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Charlotte

‘Ding dong, I’m home!’ Charlotte called as she went through the door, then tapped the plastic doorbell casing as though to remind herself to get it fixed. The house seemed quieter than usual, which meant that perhaps Grandma had taken Harry out for a walk. Charlotte frowned up at the clock, showing just after half past five, and with it fully dark outside already, that seemed strange. The hall light was switched on, and at the end of the hall she could see the living room light was also on from the glow through the frosted glass panes in the partition door, but there was no television or radio, no barking of the dog, who always came racing up the hallway to meet her, or battering himself against the hall door to be let through if it were closed.

‘Grandma? Are you playing hide and seek?’ Charlotte called, aware that while it had been twenty years since they had played such a game, you never quite knew with Grandma, who had maintained that sprightly childlike sense of fun right into her middle eighties. Perhaps Harry was out in the garden and Grandma was in the kitchen, making a batch of Christmas biscuits, cutting the dough into little reindeer shapes as she did every year, or decorating the freshly baked biscuits with red and green icing.

But … no smell of cooking. And the door had that tapered glow, the right side brighter than the left, which meant the living room light was on, but the kitchen light was off.

She had to have fallen asleep in her chair. That was the only other option. Grandma took a regular nap in the afternoon, although usually it coincided with one of the old films on BBC Two that she’d already seen a hundred times. From four o’clock onwards, were the game shows followed by the news, and Grandma hated to miss any of those.

Charlotte leaned down and pulled off her shoes, little elfin green velvet boots she had picked up in the new artisan shoe shop on the pretty little street up near the church. She cleaned off a bit of dirt with the brush she kept hanging on a string behind the door, then stacked them neatly beside the shoe rack. Her new slippers were there, not having been mauled by Harry, who had been gifted her old pair to terrorise, so she slipped her feet into the soft woollen lining, the reindeer sequin designs glittering under the hall light.

She took off her coat, hanging it up on the hook behind the door, taking a moment to straighten the arms and shoulders to keep it from creasing.

Only then did she notice the cold. The heating was usually on at this time, turned on manually by Grandma, who hated to waste electric and gas by having it set to automatic. ‘When I was a child, we were so poor, we would chew the acorns off trees,’ she liked to tell Charlotte whenever she considered money to be going to waste, which didn’t count with any of her magazine subscriptions, but certainly did when lights were left on or the kettle was filled too full.

Perhaps Grandma was outside in the garden. It wasn’t the best weather, but Grandma was as hardy as an old tree, and had to be reminded to put on a sweater even when it was snowing outside. Maybe she’d decided to dig a new pond, or construct a picnic bench. A little rain and wind wouldn’t stop her.

Charlotte edged towards the door. As she reached out to nudge it open, she realised her hand was shaking, and briefly stuffed it into her trouser pocket, pressing it against the warmth of her thigh. Her heart had begun to race too, rattling along like a joyful steam train.

Grandma….

She peeked through the crack in the door. The dining table by the window revealed itself, a mug sitting neatly in the centre of a coaster. Charlotte realised she was crouching down like a child actually playing hide and seek, and stood up straight to find that the mug was still half full of coffee, although there was no steam and it had that beige look that suggested it had filmed over.

She nudged the door a little further.

The television appeared. Switched off. The remote, however, lay on the floor, halfway between the television and Grandma’s chair. It was never on the floor. Grandma, while no neatness freak, had a place for everything. The remote’s place was along the right side of her favourite armchair, already pointing at the television as though ready to spark into action. Unless Harry had used it as a bone—unlikely—it had no reason to ever be on the floor.

Charlotte could barely bring herself to look any further, and actually glanced back at the front door as though she was hoping for some distraction. Leaning forward, however, her slipper suddenly slipped and she burst through the door, landing on the floor on her hands and knees like a child caught spying.

On the chair, Harry’s head rose, ears pricking up.

But Harry was too high up.

Charlotte realised she was squinting, blurring the world as she had done the first time she’d been subjected to a Friday the 13th film at a friend’s house, and for every horror film ever since, even the ones that were distinctly unscary. Slowly she let her eyes relax.

Grandma lay in the chair, slumped back, her head leaning to the side, her mouth open. She could have been sleeping in that old woman way where she almost looked like she was screaming, but Charlotte could immediately tell that something was wrong. Grandma was still and silent, nothing more than a statue now. One hand had come up as though reaching for the television remote, knocking it to the floor. The hand now hung out over the floor as though the last action she had undertaken in this world had been to attempt to stroke Harry’s back. The dog, loyal to the end, still sat in his owner’s lap, but now that Charlotte had returned to share in his grief, he let out a little whine, stretched his back and then jumped down, trotting over to Charlotte to lick her hand, as though to offer his commiserations.

Charlotte patted the dog on the back, then looked up at Grandma.

Hugging Harry to her, she began to cry.

She called the emergency services because she wasn’t sure what else to do. A kindly police officer sat with her and chatted over a coffee while paramedics attended to Grandma, then stretchered her out to a waiting ambulance.

‘It’s just you and your grandmother, is it?’ the police officer, whose badge identified her as Wendy Simmons, asked. ‘I mean … was?’

Charlotte sighed. ‘It always has been,’ she said. ‘Since I was little and my parents … passed away. She brought me up.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘She was eighty-six. It’s a good age, isn’t it? I’d hoped for a couple more years, but … I suppose, when your time comes….’ She wiped away a tear. Wendy offered her a tissue out of a box on the table, the floral tissue box holder, one Grandma had embroidered herself. The big person was meant to be her, the little one was Charlotte, and the dog was the pug Grandma had had when Charlotte was little, Lucy. In the embroidery, Lucy had somehow morphed to the size of a Great Dane.

A paramedic knocked on the inner side of the hallway door. ‘We’ll be on our way down to Brentwell General now,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come or make your own way?’

‘I can give you a lift,’ Wendy said.

Charlotte dabbed at another tear and smiled. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ve always fancied a ride in a police car.’