When Agnes expressed her concern to Mrs Knight, the matron, she was invited in for a chat with Mrs Valley-Brown, the manager. Mrs Valley-Brown and her husband ran Homelea.
Matron took care of nursing those residents who needed it. Mrs Valley-Brown told Agnes that Lily had Alzheimer’s and that the doctor had prescribed a tranquilliser to help calm her down. If she responded well to the medication her behaviour would settle down, she’d be less distressed. They also had sleeping pills they could administer when needed as Lily had begun to suffer from insomnia, restlessness and occasional night incontinence. Lily was welcome to stay at Homelea as long as her behaviour didn’t adversely affect the other residents.
The kettle clicked off and I made myself a coffee, took it over to my desk. There’d been something a little strange at that point in the interview. I’d asked Agnes what would happen if Lily got much worse. Her hand flew to the jet brooch on her coat and she’d squeezed it tight. Otherwise, she completely ignored my question. A pause and then she began talking about Lily’s marriage. Something in my question had frightened Agnes. Fear of the death that might follow or the thought of increasing frailty? Whatever it was, I hadn’t got an answer.
I skimmed the rest of my notes. Lily had married, had a son and daughter. The girl had died in childhood but Charles lived down in Devon, visited twice a year, wrote monthly. He’d helped sort out the move to Homelea. Lily’s husband, George, had gone missing in action in the Far East in 1944. Once Charles left home Lily had worked as a secretary and book-keeper for a small firm. Since retirement she’d been fit and active. She’d fallen twice at home, fractured her wrist the first time and dislocated her shoulder the second. The move to Homelea had been at her own instigation. Apart from the shoulder and a certain nervousness about falling Lily had been fit as a fiddle when she left her own house for Homelea. There had been no sign of mental frailty then.
Eight weeks.
I tilted my chair back dangerously and made a survey of my office while I let the information trickle round my brain. The blind over the basement window was broken. Roller blinds are about as reliable as flip-top bins. The year planner that I’d put up the previous January in the hope it’d help me plan my time was still blank apart from school holidays. My sort of work doesn’t get planned. It’s all response and reaction. Go here, do this, try that, meet so-and-so.