Eighty four…. Eighty five… Eighty six…

The morning chill had sharpened the edges of everything, making the whole world look like a picture etched in glass. The trees glistened with frost and the concrete of the garden path looked like it had been dusted with glitter. Jean had almost counted to one hundred again and readied herself to let out another desperate sounding scream. At least two hours must have passed with her lying here. She took a series of short breaths and tried to ignore the sharp throb from her hip.

“Help!! Please someone help me!” She called. Only the hard caw of a crow answered her. She tried to sit back up against the garden shed but found even this too painful and had to relax and let her aching back lie against the freezing concrete. This was no way to live, she thought to herself and certainly no way to die. She grimly thought of the scene of her discovery. Her body still, lips blue and eyes frozen over with petrified tears. What a terrible business it would be. She began her count to one hundred again. When she had first fallen she had yelled and yelped solidly for a good half hour but the world was not listening and her voice had become very weak and sore. She had then decided it would be best to leave a good space of time between each call for help so as not to waste her energy.

Twenty one… Twenty two… twenty three….

She cursed her inability to right herself. She was reminded of the terrapin turtle that her grandson had been given as a gift. She remembered catching him tossing the poor creature over onto its back and watching its legs wave about ineffectually as it tried to turn itself over. She was a little taken aback by the callousness of the act, not too surprised though, because she was knew that little boys could be so cruel. Jean had chased him out of the room, leaving the turtle in its glass coffin beside the radiator. She had gone to reach in to help it but found herself morbidly fascinated by its struggle. Perhaps it was the same curiosity which had prompted her young grandson to commit such an act. She stood there looking down on the struggling creature, directly above it like an almost apathetic God, disinterested and aloof, merely inquisitive about the fate of one of His creatures. It took about five whole minutes yet however undignified and ungraceful it might have been, eventually the creature managed to turn itself over and limp away, indignant and proud. It was more than she could manage. But then the turtle did not have osteoporosis to deal with.

Fifty one… fifty two… fifty three…

She had deliberately grown the hedges as high as they would go, she liked her privacy and she hardly knew any of the neighbours. The house beside hers was deserted and had been for sometime. The old man who had lived there had passed away and his family had taken some time in dividing up the loot. The For Sale sign had only recently been taken down but still the place looked empty. The area had gone down hill somewhat in the last twenty years. They had desecrated the fields which surrounded their little group of houses and built a sprawling cancerous mess of concrete, tar and corrugated iron which they called an industrial estate. Flowing out from this came the spiralling webs of identical houses and their hordes of hatchback driving young families. She had grown her pine tree hedge as tall as she could so her neighbours could not pry into her private garden. If only they could see through it and catch sight of her there, shivering on the frosted ground, waiting for the cold end.

Seventy four…. Seventy five… Seventy six…

She would be seventy six in just another month’s time but she wondered now if she would ever see it. Her grim prophecies each year could finally turn out to be true. Her children would always chide her for being so morbid but one of these years it would be true, she always said without really believing it would be this year. She thought of her walking stick, which sat upstairs in her bedroom, still wrapped in blue crepe paper as it had been when it was given to her on her last birthday. She hadn’t needed it, she had said, casually leaving it leaning against the table.

“Just keep it close to hand, mum” Her youngest daughter had said. But she had squabbled with her for the implication. The same argument had been had so many times over the last few years, since Charlie passed. As if somehow her mobility would take a nosedive simply because her husband had died. She realised that it was their father’s death which made the prospect of her old age finally a reality. Her children had tried everything they could, they asked her if she would like to move into a “sheltered community” – a euphemism for an old people’s home. There she would sit with the others, like potatoes rotting in the ground, sipping weak tea and swallowing pills to keep her dozy. Jean would rather die than have that sort of life.

Eighty three… Eighty four… Eighty five…

There were various proposals for hand bars beside the door, stair-lifts and intercom systems to ward off preying burglars. But she believed that there was nothing more likely to attract a predatory robber than the sight of hand bars and ramps and such. She had refused, refused point blank and they had been forced to concede. The only concession she had made was the weekly visit of her helper, Sally. A pleasant enough young woman, though a little plain minded and overly perky, who would come and do her dishes once a week and hoover her stairs. She was sure to have as much of the housework done as she could manage and always volunteered to dry the dishes when there were some to do. But Sally only came on a Thursday and this was Tuesday. Jean considered for a moment that it might be this girl who finally finds her. After knocking for a while on the front door she would walk around the side of the house to the back garden, assuming that Jean was in the garden tending her plants again. And there would be the terrible discovery. She remembered seeing her own mother’s dead body, the empty doughy flesh, sallow and cold in the coffin.

Ninety five… ninety six… ninety seven…

What was the meaning of all this reminiscing? It seemed she had spent the last few years of her life thinking exclusively about the past. She supposed it was because thoughts of the future were so terminal and hopeless. Or perhaps this was what they meant when they said that before death your life flashes before your eyes. But her life was hardly flashing before her eyes, it was merely crawling past, inching along before her mind’s eye like the Generation Game’s conveyor belt. Time was teaching her a lesson, she felt. These things came to mind in this place, in this awful situation to show her the error of her ways. She had cast herself as a modern day Ebenezeer, desperately alone and haunted by the ghosts of mistakes past.

One hundred.

“Help!!” Her voice searched out through the cold garden and returned empty handed. “Please someone help me!”

“Hello?” There came a voice from the other side of the hedge. A rough sort of a voice, a woman. “Are you alright? We’ve just moved in next door. Do you need a hand?” Jean felt a ripple of appreciation wash over her, as the blissful sound of her reprieve filled her ears.

“Could you help me? I seemed to have fallen and hurt myself. Could you call an ambulance?”

“Of course, just give me a minute.” Said the voice. Jean heard the sound of hard heels clicking their way back into the house next door and voices from within. She promised herself that she would cut down that hedge, when she was better.