— CHAPTER 2 —
The funerals had been given various prefixes over the years—“public health,” “contract,” “welfare,” “Section 46”—but none of the attempted rebrands would ever replace the original. When Andrew had come across the expression “pauper’s funeral” he’d found it quite evocative; romantic, even, in a Dickensian sort of way. It made him think of someone a hundred and fifty years ago in a remote village—all mud and clucking chickens—succumbing to a spectacular case of syphilis, dying at the fine old age of twenty-seven and being bundled merrily into a pit to regenerate the land. In practice, what he experienced was depressingly clinical. The funerals were now a legal obligation for councils across the UK, designed for those who’d slipped through the cracks—their death perhaps only noticed because of the smell of their body decomposing, or an unpaid bill. (It had been on several occasions now where Andrew had found that the deceased had enough money in a bank account for direct debits to cover utility bills for months after their death, meaning the house was kept warm enough to speed up their body’s decomposition. After the fifth harrowing instance of this, he’d considered mentioning it in the “Any other comments” section on his annual job satisfaction survey. In the end he went with asking if they could have another kettle in the shared kitchen.)
Another phrase he had become well acquainted with was “The Nine O’Clock Trot.” His boss, Cameron, had explained its origin to him while violently piercing the film on a microwavable biryani. “If you die alone”—stab, stab, stab—“you’re most likely buried alone too”—stab, stab, stab—“so the church can get the funeral out of the way at nine o’clock, safe in the knowledge that every train could be canceled”—stab—“every motorway gridlocked”—stab—“and it wouldn’t make a difference.” A final stab. “Because nobody’s on their way.”
In the previous year Andrew had arranged twenty-five of these funerals (his highest annual total yet). He’d attended all of them, too, though he wasn’t technically required to do so. It was, he told himself, a small but meaningful gesture for someone to be there who wasn’t legally obligated. But increasingly he found himself watching the simple, unvarnished coffins being lowered into the ground in a specially designated yet unmarked plot, knowing they would be uncovered three or four more times as other coffins were fitted in like a macabre game of Tetris, and think that his presence counted for nothing.
* * *
—
As Andrew sat on the bus to the office, he inspected his tie and shoes, both of which had seen better days. There was a persistent stain on his tie, origin unknown, that wouldn’t budge. His shoes were well polished but starting to look worn. Too many nicks from churchyard gravel, too many times the leather had strained where he’d curled his toes at a vicar’s verbal stumble. He really should replace both, come payday.
Now that the funeral was over, he took a moment to mentally file away John (surname Sturrock, he discovered, having turned on his phone). As ever, he tried to resist the temptation to obsess over how John had ended up in such a desperate position. Was there really no niece or godson he was on Christmas-card terms with? Or an old school friend who called, even just on his birthday? But it was a slippery slope. He had to stay as objective as possible, for his own sake, if only to be mentally strong enough to deal with the next poor person who ended up like this. The bus stopped at a red light. By the time it went green Andrew had made himself say a final good-bye.
He arrived at the office and returned Cameron’s enthusiastic wave with a more muted acknowledgment of his own. As he slumped into his well-weathered seat, which had molded itself to his form over the years, he let out a now sadly familiar grunt. He’d thought having only just turned forty-two he’d have a few more years before he began accompanying minor physical tasks by making odd noises, but it seemed to be the universe’s gentle way of telling him that he was now officially heading toward middle age. He only imagined before too long he’d wake up and immediately begin his day bemoaning how easy school exams were these days and bulk-buying cream chinos.
He waited for his computer to boot up and watched out of the corner of his eye as his colleague Keith demolished a hunk of chocolate cake and methodically sucked smears of icing from his stubby little fingers.
“Good one, was it?” Keith said, not taking his eyes off his screen, which Andrew knew was most likely showing a gallery of actresses who’d had the temerity to age, or something small and furry on a skateboard.
“It was okay,” Andrew said.
“Any rubberneckers?” came a voice from behind him.
Andrew flinched. He hadn’t seen Meredith take her seat.
“No,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “Just me and the vicar. It was his very first funeral, apparently.”
“Bloody hell, what a way to pop your cherry,” Meredith said.
