Last Child

by Terry Tyler

  That was the main problem, I think. The disbelief that a tragedy was playing out in front of their eyes.

  “They started clapping and shouting ‘Jaz, Jaz, Jaz’, waiting for him to appear on the other side,” she said.

  Jaz was not a strong swimmer, but it was only a fall into a river, no different from jumping off the high diving board at school, a bit less of a leap, if anything—

  One of them, a boy called Guy, said, “shut up, India’s right—something’s wrong.” He and the girl ran to where Jaz had fallen; Guy dived in and dragged him out, gave him the kiss of life, pumped his chest, rolled him over, like he’d learnt on a course at school, but it was useless.

  “I think it’s only in films that they suddenly start spluttering and spitting out water after they’ve already drowned,” India said.

  Just like his mother, Jaz died in a stupid accident that could so easily have been a near miss, one to relate in years to come (‘a second later and I would have been a goner!’), but there would be no more years for Harry’s son.

  I wish I had a religious faith so that I could think of him as safe with his father and mother, but I haven’t. Angie Seymour says hers is a great comfort, as is Jaz’s grandparents’. Isabella tells me that her mother, Cathy, who became a devout Christian after her second husband died, is saying prayers for Jaz’s soul, and for all of us. Even Erin says she sees him when she closes her eyes, with Harry.

  None of it means anything to me.

  Will Brandon said to me, “those two girls have seen far too much death,” and of course he was right. I was so glad Isabella still had her mother, but Erin, poor Erin, all she had left was her aunt Mary’s family who lived in Essex, and her maternal grandfather, Milton Hever, who scarcely bothered with her. Of Harry’s family there was only Dahlia, but though we expected her for the funeral, there was little contact.

  “She’s got us,” Will said, when I voiced this. “We’re her family.”

  A strange mish-mash of a family, that was what we were.

  Jaz’s funeral was held ten days after his death. So many attended, most of Lanchester Estates, all his school friends; poor Zach, Guy and Ollie, India, and Laurel, the pretty little thing who’d been his first girlfriend, in floods of tears, too young to have to face something like this. His old nanny, Bev, was there, and all of Ollie’s family. Will said it made him think of when Harry’s brother Alex died, almost forty years before.

  “That was a perfect summer day, too,” he said, his eyes misting over with memory as they so often did these days. “All wrong, all wrong.”

  The coffin was carried out to the musical accompaniment of some song Jaz liked. I don’t know what it was, I just know I never want to hear it again, though its melody stayed with me for days afterwards.

  I stood with Erin at the graveyard as people began to drift away.

  “I suppose today will be the end of the Seymours, as far as we’re concerned,” she said. I followed her gaze; Angie was helping Jaz’s grandparents into her car, whilst her daughters and Aiden got into Ned’s. Indeed, she had a point. They were no longer connected to Lanchester Estates, and now there were no family ties, either. Ned worked in London now, and we’d never connected much socially; it was all about Jaz. Give or take the odd Christmas party, I imagined our paths would now diverge.

  I turned to Erin. Her unmade-up eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she looked oddly beautiful, standing there in her black linen dress, the light summer breeze lifting her gorgeous chestnut hair away from her delicate, tanned shoulders.

  “Did you talk to Aiden?” I asked, in case she was finding his presence awkward.

  “No,” she said. “I wanted to, because what’s happened makes all the crap that went before not matter, doesn’t it? But he just looked away. He blames me for everything; well, he phoned me up drunk to say so, once, anyway. Like, he reckoned Kate leaving him was all my fault for seducing him, or some such bollocks.”

  She looked at me and we both smiled. It’s funny, isn’t it; when something terrible happens you think you will never smile or laugh ever again, but you just do.

  “Typical man,” I said. “I wondered if Kate would come. Maybe seeing Aiden again would have been too much for her. She said that she and her husband would be in Florida and she couldn’t make it, but I’m not sure.”

