Page 62 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘What are you, my mother?’
‘You want it or not?’
Jodie grabs it from her. ‘Let’s have a look.’ She shakes it out and then cackles loudly. ‘Oh my actual days, Violet, where do you wear this?’ She holds it against her, a big fleece jumper with a badly rendered laminate picture of a wolf howling at the moon. ‘This wolf looks like a crazed psycho.’
Violet humphs. ‘Well, actually, I got it on holiday. Brian has a matching one, too.’
Jodie snorts. ‘Where’d you go on holiday to get that?’
Violet sniffs. ‘Skegness.’
‘Lol,’ Jodie says.
‘You want it ornot?’
Jodie slips it over her head. The sleeves are too long and it almost reaches her knees, but it looks warm. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Thank you, Violet,’ Violet says.
‘Thank you, Vi,’ Jodie replies.
‘What about Barbara?’ I say, taking her in with her thin cotton nightdress and maroon fluffy slippers.
‘We’ll wrap her in that huge great dressing gown and then a load of blankets, like we do in the Peace Garden,’ Jodie says. ‘Stop stressing, Penny. She’ll be fine.’
Lunch arrives and I am so churned up I can’t eat it, but I’m not really sure I’d want to eat it much anyway. It’s a vegetarian lasagne, Nicki says, but the lasagne sheets are like sloppy gloop and the vegetables overboiled pulp glued together with the pasta. It’s like someone in the industrial kitchen at wherever it is this hospital gets its meals these days has thought to themselves, ahh, I know what to do with all those bits of broccoli we boiled to death and never used, let’s stick them between a few lasagne sheets and put it in the microwave and call it vegetarian lasagne. That’ll do those fussy veggies.
I push it away and drum my fingers on my lap.
‘Will you stop that?’ Kat says, shovelling up her meat-of-doubtful-origin stew. ‘You’re getting me all riled up now.’
‘It’s only a bit of fresh air, Penny,’ Jodie says.
‘You got your coat and everything, Violet?’ I say.
Violet sits with arms folded, mouth a thin slash. ‘If Amina isn’t going, nor am I. I… I never got to say goodbye to her. We should find her first.’
I stare at her and I want to rail at her, to pour out a rant about how she treated Amina and didn’t deserve to say goodbye. But I wonder if, deep down, she knows that.
‘I don’t know how we can,’ I say. ‘Unless Nicki can look, or Sister Joy, but they’re rushing round everywhere with that new lady today so I don’t want to disturb them.’
‘Well, I won’t go, then,’ Violet says.
‘Whatever,’ Jodie mutters under her breath.
‘An hour and a half to go,’ Kat says.
I feel sick.
Chapter 19
Ishouldn’t be doing this. I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I thought about asking on Mumsnet: Am I Being Unreasonable to join five other sick women from my hospital ward on a jaunt to the seaside to give an elderly lady her dying wish? YABU, they would say, You Are Being Unreasonable, 98% would say I was unreasonable and 2% would vote You Are Not Being Unreasonable just to be obtuse. I’d get told to give my head a wobble and get a grip, to stop being so stupid and think about the practicalities of such madness, that I sound like hard work and do I want to kill an old lady? So then I thought about asking on Reddit, but quickly gave up that one at the thought of Jake’s face whenever I mention Reddit, as if he is amazed I am aware of its existence, as if it is his domain only.
I know in my head though what I don’t need randoms on the internet to tell me. This is crazy, foolish, bonkers. Even if it’s only an hour’s trip we shouldn’t be going. We’re breaking the rules. We might get sicker. It’s the middle of winter, cold and grey and damp, and we all have lung conditions.
But my heart is larger than my mind. I get dressed quickly, taking care around the cannula site, a sense of something like excitement bubbling in me, like the waters of a lake rippling at thecoming of a storm. I don’t do things like this. I keep the rules and keep the peace. But Jodie is a life-force, a wind rushing through the ward and through all of our minds, spinning our thoughts until we cannot do anything but follow her lead. For the fiftieth time, I ask myself what she is doing with that awful man.
She has tucked her pyjama bottoms into a pair of Ugg boots and balances on the edge of my chair, picking at her nails. ‘Come on, Violet,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to come.’
