Memory road, p.1
Memory Road, page 1
MEMORY ROAD
SARAH EDGHILL
Copyright © 2024 Sarah Edghill
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The right of Sarah Edghill to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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First published in 2024 by Bloodhound Books.
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Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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www.bloodhoundbooks.com
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Print ISBN: 978-1-916978-56-0
CONTENTS
Newsletter sign-up
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
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Acknowledgments
A note from the publisher
CHAPTER ONE
It was one of those unnervingly silent waiting rooms. People were sitting on rows of orange plastic chairs, staring down at their feet or up at posters on the wall, trying to avoid eye contact. One woman had her hands plunged into her handbag, fiddling with the contents, another had brought out some knitting. The wall clock ticked into the silence, as the second hand travelled onwards.
When they arrived, Moira had started flicking through the pages of a magazine. After a few minutes she began to sigh loudly, and was now tutting and shaking her head. Lily put a reassuring hand on her mother’s arm and glanced at the clock, willing the door at the far end of the room to open.
‘The women in this magazine are too thin,’ Moira announced. ‘They aren’t eating enough.’
‘They’re models,’ whispered Lily. ‘They’re always thin.’
‘Well, they should eat more toast.’ Moira sniffed and continued to look through the magazine, flicking the pages so vigorously that each one turned with a crack.
Lily stared down at the book in her hands, reading the words in front of her, but not taking them in.
‘If they ate some toast, they would have proper boobies!’ Moira exclaimed. ‘Their chests are as flat as pancakes!’
Someone sniggered on the other side of the waiting room.
‘Mum, shh!’ Lily knew her cheeks were burning.
‘Look at this one here! She’s not wearing anything on her feet, but she’s standing in the middle of a field. That’s just silly. Who would do that?’
Lily buried her head in her book again; there was always a chance that, if she didn’t respond, her mother wouldn’t continue with the conversation.
‘Cheesecake!’ Moira jabbed her finger against the magazine. ‘That’s one of my favourites. You know that, don’t you, Lily?’
‘Mum, please keep your voice down.’
‘Why? I like the ones with the biscuity bottom. We had one on my birthday, do you remember? I think it had raspberries on top. It was by that famous person who makes frozen cheesecakes. Who was it again? Lee somebody. Bruce Lee!’
A man further along the row snorted with laughter. Lily knew her face was scarlet now. ‘It’s Sara Lee, Mum.’
‘Who is?’
‘The person who makes the cheesecakes.’
The door at the end of the room opened, and a voice called out, ‘Mrs Spencer?’
‘That’s us!’ Lily said, shoving her book into her bag and putting her hand under her mother’s arm. ‘Come on, up we get.’
‘I haven’t finished this magazine yet. It has a lot of interesting articles I want to read.’
‘Mum, we need to go in. Give it to me, we can bring it with us.’ As Lily took the magazine, she saw her mother had been holding it upside down.
The consultant leapt up from behind his desk as they were shown into the room. ‘Mrs Spencer, how lovely to see you. Have a seat.’
‘We’ve been waiting out there for a very long time!’ Moira said, as she settled herself into the chair. ‘My bottom has gone to sleep.’
‘We really haven’t been waiting long.’ Lily shot the man an apologetic look. ‘Mum, shall I hold your handbag?’
‘Take your bloody hands off!’ Moira clutched the bag to her chest. ‘You’re not having my Polos.’ She leant forward and whispered to the consultant, ‘She never buys her own. She has been stealing mine for years.’
Lily sat back, shaking her head and smiling at him; thank goodness this was someone who understood. It had been a stressful morning; Moira hadn’t been ready when Lily went to pick her up to bring her to the clinic. They’d spent several minutes searching for her glasses – which were in her handbag the whole time – then Moira insisted she didn’t want to wear any of the coats that were hanging by the door. ‘I want the green one,’ she’d said. ‘With the fur collar.’ Lily didn’t remember her ever owning a green coat. They’d eventually found an olive-coloured scarf at the back of Moira’s wardrobe and compromised on that, but the process took a while. Lily had tried to stay calm and not let her frustration show, casting furtive glances at her watch. She really didn’t want them to be late for this appointment – they’d waited weeks for it. She wasn’t necessarily expecting to learn anything new, but it felt good to be getting things moving, and she was reassured by the knowledge that, after numerous phone calls and a couple of visits to the GP, Moira had finally been referred for tests and was in the system. Even if it turned out there wasn’t a great deal the system could do for her.
