by Jill Mansell
Shay checked his watch. ‘Ten past four.’
‘Now I know what you’re doing.’
‘Go on then, tell me.’
‘You heard that thing on the radio about sick people being more likely to die at this time of night.’
He was right, as usual. Shay said, ‘What are you, some kind of mind-reader?’
‘Yes. And I’m not going to die tonight, so you can go back to bed.’
‘Bossy as ever.’
‘I’m feeling pretty good, if you must know.’
He was certainly sounding brighter than he had for the last couple of days. He’d been sleeping more, but the pain was under control. When the hospice nurse had paid a visit at the weekend, she’d asked him if he wanted to come into the hospice, and Red had explained that he’d really prefer to spend his remaining time here at home.
Shay said, ‘Can I get you anything?’ and his father nodded. ‘Wouldn’t say no to a Drambuie.’
‘At this time? Are you sure?’
‘Hey, I didn’t die tonight. We may as well celebrate.’
Fair enough. Shay poured the drinks and brought them back to the bed next to the French windows. One of the security lights had come on; a hedgehog was ambling across the patio.
‘Cheers,’ said Shay, and they clinked tumblers.
‘Good health.’ Red smiled slightly. ‘That’s a joke.’
‘Don’t give up the day job.’
‘What’s going to happen after I’m gone?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Will you stay here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about Caz?’
‘What about her?’
‘I want to know what I’m going to be missing. Do you think she’s the one for you?’
Shay shook his head. ‘Dad, you’re asking me questions I can’t answer.’
‘OK then, tell me what you most want to happen. Best-case scenario.’
Right now, there was no best-case scenario. Avoiding the question, he said, ‘It’s way too soon to be making plans for me and Caz.’
‘When I met your mother, I knew right away she was the one for me. By the end of that first evening, it was a done deal. I told everyone I’d found the girl I was going to spend the rest of my life with.’ Red covered his mouth to cough, then said, ‘Do you ever wonder what she’d look like now? I do. God, I wish she was still here.’ He gazed out through the window at the night sky, speckled with stars. ‘Maybe she is. Maybe she’s waiting for me, giving me a nudge and telling me to get a move on.’
Shay said, ‘You were lucky.’
‘When you know, you know.’
‘It’s not always that straightforward.’ As he’d found out to his cost.
‘Do you know why I wanted to move into this house?’ Red asked. ‘Because I thought getting you back here might sort you out.’
‘Sort me out in what way?’
‘You’re thirty-one. I’ve met plenty of your girlfriends over the years, seen the way you are with them. And they’ve all been great girls in their own way.’ Red coughed again, then took another swallow of Drambuie. ‘But you’ve never been as happy with any of them as you were with Didi.’
Tell me something I don’t know.
Shay’s heart thudded. ‘We were kids.’
‘I know. So was I when I met your mum.’
He sat forward. ‘Are you seriously telling me you emotionally blackmailed me into spending the whole summer working seventy hours a week, all because you thought it might help to get me and Didi back together?’
‘Well that was the plan. Didn’t bloody work, though, did it?’
‘She’s about to get married.’
‘You could have persuaded her to change her mind.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Never too late.’ Red’s breathing was becoming more laboured.
‘Just because you want something to happen doesn’t mean it’s going to,’ said Shay. ‘Maybe if she hadn’t met Aaron first, things might have been different. But she did, and I’m not going to try and break them up, because that’d be a shitty thing to do. And it’s not my decision to make either. Didi’s the one who chooses whether or not she gets married.’
‘You and your morals. I don’t know where you get them from.’ Red summoned a brief smile. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry I ruined everything for the two of you.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Shay reminded him. ‘You didn’t break in and empty the safe.’
‘Ah, but I’d done enough other stuff to make people assume I had. If I’d had a proper job, led a decent life, Didi’s parents would never have thought it was me in the first place.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Time to change the subject. ‘Can I ask you something?’
His father chuckled and coughed. ‘Before I die, you mean?’
