2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (22 page)

The light of the torch was beginning to flicker; the battery must be running low. I switched it off and climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing. The nine doors were all closed. I gathered together Mrs Shapiro’s grey-white satin nightdress, pink candlewick dressing gown and
Lion King
slippers from her bedroom. Standing on tiptoe, I could just see that the Harlech Castle tin was still on top of the wardrobe where I’d left it. Then I closed the door behind me and opened the door that led up to the attic.

I’d not been up here before, and I’d sneered inwardly when Mark Diabello had talked about the penthouse suite, but as I climbed the steep dog-leg stair, light poured in from two high rounded gable-end windows and a vast light-well in the roof, revealing wide beamed eaves branching off into rooms with sloping ceilings and magnificent views over the treetops towards Highbury Fields.

The rooms, however, were full of junk—heaps and bundles and cardboard boxes, all piled dustily on top of each other. My heart sank. It would take ages to search through this lot. I opened one of the boxes at random—it was full of books. I pulled one out and flicked through the pages. Saint
Teresa of Avila: A Life of Devotion
. Not my sort of thing. Other boxes contained crockery, cutlery and some rather ghastly china ornaments. A cupboard that looked promising had nothing in it but rubber bands and jam-jar lids—dozens of them—and some pre-war recipe books and magazines. There were no documents or photos, or letters or a diary that would fill in the gaps in Mrs Shapiro’s story.

On my left a narrow doorway opened on to a spiral staircase that led up into a small round room. This, I realised, was the fanciful little turret perched on the west side of the house. It was barely large enough to fit an armchair, and that’s all that was in there, a wide armchair upholstered in faded blue velvet with claw feet and a scrolled back, and by it a little carved table in front of the window. As I sat down on the chair a cloud of dust rose up around me making me sneeze. I looked out over the jungly rain-washed garden, imagining how pleasant it would be to sit here on a quiet afternoon with a cup of tea, a Danish pastry and a good book; and then out of the blue I felt an intense sensation of presence—of someone else who had sat here looking out of the window just as I was. Whose chair had this been? Who else had sat here looking down into the garden? My restless hands had been stroking the velvet and now I felt something unexpectedly hard against my fingertips—a coin. It was one of those big old-fashioned pennies with a picture of Queen Victoria, pushed down the side of the chair. I carried on feeling with my fingers and pulled out a paper clip, a cigarette butt, and a small crumpled photograph. I smoothed it out. It was a picture of a baby, a beautiful brown-eyed baby. I couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy. Somebody’s hands were holding it up under the arms as it grinned gummily into the camera.

“Yoo-hoo! Anybody there?”

I jumped. I’d left the front door open, I remembered. Guiltily, I shoved the coin and the photo back down the sides of the chair and made my way down the stairs. Mrs Goodney was standing in the hall with a smug smile on her face.

“I thought I’d find you here. Having a good snoop around, are we?”

She was wearing the same pointy cube-heel shoes and an ugly raincoat with a slightly scaly texture in almost the same shade of lizard green. I suppose someone had once told her the colour suited her.

“Mrs Shapiro asked me to feed her cats. She gave me the key.”

“Feeding them in the bedrooms? I don’t think so.”

I blushed, more with fury than embarrassment, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Anyway, you can hand the key over now, because we’ve established that you’re not in fact the next of kin. She’s got a son.”

I caught my breath—the baby! But there was something about the way Mrs Goodney looked at me that made me think she was bluffing. Or fishing for information. Well that was a game two could play.

“But I don’t think he’ll be coming over from Israel to feed the cats.”

She blinked, a quick reptilian blink.

“We have our links with international agencies, you know. We’ll be inviting him to help sort out his mother’s business when the house goes up for sale.”

“You can’t put it up for sale without her consent.” Or could she?

“Of course, he’ll have an interest in the property, too—the son.” She watched me closely with her lizard eyes. “In the meantime, she’s in the care of Social Services. She said, by the way, that she doesn’t want you to visit her any more.”

Her words sent a tremor through me. Had Mrs Shapiro really said that? It was possible—she was cussed enough—but somehow I just didn’t believe it.

“So,” Mrs Goodney held out her hand for the key, “I’ll be taking over the care of the cats.”

