In between watching Deirdre and Walter strut up and down, as long as they can stay awake Stephen and Margaret spot the gifted and lythe from the fat and clumsy. Like Deirdre’s dancing it’s a bit hit and miss. They usually doze off once the music starts, and resurface snorting and snuffling when the applause kicks in. Then they drift for a while lost in bygone days when, young, gorgeous and agile, they too skimmed endless floors in endless ballrooms all around the world. That tall willowy woman with a tight blonde chignon. Those sumptuous yards of flowing silks, bias cut and eddying in shwooshing waves with every flawless turn. Her partner, slightly taller and angular, spare and pale, has gleaming auburn hair and golden lashed green eyes set high and wide in a long oval face. Time has seen them both crumpled and very small, skin creped, bones eroded and joints calcifying. They are wrinkled and withered and still deep in love.

Stephen and Margaret never notice these creaky impediments as between naps they move in their chairs ever so slightly, in time to the music. They sympathise when Deirdre’s pirouettes stop with a stumble as soon as one foot leaves the floor. They duck when her rampant arms reach full extension. They make sure to keep their feet tucked in. And they are content to let the television give back their shared beauty and the joy. “We’re still here old girl” he says, and she nods lovingly back at shabby remnants and vague hints of glittered copper in his hair, roguish green eyes, freckled cheeks. Once plump lips curl still in a smile that melts her. She tingles and grows warm. She sometimes blushes at the memory of what those lips could do. She falls reckless every time, before turning back to hide in the dancing on the screen, eyes blurred and cheeks burning.

But that was on Saturday and today was an eventful Sunday about to get even more eventful. The three stood peering at the small collection of letters and printed catalogues that had appeared, suddenly it seemed, on their door mat. Deirdre leant to scoop them up, using her Father’s walking frame as an aid and nearly bringing him with her as she bent down. Her Mother’s gnarled and twisted hands reached out ineffectually and hopelessly to catch her Stephen as he teetered. Having long since lost all elasticity or capacity for extension her hands stretched barely a few inches, more in prayer than salvation. Leaning over the frame Stephen caught his breath, and put a hand on her arm. “There there old girl, I’m not done for yet” he wheezed, still out of breath from the earlier bellowing. 

Deirdre, oblivious and still crouched, had her ear to a whistly crack in the door. She waved the letters at them, a frantic request for silence. “Shush will you shush, there’s someone out there” she hissed. “Of course there’s someone out there dear, it will be the dogs coming back with Audrey,” said her mother patiently. “Audrey?” the younger woman replied. “Yes dear, Audrey, you remember our friend, our friend who has been here all weekend with us, our friend who brought you the lovely present from Angus, who has died. You remember the pearls? The pearls Audrey gave you because Angus wanted you to have his Mother’s pearls? And you remember that we stood on the driveway and said goodbye to his ashes, in the box in the boot of her car?” Deirdre’s hand reached to her neck and stroked the triple string of pearls, warm and soft against the draping folds of her neck, but she couldn’t remember Angus or looking into the boot of a car. “There, there it is again, can’t you hear it?” she said instead. Her parents looked from one to the other, sad but resigned. Another little brick had fallen. Deirdre’s mother pushed her cold hands into her pockets and looked out at the gloom expecting to see her dogs and her friend coming back from their last minute walk. “What on earth? What on earth is that? There’s someone on the ground over there, quickly Deirdre, turn on the outside light”. Deirdre did and the three of them moved slowly out into the porch and the pool of light, slightly afraid of what they might find. Behind them the ancient house, blank eyed, sighed and sifted into black.

Peering through the dark they watch enthralled as their two extremely dirty dogs come slowly into focus, wide mouthed with scarlet lolling tongues beating time with their panting. The dogs are just slightly ahead of Audrey who is covered in mud and bits of moss and stick and appears to be crawling on her elbows over the edge of the bank. She too is panting heavily, her mouth opened wide, her teeth bared, her tongue’s pulse possibly beating time along with the dogs’. Random dirty patterns decorate the soft amber of Audrey’s new and as yet unpaid for coat. Her tangled hair, interspersed with globs of dirt and bits of grass, falls over her face and blocks her view. She struggles noisily to get over the top of the bank and as a recognisable amount of filthy wet Audrey appears, her little audience lets out a collective gasp.

Audrey’s face was tear streaked, grubby and red. She was gasping open mouthed at the air and moving with extreme care, clutching the dogs leads for some sort of balance and cursing the terrier for his enthusiasm. “Get an ambulance” she panted as she hooked her elbows further onto the drive and the relative stability of the gravel. The dogs heaved her along a few centimeters closer to the pool of light, desperate to reach their own place of safety. “Get me an ambulance immediately I think I’ve broken my ankle,” she whimpered weak and desperate. Then the tears came back despite her efforts to hold them in and she grisled pathetically in a tiny incoherent voice that she’d fallen down “this damn bank” trying to get back up it.

Audrey is struggling to pull herself together, mustering all her strength. She calls through clenched teeth, “Quickly! Deirdre, dial 999 on the telephone. Now!” Audrey, her hands still tightly wrapped in dog leads, was now heaving herself onto her knees, leaning on the ancient Lab whose bulk and general immobility could support her a little. Together they inch towards Deidre and her parents. Audrey, her fine woolen trousers sodden and cold, her coat a complete mess is sniveling, the Labrador’s lead wound tight around her hand. The terrier she lets go and it gleefully follows Deirdre into the house. Deirdre is his one and only real true love. Deidre knows where the biscuits live and the biscuits were calling him.As she headed for the kitchen Deirdre was repeating in a singsong voice nine nine nine, nine nine nine, nine nine nine, and as she listened to the ring of a distant phone, was trying hard to remember what should happen next. She knew it was important so she knitted her brow in concentration and stared at the filthy carpet and hummed to herself. As she waited, Deirdre saw Alistair dive back and forth between her and her parents and their burden. They had managed to lodge Audrey’s soft frame between them and, using the walker as support were moving very, very slowly out of the dark and inching towards the house. This novelty eclipsed all thoughts