  Erin sniffed, and rubbed her nose with her hand; a childish gesture. “Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I don’t think she could have faced any of it.”

  Then we all went back to Lanchester Hall for the wake, and I was struck, as I always am at funerals, by the way everyone puts on their social front. I wanted to weep and wail, as I was sure others did, but we all behaved as if it was a sedate cocktail party. I said as much to Rosie Brandon; I’d had too much wine.

  “It’s because no one dares start weeping and wailing in case they set everyone else off, I think,” she said. “Or it’s because they know that they’ve got to deal with it, and get on with life.”

  And, of course, that was exactly what most people did. Not me, Isabella and Erin, though.

  ***

  About five days after Jaz died, I’d left Erin asleep and gone for a long walk with Dorothy and Parker; I needed to draw back and consider the bigger picture.

  Isabella now owned Lanchester Hall, though she said she couldn’t even begin to think about selling her house and moving back in, not yet.

  “I never walk through the front door without remembering the day my mother and I were made to leave,” she said, and I felt so much pain for her, not only because of everything she’d been through, but because she couldn’t let any of it go. More worryingly, though, she was now in control of Lanchester Estates, but was not in a fit state to manage anything.

  After the funeral, Will asked her, very gently, if she was up to going into work, but she waved him away, saying she was sure the wretched place would look after itself for a while.

  “Dudley won’t dare make any major decisions while he knows I might walk in at any moment,” she said, “and he can bloody well earn his keep until I’m ready to come back.”

  “She shouldn’t be away for too long,” Will said to me, later, “and she’ll have to appoint someone else to run North so she can take over the reins from Jim, neither of which will be easy. Oh dear, oh dear, he isn’t going to take being pushed down to second in command very well at all.”

  Isabella issued instructions to say that she was going to stay with her mother in Framlingham for a couple of weeks or so, and asked that she be allowed to grieve for her brother in peace. After this, she would go up to Pontefract to appoint her successor, then return to Eltham to take up her new role as chairwoman and managing director of Lanchester Estates. In the meantime, she trusted that Jim Dudley would act as MD in her absence, his position in the company to be discussed on her return.

  “It’s going to be a nightmare when she gets back,” Erin told me, the day after she’d delivered this missive. I’d actually spent a whole day at Heaven Sent because I had to interview some nannies seeking work (life went on, indeed), but called in to see Erin on the way back. I was glad that Pat was always there to keep Erin company, too, and was happy to stay.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she told me, when I mentioned to her, carefully, that perhaps this post had turned out very differently from how we’d imagined. “Erin said she considers me a friend, now, as well as an employee, and I’m as fond of her and the house as you are—she needs us, doesn’t she?”

  Erin tried to go back to work but found it all too much and was now taking some time off. When I arrived that day I found Will there, too. They were drinking on the sunny terrace; Pat had made a huge jug of Pimm’s, floating with cucumber slices and mint leaves. The day had been a baking hot one and after being stuck in an office for eight hours I welcomed the prospect of Pimm’s in the shade of the late afternoon. I joined them and helped myself; to my surprise, they were talking about the company.

  “I’m sure everyon
e will be very helpful where Isabella is concerned,” Will was saying.

  “Sure they will, in an ideal world,” said Erin. “I don’t think Jim realises how much things are going to change—Isabella’s going to put a damper on all his plans, especially the ones she doesn’t know about.”

  “Oh yes?” Will said. “Which ones are those?”

  “Don’t ask. Oh, you know Iz; she wants to take the company back to the 1950s. Jim has so many irons in the fire, though—he was building up something great, for Jaz, you know?”

  “And for himself,” Will said, with an only just discernible edge to his voice. “Don’t forget he’s a shareholder, too.”

  Erin went pink, then. “I don’t see that as such a bad thing. It’s good to keep the company’s image fresh—Dad would have agreed with everything Jim wants to do, and being a shareholder gives him more of an impetus to make it work, doesn’t it?” She closed her eyes for a moment and ran her fingers through her hair. “I hate to say this but Izzy being in charge is the worst thing that could happen. She wants to stagnate at best, go backwards at worst.”

