I felt unclean after my sojourn in bed. I stripped the sheets and made it afresh. Thick, cotton sheets that I’d bought in the old days of regular income. I gathered up towels, sheets, face-flannels, my dressing-gown. Crackle in the pocket. The letter. I prickled with apprehension. The letter to Martin. From a dead woman. A love letter? A warning? The rantings of an obsessed stranger? I’d no way of knowing. Unless I opened it. But I couldn’t do that. It was probably the last thing she’d written. She’d trusted me to deliver it. I would if I could.
I put the letter in my bag, put the load in the washer, put myself in the bath.
Something was worrying me as I lay there. I ticked off in my mind all the things that I knew were worrying me: JB’s death; Janice Brookes’ murder; having to visit Martin’s parents; having to deliver the letter; money – no-one was paying me any, would have to apply for Family Credit again. Still something else. I fished around. Diane? Maddie? Ray? Clive. Yes, it was Clive.
‘You’re pathetic,’ I told myself, as I pulled the plug. But there it was. An unpleasant task waiting to be tackled. And all the worse because it didn’t belong to the big, bad world out there. I couldn’t face it, then come home, safe, and shut the door on it. It was here, in my home. I hated that.
I got ready to leave for Bolton, ignoring the enquiring glances from the dog. Walk? No chance. The phone rang. Maddie had been sick. Would I go and fetch her. Shit. Guilt.
On the way there, I worked out the options. There were two. Stay home with Maddie and put my visit to Bolton off another day, or ask Nana Tello, Ray’s mum, to mind Maddie for a couple of hours. I’d psyched myself up to visit Mr and Mrs Hobbs, but it was hardly urgent. Was it worth grovelling to Nana Tello, who I usually reserved for dire emergencies? She always sent me double messages about minding the kids. She’d hum and haw when asked and complain about their behaviour afterwards, then throw a fit if she heard we’d asked anyone else to mind them. ‘Why don’t you ask me? I’m a grandmother. I never see them.’
I collected Maddie, her face paper-white, dressed in ill-matched spare clothes. Made my apologies. The smell of vomit and disinfectant still lingered in the air. Poor kid.
On the way home, she solemnly related the saga. She’d thrown up three times: in the home corner, by the paints and in the toilet. Now she was tired.
