Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (best large ereader txt) 📕

“This is odd,” Saffron says, still reading. “It’s from the General Register Office in Southport.”

“Will you put the kettle on?” Jeanie says, leaning over the table and shuffling buttons around on the tray.

“No,” Angel says forcefully to Jeanie, sweeping the buttons away from her. Jeanie stands upright.

“I think it’s about your mum. Dorothy Seeder, it says.” Saffron frowns, reads again, and looks up. “They seem to be saying that they need part of the burial or cremation certificate. It was never returned by the funeral director or crematorium, although they don’t seem to know who that was.” Saffron holds out the letter.

“That’s the third they’ve sent. Must be some mistake.” Jeanie stands beside Saffron and looks at the page, and although Saffron is teaching her to read, her heart is beating too fiercely for her to take in the simplest words. “What does it say they’re going to do?” She tries to ask as though she isn’t concerned.

Saffron looks at the bottom of the letter. “Well, nothing, I think. The wording kind of suggests they’re giving up.”

“I should hope so too,” Jeanie says. “Waste of everyone’s time.” She lifts the letter from Saffron’s hands and takes it into the new kitchen where she folds it up and stuffs it underneath the vegetable peelings saved in a pot for the compost.

Saffron stands on the cottage path with Angel, holding on to Maude’s collar. “You will go slowly, won’t you?” she says as Jeanie straddles her bicycle out on the track. Jeanie bought it cheaply from Kate Gill, whose husband gave her a new one for her birthday. It’s much better than the bicycle which used to be Dot’s.

“I’ll be an hour and a half at most,” Jeanie says.

“Take as long as you need.” Saffron remains on the path as Jeanie cycles off. It is ridiculously hot and although she would like some breeze in her face and over her body, Jeanie doesn’t go fast. She is careful with her heart these days—the thought of what would happen to Julius if she died is too awful to contemplate. For a year after leaving the ITU Julius lived in a rehabilitation unit. Alastair drove Jeanie there a couple of times a week to see him and the improvements he was making: learning to walk with a frame, to feed himself, to use the bathroom. But between the unit and returning to the cottage he’d had to spend a while in a home for the severely disabled: a smelly, worn-down place, desperately understaffed, and his moods swung between anger and depression.

At the GP surgery Jeanie sits on an upholstered chair and waits until her name is called over the tannoy system. Bridget isn’t working today. Jeanie put on some lipstick before she left, a muted red that must have been Dot’s, hiding at the back of a dresser drawer. She rubs her lips together, feels the sticky slide, and sits up straighter, bolstered by it. Ridiculous, she thinks. When she goes in, Dr. Holloway stands and shakes her hand, invites her to sit on a chair beside his desk. The room is small, and out of the window the sun glares off the windscreens of the cars in the car park. Dr. Holloway goes through the preliminaries, commenting on how well Julius has settled into the cottage, his epilepsy, how there’s plenty of possibility for improvement. He says she’s doing a great job. Jeanie doesn’t think so.

“And so,” Dr. Holloway says, “your results.”

She expects him to open something on his computer, put his reading glasses on, set the machine to printing—something—but he turns to her and says, “There is nothing wrong with your heart. Everything is completely normal.”

Her hand goes to her chest without her realizing, feeling for the thing inside. She’s sure it’s still there, turning around and around, settling itself inside its shell. “What?” she says.

“The echocardiogram showed no damage to any of your heart’s valves, your blood flow is fine, there’s no murmur. You don’t have rheumatic heart disease.”

Jeanie can feel her face folding in on itself, the sting in her nose as the tears come.

Dr. Holloway touches her arm. “It’s good news, Jeanie.”

“Is it?”

He hands her a tissue and she holds it to her eyes, until she remembers her mother in a similar room, years ago.

“Of course it is.”

Jeanie shakes her head. “Did I ever?” she manages to get out. During her first appointment, which Saffron and Bridget bullied her into, she told Dr. Holloway about her visit to the GP when she was thirteen and what Dot said to her afterwards.

“Did you ever have RHD, do you mean?” Dr. Holloway asks. “I went and found your old Lloyd George envelope—we have a room full of them.” He leans forwards. “There’s nothing in there to indicate that you ever had a problem with your heart. There was a check-up noted, after your rheumatic fever cleared up, but nothing to say you had RHD.” He sits back, picks up a pen, and turns it between his fingers. “And to be honest, if you did have it, or a heart murmur, I would have expected you to be having regular checks, maybe be on some medication. You didn’t think that was odd? That you weren’t?”

“I just believed her. She told me I had a weak heart and I believed her.” Jeanie is suddenly angry. “She wouldn’t let me do anything. I wasn’t allowed to run or climb trees or get overexcited. I wasn’t allowed to have a bloody job! And what, it was all a lie?” She is shouting and she is aware of her blood pumping, heart beating too fast. She is still afraid of it and can’t help but take the deep long breaths that Dot taught her.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Holloway says.

“And Julius,” she whispers. “She kept him at home too, to look after me.” The different lives they might have lived are too enormous to comprehend. She