Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [3]
lounge – a small room mercifully devoid of the lacy trimmings that infested the rest of the house – and went to find Doctor Menzies. Joyce perched uncomfortably on the edge of a chair, her bag clasped on her knee, and waited.
‘What do you mean he’s missing?’ shouted Megan. ‘He can’t be missing! Not again.’
Steve shifted his weight from foot to foot, hardly daring to meet Megan’s eyes. He’d already sent Claudette and Bernard out to look for Eddie, but no one knew exactly how long he’d been gone and how far he might have wandered. Megan was more furious than he would ever have expected, and if she’d bellowed
‘Release the dogs!’, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, Graystairs didn’t have dogs. But then Graystairs didn’t normally lose residents.
‘Any word?’ asked Beattie, wandering through the hall towards the kitchen, a cup and saucer clattering precariously in her hand.
‘No, Beattie – now go and sit down!’ Megan grunted.
Steve could see that she was holding herself in check: this was the third time that Beattie had asked about Eddie in the half hour that they’d realised he was gone. Connie and Jessie had been settling down for an early-morning game of dominoes in the residents’ lounge with him; but when he didn’t come back from the toilet after half an hour, Jessie started a rumour that Eddie had died. Within minutes, Steve had been assailed by requests for details about the funeral: when was it taking place?
Where was it taking place? Should they buy some flowers? What music did he want played? And, most ghoulishly of all, could they see the body?
By the time Steve had checked the toilets, and Eddie’s room
– and just about every other room in Graystairs – Connie and Jessie were wandering in and out of everybody’s bedrooms, asking if anyone had a black veil. It was only by persuading them to play dominoes with George that Steve had managed to calm them down and take their minds off Eddie’s disappearance. It wasn’t as if it was the first time: he’d gone wandering yesterday morning, too, but thankfully the woman who owned the B&B
had telephoned to say that her son had seen a confused elderly gentleman walking along the road near the woods. And within half an hour, they had him back. The staff had been called together and given a severe reprimand from Megan about keeping the door locked. For all the use it had been. Steve couldn’t help but think that it was the feckless Bernard – he’d had to tell him off about that before.
The front door opened and Steve turned hopefully, but it was Angie, one of the newest care assistants, shaking her head woefully. ‘No sign of him,’ she said as Megan made a funny, disturbing little noise in her throat. ‘Maybe we should phone the police station?’ She shucked off her patchwork leather coat.
She was a thin, mournful-looking thing, thought Steve, and to be faced with all this – including Megan’s temper – in her first week didn’t bode well for her staying much longer.
‘Not yet – and you can keep that on,’ Megan said, pointing to the coat.
‘Megan, it’s cold and miserable out there; I want a cuppa.
Then I’ll go back out. Anyway, I haven’t seen you wandering through the woods looking for him.’
‘I’ve got enough to do here,’ Megan said. ‘You go with her.’
She jabbed a finger at Steve.
He felt his hackles rise at the barked order, but he put Megan’s manner down to the concern which she clearly felt for Eddie’s disappearance. Sullenly, he put on his coat. He just hoped nothing had happened to Eddie: if this was how Megan was with Eddie gone only an hour or so, he hated to imagine what she’d be like if anything serious happened to him. Megan clearly had some kind of personality defect: one minute she was vacuous, dopey and vaguely comic; the next hard, unrelenting and with a spark of cruelty in her eyes that scared him. And Eddie’s disappearance was threatening to fan that spark into a flame.
‘What did you expect? Hovercars, jetpacs and silver jump suits?’
The Doctor paused to cast an approving eye over a display of antique clocks