Broken Clouds

You take the third exit at the roundabout and drop into second as the gates come into view, the knot tightening in your chest. It’s been over two months since your last visit—even though you drive within a hundred yards every day on the way to work. You tell yourself it’s because you’d rather remember her as she was. But deep down, you know it isn’t about what you want.

You park up, lingering in the sanctuary of the car, half-considering driving off before anyone notices. You glance at your phone, but there’s nothing urgent. Steeling yourself, you step into the sunshine.

It’s a glorious May afternoon. The warmth on your face makes you think maybe it won’t be as bad this time. You tell yourself she’ll be pleased to see you—that this is the best place for her. Small, homely. Women only. She’d appreciate that.

Inside the hallway, the air feels cool. As you gather your thoughts, your eyes focus on the busy carpet and scuffed paint below the handrails. A young nurse with a sympathetic face appears, but you don’t recognise her, and assume she must’ve just started.

‘Hello,’ she says, breaking the silence.

‘Hi,’ you say, not looking her in the eye, but extending a hand. ‘I’m Ava’s granddaughter. I haven’t been in a while.’

She takes your hand and smiles. ‘I’m Freya. Your nan’s in the back room. Sign in, I’ll take you through.’

‘How’s she been?’ you ask, embarrassed for not knowing.

‘Oh, fine. Happy enough in her way.’

Freya leads you through a cheerfully painted day room, where pale figures doze in mismatched chairs, and you can almost taste the fug of boiled vegetables and disinfectant. You continue through a corridor lined with bedrooms, and wonder whether she’ll recognise you today—the odds lengthen with each visit. As Freya opens a door, you begin to feel anxious. It’s the unpredictability that’s unnerving—her mind, it seems, is covered by a blanket of cloud, which breaks only sporadically to give a sudden glimpse of sky.

You step into the back room, where light spills from the French doors to the garden. A vase of pink freesias sits on a side table, and a television flickers soundlessly in the corner. Out of the shadows, a bird-like silhouette emerges. She’s perched on the edge of her chair, like a figure in an old photograph, knees together and hands on her lap.

‘Ava,’ Freya says. ‘You have a visitor.’

Your nan looks up, searching your face with watery green eyes. She looks puzzled, as though she knows you but can’t place you.

‘Hello, Nan.’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says. ‘How wonderful. I’m so glad you came.’

Freya excuses herself and you’re alone. She stands and you stoop to kiss her proffered cheek, soft and downy as a peach. She smells of cigarettes and Yardley Lavender.

‘How tall you are,’ she says, ‘and pretty.’

‘Oh, you always say that.’ You wonder whether she knows you’re the same person she said it to in her old sitting room. ‘You’re looking well,’ you add, which is true. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh fine, dear.’ Her voice quavers, but her diction’s perfect. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have bought you something. I don’t have anything to give you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ you say with forced jollity. ‘I came to see you, not for a present. Let’s sit down, shall we?’

She lowers herself into her armchair and smooths her tartan skirt. Immaculately groomed, as always. You take a chair so you can face her and hold a papery hand in yours. You notice that the slim gold wristwatch she always wears has stopped. ‘What a lovely day,’ you say. ‘Have you been out?’

‘Oh yes,’ she replies, ‘but I don’t care for the heat.’

She never cared for the heat; always dressed for the cold on the warmest days. Even now, in this heated home, her cardigan’s buttoned to the neck.

‘Do you smoke?’ she asks.

‘Still do.’ You fish around in your bag for a packet of cigarettes.

‘Not in here,’ says Freya gently from the doorway, ‘but you can use the garden.’

‘Not without my coat,’ Nan says, rising briskly and crossing to the hall cupboard. She opens it with the confidence of someone still in her own home.

You help her on with it—the neat wool number in camel with brown velvet collar she’s had for years—and guide her through the French doors to a bench in the sunshine.

You light two cigarettes and pass one to her. You smoke in silence at first. From a neighbouring garden comes the rhythmic drone of a mower; the smell of cut grass mingles with hyacinths and tobacco on the breeze. It feels almost normal. But as you look at her, you notice the smile she’s worn since your arrival is as fixed as her blue-grey hairdo.

She taps her ash into a flower pot as she used to in her old place.

‘This was always your favourite spot,’ she says. ‘You used to leave crusts for the birds and watch them flutter down.’ She smiles at the memory.

You remember it too, the wooden bird table by the pebbledash wall—blue tits, sparrows, the occasional robin.

‘Do you have any news?’ you ask.

‘I’m desperately worried about my mother,’ she says. ‘All alone in that big house.’

You wince, knowing her mind’s clouded over. ‘Try not to worry,’ you say. ‘I’m sure everything’ll be alright.’ You feel ashamed for wanting to be back in the car.

‘Are you married?’ she asks.

‘No,’ you say. ‘No one’s been brave enough yet.’

She laughs—a sudden delightful flutter.

‘Wait until you find the man of your dreams,’ she says, patting your knee. ‘Like my Walter.’

Walter was her husband—the grandfather you never knew. They met at a dance in 1941, both nineteen—she a land girl, he a private in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. They eloped to Southampton, the day before he set sail for Burma. On the platform of Haverfordwest station, in late 1945, she was reunited with the shadow of a man with whom she’d spent just one night in four years of marriage.

‘Do you know my Walter?’ she asks.

You reach into your pocket and pull out your phone, swiping to a photo you saved—their wedding day. Ava in a white dress with sleeves and a veil, your grandfather in uniform, his face lean and proud.

‘Is this him?’ you say gently, holding it out to her.

She peers at the screen. Her brows draw together.

‘That’s me on my wedding day.’

‘Yes,’ you nod. ‘You and Walter.’

She smiles faintly. A thought flits across her face. She looks away, and then it’s gone. ‘He is so well loved.’

Squeezing her tiny hand, you think about your parents’ divorce and your own failed relationships, and feel nostalgic for a less complicated time that wasn’t yours.

Freya returns with cups of tea.

‘That you, Ava?’ she says, spotting the photo. ‘You were a beauty.’

She sets down the saucers. ‘Isn’t it nice that your granddaughter’s come to visit, Ava?’

Your nan eyes her suspiciously, and doesn’t reply. Freya shrugs with her eyes and goes back inside. Once again, you’re alone.

‘I don’t know who these people are in my house,’ she says.

‘They’re here to help you. To make your life easier.’

‘I can do perfectly well without them.’

This isn’t the first time she’s thought strangers were in her house. You received a phone call eighteen months ago from a neighbour who’d found her in her garden, curled up in the wet grass in her nightdress. Later, in hospital, she told the doctor she’d climbed out of the window to hide from the bad men who came in the night. He told you that the recent loss of her only child—your mother—had affected her mind. ‘Against the natural order of things,’ he said. ‘Bound to come as a shock.’

She still thinks there are strangers in her home, but the fear’s drifted beyond reach.

‘I think my daughter’s calling in later,’ she says. ‘She is so well loved.’

Your face crumples and you have to check yourself. ‘I have to go now, Nan,’ you pretend. You stand, tea untouched.

She insists on seeing you to the car, as always. In the spring sunshine, the world seems painfully bright.

‘Do call again,’ she says, smiling. ‘It was so nice to meet you.’

You promise to come back soon—and try to mean it. You stoop to kiss her on her downy cheek before getting into the car. As you drive towards the gate, a wren hops from the hawthorn. Its dark beak twitches and pecks at something in the gravel before it suddenly flits away, gone—like a thought out of reach. You wonder if she noticed it too.

You toot the horn twice and see her waving in the rear-view mirror until she’s out of sight.