‘No one has sent anyone to Greenbank.’ Miss Ambrose knelt down as well. ‘Try to stay calm, Flo.’
‘Then where is she? Where’s Elsie? She can’t cope for very long without me, she gets confused.’
Gloria returned with the compress, and it distracted Florence for a moment. She stared at Gloria.
‘You have very kind eyes, Gloria. You remind me of someone, but I can’t think who. Have you ever been to Llandudno?’ she said. ‘Have you ever ridden on a tram?’
Gloria shook her head.
Florence looked at them all. ‘Elsie would know. If Elsie was here, she’d know straight away. What have you done with her? Where is she? Elsie’s my best friend. There are three things you should know about her, and that’s the first one.’
‘And what’s the second thing we should know about her, Flo?’ Simon took the compress from Gloria, and wrapped it very gently around Florence’s ankle.
‘That she always knows what to say. To make me feel better.’
Simon took the edge of the bandage and started to fasten it. ‘And the third?’
Florence looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the third thing wasn’t that important after all. Perhaps it didn’t make much of a difference in the end.’
‘But I need to find her.’ Florence tried to stand. ‘I need to make sure she’s all right.’
Simon took Florence’s hands and looked into all the panic. ‘Elsie isn’t here right now, but it’s nothing for you to worry about. I think the best thing to do is try and get some rest. It’s been a long, strange, very sad day. My granddad always used to say everything looks better after a sleep. I think maybe he was right.’
Florence stared at him. ‘You didn’t do it.’
‘Didn’t do what?’
‘You didn’t talk to me like a child in the whole of that little speech you just gave.’
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘Because that would have been a bit patronising, wouldn’t it?’
Florence sat back in her chair, and she smiled.
‘I’ve left her with Natasha,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘She’ll stay until Florence has calmed down a bit. She said she’d leave her with the television on. She likes the news, Florence. It gives her an opportunity to fall out with people.’
Simon had just about finished clearing the plates away.
‘I didn’t know what to say.’ Simon drew the curtain a little further to. ‘When she was asking about Elsie.’
‘None of us do. I know Jack tried to tackle it a few times, but it’s so difficult. You did very well.’
Praise wasn’t something Simon was particularly used to, and he held the words in his ears for a little while, before he allowed them to leave.
‘Who was this Elsie, anyway?’ he said.
‘No one really knows.’ Miss Ambrose reached into a cupboard in her office and took out a bottle of brandy. ‘We tried to find out when Florence first came to live here, because we thought we might be able to trace her, but it turns out she died years ago. When they were in their twenties, I think. She’s buried in the churchyard in town. Just by the chancel, in the corner.’
‘She talks to her all the time.’
‘I know.’ Miss Ambrose poured them both a drink in little plastic beakers. ‘It seems to give her some comfort, though, and it does no one any harm. There are times when I think Elsie is just a little piece of Florence. The only part of her left that hasn’t become confused. We’ve all just got used to it.’
‘How strange it must be, to believe something with such certainty, and then to find it was just your mind playing tricks on you.’
‘Dr Andrews said she did nothing but talk to Elsie during the whole of her assessment, and look at her dancing all alone when we were in Whitby. Dementia is a terrible thing.’ Miss Ambrose looked at him over her beaker. ‘You were very kind to her. With the ankle and everything.’
‘It’s funny.’ Simon hesitated, because he didn’t know if Miss Ambrose would want to hear, but he decided to go ahead anyway. ‘A twisted ankle is how my mum first met my dad.’
‘Really?’
‘On a bus. Someone gave up their seat for her, or they never would have found each other. What are the chances?’
‘And if they hadn’t, you wouldn’t even exist,’ said Miss Ambrose.
‘I’m not sure that would be such a bad thing,’ Simon said.
‘Nonsense. In fact,’ Miss Ambrose poured another inch of brandy, ‘I think you should consider retraining.’
Simon thought of his U-bends. ‘As what?’
‘A support worker. Care of the elderly. You have a kindness about you. I think you’d be brilliant at it.’
‘Would I? I’ve just signed up for ballroom-dancing lessons. It would have to fit in around my hobbies.’
Miss Ambrose said, ‘Oh, I think that can be arranged. In fact, I think we should make quite a few new arrangements.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Tai chi,’ she said. ‘For the residents. And ballroom-dancing lessons.’
‘I was thinking of computer classes,’ said Simon.
‘Excellent idea. And I think we should plant some cherry trees. A whole group of them, at the front.’
‘You won’t be here to see them grow, though, will you?’ Simon sniffed at the brandy, and decided he’d perhaps had enough. ‘What with your CV and everything.’
Miss Ambrose clearly had no such reservations, because she poured herself another inch. ‘I’ve had a change of heart,’ she said. ‘Although it’s perhaps not a change. More of a revisit.’
‘So you’re staying?’
‘I am. I just needed to find my long second.’
Simon decided not to ask, because Miss Ambrose looked at least ten years younger and he didn’t want to spoil it.
‘Anything else?’ he said.
‘Oh, plenty.’ Miss Ambrose smiled. ‘Gardening, for a start.’
‘Jack used to say planting seeds at his age was an act of optimism.’
‘I think that might be the best reason of all for doing it,’ said Miss Ambrose.
10.54 p.m.
It’s too late, now. All the people I thought might find me have disappeared back into their own lives.
Jack won’t, of course. Somehow, I don’t think Elsie will, either. Elsie was my best friend. That’s the first thing you should know about her. The second thing is that she always knew what to say to make me feel better. There was a third thing, I’m sure of it, but it’s slipped my mind for now, so it can’t be all that important in the grand scheme of things.
‘There is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done.’
She said that to me on the beach. Elsie always knew the right thing to say. I can’t imagine how I would have coped without her all these years. She said exactly the same thing to me the night Beryl died as well.
The last time I saw Beryl, Elsie and I were pressing our faces into the window of the town hall. We looked out into the darkness, cupping our hands against the glass to block out the lights, and we watched Beryl and Ronnie arguing in the car park and tried to hear what they were saying. Beryl and Ronnie falling out was nothing new, of course, but it was something else to look at when we got tired of other people’s feet. Although it was Beryl doing all the arguing; Ronnie just watched her in silence.
‘Do you see anything?’ I pressed my hands more tightly against the window. ‘Can you hear what they’re saying?’
Elsie shook her head.
‘What if he hits her, Elsie? What will we do?’
‘Cyril’s out there, too.’ Elsie breathed into the glass and her words clouded the view. ‘He won’t hit her, not in front of someone else.’
We watched Beryl pace out her anger across the tarmac. Backwards and forwards, throwing her arms in the air, shouting in his face. I saw the tip of his cigarette glow brighter in the darkness as he drew in lungfuls of smoke. After a few minutes, Beryl stopped screaming. Her eyes were inches from his, but just when I thought he might raise his fist after all, she turned on her heel and marched off towards the fields.
‘He can’t just let her go like that,’ I said. ‘It’s pitch black out there. She has no coat.’