“Better that than a room full of weepers, to be fair,” Keith said, with one final suck of his little finger. “You’d be shitting piss, wouldn’t you?”
The office phone rang and the three of them sat there not answering it. Andrew was about to bite but Keith’s frustration got the better of him first.
“Hello, Death Administration. Yep. Sure. Yep. Right.”
Andrew reached for his earphones and pulled up his Ella Fitzgerald playlist (he had only very recently discovered Spotify, much to Keith’s delight, who’d spent a month afterward calling Andrew “Granddad”). He felt like starting with a classic—something reassuring. He decided on “Summertime.” But he was only three bars in before he looked up to see Keith standing in front of him, belly flab poking through a gap between shirt buttons.
“Helloooo. Anybody there?”
Andrew removed his earphones.
“That was the coroner. We’ve got a fresh one. Well, not a fresh body obviously—they reckon he’d been dead a good few weeks. No obvious next of kin and the neighbors never spoke to him. Body’s been moved so they want a property inspection a-sap.”
“Right.”
Keith picked at a scab on his elbow. “Tomorrow all right for you?”
Andrew checked his diary.
“I can do first thing.”
“Blimey, you’re keen,” Keith said, waddling back to his desk. And you’re a slice of ham that’s been left out in the sun, Andrew thought. He went to put his earphones back in, but at that moment Cameron emerged from his office and clapped his hands together to get their attention.
“Team meeting, chaps,” he announced. “And yes, yes, don’t you worry—the current Mrs. Cameron has provided cake, as per. Shall we hit the break-out space?”
The three of them responded with the enthusiasm a chicken might if it were asked to wear a prosciutto bikini and run into a fox’s den. The “break-out space” consisted of a knee-high table flanked by two sofas that smelled unaccountably of sulfur. Cameron had floated the idea of adding beanbags, but this had been ignored, as were his suggestions of desk-swap Tuesdays, a negativity jar (“It’s a swear jar but for negativity!”) and a team park run. (“I’m busy,” Keith had yawned. “But I haven’t told you which day it’s on,” Cameron said, his smile faltering like a flame in a draft.) Undeterred by their complete lack of enthusiasm, Cameron’s most recent suggestion had been a suggestion box. This, too, had been ignored.
They gathered on the sofas and Cameron doled out cake and tea and tried to engage them with some banal small talk. Keith and Meredith had wedged themselves into the smaller of the two sofas. Meredith was laughing at something Keith had just whispered to her. Just as parents are able to recognize variants in the cries of their newborns, so Andrew had begun to understand what Meredith’s differing laughs denoted. In this particular instance, the high-pitched giggle indicated that someone was being cruelly mocked. Given that they kept very obviously sneaking glances in his direction, it seemed it was probably him.
“Rightio, lady and gents,” Came
ron said. “First things first, don’t forget we’ve got a new starter tomorrow. Peggy Green. I know we’ve struggled since Dan and Bethany left, so it’s super-cool to have a new pair of hands.”
“As long as she doesn’t get ‘stressed’ like Bethany,” Meredith said.
“Or turn out to be a knob like Dan,” Keith muttered.
“Anyway,” Cameron said, “what I actually wanted to talk to you about today is my weekly . . . honk! Honk!”—he honked an imaginary horn—“. . . fun idea! Remember, guys, this is something you can all get involved with. Doesn’t matter how crazy your idea is. The only rule is that it has to be fun.”
Andrew shuddered.
“So,” Cameron continued. “My fun idea this week is, drumroll please . . . that every month we have a get-together at one of our houses and we do dinner. A sort of Come Dine with Me vibe but without any judgment. We’ll have a bit of food, I daresay a bit of vino, and it’ll give us a chance to do some real bonding away from the office, get to know each other a bit better, meet the family and all that. I’m mega-happy to kick things off. Whaddya say?”
Andrew hadn’t heard anything past “meet the family.”
“Is there not something else we can do?” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Oh,” Cameron said, instantly deflated. “I thought that was actually one of my better ideas.”
“No, no, it is!” Andrew said, overcompensating now. “It’s just . . . couldn’t we just go to a restaurant instead?”
