Swallowing Grandma by Kate Long Read Free Book Online Page A

you the way a dog does,’ she sniffed.
    ‘Aye, that’s true,’ Dogman sighed.
    I left the scene before they drowned in grief; before I lost my temper and told Dogman it was just as well they didn’t put humans down for having bad breath. I should have felt sorry for him, dogless Dogman, but I didn’t.
    I was too hungry. The sky above me was filled with clumps of mashed potato and clotted cream. By the time I got to Cissie’s I was feeling faint; I could have dug up and eaten the daffodil bulbs by the front gate. Only the thought of the purse belt got me past the vending machine in the entrance.
    ‘So they put in a catheter and drew out two pints of black . . . Yes?’ They know me at reception, but this was a new woman, pie-crust collar, big pearl earrings.
    ‘Cissie Southworth.’
    ‘Sign in the book, if you would.’ She slid the page at me through the glass hatch. I caught the biro-on-a-string as it swung past my stomach and scrawled my name, then checked as usual for any other visitors Cissie might have had since I last came. Just her ex-hairdresser, Edith – she must be in her sixties herself – and the vicar. Well, who else is there left?
    Apart from the tragic fiancé lost in the war there’s her sister, my great-grandma Florence, whose ashes live in my wardrobe: died of a stroke over twenty years ago. Poll’s one-armed dad, who would have been Cissie’s brother-in-law, came down with fatal peritonitis about the same time as the Coronation, so he’s out of the picture too. Of her three nieces, Mary died in childhood, Jean’s alive and well but in Australia, and Poll has to be dragged here because they always fall out whenever they meet up. I sometimes look in the visitor’s book for Vince’s name, but I don’t really expect to see it.
    I don’t mind visiting Cissie. She’s at least someone I can talk to without bursting into flames of embarrassment. I can sound off to her about Poll and get a sympathetic hearing. Also, she – ha ha, this is really mad – believes I have a life. If I could ask anyone (not dead) about leaving Poll, it would be Cissie.
    She was sitting in the TV lounge watching Watercolour Challenge with a shrunken, oddly shaped woman. ‘He’s made a right dog’s breakfast of that, now han’t he?’ Cissie was saying. ‘You can’t tell which way up it’s meant to be.’ Then she spotted me and her face lit up.
    ‘Ooh,’ she said, grasping my hand, ‘our Katherine, what a treat. You’re looking bonny, love. Come next door.’
    I hoisted her to her feet and she cast a smug smile at the woman left behind with just Hannah Gordon for company. ‘It’s a shame,’ she whispered to me. ‘She’s nobody.’ I wondered whether Cissie meant she has nobody or she is nobody. Maybe they’re one and the same.
    We walked slowly along the corridor to her room and picked our way through her soft-toy collection. ‘I’ve a few more since you were here last,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Edith brings them me, oh, and I won that pink ’un in a raffle for Heart Disease.’
    ‘Don’t the staff bother? I mean, it’s all very nice—’ I scooped a brace of dog-creatures off the armchair and looked round for somewhere to lose them. ‘I’ll just lie them down here,’ I said, shooing them under the bed with my foot. ‘Having so much stuff must make it difficult to clean round. Do they not mind?’
    ‘I suppose so; they’re very good wi’ me. But we’re not allowed pets, and you get to my age, you need summat to stroke.’ She gave the dog a pat, as if it was alive, and I watched as a hank of white fur detached itself and floated to the floor. ‘This is new. I’m going to call him Dulux.’ It lay splayed across her thigh like road-kill.
    Ally from the kitchens put her head round the door. ‘D’you want a drink, you two? I’m just coming round with the trolley now.’ Ally gave me the creeps. I used to think she was about fifty, but one day she was talking about the time she left