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two years and forty-one days missing
chapter 68
alex
It’s not the funeral my mother deserves. I stole the last two years of her life when I lost her granddaughter and now I’m robbing her of the dignified, public farewell she should’ve had.
It’s impossible to hold the service at my parents’ parish church, as Mum wanted, because of the media feeding frenzy surrounding me after my arrest six days ago. So we’re forced to say goodbye to her in a small, private chapel set within the grounds of a nearby Benedictine monastery, whose high walls and rolling fields keep the press at bay. We have to limit the ceremony to just a few family and close friends, which is all the tiny church can admit.
For the second time in three years, I stare down at the cold, still face of my dead, pillowed on satin and oak. If there is a god, he’s no god of mine.
Dad turns to me, as always, for support. I take his arm and help him to a pew at the front of the chapel; I put my arm around his shoulder when he sobs, broken and bereft, as Father Jonathan urges us to celebrate my mother’s life; my voice is clear when I give the reading Aunt Julie chose:In my house there are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.
But I can’t cry. I can’t feel. My heart is flint. The flickering ember of hope for Lottie that sustained me is no more than grey ash in my soul.
When the brief service is over, we spill outside into the chill November afternoon. The pallbearers load Mum’s coffin into the hearse for the short journey to the cemetery a few miles away. It’s only two-thirty, but the pale sun already hangs low in the grey sky.
I’m surprised to find Jack waiting for me on the gravel pathway behind the chapel, standing beneath an ancient cedar to shelter from the drizzle. He’s wearing a smart, thick black wool coat, but his jaw is stubbled and he looks like a man who hasn’t seen his own bed in two days.
My frozen heart lifts at the sight of him, in all his shambolic dishevelment.
There’s something comforting about his worn-down, worn-in, worn-out cragginess, and I have to resist the temptation to turn down his crooked collar, straighten his tie.
‘It was a beautiful service,’ Jack says. ‘She’d have been very proud of you.’
‘I didn’t realise you were here.’
‘I stayed at the back. Didn’t want to intrude.’
‘It was kind of you to come.’
Beneath the platitudes, a deeper exchange is taking place. Jack exhales, his breath a puff of white carried on the cold air. It brushes my skin, warm, like a kiss. He smiles and I feel the heat spread to my bones.
Harriet calls out to me from across the car park. ‘We should go,’ she says. ‘Dad and Aunt Julie are waiting in the car.’
‘One minute,’ I say.
‘You should go be with your family,’ Jack says. ‘I just wanted to let you know, the CPS won’t be taking your case any further. It’s not official yet; we need to wait for public interest to die down. But if you agree to see a counsellor for a few months, they won’t press charges.’
For a moment, I find it hard to speak. Jack must have called in a dozen favours to make this happen.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Don’t thank me. Flora’s mother lobbied very hard on your behalf.’ He hesitates. ‘Alex, I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. If I’d picked up your messages when you first saw Flora—’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Jack. None of this is on you.’
‘I was looking for Amira,’ Jack says, abruptly. ‘My wife.’
I remember who she is.
‘It took me a few days to track her down,’ he adds. ‘I haven’t seen her in more than six years. And I didn’t want the press getting wind of it, so I took myself off-grid for a bit.’
‘You don’t have to explain—’
