6.09 p.m.
Abi is hogging the bathroom. It’s probably only been half an hour but it feels likeweeks.With Brandon out at work, Pearl jiggles in the hallway, trying to hold in her pee as his girlfriend’s shower goes on and on and on.
‘Abi?’ She knocks on the door. ‘I really need the loo.’
‘Won’t be long,’ she bellows. ‘Sorry, think I used up all your conditioner!’
Pearl doesn’t care about the conditioner because her bladder might possibly explode very soon like a water balloon.
She knocks again – politely, as Pearl hates being impolite. If it were Brandon in there, she’d have no problem hammering on the door. But she still regards Abi as a guest. ‘Abi?’ she calls out sweetly. No response. Abi is singing loudly – Amy Winehouse’s ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’– and apparently enjoying herself hugely in there.
In actual pain now, Pearl hurries to the living room and looks around wildly for something to pee in. Anything will do. Any kind of receptacle that won’t leak. The wastepaper basket? No, that’s wicker – it’d drip out everywhere – and she can’t bring herself to use a kitchen item like a saucepan or the salad bowl. She’d run out to the library at the end of the road but it’ll be closed, she realises. And she’s not sure she’d make it that far anyway.
A large, round red plastic object catches her eye beneath the sparkling Christmas tree. It’s the tub of Celebrations that Nadira, their kind upstairs neighbour, brought down for them last night. ‘Don’t eat them all at once, guys!’ she instructed with a grin. Pearl is in too much pain now to acknowledge the small stab of guilt as she tugs off the lid and tips out the few remaining chocolates onto the floor.
She tears down her jeans and knickers and almost weeps in relief as she squats over the tub. This is me, she reflects: fifty-three years old and peeing in a Celebrations tub because I can’tgain access to my own bathroom. Once she’s finished, she holds the position for a few moments longer, drip-drying. It’s good for the thighs, she supposes, squatting so close to the ground. People go to classes for this stuff.
Pearl tries to see the positive in the direst of situations. When she had counselling after Dean died, her therapist encouraged her to acknowledge her achievements; to take a pause and notice how far she’d come. She tries to do that now, recognising that if it weren’t for her enviable pelvic floor, she might have wet herself there in the hallway. And that there’s something almostfestiveabout peeing in a Celebrations tub.
Finally, Pearl stands up and pulls up her knickers and jeans and picks up the tub.
‘Oh, Pearl. I’m really sorry!’ Abi has appeared, swathed in a turquoise bath towel and with Pearl’s spotty shower cap on her head.
‘Oh, it’s okay—’ Pearl reddens, assuming Abi is apologising for hogging the bathroom until she follows her gaze to the floor. Now she sees that, out of all the Celebrations, only the mini Bounties are left. ‘IloveBounties,’ she fibs.
‘No, no, it’s the loo. Don’t know what happened. It just kind of pinged off to one side…’
‘What did?’ Pearl is still clutching the tub of warm, steaming pee. Quickly, she jams the lid on it.
‘The toilet. The seat, I mean. It broke.’
‘Oh! I’ll just take a look at it.’ Pearl glides past Abi, transporting the tub with the care and reverence that she’d bestowed upon the platter of fairy cakes she’d carried to the front table at her school’s Harvest Festival.
In the steam-filled bathroom, she locks the door and regards the loo seat. It has indeed come away from its fittings, as if sat upon roughly by a very large, drunk cage fighter. Perhaps Brandon can fix it. Perhapsshecan. She could look it up onYouTube: ‘How to fix a broken toilet seat.’ Also: ‘How to remain perky and pleasant when under duress.’ Because now Pearl fears that, after Elias, and now this, her perky pleasantness has all but dwindled to nothing.
And there it goes – the final trace of it, along with her pee, as she tips away the tub’s contents and flushes the loo.
7
A little way east, Shelley is also having bathroom-related issues. Having just come in from work, she was eager to jump into the shower and sluice off the horribleness of the day. They are making cutbacks at the care home and two of her friends’ jobs are definitely going. Beth and Anja were in tears at coffee break, and Shelley wonders how long her own position as a receptionist will be safe. She’d only taken the job as a tiding-over thing, but has grown extremely close to the tight-knit team, as well as many of the long-term residents and their families. They’ve almost become like family to her too.
Peony Lodge isn’t one of those dismal homes where the residents are parked in a huge semi-circle around the TV. There are art, yoga and music sessions and frequent trips out. It’s a properhome, bright and cheery and buzzing with activity, and Shelley is proud to be a part of it.
She can’t shower yet, because Joel is languishing in the bath. However, the flurry of messages this morning has triggered a little hum of excitement in her, and Shelley manages to shake off her irritation. She pulls out her ponytail band in the kitchen and runs her fingers through her shoulder-length hair. Oncea natural light brown, it’s been highlighted for so many years she has no idea what her natural colour might be now. It’s the only money she spends on herself really, and those two and half hours spent with James every couple of months represents a certain kind of bliss. James enjoys hearing about her travails with Joel and the kids and they have a laugh together. Shelley always emerges from his salon feeling restored, not just hair-wise butall-ways-wise.
Now she remembers that she left a bowl of home-made chilli defrosting in the fridge for tonight. So at least she won’t have to make dinner from scratch.
She opens the fridge. Her gaze lands on the bowl which had indeed contained chilli, but now looks as if it has been lapped at by a dog. Joel must have scoffed it while she was at work. And maybe the kids had some too? Martha and Fin’s secondary school is at the end of their road and they often pop home at lunchtime.
The logic of dumping the bowl back in the fridge, with the smeared equivalent of a teaspoon of chilli left it in, is beyond her. But Shelley isn’t feeling logical now, on this drizzly Wednesday afternoon, with Christmas hurtling towards her. These past few years, her mum and stepdad have spent their Christmases at home in Cornwall. But as is the custom, Joel’s parents will be here for the big day. A glum couple, fixated on terrible happenings in the news, Brian and Babs will ensure that war, murders and soaring crime rates are hot topics for discussion at the festive table.
Shelley’s thoughts switch back to the excitable message exchange between her, Lena and Pearl this morning. She’s hasn’t had time to process whether it really might be possible to run away to the Highlands this coming weekend. Of course she wants to very much. But she can only imagine how her family would react.
The front door opens. Shelley hears a schoolbag being thrown down on the hall floor before her daughter flounces into the kitchen. At seventeen, Martha is a tall, gangly beauty; all long, slender limbs and a mass of glossy dark hair that’s rarely combed, but always looks fantastic. With her earbuds jammed in, she avoids eye contact as if she has better things to do than interact with her mother.
‘Hi, love,’ Shelley says pointedly.
‘Hi.’ Martha opens the fridge. ‘Oh,’ she mutters, as if unimpressed by the options available to her.