‘It would help if you’re still around to give me an answer.’ Both their glasses were empty; Shay reached for the bottle and refilled them.
‘Go on then, fire away.’
‘Did anything ever happen between you and Maura Laing?’
Red raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘I always wondered if it did.’
‘Well, nothing happened.’
‘Really?’
‘No need to sound so surprised.’
‘I thought you were going to say yes. After all, you had more than your share of adventures.’
‘I did.’ Red nodded, shifting his legs into a more comfortable position. ‘But not with Maura.’
‘OK.’
‘Guess why not?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘She wanted to. Well, we both did. But I said no. Because I didn’t want to risk doing anything that might make the situation awkward for you and Didi.’
Shay looked at him, silhouetted in the dim lamplight. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Completely. It’s one of the few honourable things I’ve done in my life.’
‘Dad.’ Touched, Shay said, ‘I can’t believe you did that. I’m impressed.’
‘So you should be. Waste of time, though, wasn’t it? You two broke up anyway.’
Which meant this had happened – or rather not happened – prior to the burglary. Casting his mind back to the days after it had taken place, Shay recalled the oddness of Maura’s reaction to it, her discomfort and awkwardness, the distinct feeling he’d had that she was hiding something, or at least knew more than she was letting on.
Oh well, if you couldn’t ask a tricky question mere days or weeks before your father died, when could you ask it? He said slowly, ‘Do you think Maura was involved in the robbery in some way? I mean, I’m not saying she did it. But had she been persuaded for one reason or another to give someone the keys?’
Did that sound crazy? Maybe, but it had lurked in the back of his mind for years.
‘Shay, she wasn’t involved. I can one hundred per cent guarantee it. Maura had no idea who was behind the robbery, and that’s the truth.’
Right. Shay exhaled. That had come as even more of a relief than he’d expected. It felt like a weight slipping from his shoulders. ‘OK. That’s good.’
‘I know who did do it.’ Red tilted his head. ‘Want me to tell you?’
‘Was it anyone . . . significant?’
‘No one from your family. Or Didi’s.’
Shay considered this. ‘No need for me to know, then.’ Sometimes it was easier not to.
‘If you’re ever curious, ask Maura. I told her when she came to see me the other week.’ Red yawned; his eyelids were starting to close now. The tumbler of Drambuie was tilting in his hand. Removing it before it spilled over the bed, Shay said quietly, ‘No one can say you haven’t lived an interesting life.’
The corners of his father’s mouth lifted. ‘It’s been good. And now it’s your turn to carry on.’
‘I’ll try to stay out of prison, if that’s OK.’
‘You do that.’ Red’s eyes flickered open and he rested his hand on top of Sha
y’s. ‘Did I ever tell you I love you?’
‘Several hundred times.’ It was Shay’s turn to smile. ‘I love you too, Dad.’
‘Be happy,’ Red murmured.
Shay swallowed hard. ‘I will.’
A woman in an emerald-green coat was waiting outside Hillcrest, lurking beneath a navy golfing umbrella, when Shay arrived back from the funeral home a fortnight later. Red had left strict instructions that he wanted to be buried wearing a black suit, white shirt and crimson tie, because that was what he’d worn on his wedding day.
Having delivered the clothes, Shay had been half tempted to stop off at the pub for lunch on the way home. Seeing as it was raining hard and his visitor was looking pretty sodden, it was just as well he hadn’t. He pulled onto the driveway and climbed out of the car.
‘At last,’ Maura Laing exclaimed. ‘I’ve been standing here for ages.’
He unlocked the front door and led the way inside. Once she’d peeled off her sodden coat, Maura threw her arms around him. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry about your father. He was one of a kind.’
‘He was,’ Shay agreed. ‘Thank you.’ Maura had always been the sort of person who called everyone darling, but it still felt weird coming from someone who’d once sacked you.
