The Truth Club Read Online Free PDF

plumped-up pillows. ‘Get those sheep out of here. They’re pissing all over the carpet.’
    I make vague shooing gestures. Then I say, ‘Do you think DeeDee is still in Ireland? Where do you think I should look for her?’
    Aggie looks at me sternly, so I stand up and wave my arms about. This is the routine required whenever the sheep get a bit too boisterous. Then I sit down again and say, ‘If you want me to find DeeDee, you’ll have to tell me more about her.’ I take Aggie’s hand and squeeze it gently.
    ‘Rio de Janeiro,’ Aggie says. ‘She often said she wanted to go there.’
    ‘Oh.’ This is a little farther than I had imagined.
    ‘And hats… she loved hats.’ Aggie’s eyes are too bright. She is going to cry at any moment.
    ‘Anything else?’ I coax.
    ‘Marble cake. She liked that too.’ I know about the marble cake. As far as I remember, Aggie has only mentioned DeeDee once before. She had baked a marble cake, and the words just slipped out: ‘This was DeeDee’s favourite.’ Then she stared into the distance, and Mum and Marie said the cake was delicious. I was fifteen and said the cake was delicious too. At the time I was in love with a boy called Roy Bailey, who was the first decent French kisser I had encountered. Absent relatives were of absolutely no interest to me. I’m surprised I even remember these meagre details.
    ‘She told no one where she was going. She just left us. Without even a note.’ Tiny tears are trickling down Aggie’s cheeks.
    I know I can’t press her more on the subject. She won’t be with us for much longer. Every time I visit her, I feel I might be saying goodbye. She’s actually my great-aunt, my grandfather’s sister. Eighty-nine is a good age, of course; but I can’t get used to the idea of Aggie not being around any more.
    ‘I brought you some mints.’ I hand them to her, and she smiles wanly. She is just lying back on her pillows and staring into the distance. Saying DeeDee’s name seems to have exhausted her. Perhaps she won’t mention her again. I wonder if I should start talking about Diarmuid and my happy marriage. That always cheers her up.
    But Aggie has closed her eyes and appears to be dozing. I look around. It’s a very plain room. The curtains are faded aubergine and the carpet is navy. I am sitting on a fake leather armchair the colour of over-boiled cabbage.
    ‘I don’t know where they come from,’ she murmurs.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The sheep, of course.’ She sighs. I try not to sigh myself. Every time I visit Aggie the sheep turn up. In fact, according to her they’re here all the time. Sometimes they get on her bed and try to eat her duvet. She feels sorry for them because they’d be happier in a field. I’ve tried to tell her there are no sheep, but it makes no difference.
    She closes her eyes again, so I just sit beside her. I’m not here out of duty. I do a lot of things mainly out of duty, but this isn’t one of them. In these silences, while Aggie is dozing and the nurses are laughing about something and the thick smell of stew is drifting from the kitchen, I remember what it was like when we could have proper conversations. How I loved visiting her rambling old house. How her dog, Scamp, used to throw himself on top of me as soon as I was in the hallway, with its gumboots and sensible coats and dog leads. Aggie always had something in her hand – a geranium cutting or a recipe book or a garden trowel. She would lower her head and peer at me warmly over her glasses, and then we would go into her untidy, cheerful kitchen and she would make us both some tea and give me some freshly baked cake. There was an enveloping sense of welcome and warmth. It was the same whether I was eight or thirty. I’d help her in the garden, and when we were tired she’d make pancakes and we’d watch TV – maybe an afternoon Western. What I knew most about her was that she loved me. ‘If I’d ever had a daughter, Sally, I’d have wanted her