* * *
It was past noon by the time she had battled the traffic back to the house, and her stomach growled in hunger as she pulled up. The yeasty aroma of the loaf she’d chosen from the baker’s wafted toward her from the shopping bag that swung from her elbow and reminded her of how long it had been since breakfast. Eve juggled her phone and the keys, looking for the one that would open the door to her grandmother’s house.
“Hello!” she called into the echoing hallway.
No reply.
Halfway along, a steep set of stairs led up to the first floor, and she noticed with annoyance the stack of overdue library books at the bottom. Damn. She had meant to take them back that morning. Sitting on top of them was a pile of folded clean washing and a pair of well-worn hiking boots with cherry-red laces rested on the step below. It would be a long time before her grandmother wore those again, but they had sat unmoved at the bottom of the stairs for months. Eve had at first wondered whether to tidy them away but had decided in the end to leave them be and so they’d stayed there, gradually acquiring a layer of dust and taunting her with their memories of paths long ago explored together.
A long, tiled corridor stretched past the stairs to the back of the house, where the kitchen looked onto a pocket square of a courtyard. Her grandmother’s room was what used to be the dining room, off the corridor on the left. Grams had moved there last month, after a couple of weeks in the hospital, when it became obvious that her injuries precluded access to her bedroom on the floor above.
“Grams!” Eve called out again. “I’m back.” She put the shopping bags on the floor outside the room before tapping gently on the door. Opening it a fraction, she peered in. The curtains were still drawn and she could just make out a humped shape under the covers. No movement. She must still be asleep. Eve retreated from the room and made her way to the kitchen, stowing the shopping in the fridge and cupboards before pulling out a board, butter dish, and the bread to make lunch for them both.
She filled the kettle, flicked it on, and while it was boiling she assembled a tray. Linen napkin, china cup and saucer—“never a mug, thank you very much”—and a matching plate. She sliced the bread as neatly as she could, scraped on butter, added ham and some cucumber and cut the sandwich into triangles. She rummaged through the cupboards and found a vase for the daffodils, then tiptoed into the bedroom and placed them on the bookcase opposite her grandmother, where she’d see them as soon as she woke up.
* * *
Eve had taken her last bite of sandwich when she heard the cry. Swallowing hurriedly, she raced into the bedroom to see her grandmother sitting up in bed, eyes wide, long silver-gray hair a lion’s mane about her face. She had the almost translucent, papery skin of the very old, and though it drooped in folds from her neck, her fine bone structure gave a clue to what an arresting-looking woman she must once have been. “Where did you get those?” she said, her eyes focused on the vase of flowers.
“When I went to the supermarket, Grams. I thought you might like some daffs to cheer you up.”
Her grandmother leaned back against the pillows, closing her eyes. “Oh. I thought the ones in the garden had bloomed already. And actually, they are narcissi.”
“Okay, narcissi then.” Eve determinedly kept her tone upbeat. “Though I’m not sure there’s much of a difference,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “And the ones outside are barely poking through the ground. It’s still freezing out there. Forecast says we might get snow—in March! In London! Can you believe it?”
“Snow?” Her grandmother perked up.
“Anyway, I reckon these must be hothouse ones,” Eve said.
“Or flown in from somewhere warmer.”
“Perhaps. They smell gorgeous though, don’t they?” For a moment, when Eve had pulled them from the bucket of water in the supermarket the thought that this might be the last spring her grandmother saw crossed her mind and she’d had to blink back a sudden rush of tears, leaning on the cart to steady herself. She’d always thought Grams indomitable, but seeing her in the hospital after her fall had changed her mind; she’d thought she might lose her. Although Grams seemed to be making a steady, if slow, recovery, Eve knew that things could change in the flutter of an elderly heart. A cold could lead to pneumonia, could lead to . . . she did her best not to dwell on it.
“Yes, they do. Thank you darling. Perhaps you might bring them closer.”
“Are you hungry? I made a sandwich.”
“Oh, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Of course not. I said, it’s already made.”
“Oh yes, well then, that would be lovely.” Her grandmother was making an effort, Eve could tell, just as she herself was. Grams was frustrated by her inability to do much for herself anymore and Eve bore the brunt of her occasional burst of bad temper by biting her tongue and trying not to retaliate, reminding herself of the alternative.
Eve returned with the tray, setting it on a side table, and eased her grandmother forward so that she could adjust the pillows and make her more comfortable. When she was satisfied, she placed the tray in front of her, being careful not to slop the tea in the saucer. She’d receive a ticking off for such a transgression.
“Do you think you might be up to some work after lunch?” Eve asked, as she had done almost every day since she’d moved in. Eve was helping her grandmother write her autobiography, a manuscript that was due at the publisher’s later that year. It had originally been planned to coincide with her ninetieth birthday but it now looked like that date would come and go before she’d even written a word of it. Lucky her publisher was patient.
True, there were sheaves of notes and a stack of indecipherable scrawls on scraps of paper, but each time Eve had asked if she wanted her to transcribe them, or for her grandmother to dictate to her, the answers had been a firm “no,” a “perhaps tomorrow,” or a “stop pestering me, darling. I’ll get to it in my own good time.”
Eve was taking a gap year. Just not the one she’d planned on. She’d graduated from UCL the summer before with little idea of what she wanted to do with her life. An offer to spend a few months with her boyfriend building a primary school in Africa, to do something that she could feel good about and put off getting a real job for a while longer had seemed like the answer, at least in the short term. But then her grandmother fell, breaking her hip. There had been no one else near enough to care for her—her uncle lived in New Zealand, and couldn’t leave his farm. Eve’s mother, who had moved to the South of France in pursuit of a sailing career years before, had died when Eve was a teenager, racing a sportscar on a winding road between Saint-Tropez and Ramatuelle. Eve’s brother was in New York and only managed to fly back for the occasional weekend. There was really only Eve.
She couldn’t bear the thought of Grams having to stay in the hospital for weeks on end, or worse, go into a home. Without even a second thought, she abandoned her plans—and David, who had made known his disappointment in her in no uncertain terms—and moved back in to the top floor of her grandmother’s house.
This was a different act of service than building schools, she told herself, though it had been hard to remember that when David’s occasional emails pinged in her inbox and told of heat and dust, making bricks and raising walls, bare feet and joyous singing. She knew he was doing his best to make her jealous, and she couldn’t help be aware that he was getting a tan and drinking beer with a foreign label while she bought prepared meals at Waitrose and massaged her grandmother’s pale, chilly feet. She tried not to mind too much, but it had made for a very long winter.