The Exit (2 page)

No one believes a ten-year-old.

No one believed Rose when she said she wasn’t hungry or that someone was going to die. It made her so angry she spat at the farmer.

‘Rose! Oh look what you’ve . . . I’m not the farmer, I’m Marcus,’ someone who did not believe ten-year-olds said.

Rose didn’t know anyone by the name of Marcus. The person hovering over the breakfast table was the farmer, and he’d made her furious.

‘Don’t worry about getting names right,’ the farmer said. ‘Eat your porridge.’

‘I told you, I’m not hungry.’ Rose pushed the plate to her left and folded her arms. ‘How can I eat when Margie can’t breathe? Why won’t you listen to me? We need to get the doctor or she’ll die!’

‘This isn’t Margie, it’s Catherine. She’s new. She’s not going to die. Here, one mouthful.’

If anyone here bothered to look, they’d know that Margie was seriously ill. Look at her! Grey as a Glasgow sky. There was no way she’d make it to the milking sheds. She’d inhaled the last of the Potter’s Asthma Remedy at midnight and settled for a while, but had been gasping for air since three. ‘Please, let me get the doctor. An injection is all she needs.’

‘You’ve gone back in time again.’ The farmer tapped his chest. ‘What does this say?’

Rose studied the person. Around thirty, black hair, high cheekbones, tight grey shirt and tiny leather jacket zipped halfway, oddly dressed for here. He was still tapping at the name badge on his chest. ‘Marcus Baird,’ Rose read out loud.

‘That’s right, well done, I’m Marcus! And that’s Catherine, she’s new.’

She looked at the girl standing at the door: young, but not as young as Margie.

Dear oh dear, the thing had taken her back. Rose wasn’t refusing to eat at the farm. She was in a place called Dear Green Care Home. She was an eighty-two-year-old. That’s a whole lot of old.

And guess what?

No one believes an eighty-two-year-old either.

It had been three years since Natalie Holland had knocked on Rose’s door with an over-cheerful smile that made Rose assume she was selling Jesus.

‘Go away, please; I’ve decided against heaven. It sounds tiresome.’ Rose shut the door.

Natalie knocked again, then opened the letter box: ‘My name’s Natalie Holland, Rose. I’m a social worker. See my badge?’ She dangled her photo ID through the slit. ‘Mr Buckland next door phoned – he said he spoke to you last night when you were heading off to Barrhead Travel Agency? You planning a trip, Rose?’

‘I’m considering Marrakech. Is that illegal?’

‘No, but . . . Mr Buckland said . . .’

‘Mr Buckland’s a busybody.’

‘He said you were in your pyjamas.’

‘He’s lying.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I wear a onesie.’

‘Okay, I’ve just come to check you’re okay.’

‘Why would you do that? I don’t know you.’

‘It’s my job – Adult Services – to make sure you’re safe. I have banana and walnut loaf.’

Rose was starving. ‘Did you make it?’

‘No, it’s from Peckham’s.’

Nothing from Peckham’s Deli had ever poisoned her, so Rose opened the door. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, but if you try and sell me anything, especially Jesus, I’ll hit you over the head with it.’

And so the State stepped in, in the form of Natalie Holland. And while Rose detested Natalie’s role – to investigate, assess, look after, take over – she couldn’t help but like the woman, who looked young for forty-five (slim, edgy vintage clothes, editorial short black hair) at the same time as oozing the cuddly kindness of a sixty-plus aunty.

She’d done her research before arriving. ‘Ooh, is that what I think it is?’ Rose’s latest manuscript was on the table. ‘I’m a fan, huge fan.’

‘I was about to go to the post office and send it to the publisher, actually. It’s always scary sending one off, admitting it’s finished, that you’ve done all you can.’

‘Would you like me to read it before you do?’

As Rose made the tea, she readied herself for the usual praise (How did you think of that! So layered! So funny! Sweet! Sad! My favourite line is this, favourite drawing that . . .). Instead, when Natalie finished reading, she shook her head: ‘I don’t believe in bullshitting, Rose; this doesn’t seem finished.’

‘What?’ Rose grabbed the manuscript and flicked through it. Last night when she finished it – or was it the night before? – she believed it to be her best work ever. ‘Why?’

‘Billy, who you sometimes call Willie and sometimes um, Brett, yeah Brett, he disappears halfway through, no explanation, just – poof! – gone. And some of the words seem made up. What’s eravature?’