  “Yes,” said Will, oh so tentatively, “however, sweetheart, there’s nothing you or I, or Jim, can do about it now. For the good of the company or not, Isabella will now have the final say.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, “but she has to honour contracts already in place, projects already in progress, doesn’t she? And abide by employment laws.” She gave a slightly wry smile. “Hey, I’m the crown princess of Human Resources, I know all about that bit, anyway.”

  Then the poor dear began to cry again, and talk about Jaz and her father, the triviality of big business forgotten. I wished she was eight years old again, so I could sit her on my knee, read her a bedtime story and make her world a happy one.

  Our world was flat and dead without Jaz in it. I couldn’t concentrate on my own business, and told Gina she was officially the manager until Erin was over the worst. When I suggested I move in for a little while, she was so relieved, she wept. So there I was, back in the old room in which I’d slept when she and Jaz were children, when the Lanchester family was something approaching whole.

  ***

  The days moved by slowly during that first week of my temporary residency, in an inactive haze. Ned and Angie visited, and after they’d gone Erin became very upset, this time about her mother.

  “It was because of Ned’s sister that Dad stopped loving her,” she said. “If Jenny Seymour hadn’t wormed her way in and taken Dad away, my mum might still be alive. I’d know her—that’s what hurts most, that I never had a chance to know her.” Her emotions zig-zagged all over the place; half the time I don’t think even she knew what she was crying about. All of her lost family, I expect; there was enough scope, after all. We talked, we drank far too much wine, we looked at photos, we sat in Jaz’s room, but we couldn’t bear to go through his things, not yet.

  “You’ll do it when you’re ready, and it doesn’t matter whether that time is next week, or not for two years,” I told her.

  One afternoon we sat in there for ages with a bottle of Pinot, while Erin went through Jaz's Facebook profile; after only a few tries, she’d guessed his password. JennyHarry.

  “What do you want to see?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, really. It just makes me feel closer to him.”

  We discovered my old Dictaphone; I’d given it to him a while back so he could record his thoughts if he felt the need, which I thought he might. Erin told me he found it a help when everything was getting on top of him.

  “It doesn’t feel right to listen to it,” Erin said, “but shall we keep it somewhere safe? I might want to hear his voice some time in the future.”

  “You’re right, it’s far too soon,” I said. “We’ll do it together sometime, with Izzy.”

  Will came round with news from the battlefront of Lanchester Estates, which I presumed was in limbo while Isabella was away, though he implied that Jim Dudley still considered himself the boss. I wondered about this Dudley fellow, and feared he would make trouble for Isabella. Opinions were so divided; Ned and Isabella disliked him intensely, Will was wary of but respected him, Erin thought he was marvellous, while Jaz had had a variety of nicknames for him, one of which was Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard from the Harry Potter stories. I thought of him as the Man in Black, because he wore it a lot and had a slightly sinister appearance, but I knew little about him, aside from his roles as father of the dashing Robert and arch enemy of Ned. I’d been introduced to his wife, Jean, at Lanchester parties; all I could remember was an expensively dressed and rather unfriendly, colourless woman who looked down her nose at me. I wouldn’t have known her if she’d passed me in the street. However, I would have recognised the Man in Black anywhere, and as it happened, the next time I saw him was in the car park of Sainsbury’s, out on the big retail park on the way from Woodville to Eltham.

  On the second Monday of my stay at Lanchester Hall we’d heard from Isabella that she was leaving her mother’s in Framlingham and returning to Pontefract for a couple of weeks before coming back to take charge.

  Pat was long overdue a weekend off but had refused to take it yet again, saying there was nothing she wanted to do and her time could be better spent giving the house a thorough clean from top to bottom. Come Monday afternoon she looked exhausted and I insisted it was her turn to rest; I would shop for and cook a nice meal for the three of us, partly because such an occasion would force Erin to ingest something other than wine and the odd slice of toast.

