Page 141 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘I will never hurt her, if that’s what you mean.’ I almost add ‘not now’ but decide that’s best left unspoken.
‘Having met face to face, I’d like to believe you.’ He gets up. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Where?’
‘To Mum’s room. I think it would be a good idea if we both saw her together, then perhaps she might accept you, depending on her state of mind today.’
‘Her? Accept me? Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’
‘I think it will take two of you.’
So I go, with this young man who looks so like Gerald and, come to think of it, Gillian. It seems the right thing to do.
101
Karen is sitting by the window with a photograph album in her lap.
A picture of Gerald beams out at me. Part of me would throttle him if he was still here. But there’s also a small voice that says ‘Come on. You were never suited. Besides, you always loved Imran.’
She looks up at us.
‘This is my son!’ she says, beaming at me as if introducing us.
‘I know,’ I say.
Stephen crouches down by her side. ‘Does Belinda look after you all right, Mum?’
He is scared, quite rightly, that I might try to hurt her. Who can blame him?
‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘We have some lovely chats.’
Then her forehead wrinkles. ‘Apart from the night of the party.’
I stiffen.
‘What happened then?’
‘I told everyone how my Gerald would call me Twinkle. I don’t think she liked that. Belinda took me for a walk, and then we heard a shot.’
She giggles as if it’s funny. ‘We were both a bit scared, weren’t we, Belinda, when we heard that gun go off?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We were.’
‘Do you know, for a moment, I thought you had shotme.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘It might have had something to do with a man I once knew called Gerald.’
She speaks as though she hadn’t just been talking about him. I’ve learned that lost conversational trails are common in dementia sufferers.
Stephen cuts in. ‘Gerald was Belinda’s husband, Mum. My dad. The man you had an affair with. So I have to ask you something. Are you really happy for Dad’s wife to look after you here?’
Karen’s eyes narrow. She’s glaring at me. ‘But she’s not his wife, is she? Not really. He lovedme.’
I’m about to say that of course I was his bloody wife. But then I stop. What kind of marriage did Gerald and I have? It was a sham. I have a feeling that Stephen was right when he said his parents really did love each other.
‘I like Belinda,’ Karen is saying, stretching out her hand to me. She’s switched moods again. ‘She’s a good listener.’
