‘No, I was mostly in charge of the food. Not sure my sister trusted me to do anything else.’ She’d meant it as a self-deprecating joke but she was more than aware that it had come out a bit snarky.
The vicar nodded kindly and so Lucy waffled on. ‘She’s let me help sell the house though because it mainly involves showing estate agents round and no actual signing of paperwork or negotiating terms.’
‘Deux Tourelles,’ the vicar said. ‘Beautiful house.’ And then, suddenly: ‘In any set of siblings, there will always be a leader, I have often found.’
She frowned as she thought about that. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ It was the roles they’d automatically fallen into. Clara had always been the leader, and Lucy happy to be led. Until she hadn’t been and had simply upped and moved away, eager not to fall headlong into her sister’s wake. But maybe, in the end, Clara had fallen into hers. She looked at Dido’s unmarked grave and wondered how she and Persephone had fared as siblings. Which one had been the leader? Which one the follower?
‘How are you bearing up?’ the vicar asked, pulling Lucy from her thoughts.
The question instantly made her feel guilty and so she thought it best to plump for honesty. ‘I’m bearing up very well given I didn’t really know her.’
The vicar chuckled. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Did you know her quite well?’ Lucy asked. ‘I understood Dido was quite a churchgoer?’
‘I did yes, in so far as one can know an intensely private person,’ he said.
‘Perhaps I should ask how you’re bearing up in that case?’ Lucy offered.
‘Also quite well. She’s a missed member of our parish. Always very helpful at the church fete and harvest festivals. Loved to sort the flowers for us when it was her turn on the rota and enjoyed helping the children colour in at Sunday school.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Lucy said, picturing the elderly woman she’d never really known getting involved with colouring in. ‘I don’t know why but that’s just made me cry,’ she said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘No need to apologise,’ the vicar said kindly.
‘I was just trying to choose a headstone and got a bit overwhelmed. It’s been a funny few weeks,’ she said.
‘Grief is like that,’ he said misunderstanding, as she continued to sniff. ‘Better out than in.’
‘Sorry,’ she said again and then changed the subject, eager to stop sniffling. ‘What’s this headstone made of?’ she asked the vicar as she pointed to Dido’s parents’ grave.
‘Granite. Durable and rather pretty.’
Lucy pulled her phone out of her pocket and took a photograph of it, hoping the stonemason could replicate it for Dido, so it would match.
‘Would you like to come inside for a cup of tea?’ the vicar offered.
Lucy thought. Five minutes’ peace inside a church would probably be quite lovely. ‘Actually, yes, I would,’ she said, regaining her smile.
As the vicar made tea in the little kitchenette to the side of the church Lucy asked, ‘Had Dido always been a regular churchgoer?’
The vicar filled the teapot with tea leaves and set out two bonechina cups on saucers. Lucy felt soothed already at the old-fashioned method and sank into the chair opposite the vicar’s desk as they moved inside his office. The room was warm, probably due to its small size and because the walls were wood-panelled.
‘As long as I have known her, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been vicar of this church for forty years.’
‘You must have been a child when you started.’ Lucy laughed.
‘I was twenty-five,’ he said. ‘Not my first posting either. I was once a mainlander,’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows conspiratorially, which made Lucy laugh.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she said, accepting a biscuit with her cup of tea and thanking him.
‘But I gather Dido had been a very dedicated member of the congregation directly after the Occupation ended,’ he said.
Lucy found the timing interesting.
‘I often find people need to believe in something greater than themselves,’ the vicar said as if hearing her. ‘To take comfort in knowing that God is there when there seems to be nothing else.’
Lucy let the words sink in before asking, ‘Do you think she was lonely?’
