by Rebecca Tope
He pulled her to him in an awkward hug. ‘So you did,’ he said. ‘And from the smells coming from the kitchen, I think Stephanie’s just about to call us.’
On Thursday, she drove Stephanie to school, aware that the child was apprehensive about something, and ashamed of her own failure to elicit the story the previous evening. ‘Last day of term tomorrow,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ll have to think of things to do next week.’
‘Mm,’ said Stephanie.
‘What’s up, kid? Don’t tell me you’ve got Tim’s trouble and someone’s been bullying you.’
‘Not really. Just girls – you know. Sofia Budd’s skirt got torn and they blamed me. It was all very silly, but they’ve been talking about it on WhatsApp and saying nasty things. Like they do. You know?’
‘You should have shown me. What have we said about that? Don’t keep things like that from us. We might not be able to put it right, but we really want to know. We all live in the same world.’
‘Except that’s not how it seems. It is like Timmy and his school, more or less. But it’ll be all right in the end. It’s not going to kill me.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ said Thea lightly.
‘Where will you be today?’ The question sounded more politely dutiful than genuinely interested.
‘No idea. You’ve got a ride home, haven’t you? It’s Thursday, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yeah. No problem. I’ll make shepherd’s pie if you’re not here, with that mince in the freezer. I know how to do it.’
‘You’re amazing. I’ll be sure to get it out to defrost, at least. And maybe I’ll make it myself if I’m around.’
They were approaching the road outside the school. Stephanie turned to her stepmother. ‘It’s okay, you know, you being off and out like you are. Everyone else’s mother’s the same. They’ve got busy jobs and are always on the phone, even when they’re at home. It’s normal. You don’t have to make excuses all the time.’
Tears blurred Thea’s vision as she attempted to park. ‘Thanks, kid,’ she choked. ‘Try to have a good day.’
Drew had the biggest funeral of the week that day, and the back room was still overflowing with bodies and coffins; Andrew was still incapacitated. There must be things she could do here at home, to smooth her husband’s path. If Andrew was brought in to answer the phone, Thea could sit with him and help – or even go out to the field and … what? She was shamefully ignorant of the precise details of the position of graves, their depth, and any other arcane matters. Perhaps, though, if Drew permitted family members to dig a grave, they might need supervision and support. She could in theory even take part in the actual burials, assembling mourners and listening to their stories. And if any new funerals came through, she could talk Drew through the logistics as she had on Monday.
But she had no desire to do any of that. Andrew was better with the families than Thea could ever be. Despite coming to the business late in life he had a natural skill in treading the delicate path between excessive sympathy and chilly indifference. Having been a farmer for most of his life, he was accustomed to the visceral realities of suffering and death. All he had needed from Drew was a brief course of instruction in the mysteries of the ‘coffining up’ and the crucial necessity of absolute dignity in the moments around the actual burial.
She reproached herself for her resistance to the close-up details of undertaking. She had no problem with the dead bodies while they lay quietly in the back room, but she shied away from following them to their final resting place. She told herself it was her vivid imagination at fault – she could see the slow inevitable corruption of the flesh too starkly for comfort. The heavy earth piled on top of what was once a living, laughing person was too terrible to witness. Even Drew had once said that this was the worst part of the job – the filling-in of the grave after the family had gone. There was a good reason why it was still unusual for mourners to stay for that final disappearance. They sprinkled handfuls of symbolic soil onto the coffin and left it there.
At nine-thirty Andrew presented himself, walking with a stick and looking pained. ‘Drew said I could do something useful in the office, today and tomorrow,’ he told Thea. ‘I left the car up by the church. Took me about five minutes to get out of it. Yesterday set me back somewhat.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Thea. ‘You’ll be suing us for being terrible employers.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said through gritted teeth.
