Trust

TRUST

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Don’t do it. Just... don’t.

No matter how tempting, how easy, don’t ever pull on that loose thread. It’s never going to do any good. You should always let it hang. Forget about it. Let
everything
hang.

Why disturb the calm if you don’t have good reason?

§

I should never have gone there.

Serenity House.

I should have pretended none of them existed, just as I had for the past eighteen months. Family, childhood memories, old ties and responsibilities... I’d managed without them this long, so why go back now?

I wasn’t to know, of course, that just a simple visit to my grandparents in that innocently named old folks’ home would lead me to meeting the man who would turn my life upside down, and threaten to tear it apart.

If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have gone, and I wouldn’t have started pulling at the threads of my family’s lives. I’d have been safe, and wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

But where’s the fun in that?

§

I found the place eventually, tucked away in the woods on the outskirts of a village near Epping, a part of Essex I’d never visited before. I pulled up in the graveled parking area to one side of a big red-brick house with Dutch-style gables and narrow windows. Neatly manicured gardens spread out all around the building, spring flowers just past their best and the roses only just breaking into bud.

White-haired residents still wrapped in winter coats and blankets sat on benches; an old woman stooped over like a shepherd’s crook walked in tiny slow steps accompanied by a bored-looking care assistant who looked about twelve, save for the rings through her nose and the tatts on her exposed forearms.

I was putting off going inside.

I knew this, and still I sat at the wheel of my Mini, unwilling or unable to move.

Last time I’d seen them was the day of the funeral. Gran and Granddad hadn’t been able to attend, Gran having one of her bad days. This was when they were still living in their own home, before the Alzheimer’s had fully kicked in and so Gran had known exactly what she was missing: the funeral of her daughter and son-in-law. Granddad hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, so he’d stayed away too. He’d known, even then, that she was getting seriously unwell; he hadn’t understood her condition, but he wouldn’t leave her side.

So I’d gone to them straight from the funeral, still dressed in my prim black dress, and the pink scarf that had been Mum’s favorite – the splash of color in defiance of the norms, but also what Mum would have expected of me. She’d always been impossible to rebel against. I’d visited them in that familiar little bungalow by the sea and recounted the day, repeating things when Gran got confused and Granddad and I had exchanged concerned glances.

Retelling my parents’ funeral, the repetition like revising for an exam until it was engraved on my consciousness.

And then I’d just got up and left without another word.

I couldn’t handle it. Any of it.

I walked away for eighteen months and now here I was, sitting in my Mini, my heart thumping and my throat tight, and I couldn’t just get
up
and go inside and tell my only remaining family I was sorry for being such a dick.

§

But that’s exactly why I was there.

I needed to pull my life around, and to do that I needed to set things straight, make amends.

I needed to stop being such a dick.

Heading off in the direction indicated by a few mumbled instructions and a wave of a hand from the woman on reception, I found myself in a big sun lounge at the back of the building. Sunlight slanted in through the glass roof, elderly residents sat around in small clusters of winged armchairs, and the place smelled of milky tea and hospitals and apple-scented polish.

I stood in the doorway, steadying myself. At first I didn’t see them, then I spotted a white-haired couple sitting opposite each other by a glass door that led out to the garden. The old man sat hunched forward over a Scrabble board, chin in hand, rocking slightly – he always did that when he was thinking. Closer up, I knew his tongue would be poking out just a little way between pursed lips.

My grandmother sat back in her chair, looking out towards the garden, a rolled-up magazine in her lap. She looked frail, ghostly, as if she were fading away.

I dipped my head, and when I looked up again he’d spotted me. No backing out now.

I watched as he stood and came towards me, his stride sprightly.

“You could of called ahead,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

He’d always had a way of turning almost any statement into an accusation. I was so accustomed to it I never let it bother me, apart from when I was on edge like this.

I could feel his gaze sweeping over me. The nose-stud, the ear-rings – four on the right, three on the left – the tatts creeping out from under the collar of my scuffed leather jacket, the ripped jeans and trainers.

I knew what he was thinking.

I put my hands up as if to defend myself, and said, “I haven’t come scrounging for money, Granddad. Honest.”

I’d never seen such a cold look on his face. “I’d love to believe that,” he said.

“It’s true. I just wanted to see you both.”

§

Gran came to the rescue.

We both glanced across to her and as if she sensed this she snapped her look away from the garden. For a moment she looked around the sun lounge, then she spotted us and it was the strangest thing. She didn’t seem to see Granddad at all, but when her gaze lighted on me her panicked expression softened and her features sagged into a lopsided smile.

“Stell?” she said, her voice weak but still able to carry clearly across the room. “Stell, is that you?”

Granddad put a hand on my arm, and when I looked his expression had eased, as if he’d forgotten his initial hostility.

“She’s got much worse this last six months,” he said. “Doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t know who I am half the time. You should of...”

He didn’t need to finish. I should have been there. I shouldn’t have let my life spiral like it had after the crash. Shouldn’t have tried to lose myself.

“Stell?”

We went across to her.

“She’s not good,” said Granddad. He nodded towards the Scrabble board and added, “I have to play all her moves for her now.”

I dropped to my haunches so I was closer to eye level with her, reached out and took one of her hands in both of mine. “I’m not Stella,” I said. “I’m Jess. Stella’s daughter. Remember?”

Why do we always talk louder and more slowly in these situations? She wasn’t deaf or stupid. She just couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember her husband. Couldn’t remember her granddaughter. Couldn’t remember that her daughter, Stella, had died in a car crash eighteen months before when some toe-rag in a stolen Audi had run a red light at 70.

