’
‘Me? No. The furthest I can get is the shop at the end of the road and then I have to figure out how to get back,’ she laughed, a wheezy sound that resulted in a cough.
‘Do you think she’d see me?’
Agnes looked at her then. ‘I know your face.’
‘Yes,’ Kitty said, not proudly this time.
‘You did the show about the tea.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Kitty brightened up.
‘I drink Barry’s,’ she said. ‘So did my mother. And her mother.’
Kitty nodded solemnly. ‘A good choice, I believe.’
Agnes’s eyes narrowed as she made a decision. ‘Tell her Agnes said you were all right. And that I was asking after her. We go way back, me and her.’ She looked off into the distance again, reflective. ‘You can tell her I’m still here.’
When Kitty was leaving, the door next to Agnes’s opened again and four kids came firing out as if from a cannon, their mother quickly following to shout her orders. Agnes called out, ‘And tell her they cut her rose bush down. Butchered it, they did.’
Mary threw Agnes a look of absolute loathing and Kitty smiled and lifted her hand in a farewell. En route to her next destination, Kitty looked at the two names she had visited that day. Sarah McGowan and Bridget Murphy.
Story theory: people who have had to move home against their will?
That was definitely a theme she could relate to. Her and Colin Maguire.
Due to a very limited bus service to Oldtown, Kitty had no choice but to get a taxi and with a driver hailing from the opposite side of the county, a fact he pointed out many times, they had to stop three times for directions as they drove down a series of country lanes that seemed to get ever narrower. In the heart of the countryside they finally reached St Margaret’s, a 1970s bungalow that had been extended on all sides to meet its new requirements as a nursing home. The south-facing conservatory to the right was set as a dining room, an extension to the left and then further to the back filled with couches and armchairs. The gardens were extensively landscaped, with benches placed all around and colourful hanging baskets hung from the sides of the house. If she ever saw her again, Kitty would be sure to tell Agnes that her friend Bridget was in a good place. It was 7 p.m., only thirty minutes of visiting time remaining, and having not had the greatest luck so far with hunting down her subjects, Kitty was really hoping Bridget would agree to see her.
She asked at the desk for Bridget Murphy and waited while a stern-faced nurse, her hair in a severe bun, checked the visitors’ book. Kitty squirmed as she watched her, trying to figure out how to tell her she wasn’t expected and figure out her best way of manipulating the situation. To her right was the common room, busy with visitors, and on-going chess games. A middle-aged woman with dreadlocks was in the centre of the floor forcing three old men, one using a walking frame, another wearing hearing aids in both ears, to play Simon Says.
‘No, Wally!’ she screeched with laughter. ‘I didn’t say “Simon Says”!’
The old man with the hearing aids looked confused.
‘You have to sit down now, you’re out of the game. You’re out of the game!’ she shouted even louder.
She abandoned the two remaining men standing with their hands on their heads and came to the common room door. ‘Molly,’ she called, looking Kitty up and down as though surveying the competition, ‘where is Birdie?’
‘She’s having a lie-down,’ a young nurse with blue hair and blue nail varnish responded in a bored tone, without looking up from a chart.
‘Should I go to her room?’ dreadlocked woman asked. ‘I’ve brought my angel cards I was telling her about.’
Molly looked at Kitty and lifted an eyebrow as if to say, ‘No wonder she’s lying down.’
Dreadlocked woman looked slighted at that, like a little girl who’d lost her playmate.
Molly sighed. ‘Let me go check on her and I’ll see if she wants to come to the common room.’
While waiting, dreadlocked woman turned round and spoke loudly to an old man near her. ‘Seth, would you like to hear a poem I wrote this week?’ Seth looked a little weary as she sat down anyway before he’d answered and began reciting her poem like a six-year-old at elocution lessons.
Kitty watched Molly wander down the hall, pause outside a bathroom, lean against the door where she studied her nails. Kitty smiled to herself. After the count of ten seconds Molly returned and called to the dreadlocked woman, ‘She’s having a nap.’
‘Seth needs new batteries,’ the nurse dealing with Kitty said to Molly when she returned to the desk.
Molly glanced up at dreadlocked woman reciting her poem. ‘Why don’t we leave him battery free for a few minutes?’ Kitty liked Molly’s style.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say your name is again?’ the plump stern-faced nurse finally looked up from the book.
‘Kath—’ she stalled, realising she couldn’t bring herself to say her usual professional name. ‘Kitty Logan,’ she finally said.
‘And you’ve made an appointment to visit Bridget?’
‘Actually, no, I haven’t. I just thought I’d call by,’ she said as sweetly as she could. Though how anybody could just drop by this place was anybody’s guess. A missile couldn’t be programmed to target this place.
‘We only allow visits by appointment,’ the nurse said firmly, snapping the visitors’ book closed without a smile, and Kitty knew immediately this one would be tricky.
‘But I’m here now, and I’ve come all this way. Could you tell her that I’m here and ask if she’d like to see me? You can tell her that Agnes said I’m all right,’ she smiled.
‘That’s against our policy, I’m afraid. You’ll have to come back if Brenda wishes—’
‘Bridget. I’m here to see Bridget Murphy,’ Kitty said, her temper rising. She had had no luck with making contact with anyone on the list so far, time was running out, so was her patience, and she had no intention of leaving the building without seeing Bridget or at least without smacking somebody in the face, she didn’t care who, but preferably the battle-axe in front of her.
‘Well, now …’ The nurse put her hands on her rotund hips and looked as if she was about to give Kitty a good spanking.
‘Bernadette,’ the blue-haired nurse interrupted, ‘I’ll deal with this. Why