The Empty Chair

Every care home has one animal that everybody pretends not to watch.

At Bracken Hill, it is a golden retriever called Murphy.

He belongs to nobody, which is how everybody explains him. The home pays for his food. The night staff let him sleep wherever he likes. The residents put their hands down when he passes, and Murphy decides whether to stop.

He is old enough to have gone white around the muzzle but not old enough to move slowly. He has a careful walk, a patient walk, as if he knows there are things on the floor people might trip over and he is responsible for not becoming one of them.

It is the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

Autumn light through the big windows. Tartan blankets over knees. The tea trolley doing its round. A television on with the sound down.

Murphy gets up off the carpet and starts walking.

The room changes.

Not dramatically. Nobody gasps. It is subtler and much worse than that: conversations trail off, a nurse stops pouring, and twenty people who have spent the afternoon staring at nothing begin very carefully not looking at one another.

“Is he allowed to wander off like that?” a new carer asks.

“He is not wandering,” says Edith.

Every chair has a small brass name plate screwed to the back. That is how it works in a place like Bracken Hill. You get a chair, and your name goes on it, and that is yours.

Three along by the window, a chair is empty.

The blanket is folded neatly over one arm.

The name plate says **MARGARET VALE**.

“There is nobody in that chair,” the new carer says.

“I know,” Edith answers.

An old woman leans forward.

“Murphy. Over here, handsome.”

He does not even turn his head.

He walks past the empty chair.

Past the man with the walking stick, who closes his eyes for a second in something that looks a lot like relief.

Past the window. Past the trolley. All the way across the room.

To Ruth Bell, who is sitting in a wheelchair beneath the television.

White hair set properly. Lilac cardigan. A brooch at the collar. A folded newspaper across her knees and a blue biro in her hand. She is doing the crossword and has not noticed a single thing that happened in the last thirty seconds.

Murphy lies down on her feet.

He puts his head on the footplate of her chair, against her slippers, and shuts his eyes.

Ruth looks down.

Then she laughs, properly delighted.

“Well,” she says. “Somebody has changed his mind about me.”

Nobody laughs back.

Her smile stays on about a second longer than it should.

“Why is everybody looking at me like that?”

No one answers.

The nurse is standing motionless with a teapot in both hands.

Two residents are not blinking.

The carer in the doorway has stopped walking.

Ruth looks towards the empty chair.

“What does it mean when he does that?”

Edith says, very quietly, “He does not come to people anymore.”

Murphy opens one eye.

At exactly 3:17, the fire alarm begins to ring.

And Ruth says, “There is somebody in Margaret's room.”