‘As soon as Didi told me he’d gone, I knew I had to fly over for the funeral.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘Such a lovely man.’ She hesitated. ‘The thing is, the other thing is, there’s something I need your help with.’
Here it came. ‘In what way?’
‘Red left something here for me and I need it. Kind of . . . today.’
Shay nodded; Red’s actual words to him had been: ‘If Maura turns up asking for something, let her have it.’
Whatever it might be.
‘You’ll have to tell me where it is,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get it for you.’
She turned and gestured through the window. ‘It’s out there.’
The rain was now hammering down harder than ever. He frowned. ‘I’m going to need more of a clue than that.’
‘It’s in the garden. In the ground,’ Maura elaborated. ‘Under the mulberry tree.’
What the hell?
‘And you really want it now?’
‘Yes please.’
The thing about growing up with a father like Red was you learned to expect the unexpected and take it in your stride. Thankfully this section of the garden was hidden from view of any passing cars. Having instructed him where to dig, Maura was now hovering next to Shay like a flamingo, holding the golf umbrella over her own head rather than his.
After digging for a while and finding nothing, he said, ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
‘Red said it was here. He came out and showed me. I did try to get it myself, but the ground was rock hard back then. You should have seen the state of my nails.’ She grimaced. ‘They looked terrible afterwards. Gardening really isn’t my thing.’
Minutes later, the garden spade struck something hard. After that, it didn’t take long to unearth the biscuit tin swathed in heavy-duty plastic. The lid of the tin was securely sealed, wrapped round a dozen times with gaffer tape.
Back in the house, dripping mud and rainwater at every step, Shay rinsed off the tin and dried it with a towel. Handing it to Maura, he said, ‘Do I get to see what’s inside?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Are you worried it’s something that might make me think less of my father?’
Maura shook her head. ‘Not at all.’
‘Well that’s good. Although just so you know, it wouldn’t have made me think less of him.’
‘The reason I don’t want you to see it is because I don’t want you to think less of me.’ Maura spoke with what seemed to be genuine regret. ‘I try to be a good person, Shay, but sometimes I fail. Can we leave it at that? By keeping this buried in the garden, your father was helping me.’ Tears brimmed in her eyes as she tucked the tin under her arm. ‘At least he was honest about being dishonest. In so many ways, he was a better person than me.’
Chapter 41
By the next day, the storm had thankfully passed. The sun came out and a blustery wind caused playful havoc with hats and dress hems as the mourners emerged from the church and gathered around the open grave.
Didi was glad she was wearing trousers. At her side, Maura was struggling to prevent the flimsy silk of her pineapple-yellow frock from flying up and revealing her Spanx. She murmured, ‘Why don’t I hold your handbag for you?’ but her mother shook her head firmly.
‘I can manage.’
Didi took her at her word. She still had no idea why her mother had been so determined to visit Shay yesterday afternoon. It had made her yearn, suddenly and overwhelmingly, to be with him herself, just the two of them together, so she could tell him how sorry she was about everything and they could reminisce fondly about Red. But as she’d been preparing to drive over, her mother had announced that she needed to see Shay, no it couldn’t wait, and Didi would just have to be patient and wait her turn. And that had been it. By the time Maura had returned two hours later, Didi had been too busy sorting out a staffing issue to get away, and when she was finally able to escape, it was too late; having managed to get time off from filming on location in Cape Town, Caz had arrived back in Elliscombe.
Now, in the graveyard, a broad-brimmed black hat flew off the head of an elegant brunette and cartwheeled between a row of gravestones. In fact now that Didi was paying attention, it was noticeable that amongst the two hundred or so mourners there were quite a number of attractive older women attending without partners.
Well, Red had always been popular with the ladies.
Small white clouds scudded across the sky as the vicar began to speak. The attractive older women dabbed carefully at their eyes with hankies, attempting with varying degrees of success not to wreck their make-up. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the sound of muted sobbing was audible.
