‘Do I know you?’ he asked suddenly.
I swallowed uncomfortably. There was no way this sweet, old, confused man was going to suddenly rattle off an address ora telephone number of a teenager he’d fostered twenty years ago. Really, what on earth had I been thinking?
‘My name is Lily,’ I repeated. This time without the backstory.
Gordon Baker nodded, a small smile on his thin lips. ‘I knew a lass called Lily once. Proper little tearaway she was. Always climbing trees.’
I sat up straighter in my chair. ‘That was me,’ I cried in delight. ‘I was that Lily. I used to climb the old sycamore tree in your back garden.’
Mr Baker looked at me and then shook his head as though he was sorry to be the one to have to tell me this, but I was sadly deluded.
‘No. The Lily I knew was nothing but a lass. Couldn’t have been more than twelve or so. Skinny little thing she was, but she had a good heart.’
It was too much of a quantum leap for his failing memory to match his recollections of eleven-year-old me with the woman in her thirties who sat before him now. So I decided I too would refer to younger me as though she and I were completely unrelated.
‘Do you remember Lily being friends with one of the boys you and Janette fostered?’
Too late I realised my mistake. At the mention of his late wife’s name, Mr Baker’s face crumbled.
‘Do you know my Janette? Have you seen her recently? I keep asking them why she hasn’t come to see me, but they won’t tell me anything.’
I looked around helplessly. Did he not know that his wife had died? Could he not remember being at her funeral – which I too had attended? I didn’t want to have to tell him any of that.
Fortunately, I was saved from having to say anything by the clink of crockery and the sound of wheels trundling over the wooden-floored corridor. I turned around with relief as the youngwoman re-entered the room, carrying a tray loaded with a teapot, cups and saucers, and a plate of custard creams.
‘Ah. Is it time for tea already?’ Gordon asked, with a note of happy expectation in his voice. My head swivelled back at lightning speed. There was nothing on his face to indicate the sorrow that had been there just seconds earlier, when he was asking me about his wife.
‘I think I’ll just use the little boys’ room,’ the elderly man said, heaving himself to his feet and shuffling off to a room that I assumed was his ensuite bathroom.
I waited until he had clicked the door closed before turning back to the woman who had finished setting down the tea tray.
‘He ... he seems rather confused. He asked me about his wife, and why she hadn’t been to see him. Does he not know that she died?’
The young assistant didn’t look anywhere near as troubled by my words as I felt about saying them.
‘Some days he does. And some days he doesn’t. His memory is like an old pair of binoculars that look into the past. Sometimes – on a good day – it will be able to focus sharply for a moment or two, but most of the time what he sees is fuzzy at best.’
‘So, asking him for something like an email address or a mobile phone number is going to be beyond him?’
The woman raised both her eyebrows eloquently.
I shook my head. ‘Sorry. Stupid question. I knew he was suffering from dementia, but I wasn’t aware how that presented itself.’
‘No two cases are ever the same. And no two days are alike. Their memories fade in and out faster than you could possibly believe. The thing to remember is that when we’re telling Gordon that his wife has died, it’s like he’s hearing it for the very first time and he’s grieving for her as though it was only yesterday that she was standing right there beside him.’
Her words hit me like a blow. I was one year on from having lost my husband and I was still a long way from recovering from the first devastating wound of being without him. Imagine having to go through that agony again and again. It was unthinkable.
Gordon emerged, and after a quick check that everything that should have been buttoned or zipped had been, the kindly assistant left us alone again.
Gordon seemed to have entirely forgotten the sadness of the past during his bathroom break, and the last thing I wanted to do was to bring those thoughts back into his head. Maybe somewhere in the faulty vaults of his memory he did know Josh’s current whereabouts, but memories of Josh would be inextricably tangled up with those of his late wife. And despite my promise to Adam, I wasn’t about to do anything to cause this gentle old man any further pain. And Adam would never have wanted me to.
We drank the tea, and Gordon polished off the entire plate of biscuits. We spoke about gardens – something I knew scarcely a thing about, living as I did in the top-floor flat of a mansion house.
‘Built a little platform in that old sycamore for young Lily and my lad, you know,’ Gordon said, leaning over and spilling biscuit crumbs on to the floor.
I craned forward, excited that a door to the past had unexpectedly opened.
‘You did. You nailed some planks on to one of the upper branches.’