  It was one of those odd summer days when the sky is dark and the rain lashes down, ridding the air of any humidity. I stood under the sheltered front of the Sainsbury store, fishing in my bag to see if I could find an escaped pound coin (as usual, I’d forgotten to make sure I had one for the trolley before I came out), and, as I did so, a young woman walked out through the automatic doors. She stopped to put her purse back in her handbag, sort through her purchases, then struggle with the folding umbrella she’d obviously just bought; I found myself staring at her, because she had the sort of looks I so admire and could never, ever achieve, even with a hundred Atkins diets and celebrity stylists.

  “Come on, you stupid thing, where’s the bloody button?” she said, then caught my eye and we both laughed.

  She was of medium height, slim, with that polished sheen I’d always envied on Kate. She wasn’t beautiful, no more than averagely pretty, but she had the sleekest ash-blonde hair, like a photo in a hair magazine, the most stylish version of that Victoria Beckham-inspired bob I’ve ever seen, cut short at the back then graduating in a perfect swoop down to long, wispy strands at the front that reached her collarbones. She looked as though she’d just walked out of a chic London salon, not Sainsbury’s.

  “No, it’d be a pity to get that lovely hairdo wet,” I said.

  “Oh—thank you!” She smiled, and her exquisitely yet subtly made-up face suddenly became very pretty indeed. Of course, she had perfect little white teeth, too. “It’s these silly nails; I only had them done this morning and they’re too long. I feel like Edward Scissorhands!”

  Her hands were dainty, their light tan showing off the new manicure to perfection. She wore a beautiful pale grey suit with a nipped in waist and a skirt just above her little brown knees, so smooth they looked like an advert for body lotion. Her feet tapped impatiently in pale suede Mary Janes with ridiculously high heels. How on earth did people manage to look like that for more than five minutes?

  “Let me do it for you,” I said, but at that moment her fawn talon found its target and the umbrella popped up.

  “Success!” she said. I gave her a thumbs up. She looked out into the car park and waved; I followed her eyes, expecting to see some gorgeous young hunk with a square jaw lounging by a red sports car under a huge black umbrella, ready to open the door for her, but I was wrong.

  The person who returned her wave sat in the driving seat of a black Jaguar XJS, and was not a Mills and Boon heartt
hrob at all but was, in fact—yes, you’ve guessed it. Jim Dudley.

  Miss Perfection and I exchanged cheerful goodbyes and I watched as she skipped over to the car; Jim leant over and opened the door for her. She folded down her umbrella in one smooth action and slipped gracefully into the passenger seat, and I might have presumed she was Jim’s daughter, or his secretary, had I not seen what happened next.

  The girl leant into his embrace, and he kissed her on the mouth, very thoroughly, for about thirty seconds. When they finally broke apart they were obviously muttering sweet nothings to each other, smiling, touching each others’ faces and giving each other little kisses.

  Well, it was none of my business, of course, but I did smile to myself. What a cliché; marriage to the plain, sour-looking woman with the rich father, with the young, pretty mistress on the side. Poor Jean Dudley; I wondered if she knew. Maybe that was why she looked sour. It was wonderful gossip, of course, but I decided not to mention it to anyone. Why? Well, because such tittle-tattle would have been inappropriate with everything else that was happening in our lives.

  Oh yes, and I found a pound coin for the trolley, in case you’re wondering.

  Back at home, it was the first halfway enjoyable evening we’d spent since losing Jaz. Pat and Erin sat at the kitchen table and drank wine while I prepared a sumptuous beef stroganoff, with Eton Mess to follow. I kept their glasses topped up, and I actually saw Erin laugh once or twice as we talked about her childhood; happy days. We were just finishing dessert and discussing what deliciously escapist film to watch with our Tia Maria, when the doorbell rang.