A few minutes later, Thea did phone the hospital again, feeling foolishly miffed that nobody had contacted her about events in Northleach. She had half expected Caz Barkley to appear on the doorstep, or even the wretched Kevin Sinclair. However hard she tried she could not dispel images of Bobby and her children, the two smart women and purple-haired Tessa all somehow in opposition to poor Lucy. How, Thea wondered, would they all react to the news about Ollie? Had any of them known him, disliked him – or even possibly killed him? The questions would not go away – rather they proliferated. Each one bred two more.
‘Not really any change,’ said the woman in the hospital. Thea could not be sure whether or not it was the same one she’d spoken to the day before – from the lack of friendly recognition, she assumed not. But perhaps after twenty similar calls, everyone blurred together. She was lucky, she knew, that they told her anything.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘That sounds worrying.’
‘She’s comfortable,’ said the voice. Wasn’t that what they said when a person was dying? Thea ended the call with an even stronger sense that she ought to be taking a more active role. But what could she do? If she drove back to Northleach, who would speak to her? The death of Ollie Sinclair would eclipse any interest in Lucy, at least amongst the local people.
Drew was outside, doing whatever he had to do in preparation for the burial of a woman whose name Thea had not registered. The weather was dry but cool. The mourners would be assembling at the burial field, having been told there was no space for parking at the house. This was a drawback at any time, and a real problem when it was raining. There were plans to erect a small building for people to gather in, before and possibly after a funeral, but meanwhile it was very much an al fresco event. The usual practice would be to load the coffin into the hearse well in advance, and then send Andrew over to meet and greet, a few minutes before Drew came along in the hearse. With only two of them, the coffin would of necessity be loaded onto a trolley and taken to the graveside on it. The lowering was feasible with two, but in the majority of instances, family members would participate. Some would baulk at the trolley and offer to carry their loved one across the field on their shoulders. In very wet seasons, the trolley wheels would bog down in waterlogged ground, although the gentle slope of the field meant it was well drained.
It was all a very far cry from the elaborate ceremonies staged by mainstream undertakers. This, as Thea had recently reminded Drew, was what his customers wanted. They were not shy of the realities of death and disposal, but they did need a guaranteed level of dignity and respect. They wanted time, too, instead of the lurking sense of rush associated with a cremation. No conveyor belts or strictly limited slots for the Slocombe funerals. Everything was accorded its rightful pace, which included a lot of hanging about and debriefing afterwards, more often than not.
Thanks to a nifty piece of juggling with the coffin and the trolley, Drew managed to get the deceased into the hearse without appealing to Andrew or Thea for help. The coffin itself was lightweight, the body inside likewise. He came into the house rubbing his hands. ‘That trolley was an excellent investment,’ he said. ‘It means I can do all sorts of things on my own.’
‘Why did you need me on Monday, then?’
‘Because this trolley already had a coffin on it,’ he replied mildly. ‘So we had to use the old one, which has none of the same features. It doesn’t even raise and lower any more, since the handle came off.’
‘Stephanie’s being brave about the horrible girls at school. That’s
both of them being victimised, poor things. Luckily they break up tomorrow. Maybe it’ll all be forgotten after two weeks off.’
‘I hate it as much as you do,’ he said, with a sudden burst of irritation. ‘But there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.’ He took a breath. ‘So what are you doing today?’
‘Not sure. I phoned the hospital just now and Lucy’s still a bit woozy, as far as I can gather. I need to know what she wants me to do. If she’s not having the operation, I guess she can go home once she feels all right again.’
‘Which might be weeks,’ said Drew.
Thea laughed. ‘It’s a private room – the whole exercise is private. She’ll have to sell the house if they keep her there for weeks. Even BUPA might object – and I have a feeling she’s not insured. Just paying out of her savings.’
‘That’s meant to be cheaper in the long run. Someone was telling me last week about it.’
‘Well she won’t be there for weeks.’ Thea was accustomed to the way her husband picked up a wide range of random information from the people who came to arrange funerals. Some would stay for hours, chatting about topics far removed from the matter in hand. Although she supposed private medical insurance would easily arise when one was arranging a funeral.
