She pushed the door, which opened with a creak. The small gold tassel on the key that sat in the lock swayed back and forth. The room smelled of her gran, or rather her scent – the lingering waft of Chanel No5 that had been her signature fragrance, and which Prim had applied liberally every time she walked past her dressing table; morning, noon and night.
‘Darling, I can honestly say I can’t smell it any more! My nose is completely blind to it!’
‘Trust me, Prim, I can smell it. And so can the Maitlands at the end of the lane!’
As the story went, her beau, Victoria’s grandpa – a dashing, upright, naval officer – had presented Miss Primrose Cutter with a beribboned bottle on his first trip home from sea after wooing her one summer. And that, as they say, had been that.
‘How did you and Grandpa actually meet?’ she had asked casually some years ago as they sat side by side in the drawing room.
‘It was an introduction via Great-Granny Cutter, if you can believe that!’
‘What, like an arranged marriage?’ She thought of Daksha’s parents, who had had just that.
‘Not quite, but he was home on leave and I was invited to the Rotherstones’ for tea – I now know at my mother’s suggestion. And, oh my goodness, darling! He was dashing and clever. He had the ability to turn any woman all of a dither, even Granny Cutter. It was just his way, so charming. Plus, his parents went to the same church and they all vaguely knew each other – you know, Christmas Eve drinks, cricket teas, that kind of thing . . .’
It had all sounded so simple and she had wondered at the time if Flynn McNamara’s parents went to church or played cricket. Not that it would have been much good if they had, as she did neither. She felt a tightening in her chest to think of that chat now, knowing there would be no more. A fact that was still unbelievable to her.
Prim’s bed was, as ever, neatly made, with fastidious attention having been paid to the arrangement of the vintage lace cushions that nestled in a pile against the grape-coloured, brocade-covered headboard. They might, to the untrained eye, look haphazardly placed, but they were in fact anything but. Victoria sat on her gran’s side of the bed and looked at the artful clutter on her nightstand: a silver cigarette case from back in the day, an onyx-based lamp whose gilded cherubs held up a velvet-fringed lampshade of olive green. A floral box of tissues, a tube of L’Occitane shea butter hand cream, a small leather-bound notebook for lists and suchlike, and a silver-framed photograph of Grandpa in his naval uniform.
She pictured Prim’s smile, an instinctive reaction to any mention of the love of her life, the man who had stood by her side for over five decades, until cancer felled him like a sapling. Victoria thought it cruel for a man who had stood proudly on the deck of a ship, doing his bit to keep the nation safe whilst serving with the Royal Navy, figuring her rather quiet, cigar-smoking, woody-scented grandpa deserved a more dramatic, heroic death – like in a swordfight or by falling from a sturdy steed – instead of breathing his last sitting on a plastic-coated chair in the communal lounge of Brecon Lodge hospice with the Countdown theme playing in the background. He did, after all, have medals. Victoria was nine when he died, too young to understand how his loss depleted her little family, and yet old enough to feel the pang of grief in her gut at the absence of him. But compared to the roaring grief she felt at losing Prim, it was but a flicker. She stared at her grandpa’s grainy face, recalling the way Prim spoke about the first time they met and how they had fallen in love . . .
‘Well, as clichéd as it sounds, once I had met George Rotherstone, after that afternoon tea and a couple of walks over the Downs, I knew there would not be another person as important or another feeling so all-encompassing. He was all I could see, he was like the sun blocking out everything and everyone else. And handsome’ – Prim had drawn breath sharply and spoken as if Victoria had asked – ‘he was so very handsome, especially in his uniform. A big, noble nose and eyes that twinkled no matter what the topic under discussion, suggesting mischief was never far away. But essentially, he liked me for me: all of me, warts and all, and that kind of universal acceptance was the greatest comfort. I stopped worrying about the future. I stopped worrying about most things, actually, because I knew that with George Rotherstone by my side everything would be just fine.’
Victoria realised in that second that she was now the sole custodian of the family history, the keeper of all these memories. A responsibility she felt ill prepared for, knowing she was lacking in both detail and accuracy. She lifted the picture to study the smiling, tanned face of the young officer, and yes, if she looked closely, there might have been a certain twinkle in his eye.
‘There you are. Can I come in?’ Daksha hovered reverentially in the doorway, clutching two Emma Bridgewater hellebore mugs full of tea.
Victoria nodded and returned the photograph to the nightstand.
‘This is such a beautiful room.’ Daksha walked forward and handed her a mug of tea.
She was glad her friend appreciated her gran’s taste and also how she spoke with a softened edge, aware of the fragility of her mood and the circumstances.
‘I was just looking at her things. I can’t begin to think she won’t come in here again. I can’t imagine that I won’t see her. My brain won’t let me understand it.’
‘It doesn’t seem real,’ Daksha concurred. ‘I keep expecting her to walk in.’
‘Me too.’ She looked at the door, as if expecting just that. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how you get up every morning and shower and get dressed and make your bed. Then one day you do it and it’s the last time ever, you just don’t know it. The last time you do everything. Yesterday, Prim ate her last slice of toast, it was the last time she watered her plants, the last time she sat in her favourite spot in the garden room.’
‘You were so lucky to have her, Vic.’
‘I know. I think I should feel more, but I just feel empty and cold, as if everything is tamped down in my gut and there’s this layer, a weight keeping it there and it muffles everything inside me, even sound.’
‘I’ll go and get your dressing gown.’ Daksha disappeared and returned with her old grey fleece dressing gown, which had seen better days, with its baggy, misshapen pockets and bald patches on the arms where they rested on the old pine kitchen table when she read.
‘Thank you.’ She slipped into it and pulled it tightly around her. It helped a little. Victoria sipped her tea; it was hot and perfect. ‘What was it you were thinking about saying to me when we arrived, but instead opted for the tea filler?’
Daksha sat on the small pink, button-backed boudoir chair and faced her friend. She took her time.
‘I wanted to say that Prim was fine when we left yesterday. She was happy, talkative and mischievous as ever. Chatting about Gerald and eating her pear. There was nothing you could have done and nothing you should have done. But I know you, and I don’t want you to worry or beat yourself up over things you might have done differently.’
Victoria took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking that I should have been here with her. I could have held her hand or . . .’ She didn’t really know what she would have done. But the guilt sat like a fine dust on her shoulders nonetheless. ‘And I can’t remember if I made her the cup of Earl Grey she wanted or whether I left and she had to do it herself, and that’s bothering me.’