‘We have found a slight deterioration in Mrs Spencer’s cognitive abilities,’ the consultant was saying now. He looked up at Moira. ‘The RBANS results showed your immediate memory performance was not in line with what would be expected, based upon your estimated premorbid level of function.’
‘What is he talking about?’ Moira whispered to Lily.
The consultant was looking down again, flicking through a report. ‘The list learning score was slightly lower and the story memory score was significantly lower. The overall results of cognitive testing suggest there is a significant impairment in short-term and delayed semantic memory.’
Lily squeezed her mother’s hand. She didn’t have a clue what he meant, either, but it didn’t sound encouraging.
‘I’m sure none of this will come as a surprise to either of you,’ said the consultant. ‘But having done all these tests, we know what we’re dealing with. So, the good news is that we should now be able to look at ways in which we can move forward. How are you feeling in yourself, Mrs Spencer?’
‘Oh, I’m right as rain,’ Moira said. ‘Tickety boo. Couldn’t be better.’
‘Are you finding your memory is getting a little worse?’
‘Not at all. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, young man.’
‘Mum, you know that’s not true,’ began Lily. ‘What about…’
‘Ask me anything! Go on, ask me any question you like and I bet I’ll know the answer.’ She turned to Lily and poked her on the arm. ‘But you mustn’t give me any clues.’
Lily sat back in her chair, watching the consultant’s face as he chatted to Moira. He was nodding patiently, smiling at her long-winded stories, gently prompting her for answers. He must be used to the intense denial displayed by many of those who sat opposite him in these chairs. Despite the fact that he had a waiting room full of patients to see, he was kind and concerned and there was no sense of urgency in his manner.
What Lily was hearing now was depressing, but not at all surprising; it was a relief to have got to this stage. Over the last year or so, she’d felt she was struggling on her own with a situation she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Moira was a bright woman who’d had a successful career as a history teacher. As a child, Lily wondered if her mother had some kind of photographic memory, because her head had been full of dates and places, along with endless lists of confrontations, coups and coronations. She had a sharp wit and a quick mind; she always knew more pub quiz answers than anyone else and was impressively widely read.
But then, about a year ago, Lily had begun to notice slight changes. The occasional moment of forgetfulness, which became more frequent and led to periods of confusion. Moira struggled to concentrate and Lily arrived at her flat to find tasks unfinished: a load of wet clothes left in the machine for so long t hey needed to be rewashed, a skirt abandoned on the dining table with only half the hem ineptly sewn up. Moira was repeating herself, then getting defensive when this was pointed out. She was struggling to recall friends’ names and forgetting appointments. Once Lily took her shopping for a new pair of shoes, but when they got back to Moira’s flat, they both stood and stared at the open Clarks box on the bedside table, which contained exactly the same pair, clearly bought by Moira herself a few days earlier. ‘What are they doing there?’ she’d said, flustered. ‘Those aren’t mine. They can’t be.’
Lily had started googling Moira’s symptoms and reading about early-onset dementia, trying to convince herself she’d got it all wrong. It was soon clear she hadn’t.
‘The most important thing, Mrs Spencer,’ the consultant was saying now. ‘Is to stay active; keep your brain stimulated. Do you enjoy reading? Do you like crosswords? Sudoku?’
‘Oh yes.’ Moira smiled at him. ‘Very much. I’m also writing a book.’
Lily turned to stare at her.
‘It’s a book about my life, and I’m writing it for Lily, here, and for my granddaughter, Eleanor. It will tell them all about me – where I lived, what I did, the people I knew.’
‘Well, that’s excellent!’ the consultant said.
‘In fact,’ Moira was tapping her fingers on her knees, ‘I’m going to get Lily to take me on a little holiday, so we can visit the places I’m writing about. I’ve been planning it. We’re going to drive to the town where I was born and the house where I grew up, the church where Lily’s father and I got married. I thought that going to all those places again would help me when I’m writing the early chapters.’
‘What a good idea.’ The consultant nodded. ‘That is exactly the sort of thing I would encourage you to do. It will help with your cognitive ability and your recall.’
Lily laughed and shook her head. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous. We can’t do that. Mum, you haven’t even mentioned it to me! I might not be able to take the time off work, and we can’t just drive off around the country – when you and Dad got married, you lived in Wales! This wouldn’t be a little local trip.’
‘Don’t be so grumpy, Lily,’ Moira said, turning to the consultant and rolling her eyes. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure?’
