Page 127 of The Stranger in Room Six
But despite the photograph, I hardly recognized the woman in front of me. Her sunken eyes and long grey hair made her look more like seventy than fifty as she was wheeled into the dining room by another carer. She sat up at the table, stared down at the bowl in front of her and hurled it on the ground.
‘You put nails in my cereal,’ she screamed at the woman next to her.
‘Don’t be so bloody daft,’ snapped her neighbour, still in her nightdress. ‘They’re just raisins in the bran flakes.’
‘No, they’re not.’ Karen stood up then, her eyes wild. ‘Someone here is trying to kill me.’
Everyone looked at me. The carer who brought her in had disappeared, no doubt to do the million other jobs that need doing round here, like changing soiled sheets and answering emergency calls.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said nervously, in case she recognized me. ‘Let’s get rid of it, shall we? I’ll get you a fresh bowl of cereal.’
‘Thank you!’ She grabbed my hands. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name?’
My heart pounded. ‘Belinda,’ I said. Surely, she would twig now. I’d briefly considered changing my name before coming here but it was too complicated: all my identification documents are under Belinda Wall.
‘Belinda,’ she repeated. ‘That rings bells but I can’t remember why.’ Then she beamed at me. ‘I like you,’ she said. ‘You took away those nails. Please. Stay with me.’
And that’s how I came to have two admirers: Mabel, whom I have genuinely learned to love, and Karen, the former mistress of my dead husband, whom I loathe.
I have so many questions I want to ask the bitch but her mind is all over the place. Sometimes she talks about theAntiques Roadshow(her favourite TV programme) and at other times she insists she was the first woman on the moon. ‘I planted flowers there, you know.’
Then a few weeks ago, it all came out. We were doing one of Butlins Bill’s jigsaw puzzles together. The picture was the Eiffel Tower. ‘I went to Paris once with my husband, Gerald,’ she said out of the blue.
I froze.
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. It was wonderful. We stayed in a place called Montmartre. But then we had to come home because of his wife.’
‘You just said you were his wife,’ I managed to say.
‘His other wife.’
Suddenly she pushed the jigsaw puzzle off the table and it fell apart. ‘I don’t want to do this any more!’ she screamed. ‘Get me out of here. Get me OUT!’
One of the nurses gave her a sedative and took her back to her room.
Later, I tried to ask her more questions, like how long she’d known Gerald for. But she just kept chattering on about planting flowers on the moon.
I might not understand her mind, but I have come to know her body intimately. One of my duties is to help her shower. I want to retch as I help her under the hose. To think that these now-scrawny breasts were the once-firm bosom that Gerald found so alluring.
She looks at me, smiling. ‘Soap,’ she says. ‘I like lavender soap. He used to buy me that.’
I could drown the bitch my husband destroyed our family for here and now. I could push her and claim she just fell.
I could direct the shower nozzle straight at her mouth and stop her breathing.
When I dry her, I want to do it roughly. I want to scratch her skin so hard that it bleeds.
But I find I cannot. Instead, I pat her dry and get her dressed for the day.
‘You have to do better than this,’ I keep telling myself. I need to know what happened between her and Gerald. Otherwise, I will never move on.
So, over the weeks, when I’m not with Mabel, I volunteer to go along with Karen to all the activities. I sit with my husband’s old mistress as the children from the local primary school come to sing. I even go with her to the theatre when there’s a group outing. I try to befriend her, through silently gritted teeth. Everyone tells me how good I am with her. Karen is known for her outbursts.
She doesn’t seem to recognize me, but then again nor would anyone who knew me back then.
When it’s visiting time, we sit together in the lounge while everybody else talks to their relatives. She looks at them enviously.
