The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [11]
I follow her along the hallway to the kitchen. Not quite so spry, maybe, but still a bounce in her step. She is OK.
Then I see the tin on the table.
‘Not fresh beans, then?’ Trying to make it casual, uneasy all the same. Fran never serves tinned vegetables she could grow herself or buy fresh.
‘Lor’ sake, India,’ she says. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
While Frannie wields the tin opener, humming ballads from the Blitz, I go upstairs to check where John’s put my things. Mostly, it seems, in the front bedroom, where the bed’s made up for me. ‘Fran! Mind if I shift some of my things down into the dining room?’
A clatter, a muffled ‘Oh, buggeration,’ from the kitchen. That sounds like the old Frannie. She comes out into the hall. ‘You can’t, India, I’m sleeping in there.’
‘You what? I lean over the banisters. She’s standing at the foot of the stairs with her hands on her hips.
‘John moved my bed downstairs in the summer.’
‘What’s the matter with upstairs?’ A worm twists in my gut. I can hear myself sounding like a social worker jollying her along. ‘Don’t tell me you’re too old to climb stairs. John said you were down the post office showing them how to hokey-cokey the other week. Left leg in, left leg out, shaking it all about like a spring lamb.’
‘Lights,’ she says. ‘Bloody lights, can’t sleep at night because of ‘em.’
‘Your room’s at the back. No lights out there, apart from the people in the bungalows, and far as I remember their average age is ninety-two. Anyway, you could’ve moved into the other bedroom. I don’t mind swapping.’
There’s a guilty but defiant look on her face. ‘Buggerin’ lights. Keep me awake. Rather be down here.’
‘What brought you back?’ she asks over supper.
‘Bored with London.’ Steve’s staring eyes, which a part of me never stops seeing, accuse me of cowardice, as well as murder, but I can’t burden her with the truth. ‘And to be honest, Fran, I don’t think I’m getting anywhere in television. You need connections, or luck, or mega-talent, preferably all three, and I haven’t any of those.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she says briskly, the way she always does. ‘You’re a clever girl, India. Don’t know where you got it from, but you are. Anyway, you stay here long as you want. John said you needed a good rest.’
‘I’ll find a job.’ I take hold of her hand as she reaches for her glass of water. Her knobbly fingers are cold between my warm ones. ‘Can’t ask you to support me.’
‘You’ve no idea what money I got.’ She’s grinning.
‘Millions, probably, all under the mattress. I don’t care. I’m not going to sponge off you.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Can I drink my glass of water now?’
I let go of her hand reluctantly. Millions under the mattress wouldn’t compensate if I lost Fran. Then something comes to me out of nowhere.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I say.
Frannie pauses with the glass halfway to her lips. There’s a wary expression in her eyes. ‘Yes?’
‘Grandad.’
The story I’ve been told is that Grandad’s plane fell out of the sky a few months before my mother was born. But Fran has never talked about him, and the impression grew, during childhood, that it was better not to ask: the briefest of answers would escape through tight lips. Now I’m all too conscious that one day the opportunity to find out more will be gone for ever.
‘Which one?’ Her eyes have slid away from mine, and she’s put down the water glass to fiddle with a bean that has escaped onto the tablecloth. Have I upset her? Surely not, he died more than sixty years ago. Then the weirdness of her response hits me.
‘What d’you mean, which one? You never met my father, let alone his family’
‘Course I didn’t. No bloody idea about his lot. Could all’ve bin in Reykjavik prison far as I’d know. Your mother had terrible taste in men. Family trait, mind.’
I take this to be a reference to my unfortunate affair with the tutor at uni, which ended in an abrupt return to Chippenham and floods of tears. Although it brought the near implosion of my degree, Fran was amazingly non-judgemental. I wondered if she’d been through