The Reading Group by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141941707
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2010-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

Susan

‘Mrs…?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Giles Higson. I’m the manager at The Cedars. We have met.’

‘Yes. Hello.’ Tall and a little stooped, with damp palms and a limp handshake. ‘Is anything wrong?’ She was held still by a white-hot ring of fear.

‘Not now. Everything’s fine. I just thought we should give you a ring because we had a bit of a problem with Alice this morning.’

She didn’t like the way he called her mother ‘Alice’, as if she were a child. ‘What happened?’ She leant back against the desk, facing the window, and watched the trees. Mary had looked up, when the phone rang, and when she had heard her ask if anything was wrong, but she left her work on the wide table and went quietly out of the room now, with the two coffee mugs they had finished a few minutes before. She held a curtain hook in one hand and worked it between her fingers nervously.

‘One of our care workers found her in the car park. She’d packed her bag, said she was going home. She got quite agitated when we tried to bring her back inside.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘There was a taxi driver. He’d just dropped off a visitor, and she was trying to persuade him to take her to an address he didn’t know. He said it wasn’t anywhere local. Obviously he became suspicious, and alerted one of our staff.’

He talked like an animated brochure, the one that promised you a home from home. Christ, no wonder Mum had tried to run away.

‘She’s fine now. She had a nice sleep, after lunch, and now she’s in the lounge with the other residents.’

Watching children’s television, no doubt. That patronising tone again. Why are you telling me? she wanted to ask. What’s the point of me knowing?

He answered her silent question. ‘We’ll have to report it to the GP, when he comes, and if it happens again, we may have to look at her security arrangements – for her own protection, of course.’

Lock her up. Her mind was offering a steady simultaneous translation. ‘Isn’t the front door secure?’

Now his tone became even more didactic. ‘It is, but your mother can appear to be very lucid at times.’ I know: those are the moments where I am afraid that I have condemned her. ‘She must have waited until someone came to the door who wasn’t familiar with her… problems.’

‘I’ll come over.’

‘Well, if you would like to.’

She could hear his subtext: that there was no point, really, that Alice wouldn’t know if she was there or not.

‘We serve supper at five p.m.’ High tea, not supper, at tables covered with plastic cloths, to old people who dribble and suck food through their teeth. Not something you would choose to interrupt. Far better that it happens behind closed doors.

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ She hung up, but stayed where she was, still watching the trees.

What home did Alice think she was escaping to? Not Maple Cottage, her most recent home, certainly. Perhaps the house where she and Margaret had grown up.

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