“Toooo expensive,” Keith said, spraying cake crumbs everywhere.
“Well, what about something else? I don’t know—Laser Quest or something. Is that still a thing?”
“I’m vetoing Laser Quest on the grounds I’m not a twelve-year-old boy,” Meredith said. “I like the dinner party idea. I’m actually a bit of a secret Nigella in the kitchen.” She turned to Keith. “I bet you’d go crazy for my lamb shank.” Andrew felt bile stir in his stomach.
“Go on, Andrew,” Cameron said, confidence renewed by Meredith’s giving his idea her blessing. He attempted a matey arm punch that caused Andrew to spill tea down his leg. “It’ll be a laugh! There’s no pressure to cook up anything fancy. And I’d love to meet Diane and the kids, of course. So, whaddya say? You up for this, buddy?”
Andrew’s mind was racing. Surely there was something else he could suggest as an alternative? Life drawing. Badger baiting. Anything. The others were just looking at him now. He had to say something.
“Bloody hell, Andrew. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Meredith said. “Your cooking can’t be that bad. Besides, I’m sure Diane’s a fabulous chef, among all her other talents, so she can help you out.”
“Hmmm,” Andrew murmured, tapping his fingertips together.
“She’s a lawyer, right?” Keith said. Andrew nodded. Maybe there’d be some catastrophic world event in the next few days, a lovely old nuclear war to make them all forget about this stupid idea.
“You’ve got that beautiful old town house Dulwich way, haven’t you?” Meredith said, practically leering. “Five-bed, isn’t it?”
“Four,” Andrew said. He hated it when she and Keith got like this. A tag team of mockery.
“Still,” Meredith said. “A lovely big four-bed, smart kids by all accounts, and Diane, your talented, breadwinning wife. What a dark old horse you are.”
Later, as Andrew prepared to leave the office, having been too distracted to do any meaningful work, Cameron appeared by his desk and dropped down onto his haunches. It felt like the sort of move he’d been taught in a course.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “I know you didn’t seem to fancy the dinner party idea, but just say you’ll have a think about it, okay, mate?”
Andrew needlessly shuffled some papers on his desk. “Oh, I mean . . . I don’t want to spoil things, it’s just . . . okay, I’ll think about it. But if we don’t do that I’m sure we can think of another, you know, fun idea.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cameron said, straightening up and addressing them all. “That goes for all of us, I hope. Come on, team—let’s get our bond on sooner rather than. Yeah?”
* * *
—
Andrew had recently splashed out on some noise-canceling earphones for his commute, so while he could see the man sitting opposite’s ugly sneeze and the toddler in the vestibule screaming at the utter injustice of being made to wear not one but two shoes, it simply appeared as a silent film incongruously soundtracked by Ella Fitzgerald’s soothing voice. It wasn’t long, however, before the conversation in the office started to repeat itself in his head, vying with Ella for his attention.
“Diane, your talented, breadwinning wife . . . smart kids . . . Beautiful old town house.” Keith’s smirk. Meredith’s leer. The conversation dogged him all the way to the station and continued as he went to buy food for that night’s dinner. That’s when he found himself standing in the corner shop by multi-bags of novelty potato chips named after celebrities and trying not to scream. After ten minutes of picking up and putting down the same four ready meals, feeling incapable of choosing one, he left empty-handed, walking out into the rain and heading home, his stomach rumbling.
He stood outside his front door, shivering. Eventually, when the cold became too much to bear, he brought out his keys. There was usually one day a week like this, when he’d pause outside, key in the lock, holding his breath.
Maybe this time.
Maybe this time it would be the lovely old town house behind that door: Diane starting to prepare dinner. The smell of garlic and red wine. The sound of Steph and David squabbling or asking questions about their homework, then the excitable cheers when he opened the door because Dad’s home, Dad’s home!
When he entered the hallway the smell of damp hit him even harder than usual. And there were the familiar scuff marks on the corridor walls and the intermittent, milky yellow of the faulty strip light. He trudged up the stairs, his wet shoes squeaking with each step, and slid the second key around on his key ring. He reached up to right the wonky number 2 on the door and went inside, met, as he had been for the last twenty years, by nothing but silence.
