by Dyan Sheldon
Of all the things to be late for, home is the least forgiving. If his father could install a time clock, he would. Orlando isn’t that worried tonight because there’s a bug doing the rounds of the station, so his father’s been working overtime this week. Nonetheless, as a precautionary measure, he drives home as fast as he can without risking a ticket. Where his father’s concerned, he can’t be too careful. Unfortunately, it seems that he hasn’t been careful enough. Either that or his father’s colleagues have all had miraculous recoveries and he hasn’t had to take on any extra hours. Officer Gwinnet is at the front door before Orlando gets out of the car.
“You know what time it is, boy?” His father steps off the porch like a policeman who knows you were speeding and isn’t going to take any guff. “Where the hell have you been?”
Orlando freezes, standing on the ground but holding on to the car door. “I had practice.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Practice was over hours ago.”
“I was hanging out with some of the guys.”
“Do I look like a vegetable patch that you think I need manure dumped on me?” bellows his father. His fists are clenched. “I talked to Mena. You didn’t go anywhere with anyone. He kept you after. He kept you after because you’ve been messing up again. Lying to me and messing up! So where the hell have you been?”
Dancing the night away, where else?
This, however, is no time for jokes. With every word out of his mouth, his father takes another step towards him. Thump. Thump. Thump. Orlando can see his mother at the living-room window, curtain twitching, looking worried if not actually terrified.
Which makes two of them. It doesn’t happen often, but his father has been known to throw a punch. Suzanne and Orlando have both walked into more than one wall over the years.
It’s Sorrel who screams, “For Christ’s sake, Orlando, get in the car!”
Officer Gwinnet is so surprised to see his son suddenly jump back into the driver’s seat and slam the door shut that he stops in his tracks. “Where do you think you’re going?” he shouts. “You come back here!”
But Orlando is already almost out of the driveway.
Sorrel, looking out of the rear window, watches Orlando’s father recede and then turns around to face the road. “Phew. That was kind of scary. I really thought he was going to deck you.”
Orlando, catching his breath, just grunts. He thought so, too.
Sorrel stretches out in the passenger seat. “And to think you were having such a good day.”
“Was I?” Orlando’s heart is galloping. It’s amazing how quickly a good day can turn into a bad night. “I don’t remember that right now.”
“Well, you were. Okay, not with Mena. That was pretty bleak. But with Stella it was ace. You can’t’ve forgotten that already. The way she praised you. All that stuff about not wasting your obvious talent. Didn’t I tell you that you’d be good at acting?” Apparently death does nothing to encourage modesty. “I hope you remember who pushed you into this when you’re a famous Broadway star.”
“Like you give me any chance to forget you.” He looks into the rear-view but his father isn’t pursuing, blue light flashing. “And you know what, Sorrel? I’d really like to forget you. I’d like to forget about you the way I’ve forgotten the name of the kid who sat next to me in kindergarten. But instead you keep popping up all the time. Needling and niggling me. And making things worse. Like this. Now I’m really in trouble.”
“In trouble for what? You didn’t do anything, Orlando. So one time you break this bogus curfew. Big mega deal. It’s not like you were out drinking till three in the morning. It’s not even midnight, so you’re hardly late at all. He’s just riled because you didn’t do exactly what he wanted. For God’s sake, you’re eighteen – he can’t keep you on a lead for ever. You have to start acting like an independent person sometime.”
There are few things more guaranteed to cause anger than someone telling you the truth you don’t want to hear.
“Christ. Why don’t you leave me alone?” He slams his hands down on the wheel and hits the horn. “Look at me. You listened to your crazy mother and I listen to you. I’m going to have to go back.” And face the wrath of Gwinnet.
“But not yet,” says Sorrel. “Give him time to calm down.”
“And what should I do instead? Drive around in circles all night? I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Yes you do.” She points through the windscreen. “You’re going there.”
He comes to a stop in front of Ruben’s. The house is dark.
“He isn’t in.”
“Of course he’s in. Except for school stuff he pretty much goes out less than a cloistered monk.”
“Okay, maybe he’s there. But you know he’s not going to let me in. It’s been like a year since I got through that door.”
She sighs. Apparently he’s being exasperating. “Then why did you come here?”
Because this is where he always came when things were bad.
“And anyway, you don’t have anything to lose. The worst that happens is Ruben won’t let you in and you go home and get a black eye.”
What a choice.
Orlando climbs out of the car and walks up to the front door. He rings the bell. It doesn’t work. He knocks. He knocks again.
“Keep your shirt on!” He hears Ruben coming from the kitchen. Sees him peer through the peephole.
“It’s me. Orlando.”
Ruben opens the door.
From somewhere behind him, Ruben’s mother calls, “Who is it? Is that Orlando?”
“Yeah, it’s Orlando,” Ruben calls back.
“I had no place else to go,” says Orlando.
Ruben steps aside. “Then you’d better come in.”
Orlando glances over his shoulder as he steps into the house. Sorrel is still in the passenger seat, watching him. Making sure he goes inside. Not that she has to worry about that.
The anniversary of Sorrel Groober’s death is warm and sunny, a day that shines with life.
Ruben parks the car and walks down the tree-lined path that leads to Sorrel’s grave without any hesitation. This route is another of the things he’ll never forget. There’s something about carrying a coffin that makes a lasting impression.
