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He had been sitting on this information, shamefully he felt. He
hadn’t even told Vesna yet; telling anyone would make it real.
Please, let Deb put it off for a while
, he thought. But this little prayer went unanswered. By the end of the day Deborah had arranged that both she and Meredith would come to his house the following Saturday.

When Vesna took the girls off to netball, Robert had the urge to run after the car and shout, ‘No! Come back!’. But he didn’t. Meredith arrived, chattering brightly, and Robert felt a little cheered, but Deborah was flustered and impatient; something had come up at work, she’d have to tear in there shortly. On the table lay several copies of the assessment. Meredith leafed through it and put it aside. Deborah sat in silent concentration, fingers supporting her temples, working her way steadily through the document.

She sat back and placed her hands flat on the topmost sheet, almost covering it. ‘It says mild to moderate.’ She sounded defensive.
No, not defensive
, Robert thought:
defiant
. ‘In fact, most of the results are mild, not even moderate,’ she added.

‘See?’ Meredith piped. ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about!’

‘But the… but the doctor was quite clear that this isn’t going to get any better,’ said Robert. ‘It’ll only get worse.’

‘There’s drugs now, Robert,’ Deborah said in an irritatingly superior tone. ‘Did the doctor mention that?’

‘He did. Yes, he did. He wants to get some blood tests back first though.’ Robert had clung, in fact, to the soothing cadences of the information the GP had given him about the use of medication. He recited it now. ‘Patients in both mild and moderate stages may benefit, but commencing treatment earlier in the disease predicts better efficacy.’

‘There you are,’ said Meredith. ‘Daddy just needs to take this medicine and he’ll be fine.’

‘I’m sorry, Merry, but I really don’t think so. The medication only helps slow it. Plateau, he said, a plateau phase… ’

‘Then they’ll come up with something new, Bobbit! Don’t
worry
!’

‘Yes, the drug companies must be working on this like crazy,’ said Deborah. ‘Look at the potential profits! And if we get him on this plateau stuff for now… ’

‘It’s not that easy!’ Robert said desperately. ‘Dad has
dementia
!’

‘No he doesn’t,’ Meredith shot back. Robert gaped. He couldn’t believe his ears.

‘Well, mild to moderate, maybe,’ Deborah allowed. Deborah was being conciliatory. The world was standing on its head.

‘But this assessment clearly says —’ he began.

‘They’ve assessed him wrong,’ Meredith interrupted. ‘Look at this… ’ She snatched up the report and flipped to a page.
So you were actually reading it
, Robert thought.

‘Symptoms may include,’ Meredith read, and she began ticking them off on her fingers. ‘Difficulty performing familiar tasks: well, Daddy doesn’t have that. Problems with language: definitely not. Disorientation to time and place: no. Poor or decreased judgement: no. Problems with abstract thinking: no way. So you see?’ She looked at them with a glint of triumph. ‘They’ve made a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with Daddy!’

Robert stared at her.
Could it be?
he wondered wildly.
Could this all have been an awful mistake?
But he had been there, at the assessment. Surely…

‘Oh, Bobbit, I’m sorry,’ cried Meredith contritely. ‘You’ve gone to such a lot of trouble, when you’re so busy! I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful! But you can see, can’t you? Daddy doesn’t have this… thing.’
Dementia
, she thought.
Silly name. I’m sure that’s the name of a band Laurence likes…

‘I have to go!’ announced Deborah, pushing back her chair. ‘Thanks for this, Robert,’ she said, slipping her copy of the assessment in amongst other papers in her bag. ‘I don’t think we need to tell James about this while he’s overseas, do you? I’ll show it to him after he gets back.’

‘What about Dad?’ Robert said. ‘The doctor feels we should have
a family consultation, so he can explain it all to Dad as well as us.’

‘Oh Robert,
no!
’ cried Meredith. ‘That would just be
cruel!
’

‘I’ve… I’ve made a call to the Alzheimer’s Association: apparently they have some excellent literature on this,’ he faltered. This had seemed such a good idea when Vesna suggested it; he had felt pleased with himself. ‘You should each receive a package in the mail next week. Including brochures on how to explain to grandchildren what’s happening.’

