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‘He never bad-mouthed her once, you know,’ said Barbara. ‘He always gave her full respect as the mother of his children.’
‘That’s nice to hear,’ replied Shay, with a lump of emotion in her throat as big as a dwarf planet. She put her dad’s hand carefully down by his side and slipped on her jacket. She’d leave her father with his wife now.
‘I don’t think your sister comes here. Paula. Is she all right?’
How to reply to that; with the standard answer that flowed too easily from the lips:She’s busy.Instead she plumped for: ‘Paula and I see things very differently.’ Barbara nodded, gave a small sigh, read the meaning in her words.
Shay leaned over and gave her dad a kiss on his cheek. His skin was smooth and soft and strangely youthful.
‘He loves you both,’ Barbara said then. ‘But I could always tell that he liked you much more.’ She smiled. ‘You look after yourself, Shay.’
‘And you, Barbara. I know how hard this is on you.’
Both women reached out simultaneously and squeezed each other’s hands, communicating something complex, but shining through was their mutual love for the man they had both come to see.
Chapter 19
The funeral procession left from Merriment Close, the home her mother loved; her sanctuary for so many years, the place where she felt safe and happy among neighbours, friends. They were out in force today, all of them – bar two contemptible exceptions – in their finest suits and dresses, standing outside in the pouring rain under umbrellas in a respectful line, ready to join the cortege of cars.
‘The sky’s crying for Gran,’ said Courtney, dressed in traditional black and playing the dress code down to the black lacy gloves and black lipstick and nail polish. Her hair was neon violet, to match her gran’s outfit, although she’d toyed with dyeing that black too. Like Sunny, her head was full of self-recrimination that she hadn’t been to see her gran as much as she should have over the past year. She’d presumed she’d be there forever, or at least give plenty of advance warning before leaving them. A brutal life lesson notched up.
‘I hope you’re going to behave,’ said Bruce. ‘No dramatics. This is your gran’s day.’
Courtney wrinkled up her lip at him. ‘As if. I know, Dad.’
Karoline was there with Sunny, stylishly and respectfully dressed in black. They’d greeted each other warmly and Shay was glad that Sunny had her to hold him up because he looked a wreck. She’d filled out a little since Shay had seen her last all those months ago at the engagement party, her cheeks had grown plumper but it suited her. She really did have the prettiest face: large blue eyes, long dark lashes, small tip-tilted nose, full rose-pink lips. She looked like a perfectly-iced cake, as if a sweet vanilla sponge lay underneath that flawless skin. Her figure, though, was less curvy and more blockish now. It was almost as if she was putting on some of the weight that Sunny had lost. Shay hoped that Bruce’s prediction was wrong and Karoline’s fate wouldn’t be to morph into her mother Angela, who had jowls that shuddered in a light breeze and mean, pinched facial features that a pound of Botox, a bottle of Lenor and a heavy flat iron wouldn’t have been able to soften.
There were no builders’ vans on the Close that day – probably rain had stopped play, but in the centre of the green a large digger sat like a smug metal spider, a portent of more disruptive work to come.
As the limo pulled away from the house, Shay noticed Drew Balls standing in his window, grinning, waving. She’d never loathed anyone as much in her life. She turned her head from him sharply because today was about her mum, not him. Today was about love, not hate.
Bruce held her hand tightly. The morning of her mum’s death, after Courtney and Sunny had driven home, she’d crawled into bed and been surprised that Bruce had slipped in beside her. And every night since. He’d just held her, been there for her. He’d come back from work early, forgoing the gym and he’d asked her if she wanted cups of tea, coffee,a glass of wine which she couldn’t remember him doing for ages. He’d helped her with some paperwork, he’d even forced her to have some toast when he thought she hadn’t eaten and the last time she recalled him doing that was when Courtney hadn’t been sleeping as a baby and she was constantly off her face with tiredness. He’d been kind and she’d felt a shift in their relationship, a change of course back to what they should be.