It’s early – Ruben’s on his way to work – so he’s surprised to find that he isn’t the first visitor of the morning. There is already a large and expensive bunch of flowers – similar to the one Sorrel was waving around the time he saw her in the cemetery outside Peakston – lying beside the headstone. He stands at the foot of the grave, smiling as he reads the inscription. It says neither: After all we did for her, this is how she thanks us, nor: If we’d known this was going to happen we wouldn’t have spent all that money on her teeth, but: Treasured Daughter and Sister, you will always be missed, always loved – and beneath it: Death is not the end.
“Death is not the end,” reads Ruben. If the last twelve months has taught him anything, it’s that. He opens the bag he’s carrying and takes out a framed print of the painting he did from the photo of them all at Sorrel’s birthday last year. He leans the picture against its base. “I thought you should have a copy, too,” he says, “but, you know, I didn’t want to put it out in bad weather.” In some ways he can’t believe it’s been a whole year; and in some ways he can’t believe it’s only been one. Everything’s so different from the way it was. The lights are back on in the Rossi house, Sylvia is back to herself and planning an extensive author tour in the Autumn, and Ruben’s using all the money he’s saved to take a year off to travel, paintbox, brushes and pencils in his backpack. The only thing that hasn’t changed, of course, is that Sorrel is still dead. “But never gone,” says Ruben. And this time removes a single red rose from the bag, laying it on the top of the stone.
The only time she was in this cemetery, Celeste had been in such a state that she has to get directions to the site from the office, and even with map in hand g
ets so confused that it takes her nearly half an hour to find Sorrel’s grave.
She sees immediately that she’s not the only one to remember what day this is; people have been here before her. The picture could only have been brought by Ruben – she has the same one hanging on the wall of her room. She’s not so sure about the rose or the elaborate bouquet.
“I just thought I’d stop by and say hi. You know. I’ll be leaving for my dad’s soon, so I might not get another chance for a while.” Celeste has no flowers or pictures, but she has brought a gift. “I wrote you another song.”
And without so much as looking around to make sure that she’s alone, Celeste closes her eyes and begins to sing, her strong, clear voice mixing with the rustling of the leaves and the cries of the birds and the silence of the visitors at other graves who have stopped what they were doing to look up and listen.
Orlando arrives late in the afternoon with a dwarf lilac in a plastic pot, a bottle of water and a trowel. He wanted blossoms, but it’s late for that. It was his mother who suggested he actually plant a small bush. “Then, whenever you come back to visit, it’ll be there.” Which wasn’t a statement but a question: You will come back to visit, won’t you? Of course he’ll come back to visit his mother. Who, unlike his other parent, came to the Peakston Players’ performance and beamed with happiness at the party afterwards; has given him money to help him get started on his new life and is still speaking to him. Who is proud of him and not enraged with disappointment. Suzanne thinks his father will come around – in time – but Orlando isn’t going to hold his breath. If Bernard does, he does; if he doesn’t, then that’s his call. Orlando no longer intends to lead Bernard’s life for him.
Orlando kneels in the grass. Remembering Sorrel and the scent of lilacs, remembering carrying the casket from the hearse, one foot after the other – but mainly remembering her. Thinking about having a future, he digs a hole beside death is not the end. When it’s deep enough, he tips the tiny shrub from its pot, being careful not to cover any of the words, patting the earth down around it. Then he gets to his feet, brushing the soil from the knees of his jeans. “Sorrel Marlene Groober,” he reads out loud. “Treasured Daughter and Sister.” Then adds, “And friend.”
Like Ruben and Celeste, Orlando stops and looks back as he leaves the grave, thinking he might see Sorrel sitting on her own headstone, waving goodbye. But he doesn’t, of course.
The dead don’t hang around once the job is done.
Praise for Dyan Sheldon
“Outrage and delight in a curious rich mix distinguish Dyan Sheldon’s fiction. Her ear is tuned, her eye is clear, she is smart and generous, tough and funny.”
The New York Times Book Review
“Glittering with wit and charm.”
Publishers Weekly on Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (New York Times Bestseller)
“Her skill lies in her ability to create comic yet convincing characters … and to satirise without sneering. Gripping.”
Daily Telegraph on More than One Way to Be a Girl
“The teenage girl’s lot is treated with empathy and humour.”
The Times on Tall, Thin and Blonde
“A great read that’ll have you hooked from the start.”
The Sunday Times on Confessions of a Teenage Hollywood Star
“Drily funny … impeccable comic timing and a strong sense of irony”
Publishers Weekly on The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love
“Constantly funny, splendidly witty: a bull’s eye”
Kirkus Reviews on The Truth About My Success
Other books by Dyan Sheldon
And Baby Makes Two
Away for the Weekend
Bursting Bubbles
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
Confessions of a Teenage Hollywood Star
The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love
I Conquer Britain
Just Friends
More than One Way to Be a Girl
My Perfect Life
My Worst Best Friend
One or Two Things I Learned About Love
Planet Janet
Planet Janet in Orbit
Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America
Tall, Thin and Blonde
The Truth About My Success
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.
First published in Great Britain 2018 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2018 Dyan Sheldon
Cover illustration © 2018 Anna Morrison
The right of Dyan Sheldon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-8200-6 (ePub)
www.walker.co.uk
