A is for Angelica (23 page)

It’s time to make the topping for the carrot cake. I take a bowl from the worktop and put in some cream cheese and icing sugar. I add the juice of half an orange, squeeze and stir
together. When I’ve finished, I’m going to create a new schedule. I’m going to work twice as hard and Georgina is going to get better. She’s not in any pain and she’s
still able to swallow. Things might start to change. She might begin to talk again. She might be walking in a month. Angelica is going to change her mind. That’s why there’s no
ambulance. She’s been thinking about it. She’s going to help me. Her husband too. We can lift Georgina together. We’ll take a side each and move her into a chair. So she feels
normal again, at least for a while. I finish stirring the mixture. The cake smells delicious.

It’s midnight. I’m waiting for Angelica. Half an hour ago she pulled back her curtain, looked over at the house and up at the spare room. She was looking for me,
but I wasn’t there. I was with Georgina, peering through the gap in the curtains. Now I’m in the spare room and Angelica is coming. We’re going to watch Benny. She’s going
to apologise and tell me I was right. I know what I’m doing because I’ve done it before. Here she is. She’s opening her front door and walking across the road. She wraps her arms
around her chest and skips up and onto the pavement. Then she stops, looks up at the window. I smile at her and wave, but she doesn’t smile back. Or wave. Instead she looks away and continues
across the road. I take a single step backwards. A deep breath. I check Georgina’s door is locked and make my way downstairs. The letterbox rattles. There’s a note on the floor in the
hall. I pick it up, open the door and watch Angelica running back across the street. I go to shout, but she’s almost home and I don’t know what to say. She opens her door and disappears
inside the house. I take the note to the kitchen. The words are gold and written in capital letters. They’re difficult to read. I hold the paper to the light.

‘GET HELP. IF YOU DON’T, I WILL’

I sit down at the table and read the note again out loud. Angelica is threatening me. She hasn’t changed her mind. She was never going to help us. I stand up and walk to the kitchen
window. The sky is clear and the stars are out. My heart is racing and my throat is dry. I pour myself a glass of water and drink it in one. I need to calm down. There’s no need to panic. She
clearly hasn’t thought things through. She doesn’t understand.

I pick up the note and walk to the living room window. I look across the street at Angelica’s house. It’s in total darkness. She’s pretending to be asleep. She wants me to
think that she’s gone to bed and that there’s no point trying to reason with her. I pull back the curtain and take my pen from the windowsill. The wind is blowing through the trees on
Cressington Vale. The branches move against the stillness of the stars. I walk to the hall and put my coat on. I wrap it tight around my shoulders and lift the collar up and over the back of my
neck. My gloves are in the pockets. I take them out and squeeze my fingers inside. I pick up my keys, open the door and step out into the night. There’s still no sign of life in
Angelica’s house. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need to talk. Not tonight.

I walk to the end of the garden, open the gate and cross the road. It’s extremely quiet and incredibly still. There are lights in houses, but not many. I stand outside Angelica’s
door and hold the note up to the moonlight. I read her words for one last time. Then I turn the paper over and write some words of my own. In normal letters, not capitals: ‘Help us, or
I’ll tell him everything.’ I fold the note and push it through the letterbox. I turn and walk back across the street, into the house and to the kitchen. I take my coat off and flick the
switch on the kettle. I make myself a cup of tea.

Windows

‘We’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ said Georgina. She reached across and put her hand on my knee. We were driving home from her mother’s house after
spending the day cleaning, clearing and throwing things away. Furniture, books and jewellery. Ornaments, clothes and cutlery. Everything she owned. Georgina said that we weren’t throwing
things away, we were simply deciding not to keep them. It made her feel less guilty. The house had to go on the market. We had no choice.

‘I’ll ask Don about the freezer. He says he needs a new one.’

‘That’s fine. We don’t need it.’

‘And the lawnmower. He might want that as well.’

‘Really?’

‘We don’t need it.’

‘Fine. He can have it.’