‘Eravature?’

‘You’ve used the word twice. Look. Is it a spelling mistake?’ Natalie pointed to the word.

‘Oh, eravature, no, no, that’s how it’s spelt.’ (
Social workers!
Rose thought.
What kind of education do you need to be a bloody social worker?
)

‘What does it mean?’

‘It means, it’s like when you. Eravature. It means to feel. Hang on, let me get my dictionary. Where is it? Eravature. Read that sentence out loud, will you? Put it in context.’

‘It’s not a word, Rose. And Tilly smokes? I don’t think you’re quite yourself. Look at the washing machine – why haven’t you taken the clothes out of the basket before trying to put them in?’

Rose looked at the wicker basket, filled with clothes, which was shoved halfway in the washing-machine door. ‘That is strange. Did I do that?’

‘Who else would have? And last night when you were going to the travel agency, do you know what time it was? It was 2 a.m. Mr Buckland says you’ve been going out at night a lot, and leaving your front door open.’ Natalie patted the manuscript. ‘You’re an amazing writer, but this doesn’t read like you at all, so we have to find out what’s up, because something is. I want to take you to the doctor.’

They went the following morning.

She knew what year it was. She knew the prime minister’s name. She knew her husband was dead. She knew her eldest, Jane, was in London, and that Jane’s only boy, Chris, lived just up the road in Gartmore. She knew her youngest, Elena, was in Canada with her partner, Mary. She knew her mews house was in Kelvindale. Ah, her glorious little house, bought with the advance from books five and six, tucked away in a cobblestoned West End lane, plants and flowers filling the tiny sun-trap of a courtyard. From the huge oak kitchen table, Rose could see into thirteen tenement windows, people eating and talking, coming and going; doing. Nothing pleased her more than people watching. She wrote almost all her books at that table. How she loved her house. She could never forget it. Yes, Doctor, it was in Kelvindale.

But counting down in sevens from 100 became tricky at 87, no 86, bugger it. And the lines she drew on the blank clock-face were obviously all wrong when Dr Matthews pointed it out afterwards. She felt foolish and small.

Rose couldn’t stop crying in the car. She could hardly hear Natalie, who was asking her something. ‘What? I’m sorry.’

‘Your grandson’s still not answering. Do you have any other family here? I don’t want you to be alone right now.’

She shook her head.

‘Friends?’

‘Barbara died last year. Stroke. Pamela five years ago, skin cancer. I never thought of myself as all alone, but there you go.’

‘You’re not.’ Natalie put her hand on Rose’s knee and let it rest there, which should have felt uncomfortably intimate, but didn’t, and the next thing Rose knew they had parked in a suburban driveway. ‘I’ll make the tea this time, long as you promise not to tell my boss: crossing boundaries and all that bollocks.’

‘I promise. But I’ll forget I promised.’

Natalie laughed. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

After Natalie dropped Rose home later that night, she sat at her kitchen table and did something she hadn’t done since she was seventeen. She drew reality, so she would remember it. She started doing this when she was ten, after Margie died, and stopped when she met Vernon. In each of the hundreds of pictures she drew – of Margie picking strawberries, Margie skipping to the sheds, Margie playing jacks and eating ice cream and hugging her doll – Rose included a pair of green wellies, often hidden somewhere in the background. The wellies were a kind of code. If they were in the picture, it meant Rose had actually been in the scene with her little sister, that she had witnessed it, in real life. At her kitchen table, she now drew Natalie’s four boys eating dinner: Nathan, fifteen, Fraser, eleven, Leo, nine and Joey, three. She drew Natalie’s surprisingly serious and suited husband, she drew pasta and salad and bread and wine. She drew her new friend; the warm-hearted Natalie. And in the corner of the kitchen, a pair of green wellies. If she looked at this picture at a later date, she’d remember that she knew this place, these people. The wellies were proof that she had been there.

Rose put the drawing in the chest with her childhood pictures of Margie. They’d never been published. Rose hadn’t even shown them to Vernon. She sighed as she shut the lid.

Rose gave up on sleep after an hour or so, turned on the computer, and Googled the disease. ‘It’s like living in a maze,’ someone wrote, ‘and the exit is death.’ Everything she read online was equally cheerful. She made a vow to look no further, and began to rewrite her shambolic attempt at a children’s book.

