The night for her was restless, her sleep fractured, until her eyes opened at dawn: her first day on a planet without Prim and one she did not want to face. The idea was no more palatable to her than it had been when she first considered it the previous day. There was a split second when she blinked at the sight of the morning sun and wondered if the whole thing had been a horrible dream, but no, the fact that she was in Daksha’s bed with a twist of sadness in her gut and a feeling like grit behind her lids was proof that her nightmare was real. Plucking her phone from the floor where it lay, she called Gerald, not sure of what to say or even how to begin, but knowing she had to make the call. She cursed as it went straight to answerphone, not knowing what she should say.
‘Gerald . . . it’s Victoria . . . can you . . . erm . . . I will try again.’ She sighed her relief, already dreading calling him later.
‘You want breakfast, darling?’ Mrs Joshi asked as she made her way down the stairs.
‘No, thank you.’
‘You need to eat.’ Mrs Joshi sighed, as if food might be the answer. Victoria disagreed. The hollow, gnawing feeling in her gut was, she knew, nothing that could be filled with breakfast.
‘Maybe a cup of tea.’
The relief on Mrs Joshi’s face was instantaneous. It was very different to mornings at Rosebank, where she woke to the sound of Prim pottering in the kitchen, moving to the background hum of Radio 4 and predictably putting teabags into the teapot before placing marmalade on the table and setting two plates opposite each other.
‘Good morning, sweetie!’
Never again. Never ever. It was unthinkable. She pictured coming down the stairs to a quiet house where no one had popped the lamps on and no one hummed as they spritzed the potted ferns on the windowsill.
To a casual observer it would have looked like any other day as she walked to the front door and inhaled the scent of roses that crowded the flowerbeds. She put her key in the keyhole and looked briefly at her friend.
‘It’s okay.’ Daksha encouraged from eyes that were a little puffy, swollen from having sobbed through the lonely, dark hours until day broke. It would be wrong to say that her friend’s distress irritated her, but she certainly swallowed the urge to remind Daksha that she had the support of a large and loving family around her and that it was she, Victoria, who had been left alone. She had managed to drink the cup of tea and, from across the breakfast table, Dr Joshi had told her in hushed tones, which she suspected he reserved for speaking to patients, that it was most likely a heart attack to which Prim had succumbed. She had nodded, thinking in that moment that it didn’t really matter why. What mattered was that it had happened at all. And despite overhearing Mrs Joshi’s words of support, Victoria felt the new and frightening chill of loneliness wrap itself around her bones.
Her thoughts flew to her mum and she tried to imagine how very different her life might have been if Prim had not been on hand to scoop her up, feed and clothe her in the role of both mother and grandmother – a neat trick that Prim had mastered. And one that had seen Victoria safely arrived at adulthood. Just. Not that the fact that she was now eighteen in any small way alleviated the utter terror she felt at being left by herself. She wasn’t ready. She was, in fact, as unprepared for the loss of her gran at eighteen as she had been at four, five, six . . . and in truth she doubted she ever would be prepared for it. The loss of her mother was sad, but the simple truth was that she had never known any different, having been in Prim’s care since she was mere weeks old. Her gran had always, always made her feel safe, but now? Victoria was alone, cut free, floating, and fearful of where she might land.
I need a bath, but first I think I’ll make Prim a really good, strong coffee and arrange the baklava on a pretty floral plate, one of Granny Cutter’s, and we can sit on the veranda and . . .
It was like a pick to her chest, the realisation that this was not going to happen today. Or any other day, for that matter. It was as if the news simply wouldn’t sink in. She felt a strange sensation in her knees, which were suddenly cold and wobbly, her stomach jittery, heart skipping. Daksha reached up and took the key from her friend and, turning it, she pushed the door open.
The two girls stepped inside, as they had done thousands of times before, but today it was a house in a different world, a lesser world, where Prim no longer existed.
The spindle-backed wooden chair that had sat in the corner of the hallway with a needlepoint cushion propped on it for as long as she could remember had been moved to the bottom of the stairs to make way for . . . what? A stretcher? A gurney? She didn’t want to know. Yet apart from the odd door that was usually closed left ajar, and the fact that the curtains in the dining room were still drawn, the house looked and smelled just the same as it always had. She didn’t know why, but she had expected both to be a little different. What was different, however, and markedly so, was the way Rosebank felt. Quiet and still, like a thing hollowed out, scooped free of all that gave it substance. Soulless, an eggshell, a husk, a river run dry. Prim had been the energy of the house, the noise and vivacity, and without her it felt blank, like nothing; no longer a home, just a house. Her house now.
‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’
‘God, Daks, what is it with your family and tea?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her friend looked into the middle distance, as if reflecting on this very question. ‘I think maybe we use the offer and provision of tea as a filler, a way to plug the awkward gaps when we either don’t know what to say or are avoiding saying what we know we want to.’
‘Which is it right now?’
‘I think a combination of the two.’
‘Okay then, go make the tea!’ Victoria sighed, half in apology and half in exasperation. ‘I’ll be upstairs; I need to put something warmer on.’ She rubbed the tops of her arms. She was still wearing the vest laundered by Prim’s hand, the vest she was wearing when her gran had waved her off from the doorway of the garden room, only yesterday. Yesterday. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Pausing on the half landing, Victoria let her eyes wander over the photographs of her mother.
‘Are you two together now?’ She let this thought linger, as her eyes settled on her mum’s smiling face, feeling a ridiculous stab of misplaced jealousy, an almost visceral reaction at the possibility that this might be the case. Throughout her life, if Prim had ever reprimanded her, Victoria would take up her favoured spot here on the landing and tell her mum all about it.
‘ . . . and Gran said I had to read my book and I told her I only had to do three pages, but she made me do the whole chapter . . . I hate broccoli, Mummy, but she said I had to eat it, they look like little trees and who wants to eat a little tree?’ And later in life: ‘I like this boy. Flynn, his name is Flynn . . . how can I make him notice me? What would you do, Mum? How did you attract Marcus?’
‘You’ve abandoned me,’ she whispered. ‘You have both abandoned me.’ Addressing this to the photograph, thinking most unfairly of Prim, whose only crime had been to get old after dedicating her entire life to her granddaughter’s well-being.
Her aim had been to avoid Prim’s bedroom, two doors down from hers on the opposite side of the landing. The room in which her gran had slept every night of Victoria’s childhood, first with Grandpa, and then alone. Victoria had taken great comfort in her close proximity. It was one of six rooms on the square landing with a round, turreted bedroom in each corner, and her intention had been to walk straight past, but something told her that whilst it might be hard, leaving the task and letting her nerves simmer at the prospect might just be a darn sight harder.