The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

in fact, I learned much later, an invitation to stand apart from the husband who had run from me and, instead of giving chase, waving him goodbye and bidding him safe travels.

The resolution of numbers one and two took much longer than either of us anticipated, and my hand remained on the missing person’s report until it was crinkled where the moisture of my palm had pressed into it. A man who’d had his bike stolen and a police officer had both tripped over my suitcases, swearing and questioning my purpose, respectively.

When Adam emerged from the cells, his hands un-cuffed, my new companion gave a cheer, and was shushed and then threatened by the policeman who handed Adam his possessions and told him, in words I shan’t repeat, to leave.

‘A wronged man is released,’ she said. ‘’Tis right to celebrate.’ I wondered if this was a quote from Shakespeare. ‘This is Adam. Meet our Scottish runaway, Margot.’

He gave me a handshake. My hands were still wet and I noticed him subtly wipe his palms on his jeans.

We made our way onto the street in the dim sunshine.

‘Oh,’ she said, as though she’d forgotten, ‘I’m Meena.’

We had been on the street and walking away from the police station for some time before I realized I was still holding the clipboard and the missing person’s report.

‘Oh, I forgot!’ I hurried back towards the police station, but Meena followed me, and just outside the station she put her hand on my arm and stopped me.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I can’t steal from the police!’

‘They can have their clipboard back,’ she said, ‘but not this.’ She unclipped the paper. ‘Turn it over to fate,’ she said. And then she scrunched up the missing person’s report, pressed it tight into her palms and threw it, spectacularly, into the bin.

Lenni and the Rose Room

MARGOT BARRELLED TOWARDS me so fast that she was just a blur of purple. She wrapped her arms tightly around me and I breathed in her lavender smell.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

I felt her nodding.

‘Careful,’ New Nurse warned, but it was far too late to do anything about the fact that Margot was pressing into my newly acquired stitches.

‘I’ve missed you so much!’ she said.

The eyes of the whole class were on me. But I didn’t let them swerve my attention from Margot’s collection of paintings and sketches that had accumulated in my absence. They were so good that I swore. I apologized for swearing, but she didn’t seem to mind. I think I could have got away with a lot that day because she was just so pleased that I wasn’t dead.

Pippa came straight over to me, as soon as she had finished explaining to the class how to mix blues and greens together for the abstract pictures of the ocean they were tasked with painting.

‘Lenni,’ she said, ‘I won’t hug you,’ and she gestured to the green paint splattered all over her apron. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ I said.

‘And everything’s okay now?’ she pressed. I nodded, not letting her have anything, not even a word on what had happened during my brief hiatus from the Rose Room. Even though she was only being kind, there’s something irritating about people wanting to know everything, wanting to know all the surgical details. Exactly how much you’re dying.

‘Well, it’s great to have you back.’ Pippa smiled.

When she was gone, Margot’s eyes met mine, and I sensed that at that moment she was tucking away a question about the two people with whom I used to share some very elaborate breakfasts. A question she wanted to ask but knew I wouldn’t answer.

The pictures we painted that day were secondary. The stories we told were secondary too. Nothing really mattered except that I was in the Rose Room and Margot was beside me.

Lenni and the Harvest Festival

NEW NURSE WAS sitting in her favourite place on the end of my bed. Not in the way that the other nurses sometimes do, in a kind of conciliatory, uncomfortable attempt at casual that usually comes off as insincere. New Nurse wasn’t pretending to be comfortable. She was comfortable. She’d helped herself to a spare pillow so she could lean against the bars at the foot of the bed without them digging into her back. Then she’d kicked off her pumps and settled herself down, legs crossed, her cardigan draped over her arms to make her cosy. She’d made sure the curtain was drawn around us so that we could be alone. Or as alone as it was possible to be.

Her hair is still the red of cherry-flavoured Tango but it’s a bit longer than when we first met. How long has it been? I wondered. Thinking about cherry Tango made me want to taste some – the fizziness fireworking all over my tongue, the medicinal sweetness of school discos and trips to the newsagent’s.

She tucked a strand of her cherry-Tango hair behind her ear. She wanted to know everything, anything. She wanted to know what I thought of her care. Really, I think she wanted to know if she was passing convincingly as a nurse. I told her that she was the only nurse in the hospital I would tell twice that she was my favourite.

‘Do you think you would ever go back?’ she asked.

‘To Sweden?’ I thought about it. ‘Probably not.’

‘Your mam’s there, isn’t she?’ she asked, and I wondered what hint of a dialect New Nurse had just revealed. If I’d been born here, I’d know.

‘Yep,’ I told her. ‘But she’d be the reason I wouldn’t go back.’ I noticed concern take hold of New Nurse’s face, pulling her mouth into an awkward smile. ‘If I went back to Sweden it wouldn’t be to look for my mother, but because I know she lives there, it would be impossible