Chapter Fifteen

      Tess pretended not to notice that Joe was no longer there. She refused to give the answering machine more than a nonchalant glance each time she returned to the house. In the evening, either the television or the radio was on to bypass the taunting silence of the phone not ringing. She had his mobile number, it still shared the hook with the calendar on the kitchen door and every now and then she'd look at it quickly, as if checking the correct quota of eleven numbers. It was the only mobile phone number that she knew off by heart, yet she'd never once rung it. She lacked the confidence to phone just to say, hullo, how are you, how's France.

      All of this was very different – the situation, the feelings – from simply missing someone. Missing someone causes one to feel incomplete, it's a vulnerable state. Tess had missed Em in a desperate, primal way when she'd been at work; a creeping, invasive hollowness that was only counteracted when her child was back with her. Over Joe, Tess did not feel fragile or gut-wrenched, she felt simply sad and alone because his company had recently enhanced her life. And though she currently kept the study door shut, as Joe always did when he was working, she couldn't create the illusion that he was in there. It seemed to her that, whichever room she was in, Joe was like an essential item of furniture suddenly gone. Nothing seemed quite right now. The time he'd spent at home recently had been so satisfying for her that it had shrunk her world, made it seem a safer and more intimate place; his presence had formed a moat and a drawbridge around her. It was a feeling of self-sufficiency. But with him gone, she felt cut off.

      Strangely, though she had thought about Mary even while Joe had been home, her allegiance was now so firmly with Joe that whatever it was that prevented him mentioning his mother, was enough for Tess to respect. If there were sides to be taken, she was on his. Thoughts of Seb too, had dispersed as if they'd been but lively sparks from a bonfire – which have no real substance, not even ash. So it was unnerving, to say the least, to come across both people in quick succession a week after Joe's departure.

      ‘Laura – she's gone again.’

      ‘Who has?’

      ‘Mrs S – or in your case, Mary.’

      ‘Mary? You sure?’

      ‘Just checked her room.’

      ‘The morning room?’

      ‘Not there.’

      ‘Playing rummy?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Sunroom? She does like the sunroom – sits herself down right in the far corner where she can gaze out to sea.’

      ‘She's not in the sunroom. I told you, Laura – she's scarpered.’

      ‘Well, we know where she'll be headed.’

      ‘Doesn't make it any the less a pain in the arse – I've got better things to do than chase through town for an eighty-year-old. She's crafty, that one. She never does as she's told. I don't know why you've such a soft spot for her.’

      ‘She's not eighty – she's only seventy-five. It's her condition that makes her seem older.’

      ‘Over there! Look, Laura – there she is, pegging off past Garnet Street.’

      Laura had already left the room.

      There was a scatter of elderly residents of the town taking the air on the elevated position of Marine Parade above the pier and beach. Laura had never become inured to their grace – their pace, the way they sat or stood, content for silent companionship, patient with each others’ witterings. Mary, however, was practically jogging. It was as if the pensioners enjoying the view were acting their age while Mary defiantly was not. She appeared oblivious to the melancholy expanse of the North Sea, the majestic dominance of Huntcliff reaching out into it, the breadth of golden sands. She was walking off with a pace and purpose at odds with both her peers and the vista.

      Laura always preferred to run before she could walk – because she knew it could startle the elderly lady if she approached at speed. So she'd run until Mary was in reach, then she'd walk briskly until she was abreast when finally she'd slow down and match her stride.

      There she is. There she is. Between Diamond and Pearl Streets. Laura could slow down now.

      ‘Mary,’ she called in a sing-song voice from a little way off, to advise her she was all but caught. ‘Mary,’ she said again, gently this time, when she came up alongside her. She touched her elbow and fell into line with Mary's pace as if they were power-limping side by side intentionally. Soon enough, Laura gave Mary a quiet but insistent pull and the old lady stopped abruptly.

      ‘I just want to go home, Laura dear,’ she said with great lucidity and weariness. ‘It's been so long.’

      ‘I know,’ Laura soothed, ‘I know.’ Then she said, Mary love – you've come out without a brolly. She passed Mary a small red folding umbrella.

      Mary pulled out a patterned plastic rain hat from her coat pocket and gave Laura a look that said, you'll have to do better than that, dear.

      Laura looked out to sea. A container ship almost stuck to the horizon. At this distance it looked as innocuous as a child's drawing of a generic boat. But she knew they were over a thousand feet long; she'd seen them hulking their way for fuel at Seal Sands at the mouth of the Tees. She glanced at Mary and thought how her life was like that container ship; mostly so distant that it was inconsequential though it could suddenly loom large and in pin-sharp focus and fill her mind. But it always sailed away from her until she was just an infirm pensioner, muttering to herself while she gazed out of the window in the overheated sunroom of an old-age home.

      ‘Well – I wonder whose brolly this is,’ Laura murmured because she often chose to appear less bright than she was – a ploy she used with the residents because she thought it was patronizing, intimidating even, to bandy her youth and savvy in their presence.

      ‘Elsie's, probably,’ said Mary, ‘daft old bat.’

      ‘Elsie is lovely,’ Laura said.

      ‘Or else it'll be Catherine's.’ And Mary started to laugh. ‘She's a one. She never knows where things are. She never knows where they belong. She forgets what they're for. Her fanny being a case in point.’

      ‘Mrs S!’ Laura protested.

      ‘Everyone