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

by the fact that the wheelchair remained. She’d used it to take me to the Rose Room and everywhere else since then. She may as well have carved the first half of my tombstone: Lenni Pettersson, January 1997–Any Day Now.

I asked Suzie to take me to the chapel. She’s a May Ward nurse but I never see her doing nurse things. I knew she wouldn’t bring a wheelchair and I wanted to walk.

‘A Catholic mass, is it?’ she asked.

‘Maybe,’ I said, taking her hand as she helped me up from my bed.

‘You don’t know?’ She gave me a look.

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Huh, a mystery,’ she said. ‘I like a mystery. My dad won’t play Cluedo with me any more because he says I get too aggressive.’ And then she laughed. ‘I read at least one mystery book a week, I can’t get enough of them. My dad says he doesn’t like them, says they give me ideas.’

As we walked together out of the May Ward, a rush of nausea crept up from my toes to my throat. I was hot and I was going to be sick.

‘I love all the Miss Marples too, and my friend got me a Poirot for my birthday. I love how he talks about himself in the third person.’ When I didn’t say anything, she carried on, ‘I want to start doing that, you know, say things like, Suzie has her suspicions about the corporal.’

She led me away from the May Ward and down the corridor, and all I could think of was that we were leaving behind all the places where I could be sick without ruining the floor. As we left, I yearned for the cardboard hospital sick buckets that as a child I mistook for disposable top hats. I will forever want to live in the world of my ten-year-old self, where I believed hospitals were prepared for any temporary black-tie emergency with cardboard top hats for every patient.

Unfortunately for me, the corridor that leads to the corridor that leads to the hallway that leads to the corridor where the hospital chapel is, is devoid of any kind of vomit receptacle. They should know by now, I thought. There should be sick buckets on every corner. It would save so much money on mops. Suzie kept her arm in mine and I focused on her words, trying to ignore the rising nausea crashing through me, pulling on the back of my tongue, willing it down, encouraging me to gag.

‘… I read this one that was so good …’

I felt the pins and needles pricking the ends of my fingers. It would go. It would go as quickly as it came. I just had to get through this next bit.

‘… so there’s this murder on a harbour and this fisherman has been stabbed, and they can’t match the wound to any kind of weapon. Sorry’ – she stopped – ‘is that too graphic? You’re not squeamish, are you?’

I just smiled and shook my head. We walked slowly onwards.

‘Anyway, the next murder is this man on a car park roof in a rainstorm, and he’s been stabbed, but nobody knows where the weapon is. But the next murder is in this school, but that’s where they get the crucial clue – when they test the third victim’s blood, they find that it’s been diluted with water.’

We went through the final set of doors and I could see the chapel ahead of us. It became symbolic – if I could fight every natural instinct in my body that was telling me to bend over and heave for all I was worth, then I would be okay.

‘And so they realize that because the car park of the second murder had been wet and the harbour had obviously been wet, they had missed the clues – that the weapon was made of ice, and that rather than hide the weapon, the killer just left the ice dagger in his victims and it melted before they arrived. Isn’t that cool?’

I nodded.

‘Anyway, it ends with the woman detective and the man detective getting together, and then they go ice skating and they make this joke about being careful because ice can be very dangerous. I think it would make a great film, I read it all in two days!’

I don’t think anyone has ever described a book plot to me that I’ve actually wanted to read.

Suzie was walking more slowly as we got closer to the chapel, so she could tell me more. I let myself free of her grip.

‘Thank you for taking me,’ I said. My voice sounded weird. Tight. Not mine.

‘No trouble,’ she said. ‘I hope I didn’t bore you!’

I waved my hand at her to tell her she didn’t.

‘I’ll come and get you in an hour, then?’

‘Thanks.’ I pushed open the heavy door of the chapel before she could say anything else, not sure if I was going to vomit or fall on my knees and pray. I barrelled into Father Arthur’s sizeable stomach and we both rebounded, not quite sure what had happened.

‘Lenni?’ he said, unable to conceal his joy.

‘I came for mass.’

‘You’re just in time,’ he said, and I looked into the chapel to spot the only other member of the congregation – an elderly man in striped pyjamas with a suit jacket over the top. I looked from the single congregant to Father Arthur, who just shrugged. I like that he doesn’t pretend any more.

Father Arthur was dressed for the occasion in his black trousers and shirt, with a long scarf thing around his neck that had grapes sewn onto it.

I seated myself on the third row. I didn’t want to be on the front row in case there was audience participation. The nausea was fading now that I was sitting down, and I watched Father Arthur light the final candles in the corner and turn on the hymn music on the CD player.

The old man on the front row sniffed loudly, and then