Violetta appeared, as if on cue, purring and rubbing herself against Mrs Goodney’s legs, and I noticed Mussorgsky creeping towards the bottom of the stairs, waiting for the right moment to sneak up to the bedroom. I realised Mrs Shapiro’s bed was their love nest. I realised also from the way Mrs Goodney looked at them that her idea of care would be to call in the Council’s pest control department.

“I’m not going to hand over the keys without her written permission.” I tried to make my voice sound snooty, but this just annoyed her more.

“I can always get a court order, you know,” she snapped back.

“Fine. Do that.”

Could she?

§

After she’d gone, I locked up the house carefully, putting the new key from the back door on to my key ring, grabbed the carrier bag I’d filled with Mrs Shapiro’s stuff (of course that would have made the perfect reason for me to be looking around upstairs, but you never think of those things at the time, do you?) and headed straight for the hospital. I raced around the antiseptic maze of corridors looking for Isis ward. But when I got there, she’d gone. Someone else was in her bed. I looked up and down all the bays, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The nurse on duty was another teen-child, thin and harassed.

“Where’s Mrs Shapiro? She was in that bed.” I pointed.

The teen-child looked vague.

“She’s gone into a nursing home, I think.”

“Can you tell me where she’s gone? I brought some things for her.”

“You’ll have to ask in the social work department. It’s in the same block as physio.”

She pointed vaguely in the wrong direction. Just the thought of the smug smile on Mrs Goodney’s face if I went there to ask made my blood boil.

Maybe the bonker lady would know. I hadn’t seen her in the lobby when I arrived, and when I went back to the ward where I’d first met her with Mrs Shapiro, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I thought she might be down in the foyer cadging cigarettes, but she wasn’t there either. I walked over to the porters’ desk, but I realised I didn’t even know her name. Then on my way out I spotted her hanging around outside the main entrance doors, by the No Smoking sign. She seemed to be involved in an argument with a couple of youths wearing baseball caps, one of whom had his leg in plaster. She grabbed me as I came out.

“They’ve tooken me cigs off of me.”

“Who? The nurse?” About time, I was thinking.

“No, them.” She pointed to the youths, who were both smoking hard, their heads bent over their hands, as though their lives depended on it.

I went up to them. “Did you…?”

“She’s bonkers,” said the one who had his leg in plaster. They ignored me and carried on smoking.

“You’re better off without them,” I tried to console her. “They’re not good for you.”

She stared at me silently, a look that combined desolation and contempt.

“Okay, I’ll get you some more. Do you know where my friend is? Mrs Shapiro? The lady in the pink dressing gown?”

“They’ve tooken ‘er away. This mornin’. She give ‘em some proper lip, too. You should’ve ‘card ‘er carryin’ on. Swearin’ an’ all. An’ I thought she were a lady!”

She tutted disapproval.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Never ‘card naffink like it. Filfy tongue, she’s got on ‘er. They gonna put ‘er in ar ‘ome. Best place for ‘er.”

“Do you know the name of the home? Where it is?”

“Nightmare ‘ouse.”

“Nightmare?” That didn’t sound good.

“It’s where they all go. Bin there meself. Up Lea Bridge way. Not many comes aht alive.” She shook her head ominously and started to cough.

“Thanks. Thank you very much.”

I made to go, but she held on to my coat.

“Yer won’t forget me ciggies, will yer?”

§

There was no Nightmare House in the telephone directory or on the internet. (Well, there was, but it turned out to be a video game.) I telephoned Ms Baddiel and left a message, but she didn’t ring back. Eileen said mysteriously that she was ‘on a case’. I was furious and frustrated. Should I go to the police and tell them my friend had been kidnapped by Social Services? I could just imagine their faces. Should I write to my MP? See a lawyer? It came to me that the only person who might be able to help us was Mark Diabello. He’d know what happened in situations like this; and he had a strong interest in making sure Mrs Shapiro’s house wasn’t sold from under her.

Ever since our last encounter, I’d been avoiding him and not returning his calls. It’s not just that I’d decided he wasn’t my type—I’d come to the conclusion that I wasn’t his, either, and that I was only one of dozens of women he slept with in the line of business. I guessed he was probably much more interested in Canaan House than in me. Still, I swallowed my misgivings and dialled his number. It rang just once.

