Chapter 18: The Last Bed

Clement's POV

The night matron had put my mother's things in the hall.

There were two bags, a lamp, a framed photograph of my father, and a blanket my mother had knitted for a baby that never came.

It was twenty to eleven.

"I'm so sorry, Mr Ardley," the matron said. "The trust rang at half nine. I have no say."

"I know you don't."

"She's had her tea. She's in the day room."

I stood in the hall with my car keys in my hand.

I had been the Ladbrook family's man for eleven years.

I took out my phone and rang the number I had never once rung unasked.

Honoria answered on the second ring.

"Mr Ardley."

"I resign," I said. "Effective now."

"How very dramatic."

"I have a notebook with thirty-three entries in it. When the police ask for it, they'll have it."

"Do you imagine anyone will believe a man who has been on my payroll for eleven years?"

"I imagine they'll believe the dates."

The line was quiet.

"Your mother," she said, softly, "is on the pavement in an hour."

"She isn't," I said. "Goodnight, Mrs Ladbrook."

I hung up and stood there with my heart going hard.

I had not worked out where she would go.

I had only known that I couldn't stand in that hotel corridor and be told one more thing about her bed.

I went into the day room.

My mother sat by the window in her wheelchair with a rug over her knees.

She was seventy-one, and she had been a school secretary in Ilford for thirty-eight years.

Now she looked at the dark glass, and she turned her head when I came in.

"Clem," she said, and smiled. "Is it still raining?"

"Not so much, Mum."