We pulled up at the traffic lights. The last lights before the entrance to Cressington Vale. We sat and listened to the rain and the window wipers scraping back and forth across the windscreen.
I looked in the rear view mirror at the photos on the parcel shelf. We’d found them just before we left the house, stashed away in one of the kitchen cupboards, a plastic shopping bag hidden
behind packets of cereal, all out of date except one. The photos were of my father. Various poses in various places. Him on a beach with an ice cream. Him at a zoo with a monkey. Him in a car park,
waving with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other. There were fifteen photos and in every one he was wearing his dancing suit and shoes. In every one he was smiling.

‘What shall we do with them?’ I said. Georgina sighed and took her hand from my knee. She pulled the sun visor down and looked in the mirror. She adjusted her hair and sighed.

‘I don’t know Gordon.’

‘We need to do something. We can’t keep them.’

‘Then why don’t you get rid of them?’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. Bin them. Burn them. Whatever makes you feel better.’

Georgina flipped the visor back to the roof of the car and turned away from me. The lights changed from red to amber, amber to green. We drove into Cressington Vale, swerved around the tree and
pulled up outside the house. I turned off the engine. It was early evening. The sky was neither blue nor black.

‘There’s so much that I don’t know,’ I said. Georgina sighed again, shook her head and climbed out of the car. She hitched her skirt and stretched her back. ‘You
can’t know everything, Gordon,’ she said. ‘No-one ever does.’

It’s half past nine in the morning and I’m sitting in the backseat of a taxi. Georgina is at home alone. This morning I sat with her and ate my breakfast. I handed
her a yoghurt and she refused to take it. I peeled back the lid, scooped some out with a spoon and put it to her mouth. She slowly turned her head away. I asked her what the matter was. Would she
try something else? But she didn’t speak to me. She wouldn’t even try. Her face was pale. Her pulse was slow. She still looked awful. And now I’m here and the meter is running.
I’ve never been in a taxi before. It’s always seemed like such a waste of money.

‘Who lives here then?’ says the driver. He is twenty-four-years-old and engaged to an eighteen-year-old girl who has a six-month old child called Melissa. He is not Melissa’s
father. But he knows her father because they went to school together. The pink paint on his overalls is from decorating Melissa’s nursery, which is currently blue. He will be a taxi driver
until something better comes along. He refuses to work on the lorries. He hasn’t told me his name.

‘My mother and father live here.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘They must be old.’

‘Yes. I suppose they are.’

I’ve decided to speak to my parents and ask for their help. There is no-one else to turn to. No other family. No friends. I wish Don Donald were here. I wish I hadn’t spoken to him
like I did. He would’ve sat at the kitchen table, drank tea and helped me make decisions. We’d have been a partnership. But Don is gone. And I am here. Outside my parents’ house
again. My fingers trembling. From the nerves and the memories. The taxi meter running.

‘Are you going in? It’s getting expensive.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Okay. No problem.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I haven’t got all day though.’

‘I’ll just be a minute.’

I take a deep breath. This is what will happen. I’ll pay the driver and ask him to come back in half an hour. Then I’ll walk to the front door, knock and wait for my mother to
answer, just like she did when I came with Angelica. I will hear my father shout in the background. My mother will let me into the house and I will kiss her on the cheek. I’ll say hello to
them both. She’ll be pleased to see me. He’ll be polite, suspicious and offer me a drink. We’ll walk to the kitchen together. I’ll look at the plaque on the wall. We live by
faith, not by sight.

‘Back again?’ my father will ask as he fills the kettle with water. ‘What did we do to deserve this?’ I’ll smile and pretend he’s being nice. But both of us
will know that he’s not. It will be awkward. Painful. We’ll wait for the kettle to boil and its spluttering and hissing will fill the silence between us. Then he’ll pour the tea.
I’ll ask him to sit down.

‘Dad, I’ve got something to tell you,’ I’ll say. ‘It’s important.’

‘Right. Okay then.’

‘And you need to listen carefully, because it isn’t easy for me.’

‘All right. I’m listening. But before you start, there’s no money. Nothing.’

‘It isn’t that. I don’t want any money.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Your help. It’s Georgina. She’s had another stroke. She’s extremely ill. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Is she outside in the car?’

‘No. She’s at home. She’s been in bed since it happened and no-one knows. I’ve been caring for her myself. I have all the notes. All the information. But she’s not
getting any better. She was. But now she isn’t.’

