Free Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey Page B

a twenty-five-year-old History drop-out, whose CV boasts a year’s work in probate research and, before that, six months in a psychiatric unit.
    And with that cheering thought he went into the kitchen to make coffee.
    *
    Albert Greaves was a desiccated scrap of a man, his body dwarfed by the armchair in which he sat, his head dwarfed by his large spectacles and a pair of ears like jug handles. ‘I don’t sleep, you know,’ he told Will, in aggrieved tones. ‘Hardly a wink. Back in the war I was on Atlantic convoys and we went for days without closing our eyes. Dropping with exhaustion we was; we’d have given our last farthing for five minutes’ kip. Now I got nothing to do but sleep and I can’t seem to drop off. Don’t seem right, does it?’
    As he spoke his right hand tapped emphatically on the chair’s threadbare arm, while his left lay inert at his side. A stroke, he’d explained when the carer first showed Will in. ‘Like being struck by bleeding lightning.’
    ‘Of course, the quack’s given me pills for it,’ he went on now, his glasses reflecting the square of light from the front window. ‘“You take these, Mr Greaves”, ’e says, “you’ll get a good night then”, but I ain’t daft. I might be old, but I’m not stupid. Once they start shovelling their pills into you, that’s it. Done for, you are, sure as eggs. That’s what happened to Nancy when she went into that home.’ He gave a knowing laugh. ‘Well, they call it a home but it ain’t nothing like. Oneway doors in them places. She only went in because she broke her hip. They was going to look after her until it was better, but look what happened. Never came out, did she?’
    During this speech he’d been infused with energy, but when it was over he sank further into the depths of the armchair and into his own thoughts. Will waited a moment, and took a sip of his tea. It was cooling and had white flecks of milk on the surface. Setting it down he prompted gently: ‘Were you close to Miss Price, Mr Greaves?’
    ‘Mmm?’ The old man turned his head, as if for a moment he’d forgotten Will was there. ‘Who’s that? Nancy, you mean? Oh yes, we was close all right, as much as anyone could be close to Nancy. Law unto herself, she was. Like a cat I had when I was a boy. It would come and sit on your knee and purr like a Spitfire when it was in the right mood, but if you tried to pick it up—’ His right hand shot out, imitating the swipe of a cat’s paw, and he chuckled. ‘That was Nancy. I’ll admit I got scratched like that a couple of times, but it was worth it. She was a smashing girl.’
    Will smiled. Albert Greaves must be pushing ninety and Nancy Price had reached the ripe old age of eighty-seven when she died. But in his eyes she was, and always would be, a smashing girl. For some reason, Will found that encouraging.
    ‘Was she married?’
    ‘Not as I know of.’
    ‘Any children?’
    ‘Like I said – wasn’t married, was she?’
    Will wrote it down, not wanting to offend the old man by pointing out that the two things didn’t necessarily go together.
    ‘When did she move into number four?’
    With some effort Albert Greaves raised himself up and picked up his teacup from the table beside him. The room was small and dark, and crammed with a lifetime of clutter. It reminded Will of the antique shop in the Cotswold village where his parents now lived, the one his mother called ‘that funny little junk shop’. Greenfields Lane was a fantastic location though, and the house had tons of character. He tried to imagine how it would look without the violently patterned carpet and the pine cladding over the fireplace, and the ornaments and brasses and bad paintings, then felt ashamed.
    ‘Another thing about that cat . . .’ Albert Greaves was saying now in a far-off voice, ‘I used to say it was mine, but it never was really. My mother said it was a stray, she didn’t want it in the house at first – dirty,