Lily Harford's Last Request by Joanna Buckley

Author:Joanna Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Published: 2021-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER 2007

Lily

The dining room is filling for lunch, the sound of clanging plates coming from the kitchen in a last-minute push to get our meals out. The stronger personalities gravitate to their usual cliques, leaning in to gossip into a keen ear as they take their place at a table, or to nod in collusion. It’s no different here to a school playground: by making sure you’re in the know, you’re automatically not left in the outer. How juvenile. I’m glad not to be part of that. No, I’m usually at a table with Betty, Dora and … the other one, with almost no hair … Ugh, we should all be given name tags.

Names aside, I feel I’m having a good day. I’m focused. Unlike other times when I almost scream at the frustration of not being able to draw forward a name or idea or object from the black depths of my memory, to bring it somewhere in the light where I can take hold of it and speak it and swish it around in my mind like I would a pleasing taste in my mouth. That luxury, of not ever having to give a second thought to the instant and easy accessibility of language, has gone.

‘Another day, another lunchtime, another stew.’ Jack is sitting, hunched, at an adjacent table with Frank. Jack isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but I have to hand it to him – he comes up with good lines.

I pick up today’s menu card. Beef casserole, chicken schnitzel or assorted sandwiches, with chocolate mousse or canned peaches for dessert. I consider what to select, but don’t have much appetite, probably because of the heavy, aching sensation deep in my belly that I think has been troubling me all week. Perhaps I’ll opt for a bread roll and a cup of tea. I look around the room to ask, and instead catch Jack looking at me.

‘Would you like to join us? It’s a bit lonely with just him and me.’ Jack wiggles his finger between himself and Frank before leaning towards me and lowering his voice. ‘Four-year anniversary of the poor bugger losing his wife to a particularly nasty cancer. So he’s not the chattiest chap today.’

I should help to cheer up poor old Frank but it was such an effort to get seated and comfortable at my own table that I don’t want to have to repeat the exercise. ‘Thank you, but maybe another day,’ I reply, grateful but staying put. Hopefully Betty and co will turn up soon.

There’s a buzz of chatter and much fuss as several women organise themselves into chairs around another large table situated in the centre of the room. The more nimble are assisting the frailer, and carers help where needed, busily pushing a chair in here and picking up a dropped napkin there as everyone gets settled. I’m about to beckon Donna over about the bread roll when a warm wetness saturates my underwear followed immediately by a foul, fishy smell.

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