My father will say nothing, at first. He will fidget in his seat, raise his eyebrows and scratch the tip of his nose. It will mean that he is thinking. Taking it in. Absorbing the information
and preparing a response.

‘What does Doctor Richmoor say?’

‘He doesn’t know about it either. He moved to New Zealand before Christmas.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

‘Dad, she’s dying.’

‘New Zealand? That’s a long way.’

I will begin to regret my decision to come here. My father has never taken me seriously. Why should he now? I’m fifty-two-years-old. He’s got better things to worry about. Like his
guilty conscience and my mother’s health. I will start again.

‘It happened on my birthday. Everything was fine and then it just happened. We’d been doing everything right. Just like they’d told us. She’d been getting
better.’

‘Why didn’t you take her to hospital?’

‘I panicked. It wasn’t as bad as the first time. I thought we could do it alone. Without all the hassle. All the interfering. I couldn’t face it again.’

‘So you haven’t told anyone?’

‘No. I have it all written down. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. All we need is an extra pair of hands.’

‘You don’t need me, Gordon.’

‘I do. You can help me lift her.’

‘I’m an old man.’

‘So am I, Dad. So am I.’

My father will stand up, turn and face the window. I will notice the shape of his shoulders, crooked and altered by age. And I will wait for him to speak. Some words of advice. Anything. But
nothing will come. So I’ll do the talking instead. I’ll tell him it’s okay. I understand. When I get home, I’ll phone the hospital. They’ll know what to do.
‘It’s for the best,’ he’ll say. And then we’ll change the subject. Talk about something different. The weather. New Zealand. And then the deafening silence.

‘I’d better get going.’ I’ll walk back down the hall and into the living room. My father will follow and watch me kiss my mother on the cheek. She’ll barely know
it’s happening. I’ll smile at her. Then I’ll walk to the front door and step outside. My father will clear his throat.

‘You need to put an end to it,’ he’ll say. ‘You need to call it off.’ I’ll stand my ground. Look him straight in the eye.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Angela. That woman.’

He will say it like he’s speaking to a teenager. It will upset me. His lack of compassion. His inability to empathise. I will want to grab him by the collar. This elderly man. I’ll
want to shake him and shake him, unleash sentence after bottled-up sentence, line after carefully prepared line. Rehearsed over decades. But I won’t do it. I will never do it. I will turn and
walk away.

Note: This is what you should have said. I’m sorry that this has happened. It’s not your fault. I’m here for you. Note end.

‘Are you going in, then?’

I am still in the taxi. The driver has lit a cigarette and wound down the window. He rests his elbow on the glass and flicks ash on the road with his fingers. He tips back his head and holds the
cigarette tight between his lips. It sounds like a kiss on release.

‘No. We can go.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where to?’

‘Home.’

‘Well that was a waste of time.’

We don’t speak again until the car arrives on Cressington Vale. I ask him to stop in the same place he picked me up. At the end of the street. Nowhere near the house. I pay him, say thank
you and pull my coat around my ears. He reverses back onto the main road via the pavement and drives away. Exhaust smoke follows the car and hangs in the air. It rises slowly, like lifting fog.
When I get home I check on Georgina. I’ve been gone for less than an hour. Nothing has changed. Everything remains.

I walk downstairs to the kitchen and open the cupboard under the sink. I pick up my manual and place it on the table. A failed document. Useless information. My recipes are on the worktop.
They’re held together with more than twenty staples, each lined up down the side, one by one with no gaps. I lick my thumb and flick through them. Fruit cake. Chocolate cake. Angel cake.
Perfect. I take a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer and use it to mark the page. A narrow band of sunlight bisects the paper horizontally. Ingredients in one half. Instructions in the other. I
follow the light to the sink, turn on the tap, rinse my hands, hold them to my chest and rub them together. I look up and out of the window. Benny is in the garden. He has a football under his arm.
It has four squares on it, drawn on with marker pen. They look like a puzzle. Or a window. I stop rubbing my hands. Water runs from my fingertips to my wrists and forearms. It forms a stream that
ends at my elbows and falls away to the floor. I stare at Benny. He stares back. His cover blown. He must have thought I was out. He didn’t see the taxi. The badges on his lapel are three
different shapes and colours. One red triangle. One blue square. One yellow circle.