“’Ere, Stell. So lovely to... to...”

“To see you,” Granddad finished for her, before adding, “She forgets the words. She knows what she wants to say. She gets frustrated.”

Granddad gestured at his chair as he pulled up another for himself. “So how’ve you been keeping, then?”

“Oh, okay,” I said, taking the seat.

I realized then that I didn’t have much in the way of safe conversation. They didn’t want to hear about how I’d hit rock bottom, how for much of the last eighteen months I’d been off my head on one substance or another after I’d dropped out of university... out of life. The last contact we’d had was when Granddad had paid my fines and legal fees a few months before and...

“I’m straight now,” I told him, unable to meet his look. “I’m clean. Have been since you bailed me out. What you said – it got through to me.”

Don’t just live your life, Jessica. Live it
well
, girl.

He nodded.

“So how are you keeping, Gran?” I was using that voice again, the one for stupid deaf people. I felt bad immediately, but Gran clearly didn’t care.

“Ooh, Stell, it’s been too long.” Gran was quite animated now, leaning forward in her chair, a spark of something in her eyes. She glanced at Granddad then, and said to me, “Can you tell ’im to go now, Stell? He’s always hanging around... he just won’t...”

The look on my grandfather’s face brought another lump to my throat.

“That’s Granddad,” I said, trying to talk normally. “He’s your husband, Gran. You’ve been married to him for more than fifty years.”

Gran was shaking her head. “No, that’s not right. Can’t be. I’m engaged to my Eddie. Edward Bailey. He owns half of London, he does. Them Kray twins are nothing compared to my Eddie.” She started to look upset now. “Where
is
Eddie? He should of come visitin’ by now.”

Granddad leaned in then, and patted her on the arm. “It’s okay, love. He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.” Then, to me, he added, “She keeps on about him. Remembers her days courting him in the early sixties far more clearly than anything in the past twenty years.”

“This Eddie Bailey? Who was he? Some kind of gangster?” I hadn’t missed her reference to the Krays, two brothers who’d run most of London in the swinging sixties. I’d seen a film about them once.

Granddad nodded. “I stole her from under his nose,” he said. “It could of been nasty, but he owed me. The Baileys always looked out for their own.”

I looked at my grandfather in a new light then, realizing that there were whole areas of his life I knew nothing about. What was he saying?

“You still in touch with him?”

“No, not in years,” he said. “I often wonder what became of him. Probably on some beach in Spain by now, if he’s made it this far. I sometimes wonder what she’d do if he
did
come visiting.”

“You wouldn’t mind that?”

He paused to consider before replying. “This is the best she ever is these days, when her mind goes back to the old days. She’s sharp and with it. The rest of the time she’s just lost and confused. It breaks my heart. I reckon a visit from Eddie would make her happier than I can ever hope to now, so no, I wouldn’t mind it, if it gave her some of herself back. You know what I mean?”

“You want me to dig?” It was the least I could do: poke around, ask a few questions, see if I could track this old flame down. “See if I could fix something up?”

What possible harm could come of that?

Just then, Gran fixed me with that sparkly-eyed look once more, and I saw what Granddad meant about the memories bringing her alive.

“He’s a wild one, Eddie is,” she said to me. “Always in trouble, always getting away with it. He could charm the knickers off a nun. All he has to do is give that smile of his, a little wink, and then he’d say, ‘Trust me’.”

She leaned closer, then, and put a claw-like hand on my arm, before adding: “Never trust a man who says ‘Trust me’.”

I went back to see Maureen first. She was an old friend of the family, and since the crash she’d looked after the property business.

As I drove, I thought about all this in a new light. All the homes and commercial properties Dad had owned and rented out... Where had the capital come from? In theory it was all mine now, but it was all wrapped up in trusts and legal agreements. Considering how I’d been the past eighteen months that was probably just as well. I suspected Granddad’s hand in it: he clearly didn’t think I was ready for that kind of thing yet.

But Maureen had always looked out for me. She’d made sure I was okay this last year and a half, put money my way when I needed it – not enough to be stupid, but enough to be safe.

It was Maureen who’d told me Gran was getting worse and that if I wanted to do anything to put matters right then my chances were running out.

“So how’s things?” Maureen greeted me, handing over a latte and a glazed donut.

I fell into step at her side. This was the closest she ever got to a gym: a brisk power-walk through the Lower Park over a donut and a coffee.
Walk and burn
, she’d always say.

“Oh...” She knew how Gran was, but still I found it hard to put it into words.

“She’s gone downhill quickly, hasn’t she?” said Maureen. Sun dappled the ground beneath tall trees, and a squirrel scampered just ahead of us before climbing into a bin to scavenge for scraps. “Once the Alzheimer’s took hold.”

“I wish I’d seen her before, you know?”

Maureen nodded, and took a bite of her donut. “I bet there’s a lot you wish you’d done different, eh?”

I wouldn’t meet her look. Even though she only knew the half of it, she knew me too well.

“It’s really sad,” I told her. “The two of them.”

She studied me, waiting for me to go on.

“They sit there playing board games where Granddad’s the only one who’s with it enough to make a move, so he makes her moves, too.”

“That’s kind of sweet.”

“She doesn’t even know who he is! All the time she’s lost in the 1960s, waiting for her old boyfriend to come and visit. And Granddad... he just goes along with it. Anything to keep her happy.”