‘And the van is far too uncomfortable!’ Lily turned back to the consultant. ‘I’ve got an old VW campervan and the suspension is appalling.’
‘I do think this would be beneficial, if you can make it work,’ he said. ‘At this stage, your mother needs to do everything she can to maintain her current level of cognition, and revisiting places from her past sounds like a constructive way to re-establish some of those memories and embed them further.’
‘Not only that, but my book will be very interesting for you and Eleanor to read,’ Moira said.
Lily doubted her daughter would be even remotely interested. It had probably been years since Eleanor had read anything other than the legal documents she had to plough through for work.
‘Writing down memories is a positive way of helping slow the process of mental deterioration,’ the consultant said. He put the lid on his pen and closed the folder on the desk in front of him. ‘Good luck with this trip of yours, Mrs Spencer. Let’s make an appointment for you to come and see me in six months’ time and you can tell me all about it.’
‘That’s settled then,’ Moira said, turning to beam at Lily. ‘We’re going on a road trip.’
As they made their way back out through the waiting room, an elderly man was being shown into a different consulting room. He let out a loud fart as he walked towards it; all the people sitting nearby looked away and pretended not to hear.
‘Oops, pardon you!’ Moira said, cheerfully. ‘Brussel sprouts do that to me!’
‘Mum, be quiet!’ Lily pulled her towards the door.
‘Or cauliflower, that does terrible things to my insides.’ Moira stopped and turned around. ‘Broccoli as well!’ she yelled at the old man’s retreating back. ‘Broccoli makes me fart like a bloody trooper!’
‘That’s enough!’ Lily pulled her mother out into the corridor, as laughter rippled through those left in the waiting room. She marched her mother towards the entrance. ‘Honestly! There’s no need to swear.’
‘Oh, Lily. You worry too much about what other people think,’ Moira huffed, as they went into the car park. ‘That swear word isn’t bad anymore, they say it on Channel 4 quite a lot. Anyway, you say it too – all the time – and you say the other one, that’s even worse.’
‘That’s not true. Well, maybe it’s a bit true. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you, and you never used to swear like this.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘No! Not at all.’
‘Well, that’s the beauty of getting old,’ said Moira, as she allowed Lily to help her climb up into the passenger seat of the blue and white campervan. ‘You’re allowed to do whatever you bloody well want. Can we go to the supermarket? I really fancy one of those cheesecakes with the biscuity bottoms. Who did you say makes them – was it Bruce Forsyth?’
CHAPTER TWO
‘That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!’
‘I know it sounds a bit odd, but Granny wants…’
‘Seriously, Mum, listen to me. You cannot go ahead with this trip!’
Lily sighed; she knew it was a mistake to answer when she saw Eleanor’s number come up on her phone. She had got into work late and they were one member of staff down at the garden centre today, so Lily was way behind with the usual morning tasks. Luckily, because it was October, there was no watering to be done, but there were numerous other jobs needing her attention. Everyone working at Beautiful Blooms had to do a stint outdoors; during the summer months, the staff fought for the chance to be outside rather than stuck behind a till or sorting through deliveries in the warehouse. But at this time of year, it was a different story. This morning it was Lily’s turn to be out in the grounds; the sky was molten grey, the wind was bitter against her cheeks and it had started to drizzle.
She switched the phone to her other hand and began dragging netting across a row of redcurrant bushes. ‘Darling, I’m sorry but I’m at work, so I can’t really talk. Can I call you back later?’
‘No, we need to discuss this right now,’ Eleanor snapped. ‘You cannot seriously be intending to take Granny on this stupid holiday? She’s not up to it, physically or mentally.’
Lily could hear a tapping in the background as her daughter spoke, and guessed she was on her laptop sending an email. Eleanor never seemed to do just one thing at a time, she took multi-tasking to a whole new level. Even when she dropped in at the house to see Lily – which admittedly didn’t happen very often nowadays – she would be talking while simultaneously texting a friend, drinking a cup of coffee (a takeout she’d brought with her – she always said Lily made disgusting coffee), reapplying her eye make-up and sorting through the contents of her enormous Louis Vuitton handbag. Lily knew she ought to be full of admiration for this energetic, capable daughter of hers. But most of the time, she just felt like slapping her.
‘Granny isn’t as frail as you make out,’ Lily said. ‘She’s got some issues with her memory, and she gets confused, but she’s pretty healthy for her age. We walked all the way down to Hove and back the other weekend.’
