Miss Ambrose held up another ball. ‘Number eleven.’
Of course, everyone whistled.
‘Legs eleven,’ shouted someone else.
Miss Ambrose looked at the ball. ‘It’s like a different language.’
‘It’s the language of growing old,’ I said. ‘Like pantry and wireless.’
‘How am I supposed to speak it?’ Miss Ambrose played with the back of an earring. ‘I’m only in my late thirties.’
We all stared at Miss Ambrose. I was just on the verge of saying something when Elsie gave me one of her eyebrows.
‘You’ll be there soon enough,’ I said instead. ‘It’s like waking up in a different country.’
Miss Ambrose pulled out another ping-pong. It was a two.
‘I suppose this is one little duck, then?’ she said.
‘See. You’re fluent already.’
Miss Ambrose stopped fiddling with her earring, and coughed.
We’d only been there ten minutes and my mind started to wander. It can’t help itself. It very often goes for a walk without me, and before I’ve realised what’s going on, it’s miles away. I’m not even sure when that started to happen. Elsie says to think of them as butterfly thoughts, but I can’t help worrying. I never used to be like this, and if you’re not in charge of the inside of your own head, what are you in charge of? Miss Ambrose says it doesn’t just happen to old people. It can happen when people are depressed as well. Perhaps there are times when your life is so unbearably miserable, but the only part of you that can run away from it and leave, is your mind.
It always happens to me in that blasted day room. I was staring out of the window into the car park, and wondering why silver cars are so popular when they show up all the dirt, when I saw her. Dora Dunlop. Fully dressed. There was a uniform either side of her, and she had a suitcase and three carrier bags at her feet. I could see pieces of her life peeping out of the top. Knitting and a pair of slippers, and the folded edge of a magazine.
‘You can’t make me,’ she was shouting, and her voice slid into the room through an open window. ‘I don’t have to do what you say!’
The uniforms concentrated on the ground and the sky, and anything else within their eyes’ reach that didn’t involve Dora Dunlop.
‘YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.’
A few people looked up from their bingo cards, and Miss Ambrose reached across and closed the window. After she’d dropped the catch, I thought I saw her glance over at me.
Dora was silenced now. A tiny, grey figure, standing in the middle of a car park, still packed with shouting and despair, except no one could hear any more.
I nudged Elsie. ‘They’re taking her to Greenbank,’ I said. ‘Look. Out in the car park.’
‘I’m concentrating on the numbers. We only need one more for a line.’
‘But she’s frightened. We should go and help. Stick up for her.’
I turned to the window, but the car park was empty. Dora Dunlop and her carrier bags had vanished.
‘She’s gone,’ I said.
I looked back at Elsie.
She was staring at me.
When we were finished with the bingo (which no one ever won), everybody took it in turns to go to the toilet, and one of the uniforms passed around a plate of egg sandwiches. Room temperature. Too much cress. Not enough mayonnaise. Elsie disappeared to the ladies’, and I was just considering whether I should eat her sandwich and spare her the disappointment, when Miss Ambrose stood up in the middle of the room and clapped her hands very loudly – and rather unnecessarily, if you want my opinion, as the only thing you could hear at that point was the push of dentures into buttered bread.
‘Some news,’ she said, and a flush crept from underneath her flowered shirt and wandered on to her face. ‘We’ve had a new resident join us this week.’
At that very moment, a mouthful of egg sandwich had been making its way down my throat, and her words brought it to a standstill. People looked up from their plates, and in the far corner, two residents instigated a small round of applause. The only person who didn’t react was Mrs Honeyman, who continued to snore very gently into a side plate.
‘As you know, here at Cherry Tree, we like to make our guests feel especially welcome.’ Miss Ambrose clasped her hands to her bosom in a welcoming way. ‘So I’m sure you’ll all join me in saying a very big hello to our latest friend and neighbour.’
I didn’t realise he was there, standing by the bulletin board, until he stepped forward.
Over the years, I’ve found my eyesight to be less and less trustworthy. Even with glasses, I’m reluctant to believe a word it says, but this time, there was no doubt. This time, it couldn’t have been more accurate.
It was him.
Ronnie Butler.
I knew straight away. There aren’t many things remaining in the world that I’m sure of, but this was one of them. He was older, of course. Less definite. More worn. Those things don’t really alter a person at the end of the day, though. It’s just the small print. What really matters is the eyes. The smile. The way someone looks across a room as though they had never left.
I have felt fear many times in my life. I feel it each time I sit alone in darkness, and dare to peel away a corner of the past. I’ve felt it over the years in an unexpected mention of his name, or a casual remark. It was strange, because up until that day, it had been the very absence of him which frightened me, but now he was here, standing not ten feet in front of me, I finally knew what real terror was, and there was nothing quite like it. It felt as though it could pull my heart right out of my chest.
Because he was back.
And I had been found.
‘A happy, contented community …’ I could hear Miss Ambrose’s voice somewhere outside my own thoughts. Ronnie looked exactly the same. Some faces disappear in-to old age, and their past self and present self are two completely different people, but the lines on Ronnie’s face had only made more of who he was. Even the scar was there. A tiny mark at the corner of his mouth, which disappeared each time he smiled.
‘A safe harbour in those twilight years,’ said Miss Ambrose.
Twilight was a ridiculous word to use. It means dim and confusing, and stumbling about. I couldn’t swear to it, but I was almost certain he expected me to be there. It was the look more than anything. The same look he had in the factory yard and on the bus, and across a kitchen table. When you’ve seen that look you don’t ever forget it. Even a lifetime later.
‘So please join me in welcoming the new occupant of number twelve, Mr Gabriel Price.’
There was a beat of silence before I heard my own voice.
‘Gabriel Price?’
All the breath I’d been holding escaped along with the shout, and there was the scrape of a chair leg, as someone leaned forward to look. Miss Ambrose tilted her head to one side, and she stared at me.
‘At your service.’ Ronnie Butler touched the edge of his trilby. He stepped forward, and I felt the back of the chair push into my bones. I could almost smell the night he died. I could almost reach out across the years and take it in my hands, and carry it with me out of the room. A pulse drilled into my throat with such violence, I couldn’t understand how the whole room hadn’t heard.
Ronnie looked straight into my eyes and smiled, and when he did, the little scar at the corner of his mouth disappeared.
Like magic.
‘We’re