Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [24]
The fact that there was a strange girl in Norma’s room, half crouched as if she were planning to attack, shattered what little composure she’d managed to cling on to; and before she knew it, the cloud of white towels was a jumbled, snowy mess on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ the girl apologised, breaking out of the ‘rabbit caught in headlights’ trance that she seemed to have been in.
Claudette muttered a flustered something or other and began gathering the towels up, feeling like she might burst into tears at any moment; the girl moved to help her, and Claudette inexplicably found herself backing away.
‘Are you OK?’ the girl asked. Claudette nodded and tried an unconvincing smile. ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ the girl said, and began folding the towels and stacking them on the dressing table.
‘What’s your name? I’m Ace.’
‘Claudette,’ she answered and they shook hands in a clumsy, this-is-what-adults-do sort of way.
She looked down at Norma, still soundly asleep. ‘You come to see your grandmother, then?’ she asked, trying to defuse the awkwardness. Ace nodded, her eyes darting away at the last minute.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘She’s asleep – I didn’t want to wake her.’
Claudette nodded. ‘I think she’s been for a treatment session
– they dope them up with sedatives, so she’ll probably be out for a while.’
She was an odd one, thought Claudette, as the two of them set about building up the stack of towels on the dressing table.
Probably about her own age, hair braided back into a ponytail, a jacket that looked a couple of sizes too big for her, and loads of badges – which, Claudette thought, she probably wore to make herself look more ‘street’ than she actually was. She had a nice smile, though – decent.
‘Where are you from, then?’ Claudette asked.
The girl waved her hand airily ‘Around. Perivale, really.
London.’
‘Wow, a long way to come. What’s it like?’
‘London? Oh, you know... Busy, noisy. Some great shops, though. You never been?’
Claudette shook her head and pulled a face. ‘Wanted to go last summer – we’ve got some relatives down in Essex – but Mum changed her mind at the last minute and it all got cancelled.’ She glanced at her watch and gave a sigh. ‘I’d better get on,’ she said heavily, laying a couple of towels on the chair beside the bed. ‘We’re a bit short-handed at the moment.’
‘So I gather,’ Ace said. ‘Two of the old dears told me that it’s turning into the Marie Celeste around here – people disappearing left, right and centre.’
‘And without even giving us a chance for a goodbye whip-round. Not sure how long I’ll be staying myself.’ Claudette pulled a grim face.
‘Where do they go for this treatment, anyway?’ asked Ace suddenly, remembering that she really ought to have something a bit more meaty to report back to the Doctor.
Claudette swallowed, suddenly remembering what had happened to her ten minutes before.
‘Hey, what’s up?’
Claudette’s face must have shown more than she’d thought.
Ace was by her side in an instant, a hand on her shoulder, strangely welcome despite Claudette’s only having known her for a few minutes. She shook her head. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
Ace smiled. ‘If I had a quid for the number of times I’ve heard people say that when it turned out to be anything but, I’d be rolling in it. Come on, what’s wrong?’
Claudette took a deep breath and sat unsteadily at the foot of the bed – almost forgetting that an elderly woman still slept in it
– her hands knotting and unknotting in her lap. She knew that if she didn’t tell someone, she’d go mad.
* * *
Claudette didn’t normally have any business being up there, on the second floor. But when she’d been told to change all the towels in the residents’ rooms, she’d found the linen cupboard almost empty.