Shay scanned the crowd waiting outside the crematorium chapel for Les, but there was no sign. Shay had rung her twice, left a voicemail and followed it up with a text: once to let her know about her mum’s passing, then to tell her the date of the funeral because, whatever was going on in her own life, Shay would have put all her savings on Les being there for her at this time, when it counted.
The service went perfectly. Dagmara read a poem she’d written, about love being everlasting; Shay stood up to do the eulogy, about how special a person their mum was, too special for just a short speech, but she hoped to do Roberta proud. She thanked the people of Merriment Close for being so loyal and considerate and affirmed how much their mother thought of them all. She told everyone how Roberta had always been there for her daughters whenever they needed her and how she and Harry had looked after their grandchildren when Shay had had to go out to work and about the activities they’d done together. She said how clever Roberta was at languages and had planned to run her own school, but she’d put her family commitments above any of her lofty ambitions.
Shay had written plenty of humour into her speech because she knew it would keep her strong enough to deliver it. She related how Roberta couldn’t remember the Englishword for skip and yet had never lost a word of Russian, and after watching a James Bond film recently had declared that she’d had a short career as an international spy. She made the congregation laugh by saying how, before she died, Roberta remembered having chocolate ice cream with Omar Sharif at the seaside and how happy it made her. She did not say that her mother had been a rock when Shay was accused of being responsible for the death of a boy, had sat by her daughter’s bedside praying that she’d be okay, had done everything in her power to bring her daughter back from the edge of a very dark brink.
They listened to Roberta’s chosen song, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and Shay wondered why she’d picked that. She couldn’t imagine the passion that song evoked being directed at her dad. But then she thought all children must think that of their parents, forget they were once youngsters with carnal desires who snogged and groped each other in cars. As the song played, a succession of photos that Shay had chosen flashed up on a screen: grainy black and white ones of Roberta as a chubby child in a frilly hat; a teenager with her long strawberry-blonde waves, linking arms with her dark-haired, Sophia Lorenesque sister Stella; as a bride in a frilly white dress, her waist tiny. As an exhausted, beatific mum holding her first newly-birthed daughter, as a smiling, contented woman holding her newly-born second child; all stages of her life, but her smile never ageing. A photo of her and Dagmara peering around a tree in the park, looking like naughty children trapped in pensioners’ bodies; wearing a bright pink wig at her seventieth birthday party; photos of her with Courtney and Sunny, every inch the proud grandmother. One of her dazzling in her violent violet suit that she’d intended towear at Sunny’s wedding; the same photo stood in a frame on her coffin.
Shay felt the creak of the closing curtains make an echo in her breast. She wanted to rip them open, tear her mother out of her casket, see her one last time, kiss her goodbye. She wasn’t ready to let her go; she would never be ready to let her go. It was as if someone had pulled the floor from under her feet and there was nothing to grab hold of to stop the fall.
As they left the crematorium, the family lined up outside to say thank you to everyone and reiterate the invitation to join them for a bite to eat. Shay looked again for Les but there was no sight of her. She said as much to Bruce as they were being driven to the community centre in the limo.
‘I don’t know why she’s not here,’ was his answer to that, accompanied by a shrug. ‘Funerals aren’t for everyone are they?’
‘Mort says that Les still hasn’t been in touch properly with him either, just a text here and there to tell him to stop bothering her, the old cow,’ said Courtney.
Chris, Paula’s husband, cleared his throat in such a way as to express disapproval of his niece’s language, without being brave enough to actually voice his opinion in words.
Paula’s hat took up a huge proportion of the car. It was as wide as a flying saucer with a veil expertly draped over her sad expression.
‘That went well,’ she said.
‘Yes, very nice service,’ added Chris. His shirt was straining over his gut and if one of those buttons popped off, it would spring like a bullet and shoot someone, Shay thought. Funny what the brain conjured up at such times. She imagined her mum noticing the poor buttons’ valiant effort to do their duty and saying something inappropriatelike, ‘There’s no shame in buying bigger shirts, Christopher, if there’s comfort to be had,’ and she dropped her head to hide an inappropriate smile.
‘Funny song choice, I thought,’ said Paula.