“Hello, Georgina.” (My number must be on his mobile.) “Nice to hear from you.”

There was something in his voice that reminded me of…Velcro. I felt a flush rise in my cheeks. If I got him to help me, would we end up in bed again? And was that what I really wanted? I pushed the awkward questions to the back of my mind.

“Mrs Shapiro’s disappeared,” I blurted. “She’s in a nursing home, but I don’t know where.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Leave it with me, Georgina. When are we going to…?”

“Thanks, Mark. Got to dash. Someone’s at the door…”

§

Before he could get back to me, though, Mrs Shapiro found a way of contacting me herself. One day when I went around to Canaan House, I found a letter on the that inside the door; I almost didn’t pick it out among the junk mail. It was a used envelope, addressed to a Mrs Lillian Brown at Northmere House, Lea Gardens Close. The address had been crossed out, and her own address written in. There was nothing inside the envelope except a scrap of paper torn off from the corner of a newspaper, with two words scrawled in what looked like black eyebrow pencil—
HELPME
.

Adhesives Around the Home

The breeze-block fortress

N
orthmere House was not really a house at all, but a squat square two-storey institution, purpose-built out of plastered breeze block punctured at regular intervals by square windows that opened wide enough for ventilation but not for escape. The only access to the interior was via a sliding glass door operated by a button behind the reception desk, which was guarded by a fierce middle-aged woman in a corporate uniform.

“Can I help you?” she barked.

“I’ve come to see Mrs Shapiro.”

She tapped a few strokes on her keyboard and said, without raising her eyes from the screen, “She’s not allowed visitors.”

“What do you mean she’s not allowed visitors? This isn’t a prison, is it?”

My voice was a bit too shrill. Calm down, I told myself. In—
two
—
three—four
…

“That’s what it says on her notes. No visitors.”

“Why not? Who made that decision?”

“It’ll be up to matron.”

“Can I speak to her?”

She looked up at me finally, a cold, indifferent look.

“She’s in a meeting.” She indicated a row of pink upholstered chairs along the wall. “You can wait if you like.”

“And if I just go for a wander around while I’m waiting?”

I tried to sound cool, but my heart was pumping away, making my voice wobble.

“I’ll have to call security.”

From a window in the lobby I could see through to a central courtyard with a square of trim corporate grass, surrounded by a concrete path which led nowhere, and four benches, one at each end. The access was by way of another pair of sliding glass doors on the far side of the courtyard, presumably also button operated. Through the glass, I had a glimpse of a corridor, with doors opening off it. In one of these breeze-block cubicles Mrs Shapiro would be sitting in her bed waiting for me to free her. Somehow I had to get a message through to reassure her that I was trying. She would still be bandaged up, I supposed, and hopefully receiving some kind of medical care in here.

I sat on the pink chair and waited for a while, wondering what to do. The place was eerily quiet, the sounds all muffled by the thick pink carpet and closed double doors, the air dead, with a synthetic smell that was sweetish and chemical. From time to time, a lift discharged someone into the lobby and the guard-dog lady pressed her button to let them exit the building. Some wore nurses’ uniforms, some the same corporate skirt and jacket as the guard-dog lady, and there was a woman with a stethoscope who looked as though she might be a doctor. They all seemed busy and preoccupied. It dawned on me that the impassioned human-rights-violation speech I was composing in my head was going to cut absolutely no ice here.

On a low table next to the pink chairs was a bowl of polished waxy fruit, no doubt intended to reassure families that their incarcerated relatives would be getting a wholesome diet. I picked up a bright green apple—it was the same colour as Mrs Goodney’s jacket—and bit into it, hard. The sound of my crunching filled the lobby. The guard-dog lady glared at me. When I’d finished it, I placed the apple core on the reception desk and left.

Walking to the bus stop, I racked my brains for ways of springing Mrs Shapiro. I imagined a video-game scenario with the two of us haring along the corridors dodging security guards and ampoule-armed matrons, violins playing wildly on the soundtrack as we burst out through the sliding glass doors down to the Lea Bridge Road and on to a passing bus.