Page 32 of Forever, Maybe
Her thumb hovered for a moment before she jabbed the green call button. “Sorry, Artie. I didn’t get to the phone in time. How are you?”
Corrie, displeased by the commotion, leapt off the bed and padded out of the room, tail high and flicking. Across the hallway, the spare room door creaked open, and Danny appeared, hair mussed and eyes half-closed. He peeked around the doorframe, mouthing something about getting started on breakfast.
“Fine, fine,” Artie muttered, as Nell waved Danny off before turning her attention back to the phone.
Artie didn’t bother repeating her question. She’d been born a week after his twelfth birthday—a surprise he’d never wanted and certainly hadn’t celebrated. By the time he turned eighteen, he was out the door and away from family life altogether. When he declined to come up to Glasgow for Nell’s wedding, citing his busy schedule, it hadn’t come as a surprise. In all the years she’d lived in the city, he’d made the effort to visit twice.
“How’s Lorraine? And the boys?” Nell asked.
A better aunt might have kept track of whether Artie’s kids still lived at home, worked or attended university. But then, better brought-up nephews might have remembered to thank their aunt for years of overly generous Christmas and birthday gifts. Artie’s sons never had.
“Fine too. I’m calling about Mum.”
“What about her?” Nell pushed herself up, shoving the pillows against the headboard as a back rest. The disgusting taste in her mouth brought back last night’s events in gruesome technicolour details.
Cringe.
“As you’re not down here much, you probably haven’t noticed,” Artie went on, the barb unmistakable. “But Lorraine and I are about ninety percent sure she’s in the early stages of dementia. Bobby’s in total denial—calls it a ‘senior moment’ every time she forgets something. Which, frankly, is most of the time.”
“What’s she forgetting?” Dread curdled in Nell’s belly. Artie’s news was something that had lingered on the outskirts of her consciousness for a while.
“Names. Words. Switching the oven off. Directions to places. Asking the same question three or four times during any conversation. Then on Friday night, we were in the chippie for the usual, and she asked Bobby, ‘Daddy, please can we get vinegar on our chips?’, and he just brushed it off, like it was nothing. She also confuses him with Lenny a lot.”
“Dad hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Well, he wouldn’t. Everyone has to tip-toe around delicate little Nell, don’t they?”
Nell pulled a face Archie couldn’t see. After all these years, her half-brother’s continued hostility still rankled. The ten-year-old boy furious at his mother for remarrying so soon after Lenny, her first husband, died. Cate seldom talked about Lenny, but her sister had told Nell Lenny was handy with his fists. No wonder she’d greeted his death with relief.
But as Nell recalled the last few phone calls with Cate and her parents’ New Year visit, plenty of things raised red flags that she had noticed and dismissed at the time.
Cate confusing Nell’s graduation from the Art School with her other half-brother’s graduation from Manchester University several years earlier. Cate forgetting the recipe for Delia Smith’s pavlova, a dessert she had made hundreds of times since it first appeared in the early 1980s.
Cate not phoning her on Thursday night to wish her a happy anniversary, something she’d always done. Having no knowledge of it when Nell called on the Saturday morning. Forgetting it again two thirds of the way through the conversation. Bobby taking the phone away from her at one point, ostensibly to speak to his daughter but now that she thought about it, because Cate kept muddling things up.
Artie had a point, however underhandedly he’d brought it up.
“How can I help?” Nell asked.
“Not much, seeing as you’re stuck up there in Scotland,” Artie replied, his tone clipped. Apart from a brief stint in the States during his twenties, he’d never left Norwich, their hometown. “Lorraine wants Bobby to take her to the GP. The sooner these things get diagnosed, the better.”
Lorraine worked on the geriatric ward at the local hospital, so presumably, she knew what she was talking about.
“Has she mentioned that to him?”
“Well, of course she has!” Artie snapped, his frustration crackling through the line. “We’re in and out of that house all the time! I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think this was important.”
Nell pushed the phone away, letting Artie’s voice drone on while she stared at the ceiling. She only brought it back to her ear when his sharp, “Are you still there?” jolted her out of her thoughts.
“Yes, I am,” Nell said firmly. “Artie, I try my best. I wish I lived closer to Norwich.”
She caught muffled whispering on the other end—Lorraine, most likely. The woman must have the patience of a saint to deal with him. Perhaps she was urging her husband to soften his tone.
“Okay, fine,” Artie relented after a pause. “Bobby’s more likely to listen to you. Just make sure you bring it up when they visit you next weekend, alright?”
“No problem. Though maybe Dad’s right, and it is just old age. Mum’s in her late seventies now,” Nell offered, her voice tentative.
“Maybe.” Artie let out a long, heavy sigh. “But we went through this with Lorraine’s mum a couple of years ago. The signs are the same, and it’s... it’s fucking awful, Nell. I can’t face the thought of doing it all over again.”
