In the previous instalment we get to meet Annie’s work colleague Amira and the her new and very handsome client who turns out to be famous, though Annie had no idea who he was!
Now read on …
I decide not to walk too far tonight. Not as far as town because the quickest way back home is through the graveyard and the film I was watching late into the evening, as contrived and ridiculous as it was, has me worried that a very tall man with a hooded, oversized coat is going to follow me.
I pass Judith’s house. The gate to her upward sloping drive is closed and all the lights are out making it look tall and sinister. Her double fronted house with its light blue door and silver door knocker is very welcoming in the day time with the branches of the weeping birch in her front garden dipping towards the pavement like a courteous bow. Behind the double glazed bay window to the right is a sizeable through lounge. The furniture is large, the sofas deep. The sideboards and shelves are chestnut, the soft furnishings are muted lilac and pink. Not an ornament is out of place and dust, if it were to float into the house, doesn’t linger. Judith has a yellow duster and a canister of Mr Sheen at the ready and she isn’t afraid to use it. Behind the smaller window to the left is Judith’s study. It’s a snug room with packed bookshelves and framed pictures of birds on the wall. Her late husband was a birdwatcher and she has lots of bird pictures in the hallway and along the wall to the kitchen and dining room. Judith and her husband never had children and, therefore, none of the turbo charged grandchildren that Rhiannon has which makes it easier for her house to remain immaculately clean and orderly.
She has an open door policy. For me anyway. After Mum flew back to Australia Judith filled my gloom with photos from her collection of albums and the tales attached to each photograph. Judith, a good looking woman in her seventies, was once a stunningly attractive young woman. When she married at age thirty-two she looked like a glamorous film actress from the 1950s. Her hair was jet black and shiny. It was thick and full of life, so were her eyes which are hooded now and never seem to sparkle they way they did in her wedding photo album. Her lips were fuller then, painted red so that her teeth gleamed in the close up shot of her and her late husband, Richard.
I had been surprised to see that Bea, considering she and Judith had been best friends since their late teens, was only in one or two of the wedding photographs. Back then, Bea had her signature trim waist and wore a peach dress that looked a little like a wedding dress with its silk waistband and dramatic bodice and she carried a small bouquet. I’d asked if Bea had been the matron of honour.
‘No,’ Judith had said without expression. ‘She almost didn’t make it to the wedding. She came back a week before and I had to at least make her a bridesmaid when I hadn’t intended to have any.’
I’d gone on to ask another question. I wanted to comment on how amazing they both looked. To ask who Bea was married to at the time or whether she was between husbands but Judith slammed the album shut, got up and started fussing over a pot of tea, admonishing herself for being such a terrible hostess. She’d promptly turned the topic of conversation back to Mum, asking after her health when we had already spoken about Mum on my arrival. She’d become so flustered talking about Bea disappearing before her wedding that I don’t think she remembered our previous conversation.
I walk aimlessly past Judith’s house, knowing that she is fast asleep. Her cat, Phoebe, will be curled up, purring away on the window seat cushion behind the bedroom curtain. I turn the corner at the top of the road, my thoughts are still on Judith. I really want to ask her about the wedding and why she and her best friend were not in any pictures together and why, though Judith looked elegant, her smiles seemed forced apart from the one of her and Richard outside the church.
I think about Bea now. How she bundles and blusters through my life on a very regular basis these days. She always shuts me down when I’ve asked why, if she and Judith are such best friends, it sometimes seem as though they can’t stand each other. She waves a small hand at me and says nonsense before going on to tell me about a dance they went to as teenagers.
‘The men loved Judith but were always too afraid to talk to her. They looked on her as if she were royalty and very often came to me to ask if they should dare ask her to dance, as if I were the lady’s maid.’
Bea never tells these stories with any ill feeling towards her friend and I genuinely believe they love each other. Theirs is a love hate relationship and I’ll never understand the nuances of it. Both Judith and Bea are adept at subject changing and offering refreshments so that I won’t be able to ask. Perhaps my best bet is to question Rhiannon but I suspect she will be loyal to them and there is a chance she is as clueless as I am. She hasn’t known them since childhood, just for the ten years she has owned the café. Rhiannon had discovered that she shared an interest in knitting with Judith. Both were hardcore knitters and together they coerced Bea into sitting still for five minutes to join them in a knitting circle.
I’ve walked around in a circle and back at the front door I’m feeling more awake than I did at 2.30 a.m. I wish I could sleep for a few hours but I’m feeling wired and full of curiosity, once again, about my friends. Presumably Bea has done something wrong and Judith is tolerating her because she doesn’t want to lose her as a friend.
In the kitchen I start to make some tea. By now my body must be programmed to wake up in the middle of the night expecting to go for a walk and come back for a cup of tea. Maybe it’s time to consider that I myself have ruined my Circadian rhythm after years of getting out of bed, flinging clothes on over my pyjamas and taking to the streets. Maybe there is no turning back for me and I’ll never have a good night’s sleep again.
My hands shake with the prospect that I might have to change my whole life. Sleep in the day and do a job that takes place at night. I consider the idea of the first ever midnight physiotherapist as the kettle boils. This week it’s all about ashwaganda tea to help relax me for sleep. Hops, valerian, lavender, chamomile, all of my sleep teas are lined up in what I call my sleep cupboard. It contains every herbal sleep tablet on the market, most of which I order from Amazon at three in the morning after I’ve turned off my sleep App. I have so much information on how to fall asleep, I could invent my own sleep App. I know all about sleep, sleep patterns, what process your body is going through during each sleep cycle. I know what happens to your body if one doesn’t get enough sleep and I’ve read all the scientific reports on how much sleep a person at various stages of their life requires and the things that could go wrong if one doesn’t get their quota. As it stood, I would be dead by 78, either from heart disease or respiratory weakness, provided, of course, I hadn’t died from early onset dementia.
My life expectancy arranged, I snuggle down on the sofa with some ashwaganda tea and call Mum. I sit with one small lamp on in the corner of the room. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon in Adelaide.
‘You’re lucky to catch me in,’ she says with a laugh behind her voice. ‘I had planned to go to a yoga class but I got involved in the afternoon matinee. How are you darling?’
In a couple of hours I wake to find that I’ve dropped off to sleep after my chat with Mum while the song Misty in the style of Sarah Vaughan replays in my mind. Mum sang that as well as others before my eyelids grew heavy. That was my sleep App idea right there. A repertoire of dreamy jazz standards on repeat. It’s no longer dark and I have to get ready for work.