The Killer Next Door(32)

Footsteps soft-shuffle down the corridor and a man appears, wearing what look like chef’s whites. He wields a bunch of keys, like a jailor, and peers enquiringly past the flowers at the receptionist.

‘Visitor for Janine Baker.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh, riiiight.’

‘Her daughter,’ says the woman, significantly.

He turns to Collette and gives her an up-and-down look. ‘I was beginning to think she was all alone in the world.’

‘Yes,’ says Collette. ‘I couldn’t get here sooner, I’m afraid. I’ve been abroad. I had to make arrangements.’

‘Fair enough.’ He turns and starts walking back up the corridor. She hesitates for a moment, unsure as to whether she’s supposed to follow or not, then, when he turns and looks over his shoulder, hurries to catch up.

Deeper into the building, the smell of nappies is stronger and the smell of polish weaker. They pause at a double fire door as he unlocks it. ‘It’s a toss-up,’ he explains. ‘I know you’re meant to keep them unlocked, but whoever made that rule clearly wasn’t trying to herd cats like we are. I’m Michael, by the way.’

Collette nods and mutters a second greeting. On the far side, the atmosphere is slightly damp, slightly feral, like the air in the underground she’s just come off, the walls a soothing mint green. She walks beside him, glimpses an empty dining hall, Formica tables and a wall-length window overlooking a garden full of privet and the corrugated iron wall of a warehouse. I must start stockpiling opiates, she thinks. I don’t want my last view to be of this. A seascape, a bottle of gin and a bottle of Oromorph: that’ll do me if I make it that far. In a lounge, shrivelled forms sit on non-absorbent surfaces and stare silently at Jeremy Kyle on the television. Each chair has a built-in tray sticking out from its right arm, each bearing a medical-pink earthenware teacup. There are no visitors, no people standing up by themselves who aren’t in uniform. Wrong time of day, thinks Collette. At least, I hope so.

‘Your mum’s in her room,’ says Michael. ‘She likes to stay there most of the time. Till lunchtime, at least.’

‘Fair enough,’ says Collette. Janine was never a very sociable sort, in between boyfriends. God knows how she managed to replace them, sitting in her chair smoking and gazing at the telly while her peers went out arm in arm to the bingo, but she did. Even got three of them to marry her, for a bit. ‘How’s she doing?’

They reach a junction and the wall colours change abruptly. To her right, sky blue, to her left, where he leads her, candy pink. Even in second childhood, the genders are distinguished by decor. ‘She’s fine,’ he says soothingly.

Always good to get a medical opinion. ‘Sometimes she’s a bit confused, but mostly she’s quite content,’ he adds.

So why did they decide she needed taking away? wonders Collette. This is how I remember her all my life, though I suppose the Temazepam and gin might have had a bit to do with that. Cardiac-related dementia, they called it when they informed her. Her heart’s failing and the oxygen’s just not getting through to her brain.

They reach a door, which sits ajar like all the others she’s passed, so the staff can see the inhabitants without going inside. No real privacy in a twilight home. Collette wonders if they even close the doors at night and suspects that they don’t. From behind the door they have just passed, a reedy voice rises in a wail. ‘They won’t let me they won’t let me they won’t let me! Bugger them. Why can’t I? All I want is…’

‘Here we are,’ says Michael, drowning the voice out. ‘Now, don’t be surprised if she’s gone downhill a bit since you last visited. It can come as a shock, I know, but Mum’s still inside.’

Last time she saw her was in the garden of Collette’s flat in Stoke Newington: her hard-won respectability, her move into home-ownership. Three-odd years ago, looking unimpressed as she smoked her Bensons under a monstrous parasol, gin and tonic rattling ice in her hand. I loved that flat, thinks Collette. I was so proud of it. It was my proof that all the work I’d done was paying off. I wonder what’s happened to it? Taken back by the bank, I suppose. Someone else is living there now, enjoying my kitchen, probably using my parasol and congratulating themselves on their auction bargain. And Lisa’s probably credit-blacklisted until the end of time.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll remember.’

He calls in through the gap in the doorway. ‘Janine, love? Are you decent?’

He mother’s voice, but not. It’s gone reedy, like that of the weeper next door, and breathless. ‘Yes, thank you, dear.’