Chapter 1A Room with a View

"Mind the—" Kate never finished, because the crutch had already caught the umbrella stand and sent it down with a clatter of handles. Ruth held the door frame, waited for the wobble to pass, then swung herself through. "Leave those," she said. "I'll do it." "You'll go over." Kate crouched anyway and began slotting umbrellas back into the stand, one by one, not looking up. "Sit. The tea's going cold and I've a client at two." Ruth crossed the room in the order the physio had drilled into her — crutch, bad leg, good leg — and lowered herself into the chair. A set of papers had been squared neatly at her place: a booking form, a deposit slip, a brochure with a lake on it. "What's all this?" "Six weeks at Lakeside. Physio every morning, meals, ground-floor room. There's a bus that goes from the end of the road." "I'm not going to a rehabilitation hotel." "It isn't a hotel." "It's got a view and a deposit slip. That's a hotel." Kate sat down opposite her and laid both hands flat on the table, the way she did when she had rehearsed something in the car. "The flat's sold, Ruth. I had the letter in March. You can't be here past August, and you can't manage those stairs." "I manage them." "On Tuesday I heard you from the street." Ruth turned the deposit slip over. On the back, in Kate's small square hand, was a list — bath, chair, ramp? — and under it, crossed out twice, ask her first. "Who's paying?" "Does it matter?" "It matters to me." Kate reached past her for the pot and poured, and the tea came out almost black, and neither of them mentioned it. "Mum's ring," she said eventually. "The one in the drawer. I'd have to sell it." Ruth's thumb found the worn patch on the crutch's rubber cuff, the place it had shaped itself to, and pressed hard. "Don't you dare." "Then give me something else to do." Above them a floorboard creaked. The bell rang, and Kate pushed her chair back and went to the door, and Ruth sat with the brochure in one hand and the crutch upright against the table like a third person in the room. She could hear her sister's voice in the hall, warm and professional, and the client's boots on the mat. When Kate came back, Ruth had the pen in her hand. "I'll go and look at it," she said. "Friday. Not to sign — to look. And you're coming with me, because I'm not getting on a bus with a brochure and a suitcase and no one to tell me I'm being an idiot." Kate took the pen out of her fingers and put it down. "Friday," she said. "I'll bring the car round at nine." Ruth nodded, and picked up her tea, and drank it although it was cold.