For the next twelve months, Natalie worked hard to keep Rose at home. Alarms were fitted on windows and doors, meals were delivered each day at four. Action plans were written up, review meetings planned. Rainbows of pills were placed into pots. Notes appeared wherever she looked: Have you turned this off? Make sure you shut this. Your kettle is gone – the home help will bring tea. Activities were planned, and abandoned. ‘I will not get in that van! Won’t sit in that circle! Where is Natalie? Get Natalie.’

Natalie did things she wasn’t supposed to do, and she didn’t hide this fact from Rose. She advised her to start withdrawing money from her account, and when Rose understood and agreed, she suggested places she could hide it. ‘You might need this money, Rose, for clothes or music or books or something,’ Natalie said as they sealed envelopes containing £1,000 each and slid them inside the covers of Tilly books. ‘Keep it safe. If you move somewhere else, take these books with you and hide the envelopes somewhere in your room.’

Eventually, there was a review meeting in the Partick Social Work office. Rose’s daughter Jane came all the way from London to attend, spending half her time yelling ‘sell’ to someone on her mobile phone and the other half complaining about the incompetence of social workers and the outright failure of ‘care in the community’. Her grandson, Chris, was also present, as well as Natalie, and Natalie’s cocky young male boss, and a woman who took notes, and a man who also took notes. It was decided that Rose’s beautiful mews home would be sold in order to buy her some time in a home.

Natalie cooked Rose a special meal after that meeting, and the boys each gave her a present (pencils, pens, a sketch pad, two dozen stamped envelopes with Natalie’s name and address written on them). Later, back in her own house, Rose gave Natalie a present: the chest full of childhood drawings, and the ones she’d drawn this last year. She explained about the wellie boots in each picture. ‘You can throw them out if you want, they’re not worth anything, just diaries really.’

‘I won’t ever throw them out,’ Natalie said. ‘And I’ll visit you. I’ll visit you too much.’

It was Chris who suggested Dear Green Care Home as it was very pretty, not too far from his house, and had excellent inspection reports. He drove her there on a sunny Saturday. ‘Look at that gorgeous building! All rooms are en suite and yours has a view of the rose garden. Isn’t that perfect, a rose garden for Rose?’

It certainly was beautiful. Like a castle, giving her princess-vibes. ‘We should stay an extra night and go for dinner at the old Ginn House!’ She could imagine staying here two nights, no more. While Rose loved nature, it was hustle and bustle she enjoyed most, and there was none of that here, just gardens, fields, a river. If she couldn’t watch people, like she did from the kitchen table of her mews house, like she did when she sauntered around the West End of Glasgow, ambling through unknown routes, chatting to shop owners and dog walkers as she did, she’d probably shrivel up and die.

‘It’s a care home, Gran. There are people here who’ll cook for you.’

‘Ah . . .’ She’d noticed the ramp leading to the front door and an ambulance parked beside it. A trolley was being wheeled out the wide front door with a sheet-covered body on it. She remembered where she was. There’d be no more weekend breaks for Rose, no more heading off to the airport with a small backpack filled with one change of clothes and drawing materials, no more dinners at fabulous restaurants by herself. She loved eating out by herself. This Rose was gone, this Rose had reached the exit to the maze.

It was group activity time at Dear Green and Marcus, a wannabe novelist himself, had brought in a local author especially for Rose. H. R. Davids, writer of detective fiction. Rose didn’t like women who made themselves genderless (no, male) to sell more. She didn’t want to call her ‘H’ or ‘HR’. What the fuck was her name?

Yes, eighty-two-year-olds swear. They also eat, and drink, and shit. They like some people, hate others, and have thoughts that might be described as conflicting and/or bad.

She was having bad thoughts now – composing a one-star review in her head that she could post on Amazon later. ‘H. R. Davids will appeal to those whose thoughts cannot be provoked.’ (Yes, eighty-two-year-olds know how to use computers.)

‘So you were an author?’ H. R. Davids had a patronising smile that Rose wanted to punch.

She decided to call the boring bitch Henrietta Ruth. ‘No, Henrietta Ruth, I am an author, and an illustrator. Children’s books.’

Henrietta Ruth obviously decided to let the doddery old fool’s name-mistake go. A pitying frown, like a pat on the head, travelled from her thin lips over to Rose’s armchair.