Free The Monkey Puzzle Tree by Sonia Tilson Page A

they sat in Vanna’s soft, grey-blue velvet armchairs while the mist came up from the sea and the foghorns moaned in the bay, until it was time for Gillian to return to Langland for the night.
     
    In the still-misty morning, Gillian walked from the bus-stop to Saint Anne’s, and smelled the salty, fishy, seaweedy tang borne on the wind from the sea. I’m home, she thought. This is the smell of home. She stopped and inhaled deeply. But what was home now, in fact? A set of lawyers’ offices? An old wall? An unfamiliar bungalow on the outskirts of town? A few people who remembered her but could live perfectly well without her? With a shake of her head she walked on.
    Home was Canada now. Ottawa was where she belonged, as much as she could belong anywhere. If she came back to live here now, she would be homesick for Canada. Home was her little house near the park and the river; her son and his wife, and her granddaughter, Alice; her partner Simon, and her other friends, and her spaniel, Dora. All those, along with the snow and the wide horizons had become her home.
    Passing the wall of her old house, she noticed a small stout man in cap and raincoat walking briskly up the hill. Drawing level with her, he touched his cap and smiled politely, then stopped to take a second look, smiling even more broadly.
    “Excuse me, lady, but does I know you?” He chuckled. “You looks very familiar. Does you come from round here, then?”
    “Well, yes, I do, actually. Very much so.” She pointed. “I used to live in this house.”
    As he peered at her, she saw something familiar about his broad, red face and bright blue eyes.
    “It’s never Gillian?” He burst into a high, wheezy laugh. “Well, well, well! It’s Gillian Davies! There’s a surprise, isn’t it! I’m Robbie Bevan, Gillian. Don’t you remember me? I used to bring the meat!” He seemed to find that hilarious.
    She remembered him then: Robbie, the butcher’s boy, in his navy and white striped apron, turning up on his ancient bicycle with shiny brown-paper packages in the front basket. A cheery, red-cheeked boy, always whistling.
    “Gladys’ll be amazed when I tells her!” He chuckled. “Who’d of thought it? Gillian Davies! Well I never!”
    “Gladys?”
    “Yes, Gladys Jones, as was.” He grinned and jerked his head at the house. “Her mother worked for your mother, remember? It was after you went to Canada, I think, that we got married. Didn’t you mother tell you? I always fancied Gladys, and in the end she come ’round to me, and we been very happy. Got grandchildren now, we have. Five of them!” He evidently found this side-splitting, but suddenly straightened his face. “Is you mam still alive? Last I heard she was living in Langland.”
    Gillian told him where her mother was presently, and learned that he and Gladys lived just down the hill from Saint Anne’s, in Number 84. Gladys would be popping in to see Mrs. Davies, he said, now that she knew where she was. He raised his cap and twinkled off, with an invitation to come and see them any time.
    Curious, although not at all sure she wanted to see Gladys, or that her mother would, after what happened with Tom, Gillian made her way to Saint Anne’s.
     
    Sunita met her on the stairs, carrying a tray of untouched breakfast: scrambled egg, toast, marmalade and tea. “Your mother’s not eating well, Mrs. Armstrong,” she said. “She didn’t touch the beef jelly you brought her yesterday, and she had no dinner to speak of. I think she should go onto meal supplements just to keep her strength up until she feels better.”
    “Certainly. Whatever you think best, Sunita.” Gillian felt a stirring of the panic she had felt on the plane. “D’you think the new antibiotic is working?
    “Not yet, but it’s too early to tell. We should know by tomorrow.” Sunita smiled, perfect teeth in a dusky-rose face, and passed on softly down the carpeted stairs.
    Her mother was sitting up, coughing. She