*****
Chris hadn’t trusted himself to go into Ann-Marie’s bedroom. Fearful that he would do something obscene: trash the place, tear down the drawings and her City scarf, the mobiles and the posters. But now he took a breath and pushed the door open. Why was it shut anyway? She never shut her door; she liked to be able to see the landing light, to be able to hear them moving about the house and call out to them. The door swung open and he took in a scattering of felt pens and bits of plastic, some cards and puddles of clothes. He’d expected it to look neater, more organised. He thought Debbie would have already tidied up. Creating a shrine.
Chris had built the beds, rigged up a slide from the top bunk and a ladder at the other end. He’d made the cupboards in the alcove, too, with drawers beneath for her clothes. The drawers had come from a big reclamation place in Hyde. Lovely wood, beech. He’d cleaned them up, sanding them and using linseed oil for a soft warm finish. He’d fixed on new handles, rejecting all the fancy shapes for some simple round wooden ones not too big for her hands and no sharp edges. After all that Ann-Marie had plastered the unit with stickers from cereal packets and the dentist. He’d felt a lurch of dismay when he’d first seen them but quickly reasoned that it didn’t matter. It was her space. Just a week ago her curtain pole had come adrift and he’d been up there fixing it while she chattered to him about dogs and how their sense of vision worked compared to humans and cows and flies.
Can’t fix this, he thought, and sat down heavily on the lower bunk, his head bowed in the narrow space, his hands large and useless, an encumbrance now. He stared mutinously at her old teddy, remembered making it dance as he held Ann-Marie in the crook of his arm, her sturdy legs kicking in delight. How she’d dragged the bear about as a toddler; already she was the image of her mother: the same dimples, the same wild hair.
Debbie, falling for Debbie had been brilliant. He met her through the job. She and another nurse had a flat-share in Withington, before the old hospital closed. Chris had woken her up. She’d been on nights. She was skinny and funny and pretty, even with her hair sticking out every which way. She’d made coffee and watched him work, asked him questions. She was easy to talk to.
‘Reckon you need a new T-connector,’ he told her, wiping his hands on a rag.
