‘I know.’ Elsie smoothed tea cake crumbs from the tablecloth. ‘Last Christmas only seems like yesterday.’
The man paced the room. There was something about the way he lifted his collar, the shrug of his shoulders, and it made the world turn in my stomach. ‘It does. But it can’t be.’
‘It is. Ninety-eight. I’ve counted them whilst you’ve been wasting your time staring out of that window.’
I frowned at Elsie. ‘Ninety-eight what?’
‘Days until Christmas.’
‘I didn’t mean—’ I looked back, but the lightbulb had given up, and the man with the collar and the shrug of the shoulders had vanished. ‘I thought I recognised someone.’
Elsie peered into the darkness. ‘Perhaps it was one of the gardeners?’
‘No, at number twelve.’ I looked at her. I changed my mind and turned back. ‘I must be wrong.’
‘It’s dark, Florence. It’s easy to make a mistake.’
‘Yes, that’s what happened,’ I said. ‘I made a mistake.’
Elsie went back to sweeping crumbs, and I pulled the sleeves down on my cardigan.
‘Shall we have another bar on the fire?’ I said. ‘It’s gone a bit cold, hasn’t it?’
‘Florence, it’s like an oven in here.’
I stared into the shadows and the window of number twelve stared back at me. ‘I feel as though someone just walked over my grave.’
‘Your grave?’
I definitely must have made a mistake.
Because anything else was impossible.
‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’
We were halfway through Tuesday before I saw him again.
Elsie was having her toenails seen to, and it always takes a while, because she’s difficult to clip. One of the uniforms was dusting the flat, and I was keeping my eye on her, because I’ve found people do a much more thorough job if they’re supervised. They seem to appreciate it when I point out something they’ve missed.
‘How would we manage without you, Miss Claybourne?’ they say.
This particular one was especially slapdash. Flat feet. Small wrists. Earrings in her nose, her lips, her eyebrows – everywhere except her ears.
There was a mist. The kind of mist that hammers the sky to the horizon to stop any of the daylight getting in, but I saw him straight away, as soon as I turned to the window. He sat on one of the benches in the middle of the courtyard, staring up at number twelve. He was wearing the same hat and the same grey overcoat, but that wasn’t why I recognised him. It was because of the way he pulled at his collar. The way he wore his trilby. The very look of him. You can spot someone you know, even in a strange place or a crowd of people. There’s something about a person that fits into your eyes.
I wanted to point him out to the girl with the earrings. I wanted to make sure she could see him as well. You hear about it, don’t you? Old people’s minds conjuring things up from nowhere and inventing all sorts of nonsense to fill the empty space, but the girl was in the middle of having a conversation with herself, and pushing a duster around the mantelpiece. And I was on probation. Miss Ambrose hadn’t gone into detail, but I was fairly certain hallucinations wouldn’t go down particularly well.
When I looked again, the man was still sitting there, but his elbows were resting on the back of the seat, just like they always used to. As I watched, I felt the colour leave my face. I wanted to knock on the glass, make him turn around, but I couldn’t.
‘Miss Claybourne?’
Because if I did, I might never be able to look away.
‘Miss Claybourne? Is everything all right?’
I didn’t move from the window. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s about as far from all right as it can get.’
‘But I’ve been over the mantelpiece twice. If I dust it again, it’ll make me late for the next one.’
The girl stood in front of the television with a can of Pledge. The earrings covered her face like punctuation marks.
‘Not the mantelpiece,’ I said. ‘Out there. Ronnie Butler. On a bench. Do you see him?’
Sometimes, words just fall out of your mouth. Even as they leave, you know they really shouldn’t, but by then it’s too late and all you can do is listen to yourself. The girl said, ‘Who’s Ronnie Butler?’ and curiosity made all the earrings rearrange themselves on her face.
‘Someone from the past. Someone I used to know.’
I pulled at the edge of the curtain, even though it was perfectly straight.
The girl began collecting up her cans and cloths, and dusters, and arranging them in a little pink basket. ‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? You’ll be able to have a lovely catch-up.’
I looked back at the courtyard. He was standing now, and as I watched, he made his way along the path that led back to the main gates. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.’
‘Why ever not?’
I waited before I answered. I waited until the basket had been filled, until I’d heard the click of the front door, and the drag of the girl’s feet along the corridor outside. I waited for all of that before I answered her question. And when I did, the words still came out in a whisper.
‘Because Ronnie Butler drowned in 1953.’
‘Do you ever imagine you see things?’
Elsie had returned from the chiropodist, and she was admiring his craftsmanship through her tights. ‘Oh, all the time,’ she said.
‘You do?’
‘Oh yes.’ Elsie wriggled her toes and they crackled in their 30-denier prison. ‘I imagine it’s raining, but when I get outside, I find that it isn’t. And I often imagine I’ve got more milk in the fridge than I actually have.’
‘No, I mean people. Do you ever imagine people?’
Elsie stopped wriggling and looked up. ‘What a strange question. I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘But then again, I wouldn’t know, would I?’
I hadn’t moved from the window since I saw him. Or thought I saw him. I had watched staff disappear into buildings, and visitors forced to shuffle around the grounds with faded relatives, but I hadn’t seen the man again. Number twelve was quiet and dark, and the bench was deserted. Perhaps I’d invented him. Perhaps this was the start of my mind crossing over the bridge between the present and the past, and not bothering to come back.
Elsie was watching me now. ‘Who do you think you saw?’ she said.
‘No one.’ I started straightening the ornaments on the sideboard. ‘I need to visit Boots Opticians. I need to get my glasses changed.’
‘You’ve only just changed them,’ she said. ‘And why do you keep picking things up and putting them back again exactly where they were?’
I let go of Brighton seafront and looked at her. You could fit Elsie’s worries into a matchbox. ‘Did you see anyone?’ I said. ‘On the way over?’
She frowned. ‘No one in particular,’ she said. ‘Why, who have you seen?’
‘Miss Bissell,’ I said. ‘A man delivering letters.’
‘The postman?’
I nodded. ‘And that strange little woman from number four. Round face. Never speaks. Not very good with stairs.’
‘Mrs Honeyman?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘And I saw Dora Dunlop as well. She wasn’t in her nightdress either. Fully dressed, she was.’
Elsie raised her eyebrows. ‘They’re sending her to Greenbank, you know. I overheard.’
I felt all the space behind my eyes fill up. ‘She’ll never cope,’ I whispered.
Elsie didn’t reply, but I thought I saw her shoulders give a little shrug.
‘You haven’t seen anyone interesting, then?’ I said.
‘No, no one.’
I drank some tea.
‘I wish you’d just spit it out, Florence.’
‘I just thought I saw someone we used to know,’ I said, into the china. ‘Can’t remember his name.’
‘Oh, I wonder who it might be. Someone from school? From the factory?’
I swallowed another mouthful of tea. ‘Not sure. Can’t place him.’