The impression that this wasn’t a care home at all, but an exclusive country club hotel, the kind you might attend for a wedding, only got stronger when I entered the building. There was nothing cold or clinical about the foyer, with its elegant period furniture and impressive mahogany reception desk. The feeling that I ought to be wearing a fancy hat and carrying a box of confetti was only reinforced.
‘Good afternoon. Can I help you?’
I plastered on a smile that almost covered my anxiety.
‘Yes. I hope so. I’ve come to visit one of your residents. A Mr Gordon Baker.’
The woman smiled as she reached for a clipboard on the desk. ‘Is he expecting you?’
‘Um ... no. Not exactly.’ I wondered if she could tell that actually translated intonot at all. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve been here. I didn’t realise I had to make an appointment.’
The receptionist’s smile didn’t waver. ‘You don’t. We have an open-door visiting policy for family and friends.’ She was looking at me expectantly, and I could see she was waiting for clarification as to which category I fell into. Truthfully the answer was neither.
‘I’m an old neighbour of his,’ I said, which was entirely true. ‘And I happened to be in the area this afternoon.’ Which was a barefaced lie. I’d driven for two hours to get here, but she didn’t need to know that.
‘I thought I would surprise him, but if it’s not convenient, please don’t worry. I can always come back another time,’ I said,already knowing that I would never return. At least I could say I hadtriedto make contact with Josh. I’d given it my best shot.
Mentally I was already halfway back to my car when the young woman passed me the clipboard from the desk. ‘Oh no.Of courseyou must see Mr Baker. It will be a real treat for him. To be honest, he doesn’t get that many visitors.’ She added the last in a half whisper as though spilling secrets.
I took the pen she was holding and the clipboard. It looked as though I was doing this after all.
‘Do all visitors sign in?’ I asked, slowing down how long it took me to write my name so I could scan the list of arrivals who’d filled in the form before me today.
‘Yes. It’s company policy.’
I had neither wanted nor expected to see the name Josh Metcalf on the list of today’s visitors. So there was no reason to feel disappointed as I passed the clipboard back across the desk. But I did.
‘Mr Baker is in our Wintergreen wing,’ advised the young care worker who’d been summoned to accompany me to his room. She swiped the card hanging from a lanyard around her neck across a discreetly positioned pad beside the door. I heard an inner mechanism click to release a lock.
‘Some of the Wintergreen residents have a tendency to go walkabout,’ she explained. ‘They’re not locked in. We just have the doors shut to keep them safe.’
I was still wrestling with the semantics of that statement when we paused at a door. Beside it was a neatly engraved plate bearing the name of Josh’s foster father. No scribbled-on piece of card slotted into a holder here.
‘Most of the residents in Wintergreen feel more comfortable receiving visitors in their own rooms. They find it less unsettling.’
I wasn’t sure about Mr Baker, but I was starting to feel more than a little unsettled myself. Was I doing the wrong thing here?
The door to the room had been left ajar by a few inches. It was too late to back out now because the assistant was already knocking softly on the wooden panels. ‘Gordon? Can we come in? I have a visitor for you.’
There was a mumbled comment from the other side of the door, too low and indistinct to know if he’d said yes or no to that one. The assistant pushed open the door and then stood back, allowing me to enter the room first.
I had become very good at training my face not to express shock or dismay when Adam had been in hospital and then later in the hospice. No one wants their visitors to look horrified when they first set eyes on you. But it took me a moment or two before I could school my features not to react to the frail-looking man seated in a brocade wingback armchair in front of me. He looked nothing like the Mr Baker from my memory. His hands were clenched on the armrests, with thin, claw-like bony fingers, covered with concertinaed wrinkles and age spots. I saw them tighten their hold on the upholstery as he prepared to stand, and a lump unexpectedly rose at the back of my throat. Mr Baker had always had impeccable manners. He would unfailingly get to his feet whenever my mum or I came into a room. How could I have forgotten that?
To be honest, that was one of only a few things I recognised about the elderly gentleman in the bright and spacious room. His hair had been thinning even when I had last seen him, and it was now sparse enough to count the strands. His face was the same, and yet entirely different. It was as though someone had made a latex mask of Mr Baker and then left it out in the sun, where it had somehow melted out of shape.
His eyes were watery, and although I couldn’t remember their original colour, whatever it had been had long since faded. His lips were moving soundlessly in the way that old people’s do.
‘Please don’t get up,’ I urged, holding out a hand as though I was on traffic control, and stepped closer to his chair. ‘I’m not sure if you’ll remember me, Mr Baker – Gordon,’ I corrected, feeling embarrassed at the formality. ‘I’m Lily. Lily ...Williams,’ I said, reverting to the surname I’d not used in six years. ‘You used to live next door to us in Elm Close. My parents are Tony and Barbara.’
That was a lot of information I’d thrown at him in the space of a few seconds, and I could see him trying to process it ... and failing.
‘Why don’t I go and prepare you a little tea tray?’ the woman who’d brought me to the room suggested. I looked back at her over my shoulder, suddenly not sure I was ready to be left alone with someone who looked as though a gust from the slightly open window could blow him off his armchair.
‘Please don’t bother on my account,’ I said, but the woman was already halfway out the door.
‘Oh, it’s no bother. We usually bring Gordon a cuppa at around this time of day.’
Then she was gone, and for a moment I felt like a child who’d been dropped off at a party she hadn’t really wanted to attend. I turned slowly back around. Gordon’s lips were still moving as though he’d been given a particularly challenging toffee just before I arrived. He lifted a shaky hand and pointed towards a chair a short distance from his own. I did as I was instructed and perched on the seat, not relaxed enough to sit back against its cushions.
