Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘Your temporary home.’

‘Aren’t you staying here as well?’

‘Just around the corner in a bed and breakfast. You don’t mind having the place to yourself?’

Truth to tell, Rose preferred it. She was drained by the effort of accepting as her sister this woman she had no recollection of meeting before. They got out at the lower end of the square. Doreen had a hefty fare to settle: she counted out six five-pound notes and got a receipt, which she pocketed. Then she escorted Rose to the door. ‘There are shops along there, in St James’s Street, newsagent and grocer combined, deli, launderette, enough for all immediate needs,’ she said, sounding like a travel guide. ‘Oh, and a hairdresser’s.’

‘Does it look that awful?’

‘Of course it doesn’t, but if you’re like me, you get a lift from having your hair done. If not, there’s the pub.’

From the arrangement of doorbells, Rose noted that the house was divided into flats with a shared entrance.

‘Hope you won’t mind the basement,’ Doreen said apologetically, when she had let them in. ‘That’s all I could get at short notice.’

They stood in a clean, roomy and impersonal hall without furniture except a table for the mail.

‘You must have been confident of finding me to have fixed this up.’

‘More than confident, my dear. I knew. Saw your picture in the paper, you see. It said you were being looked after by the Social Services, so it was just a matter of establishing who I was.’

‘And who I am.’

‘Well, yes.’ Doreen led the way downstairs and turned the key in the door. They stepped inside a large room that must have faced onto the square. All you could see through the window was the outer wall of the basement well and, high up, a strip of the street with railings.

‘The living room. Better than the hostel?’

‘I don’t think the hostel had a living room.’

Affectionately Doreen put her arm around her. ‘So this will do?’

‘Home from home.’

In reality, it was just another strange setting for Rose to get used to. She was impatient to get back to her own place, whatever that turned out to be. She hated being under an obligation to people. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do while Doreen and her partner Jerry chose to linger in Bath.

Fitted green carpet, two armchairs, glass-topped table, bookshelf with a few paperbacks: it would do. The only thing she disliked was having to keep the light on during daytime, a fact of basement life.

‘I’m going to make us a cuppa,’ said Doreen, crossing to the kitchen.

Rose looked into the bedroom. Clean, if rather spartan. Two divan beds with the mattresses showing. A sleeping bag had been arranged on the nearer one. Fair enough, she thought. I could hardly expect them to go to the trouble of buying a full set of bed linen. She put her carrier bags on the spare bed. Unpacking wouldn’t take long.

Back in the kitchen, Doreen showed her the food shopping she had done. There was enough for a couple of days at least. ‘Didn’t know whether you’d gone back to your vegetarian phase, so it’s rather heavy on veggies,’ she said.

‘If I have, it’s all gone by the board in the last few days. I simply don’t remember if I’m supposed to be a vegetarian.’

‘You were always taking up new diets. I could never keep track of them.’ Doreen poured hot water into the teapot and swirled it around. ‘But you like your tea made properly. The pot has to be warmed.’

‘It’s so strange being told these things. I’m wanting to know everything about myself, of course, but it’s still like talking about another person. If I make tea for myself, I suppose I’ll go to the trouble of warming the pot now that you’ve told me I always do it, but it’s the strangest feeling – as if I’m trying to be someone I’m not.’

‘It will all start coming back, I expect,’ Doreen said, ‘and then it will make more sense. Did the doctors give you any idea how long you’ll be like this?’

‘Not really. All I was told is that I’ll get that part of my memory back. It isn’t like concussion, when you lose a small chunk of your life for ever. I may have had concussion as well, of course.’

‘You have had a time of it.’

‘I’ll be all right soon.’

‘But it’s still horrid for you while it lasts.’

‘Yes.’

‘How will it come back, all at one go, or in little bits?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You haven’t noticed anything stirring at the back of your mind?’

‘I wish I could say I had. You said my real name is Rosamund. I didn’t even know that.’

While the tea was brewing, they sat on two stools facing each other across the kitchen table. People with impaired sight or hearing sometimes develop their other senses more sharply. Rose, deprived of so much of her memory and experience, found she was becoming acutely observant of the way others behaved towards her. She could detect insincerity as if with a sixth sense. For example, she had found Imogen, the social worker, friendly, but unwilling to get involved beyond the limits of her job. She carried out her duties without really throwing herself into them whole-heartedly. Ada, on the other hand, had come across as totally committed, dependable and sympathetic, however brash her utterances were.

She could tell that Doreen’s motives were more complex. Doreen had a strong, honest concern, though it came out less obviously than Ada’s. Maybe that was only the difference between family and friends. No doubt Doreen was trying to reconcile different loyalties, to their mother, her partner, Jerry, and to Rose. The important thing, Rose concluded, was that Doreen clearly had her welfare at heart. She might appear manipulative, bossy, even, but she had gone to all the trouble of arranging this flat, and it was done with Rose’s interests clearly in mind.

She was trying her best to warm to Doreen.

‘Will I meet Jerry soon?’

‘Jerry?’ There was hesitation, as if Doreen’s mind had been on other things. ‘You threw me for a moment. It won’t be a case of meeting him. He knows you almost as well as I do.’

‘Sorry. You’ll have to make allowances. Remind me what he’s like.’

Doreen blushed a little. ‘I think he’s special, or I wouldn’t have moved in with him and shocked the family. They’ve accepted him now, even Mother.’

‘Good-looking, then?’

‘I think so, anyway.’

‘You live at his place?’

‘Yes, but we don’t crowd each other. Today I told him I didn’t want him with me when I called at the Social Services place. Jerry can be a bit abrupt with people like that. It called for some tact and persuasion, if you know what I mean. So he’s doing his own thing, which probably means test-driving a new car at some posh garage. You’ll see him soon enough.’

‘Tonight?’

‘I thought you’d want an evening at home. Nice bath, chance to put your feet up and relax.’

Rose took this to mean that her sister wanted dinner out somewhere nice with her partner. And why not? This was their short break in Bath.

‘About tomorrow,’ she thought it right to say. ‘If you two want to spend the day together, sightseeing or something, I don’t need to tag around with you. There are plenty of things I can do.’

Doreen ventured no immediate response. She went to the fridge and took out a carton of milk. ‘Is semi-skimmed all right?’

‘Fine.’

When the tea was poured, Doreen said, ‘Look, I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but you’ve got to be on your guard.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, come on, darling. Someone tried to force you into a car yesterday.’

So much had happened since that Rose had put it out of her mind. She shrugged and said dismissively, ‘I don’t know what that was about. You get some weirdos these days. I suppose he saw my picture in the paper. He knew my name, the name I’m using, anyway.’