Page 150 of The Stranger in Room Six

Harry looks both relieved and sad. ‘I’ll miss you,’ he says, kneeling at her level, and putting his arms around her. ‘But I think you might be safer there until things have died down a bit.’

‘Are you ready?’ Mabel asks Polly who is perched in the basket of her wheelchair. ‘We are going on a big adventure!’

111

Belinda

I find myself lonely after Mabel leaves. I hadn’t realized how much her companionship meant to me, until her room was empty. I thought that my job was to listen to her. I would have done so even if I wasn’t being blackmailed by Mouse. But in fact, Mabel listening tomehas meant just as much.

Maybe it really is time to leave now. But then I overhear one of the other carers talking to an elderly gentleman who’s just arrived and is feeling low in spirits. ‘You need to chat to Belinda. She’s a good listener.’

Those words make me feel useful. Valued. I still have a job to do.

When people move into a care home, their past is the most important luggage they can bring with them. After a busy life, they now have the time to dissect it. To look back and think what they should and shouldn’t have done. It’s a difficult journey. Mistakes have been made that can’t be rectified. Wonderful times have gone that they can’t recreate. They need someone to share this with. To listen. And not all have relatives close by to do that.

But it can take its toll on the person listening too; it can also encourage that listener to re-evaluate their own life. To learn lessons from those who are one step ahead in the chain of life and death.

Now I am staying on, I decide to spend more time with Karen. I’m not trying to find out anything new now. I’velearned what I needed to from her son. When Karen refers to ‘Gerald, my husband’, I no longer boil with anger. In some ways, he was her husband more than he was mine.

I remember Mabel’s words about forgiveness. I’m not quite there. But I’m slowly moving towards it.

‘I know who stole those photographs from Mabel,’ Karen whispers to me one day.

‘Of course you do,’ I say. I’m used to Karen’s wild ramblings.

‘It was that Claudette. The singer. I overheard her telling someone that she’d made a mint by selling something to the papers.’

Is this Karen’s dementia speaking? Still, I tell the manager and she calls the police, who question Claudette and she confesses. I worry about what will happen to her. She’s only nineteen and she did it to pay her tuition fees, although that’s no excuse. But she gets let off with a suspended sentence and a fine.

Elspeth and I see each other about once a month. Sometimes she links her arm through mine. When I ask how Gillian is, she simply says ‘fine’. It makes my heart ache. Just as it aches for Imran.

It might have been different if I’d been brave enough to get into the car when he came to collect me from prison. But the longer I am free, the more I realize how far apart we have grown. Imran will never see the prisons where I spent my sentence. He doesn’t know that I still wake in the night, screaming with terror in case someone is coming in to attack me with boiling water. How can we make a life together when his has been so different?

I try explaining this when he rings. I’ve ignored him for long enough and I need to be straight with him.

‘Please, Belinda,’ he says. ‘Just give me a chance. Let me come and take you out for the day. We can talk properly.’

My weekend off is coming up. I could spend it wandering round this seaside town alone, or I could accept Imran’s offer.

I don’t take long getting ready. I dab on some concealer and tie my hair into a chignon to try and hide the grey strands. Then I put on the dress Elspeth bought me last Mother’s Day. ‘Going somewhere nice?’ asks the receptionist.

‘Just seeing a friend,’ I say as casually as I can.

But underneath, I am shaking. It’s been a year now since I was released. A year since I turned down Imran.

How will he feel about me? How will I feel about him?

I wait outside in the visitors’ car park. Imran isn’t here. I’m early, of course, but I persuade myself he’s not coming. A twitch of a curtain makes me aware of a figure standing at a window, peering out at me. It’s one of the residents on the ground floor. They always watch everything. To them it’s a world acted out beyond their lace curtains. The stage on which they used to play a bigger role.

A sleek blue car pulls up noiselessly. I hold my breath. It’s a different car from last time but the driver is the same. He gets out, as tall as ever.

His eyes lock with mine. He holds out his arms and envelops me. I feel like a lost jigsaw piece that has finally been found. Then he releases me briefly and looks down at me. ‘It’s going to be all right, Belinda. Trust me. It’s going to be all right.’

But will it?

112

Imran drives me along the coast towards Lyme Regis. ‘I thought you’d like a change,’ he says.