‘You want to go back to Northleach,’ he accused her now. ‘You want to see the reaction of those people you met yesterday, and keep in with the Higgins chap.’
‘Old habits,’ she shrugged ruefully. ‘Would you mind? I’ve walked the dog and tidied the kitchen. I won’t take her with me this time. And I expect I’ll be back before supper.’
‘I won’t even notice you’ve gone,’ he said, only half joking. Then he paused, and turned to face her directly. ‘Can I just say that I’m taking it for granted that you want to help, that you’re going there in a spirit of … I don’t know … call it philanthropy. I need to know you’re not just looking for a way of passing the time because it’s boring here. Can I say that?’
‘You’ve already said it,’ she pointed out. ‘Which was brave of you, I’ll give you that. I guess the proof of the pudding will be in what happens next. I’m not as clear as you about my own motives, sorry to say. But I’ll keep what you said in mind.’
‘Well, let’s hope you have fun in the process,’ he said.
She drove the same route as before, via Stow and Bourton-on-the-Water, taking the shortcut through Sezincote, where the morning sun was throwing shadows at quite different angles from the previous evening. It seemed like a new world, despite the inescapable echoes from the past. This land had seen starvation, violent uprisings, extreme weather, great flocks of sheep coming and going, smaller flocks of tourists and walkers and photographers and writers all intent on making the most of the accidental beauty of the landscape and its stone. And yet there was no sign of human life until she reached the turning down to Stow. She had not passed another car for a mile or more. Drew’s careful words were circling around in her head, trying to take root either in hurt feelings or a determination to show him her best side. The trouble was that she really couldn’t justify going back to the scene of the murder. Nobody had asked her to. There might be nothing to do when she got there. Just because she had blunderingly lent a hand in earlier investigations was no guarantee that she would be useful this time. The dreamy inward-looking Cotswolds could get along quite well without her interventions, and the murder of a young man would be solved by professionals, sooner or later.
But she kept going, and the A429 was busy. She sped along between two large lorries and was soon in Northleach, approaching along the former turnpike that had been bypassed for several decades. Driving eastwards, she noted new buildings, showing how the town was growing uncomfortably fast – as were most others across the country. And yet the heart of the place remained much the same. She carried on down High Street, curious to see whether there were any signs of disturbance after the discovery of a murder victim. Cars were parked at crooked angles around the town square, surrounded by a prosperous range of small shops, with public toilets set usefully at the foot of the incline. The majestic church watched over it all, completing the picture, as it had since the fifteenth century. Nothing looked any different from before, and she turned round to go back to Lucy Sinclair’s house. There was a slowly dawning sense of panic at the total lack of visible activity. She had been wrong to come. There were countless tasks she could be performing at home, not just as a wife but also as a stepmother.
Schools, after all, expected a great deal by way of clothes, homework, lunch money, meetings, and commitment to whatever ethos featured in the latest newsletter. There had been two parents’ evenings the previous week, which she and Drew both went to. Both came away with a sensation of having been subjected to something faintly Stalinist. ‘We’ve been brainwashed,’ said Drew. ‘Twice.’ It all felt dreadfully relentless, the years stretching endlessly ahead, with the whole treadmill going round and round, term after term. The fact that everybody did it with little obvious complaint only made it worse. Thea Slocombe did not naturally conform to what ‘everybody’ did. ‘So do you want to home school them?’ Drew had once demanded in exasperation.
‘Only if that means setting them loose in the woods all day,’ she had sighed.
But now, she had left it all behind for the day. It was easy to understand those mothers who threw aside their smothering blanket of guilt and signed up for demanding full-time jobs, which gave them the best possible justification for forgetting about homework and school dinners and torn skirts. Hadn’t Stephanie said that very thing just that morning, without any hint of criticism? They could pay someone else to do all the tedious stuff and go out to sell things, whether it be cornflakes or futures in gold. Some of the time at least, this made sense to Thea.