Meredith seemed not to have heard. Deborah hesitated, then headed quickly for the door. ‘Thanks, but I really have to
go!
’ she said urgently, as though he’d been trying to stop her.

Deborah’s hands were shaking on the steering wheel all the way in to the city.
My father has dementia
. Deborah thought of the other expressions she’d used, about other people’s parents.
Gone gaga. Lost her marbles. Off with the pixies.
They sounded cruel, now. And stupid.

She knew that Meredith was wrong, but for once she felt completely in sympathy with her sister.
Let it not be so
, she thought.
Make it go away, Daddy; make it go away.

CHAPTER 11

Silver came back to London after a few short days in Chicago to find a man transformed. She could hardly take in the news James had been bursting to tell her. Was this her laconic, easygoing husband?
I’ve never seen him like this!
He couldn’t keep still. A thrilling vibrancy lit his face, his voice. He kept putting ‘Rose’ into a sentence just to have the pleasure of saying it. ‘My mother.’ And his amazement! The wonder!
He’s like a boy who’s just been given the best present he could ever have
, she thought.
The thing of his dreams.

As he described what had happened, James roamed the room, bounding back to Silver like a tethered ball, hugging her, touching her hair, her face, stroking her arms. He grasped her hands and urged her to look at their schedule immediately, so that they could go to Marsh Farm together. By now Silver was catching the excitement, too.

In bed that night he kept talking, and touching her. She loved this, it was so… Silver didn’t want to say the words even to herself. Exciting. Sexy.
Any moment now, he’ll fold his hands on his chest like he usually does
, and she hardly dared breathe in case he… stopped. She
didn’t want him to stop. He was propped up on his elbow, talking ten to the dozen about Rose, Roland, the farmhouse, and stroking her left breast in a half-conscious way, as though it were a cat. And then he felt her nipple harden under his palm, and looked at it.

He quieted. Silver had large breasts but unusually small nipples, pink and dainty. ‘Hello, little rosebud,’ he said fondly. She felt quick tears of startled happiness sting her eyes.

Gently he used his fingernails to describe a circle all the way around the outer edges of her breasts, first one, then the other. And again, closer in. Silver thought she’d never been so focused on anything in her life. She felt as though a chain of light was coming on behind his fingernails, until both her breasts were pulsing, illuminated. He shifted and knelt beside her, gazing at her, and he took hold of her nipples and rubbed them incredibly softly, like precious jewels. Silver could feel hot threads like fuses burning all the way from there across into her armpits and right down through her belly, setting the whole of her vulva alight. She breathed in deeply, very deeply. He smiled, that beautiful smile of his. Taking both her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers, he squeezed them gently, then harder, and
shook
her breasts.

‘Whoa,’ Silver said, exhaling with a gusty moan, but she didn’t mean stop. Her hips lifted a little of their own accord towards him. He pressed against her thigh and she could feel his erection. He bent and kissed her mouth, pushing his tongue in, and she knew absolutely that they were going to have sex. Make love.
No
, she thought,
he’s going to fuck me
, and heard herself moan again. He swept his hand down her ribs and belly, caressing their contours, and cupped it over her pubic mound, pressing firmly, making little circular movements with his palm. She reached down and took hold of his penis,
his cock
, she thought, with a sudden image of those handsome fighting cocks she’d seen in Bali, preening and puffing up their feathers, and she stroked him as she’d seen the men in Bali lovingly hold and stroke their roosters. He slid his index finger between her lips and then into
her vagina, releasing the wetness welled up there. She felt his cock leap as his finger swept the moisture around her lips and opening.

‘Oh, come inside, come inside me,’ she said.

‘In a minute,’ he whispered, kissing her mouth, teasing her clitoris with his wet finger. ‘But I think this pussy needs a little stroking first. He-ey? Sweet pussy?’ He pushed two fingers in deeper, then out again to her lips and clitoris. ‘My sweet pussy cat, huh?’ The words were so playful and silly, while the challenge in his eyes was utterly irresistible. Silver giggled, and wriggled beneath his hand. He didn’t stop.