— CHAPTER 3 —
Five Years Previously
Andrew was late. This might not have been so much of a disaster if on the CV he’d submitted ahead of that morning’s job interview he hadn’t claimed to be “extremely punctual.” Not just punctual: extremely punctual. Was that even a thing? Were there extremities of punctuality? How might one even go about measuring such a thing?
It was his own stupid fault, too. He’d been crossing the road when a strange honking noise distracted him and he looked up. A goose was arrowing overhead, its white underside lit up orange by the morning sun, its shrill cries and erratic movement making it seem like a damaged fighter plane struggling back to base. It was just as the bird steadied itself and continued on its course that Andrew slipped on some ice. There was a brief moment where his arms windmilled and his feet gripped at nothing, like a cartoon character who’d just run off a cliff, before he hit the ground with an ugly thud.
“You okay?”
Andrew wheezed wordlessly in reply at the woman who had just helped him to his feet. He felt like someone had just taken a sledgehammer to his lower back. But it wasn’t this that stopped him from finding the words to thank the woman. There was something about the way she was looking at him—a half smile on her face, how she brushed her hair behind her ears—that was so startlingly familiar it left him breathless. The woman’s eyes seemed to be searching his face, as if she too had been hit with an intense feeling of recognition and pain. It was only after she’d said, “Well, bye then,” and walked off that Andrew realized she’d actually been waiting for him to thank her. He wondered if he should hurry after her to try to make amends. But just then a familiar tune began to play in his head. Blue moon, you saw me standing al
one. It took all his concentration to shake it away, squeezing his eyes shut and massaging his temples. By the time he looked again the woman was gone.
He dusted himself down, suddenly aware that people had seen him fall and were enjoying their dose of schadenfreude. He avoided eye contact and carried on, head down, hands thrust into his pockets. Gradually his embarrassment gave way to something else. It was in the aftermath of mishaps like this where he would feel it stir at his core and start to spread out, thick and cold, making it feel like he was walking through quicksand. There was nobody for him to share the story with. No one to help him laugh his way through it. Loneliness, however, was ever vigilant, always there to slow-clap his every stumble.
Though somewhat shaken up after his slip, he was fine apart from a small graze on his hand. (Now that he was nearing forty he was all too aware there was a small but visible spot on the horizon where such a standard slip would become “having a little fall.” He secretly welcomed the idea of a sympathetic stranger laying their coat over him as they waited for an ambulance, supporting his head and squeezing his hand.) But while he hadn’t suffered any damage, unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for his white shirt, which was now splattered with dirty brown water. He briefly considered trying to make something out of this and the graze to impress his interviewer. “What, this? Oh, on my way here I was briefly diverted by diving in front of a bus/bullet/tiger to save a toddler/puppy/dignitary. Anyway, did I mention I’m a self-starter and I work well on my own and as part of a team?” He decided on the more sensible option and dashed into the nearest Debenhams for a new shirt. The detour left him sweaty and out of breath, which was how he announced himself to the receptionist at the cathedral of concrete that was the council offices.
He took a seat as instructed and sucked in some deep, steadying breaths. He needed this job. Badly. He’d been working in various admin roles for the council of a nearby borough since his early twenties, finally finding a position that had stuck, and which he had been in for eight years before unceremoniously being made redundant. Andrew’s boss, Jill (a kind, rosy-cheeked Lancastrian with a “hug first, ask questions later” approach to life), had felt so terrible at having to let him go that she’d apparently called every council office in London asking about vacancies. The interview today was the only one that had come out of Jill’s calls, and her e-mail to him describing the job was frustratingly vague. From what Andrew could tell it was similar to what he’d been doing before, largely admin based, though it involved something to do with inspecting properties. More importantly, it paid exactly the same as his last job and he could start the following month. Ten years ago there had been a chance he might have considered a fresh start. Traveling, maybe, or a bold new career move. But these days just having to leave the house left him with an unspecific feeling of anxiety, so hiking to Machu Picchu or retraining as a lion tamer wasn’t exactly on the cards.
Something to Live For Page 2
