Dot (Araminta Hall)

suicide note.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘I didn’t even know she killed herself.’ Alice half laughed.
    Sandra felt she needed to get a handle on the situation. ‘Why on earth did your mother show you this?’ She put it back into the drawer, not wanting it to contaminate the atmosphere any more.
    ‘I asked her that. I said, Are you suggesting something? I didn’t mean it literally, but she got really agitated and went on about how wrong her mother had been. Don’t you see how stupid it is to give everything up for one person, she said, to leave people who love you. Because there are always people who love you.’
    Sandra sat in silence; she found Alice’s world baffling. But then Alice rolled on to her side and said, ‘I feel so weak. Like my legs are pieces of string or something. I can’t imagine ever getting up and making food and taking Dot out and getting through to the end of the day, ever again.’
    ‘Well, you need to eat for a start,’ said Sandra. Sometimes she felt as if the whole world needed to be mothered. ‘In fact, I’m going to go and get you something now.’
    Sandra went to the kitchen where she made her friend some tea and toast with butter and honey. She could see Clarice sitting in the chair under the apple tree with Dot and Mavis at her feet. She was very still, but Sandra thought she could see agitation running through her veins. She carried the food back upstairs and when she opened the door didn’t think that Alice had moved at all. She might not have even blinked. Sandra bustled as much as she could, trying to make waves in the dead air.
    ‘Come on, Alice, I’m not leaving till I see you eat this,’ she said, pulling a chair up so she could sit next to the bed.
    ‘My throat feels like sand.’
    Sandra pushed the plate closer so Alice had to sit up and take a small bite. She was like an invalid: it took twenty minutes for her to get through the tea and toast and by the end she was crying, but it was the same as getting Mavis to take medicine when she was ill, you couldn’t turn your back because it made life easier.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alice finally. ‘I’m being pathetic. You’re so kind.’
    ‘Don’t be silly. I’m doing what anyone would. We’ll get you up and about in no time.’ Alice nodded. ‘And you know he will be in touch. He’s not just going to walk out of your life. I mean, there’s Dot apart from anything else.’
    ‘I keep thinking about that.’ Alice swallowed hard. ‘I know he loved her. Oh God, San, he must have found me disgusting to walk away from her.’
    ‘He hasn’t walked away. He’s made a stupid mistake and he’ll probably be back. Not that I would ever let you take him back. I just mean, he’ll be back.’
    Alice shook her head. ‘You don’t know him. He’s already walked away from his parents. I think this is it.’
    ‘Alice, apart from anything else, if he really wants to split up you’ll have to get divorced. This Silver woman sounds like a sort of breakdown, if you ask me.’
    ‘Do you think so, really?’ Alice looked like a beautiful child and Sandra was shocked both at Tony’s ability to leave her and the certain knowledge that she would take him back if he so much as waved through the door.
    ‘I think the important thing is to get you better,’ she said by way of an answer.
    Before Sandra left she sat with Clarice and told her that she would come every day and when she was there she would take Dot in to see Alice, but that Clarice should insist she ate and let Dot go in as much as possible. Clarice nodded and thanked her and Sandra was amazed at how people who seemed to know a lot really often knew nothing at all about the things that mattered.
    Sandra was as good as her word and within a week she arrived to find Alice sitting in Clarice’s chair under the apple tree with Dot on her knee, reading her a story. Dot was twirling a lock of her mother’s hair round her little fingers and smiling. Alice still seemed weak and fragile, but Sandra thought that over time things would fall back into place. She was amazed that Tony still hadn’t been in touch, but for some reason Clarice seemed as certain as Alice that he wouldn’t be. Clarice didn’t even seem that surprised that he’d left. Sandra knew she’d never properly work these people out, but she also knew that this had bound them together and that they now would be friends for ever.
    It was on the way back to her house one afternoon that Sandra saw the