And then so suddenly it rushed up on her: her mouth fell open and her eyelids rolled down and a growly noise was sounding from down in her throat, her chest, her belly. Every muscle in her seemed to clench, to spasm, and while she was still coming he pushed her willing legs apart with one knee and swung his body above hers, thrusting his cock deep into her. She just couldn’t stay quiet, she was urging him on with her body and voice and he came quickly, too, and then they both fell almost instantly into a heavy sleep, as though they’d been drugged. They woke in the night and fucked again, steadily and generously, and fell again into a moist, manky, deeply contented sleep.

Just before dawn Silver had a beautiful dream. She and James were lying on a bed together, in a large simple room full of dappled light. The window was open on to birdsong and a summer’s day. James was giving her something, a box of some kind wrapped in gold tissue so soft that her fingers sank into it. She began to unwrap it but even before she had, she felt a flood of joy because she knew what was in there: the thing she most wanted. The thing of her dreams.

The pretty green of rural Somerset delighted her. ‘I thought this was just in the
movies
!’ Silver crowed as they drove past hedgerows and thatched cottages, through little toy-town villages. James grinned,
proud as though he’d created it himself. When their car turned in at the gate to Marsh Farm, Silver immediately noticed the svelte, white-haired woman standing gracefully on the doorstep.
Good lord
, she thought,
that’s Deborah – in twenty years!
She saw now what James had been trying to convey to her, the arresting power of the family resemblance.

Suddenly, this elegant older woman jumped up and down, her hands clasped together before her
. Like a little kid!
Behind her appeared a strikingly handsome black man in a crisp indigo cotton shirt. He was smiling broadly, but Silver saw, too, the steadying hand he placed on Rose’s shoulder, and the way she responded, moving closer and snuggling her head back to his chest.

There was no mistaking the hungry fervour with which mother and son embraced, their eyes closed in the pure joy of the moment. Silver’s eyes met Roland’s, and between them passed an almost visible skein of shared pleasure. Pleasure in their spouses’ pleasure.

Silver had always relished the company of couples who treated each other well, and in the course of the afternoon she saw, to her pleasure and relief, that this was one such couple. There was a lovely playful courtesy between Rose and Roland, a lively tenderness. Beneath Rose’s sleek exterior ran a vivid undercurrent of energy that could, one sensed, fly off into wildness or melodrama, but was balanced by Roland’s steadiness. Clearly, he was her anchor.
How old would he be? Mid-fifties?
Silver wondered. She herself was five years older than James, but the gap between these two had to be considerably more.
What, maybe fifteen years?
Yet in some way Roland seemed older than his wife.

Among the many photographs in the house, there was one Silver found particularly delightful: an excited little girl in her party dress, caramel skin glowing and fluffy dark hair sticking out in brightly ribboned bunches on her head, balancing like a little acrobat between the chairs of two elderly women, one black with awesome bone structure, dressed in a magenta suit, the other a sweetly faded English
rose in pearls and a pretty blouse. Each had an arm around the joyful gap-toothed little girl.

‘That’s my daughter Jacinta, with her two grannies,’ Roland said proudly, coming to stand beside her as she admired it. ‘Shame it’s not the weekend,’ he added. ‘You could have met her. But during the week she’s with her mum in Bath.’

‘She sure is one beautiful little girl!’

Roland beamed. ‘Yeah; she’s my princess. But not so little any more. She just turned fifteen.’ He riffled through a pile of loose photos sitting on the side table, showed her one of a long-limbed teenage beauty in jodhpurs, arm around the neck of a horse, smiling. ‘Soon I figure I gotta get a big stick, keep all the boys in line,’ he added. They both laughed. It seemed likely to Silver that a big stick might indeed be necessary.

Shown the girl’s bedroom a few minutes later, Silver smiled. Those telltale transitional layers: stuffed toys jostling with piles of make-up, posters of foals side by side with quotes from the Dalai Lama and a collage of sexy Calvin Klein underwear ads.

‘Loves riding, our Jacinta; that’s her pony you saw in the stables,’ Rose said, standing beside her in the doorway. ‘In the summer holidays I just about have to bribe her to get off it.’

And how is it for you?
Silver wanted to ask.
Being a stepmother, at your age? With your… history?
‘People say teenage girls can be pretty trying,’ she ventured. ‘What’s she like, young Jacinta?’