Didi saw the lines of grief drawn on Shay’s face and longed to be able to comfort him. But it wasn’t her place; he didn’t belong to her. At his side, a single tear slid down Caz’s left cheek as she rested her head against his shoulder. She was looking beautiful, holding his hand supportively and gazing with ineffable sadness into the open grave as he now stepped forward to drop a handful of earth onto the lid of the wicker coffin.
The ceremony was concluded and the invitation issued for everyone to come back to Hillcrest. People began to drift away from the graveyard. Shay stayed where he was, with Caz beside him. Didi wondered if he was imagining that Red had finally been reunited with Mel, the wife he’d loved more than all the other women who’d subsequently danced in and out of his eventful life.
Hopefully they were now together forever, and Shay could add his father’s details to the black marble gravestone commemorating his mother. Watching him, Didi’s eyes misted over.
‘Come on.’ Maura tugged at her arm. ‘We don’t want to be the last ones there, do we? I need a drink.’
Most of those who’d attended the funeral went back to Hillcrest for the wake. Luckily the blustery wind died down, enabling people to mingle both in the house and outside in the sunny garden. Drinks and canapés were served, tales were told about Red, and Didi found herself recognising people she hadn’t seen for years. There was Big Gav and his wife, both knocking back the cider and helping themselves to sausage rolls. Over on the other side of the garden was Barbie, who’d once owned the florist’s shop on the market square before moving away over a decade ago.
‘Who’s that?’ Maura pointed at a dumpy woman in a tight-fitting cream trouser suit.
‘Haven’t the faintest,’ said Didi.
‘What about her over there?’
‘Mum, I’m not Google! I have no idea! Red knew people from all over the place.’
Slept with most of them too.
‘I recognise the woman with the wobbly chins.’ Layla joined them, having overhea
rd the conversation. ‘She has a dear little jewellery shop on Garrett Street in Cheltenham. I bought Mum’s charm bracelet from there for her birthday.’
‘Ah, that’s right.’ Maura nodded a bit jerkily, her cheeks reddening. ‘That’s how I recognise her. I knew I knew her from somewhere.’
It was a while later that Didi turned and caught Shay’s eye across the garden. Caz was otherwise occupied chatting to the elderly couple who ran the funeral parlour, and Shay was briefly alone. When he half smiled and began to move towards her, she met him halfway.
She greeted him with a fleeting kiss on the cheek – oh God, it might be fleeting but it still played havoc with her heart rate – and said, ‘How are you doing?’
‘Be glad when it’s over.’ Again the crooked smile. ‘Except it won’t be over, will it? He’s not coming back.’
‘He loved you so much. And you’ve done him proud.’ She longed to hug him, but what if she started and couldn’t stop? Imagine how embarrassing that would be, in front of everyone. ‘At least he got to spend time in his old home. I was so worried he wouldn’t have the chance. He was so happy to be back here, too.’
‘I know. It meant the world to him.’ The expression in Shay’s eyes was unreadable as he glanced at her then looked away. ‘Thank goodness we managed to get the place finished in time.’
People were watching them; Didi could feel their gazes. Living in a small town where everyone knew you had its drawbacks. ‘And how about you, any plans for the next few weeks? You need to relax, take things easy.’ As she said it, Caz managed to escape from the elderly couple and crossed the lawn to join them.
‘Can you believe it? They asked for a selfie. Hello, you!’ She gave Didi a big hug. ‘God, all this being nice to strangers is exhausting.’
‘I was just telling Shay, he needs to take time to unwind.’
‘You’re absolutely right.’ Caz slid her arm around Shay’s waist. ‘I said the same. He has to get away for a proper break. One of my mates has a place in St Lucia and she said we can stay there for as long as we like, but Shay’s not sure he wants to.’ She gave Didi an encouraging nudge. ‘Come on, back me up here. Tell him he needs to go.’
Here it was, one of those situations you didn’t want to find yourself in. Not wanting him to go at all, but unable to say so, Didi nodded at Shay. ‘It’d do you good.’
