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Allerton’s a nice cemetery, all told. Green and well maintained, and I like to think it’s where they’d have wanted to be if they’d been remotely at an age where they thought it was worth making plans for that kind of thing. Which of course they weren’t. Mostly they’d been making plans for their silver wedding, which should have happened about two weeks after they got run down by some prick in a Bugatti on the way home from their regular Friday dinner out.
“If it’s good enough for Ken Dodd and Cilla Black,” I can imagine my dad saying, “it’s good enough for me.”
Not that he ever got the chance.
They’re actually pretty close to Ken Dodd. Not that he was really either of their sort of comedian. My granddad was a fan, though he went a while back, and so was my nan, who I lived with after. It was her going that set me running to Sheffield in the first place.
So, there they all are in a row. Six of the buggers, my mum and dad in the middle and their parents on either side like the bride and groom’s family at a wedding. Which is sort of…how it’s meant to work in a way. There’s a reason that Hugh Grant movie had a funeral in it as well as a clunky line about the Partridge family and some very silly hats.
William Becker. Mary Becker. Thomas Becker. Louise Becker—she was a modern woman, my mam, but it was still pretty rare for a lass to keep her own name back when she got married. Then after that Bridget O’Brien—last to go, right next to her daughter—and Samuel O’Brien, who used to tell his friends I was named after him even though I technically wasn’t.
It’s snowing.
It never fucking snows on Christmas. Not even this far north. But it’s snowing now. I don’t really believe in God, but if I did I’d think he was trying to mess with my head. That or he just wanted to teach me a lesson for being too proud to bring my Olive Block Colour Padded Jacket.
“Well,” I say to my mum, and my dad, and all four of my grandparents, “this is where I am now. It’s been a bit of an odd month, to be honest.”
It’s not just God. I don’t think I believe in much of anything, really. But times like this I fucking wish I did. I wish I did so badly it makes me want to have stern words with whichever prick made up the rules about blokes crying.
“See I met this lad,” I go on. “I mean, I say met. I’d been working for him for a couple of years and, well, honestly I don’t think you’d have got on.” I give Granddad William a look. “Okay, you might. But then from what I remember you were a bit of a prick yourself when you were with us.”
The wind’s picking up, and I pull the coat I’m not wearing tighter around myself. At least I’ve got Mam’s scarf, though she picked it for how it looked not how well it kept off the breeze. She was never a practical woman, our mam.
“The thing is,” I tell the Becker-O’Brien clan, “I messed up. I don’t quite know what I was thinking at the time, but I’m also not quite sure what I should have done differently other than—well—look I blame you for this, Dad, because we had that fucking Goldie Hawn movie on DVD and it was one of your favourites, but I told him I had amnesia.”
I tuck my fingers into my sleeves. I should’ve brought gloves. I’vegotgloves. I just didn’t think ahead, which given how things shook out might be more like the story of my life than I’ve been willing to admit.
“You must be freezing,” says a voice from behind me. Andeven though I don’t believe in ghosts any more than I believe in God, I jump out my fucking skin because while it’s a very nice graveyard and it’s the early morning and everything’s very un-scary, Iamstill surrounded by dead people.
When I turn around I see Jonathan Forest. He’s looking wary and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look wary before. But that’s the only thing that’s unfamiliar about him. The rest I could have filled in without even turning round. The way his lips turn down like he’s scowling when he’s really not. Those heavy brows that, if he was a different sort of man, he’d have done something about. The streak in his hair that looks even whiter in the snow. I’m a bit afraid to be glad to see him, but I can’t stop myself.
“You forgot your coat,” he says, holding out my jacket.
“’Bout the only thing I did actually forget.” I really, really hope it’s not too soon to be making jokes about it.
“So I gather.” He comes forward and drapes the jacket over my shoulders. And it’s like—you know when you come in from the cold and you don’t take your coat off exactly that second, and then your mam or your granddad says you need to get it off right now or you’ll not feel the benefit when you go out again? It’s that, only backwards. I feel the benefit more than I’ve ever felt anything.
I look at him, then I look at the jacket, then I look around at the cemetery in a town which, to my knowledge, Jonathan has never even been to. “What are you doing here?”
His ears go a bit pink. “I told you. You forgot your coat.”
“And that made you come randomly to a graveyard in Liverpool?”
“No. It made me go to Sheffield. Realise you weren’t there. And then…” His ears go even pinker. “Well, I did put a tracker on your phone.”
Oh, he had, hadn’t he? Of all the high-handed, controlling, actually kind of sweet things he’d done, that was probably themost high-handed, controlling, and actually kind of sweet. “Yeah, remind me to turn that off.”
“You agreed to it at the time.”
“I did but I’ve made a lot of very bad choices recently.”
He glances away. “Was I one of those bad choices?”
“No,” I reply, faster than any human being has ever replied to anything. “Fuck no. I meant, I made bad choices that made things go wrong with you and I wish I hadn’t. And I wish I could—but I can’t.”
“And so you left?”
He doesn’t sound accusing. He doesn’t sound anything. Which is sort of something all by itself. “You didn’t want anything to do with me, Jonathan. You wouldn’t even let me say sorry.”