She let herself into Lucy’s house, feeling oddly intrusive. A lot had changed since she’d spoken to the woman on Tuesday, and she was not at all confident that she was still required. For one thing, there was no knowing when Lucy would come home. Perhaps she had suffered brain damage and would no longer be able to live independently. And surely the sudden, violent death of her stepson would have some influence on future decisions. This gave Thea pause for thought. What would have been the relationship between Lucy and Ollie, now she was divorced from Kevin? Had she been in the role of mother throughout the boy’s adolescence? Had he sided with his father and cut off all relations with Lucy? Since he apparently lived a few hundred yards away in the same small town, this seemed unlikely. Perhaps he had deliberately sought her out, hoping for support or money or both.
The living room felt chilly, the curtains left open – for which Thea reproached herself. Unlike Bobby Latimer, Lucy liked to keep nosy pedestrians unsatisfied, although this house did not have heavy shutters like some of its neighbours. Without the spaniel, Thea felt exposed and alone. There was something to the notion of a daemon, a companion who was always there, uncritical and loving. Not to mention the convenience of being able to talk out loud without sounding crazy. ‘Oh – just talking to my dog,’ she would say, if anyone looked askance.
But she did not have long on her own. Barely five minutes after entering the house, she had a visitor, tapping on the window, as had happened the day before at Bobby’s. Evidently this was the preferred means of attracting attention amongst the locals.
It was one of the two women from next door. The one with protuberant eyes and small chin. Faith, if Thea remembered rightly. She went to let her in, reminding herself as she did so that this was Lucy’s house, and this woman was not Lucy’s friend. Lucy had, in fact, specifically warned against her and her housemate.
‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘But I saw your car. No dog?’ She looked around.
‘No,’ said Thea.
‘Any news?’
‘About what?’
‘Lucy, of course. How is she? Nobody seems to know what’s happening. All that business down the street has driven everything else out of people’s heads. Awful thing t
o happen.’ She lowered her voice to a respectful whisper, but her face showed no sign of emotion.
‘I think Lucy’s a lot better now,’ Thea said stiffly.
‘They say it’s that boy, Oliver, who died. Using that house for all kinds of disgraceful activities, apparently. He was a drug addict, you know. Shocking waste. I can never understand why people … oh well, never mind that now. It’s very sad for poor Kevin. To think we only saw him yesterday.’
With difficulty, Thea kept her mouth shut, waiting for something that might account for this visitation. Idle curiosity was the most likely explanation. Faith had probably been sent by Livia to find out as much as she could from the renowned amateur detective who had suddenly arrived in their midst. Inwardly, Thea sighed – going by her reputation, it was perfectly possible that the people of Northleach had expected a murder once Thea Slocombe, formerly Osborne, showed up. But no way was she going to disclose any information that might get this person excited. There was something faintly unwholesome about her, in spite of the smart clothes and expensive hair.
Faith went on obliviously. ‘What will you do now, I wonder? Lucy was expecting to be home in a few days, wasn’t she? And there really isn’t anybody else she can turn to. Fancy having to use the girl across the road as her main contact for the hospital! I mean, isn’t that dreadful, not having any real friends or relatives? Even a cousin or something. I suppose it’s the small families people have nowadays. As for me, I’ve got two sisters and at least eight cousins. And Livia’s got her boys, and countless nieces and nephews. We’re awash with relations.’ Finally, she heard herself and came to a sudden halt. ‘Sorry – too much information,’ she said with smile.
‘Have you lived here long?’ Thea thought to ask. Not only was it a safe question, but she thought it might tell her something helpful.
‘Twelve years or so. We came just after Livia’s divorce came through.’
‘I see.’ Several more questions pressed eagerly to be voiced, but she resolved to take it slowly. If she’d got any kind of handle on this woman, there would not need to be much prompting. So long as she stuck to facts – which would not be difficult.
