“Well,” Andrew said, “and this isn’t strictly part of the job, but if it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to turn up—no neighbors or ex-colleagues or anything—then I go myself.”
“That’s very good of you. Going above and beyond, like that.”
“Oh no. Not really,” Andrew said quickly, squirming with embarrassment. “It’s quite common in this job, I think. I’m sure I’m not the only one.”
“Must be tough, though,” Peggy said. “Are they usually okay—as much as they can be—the funerals? Nothing really distressing’s happened?”
“Not so much distressing,” Andrew said. “But there are unusual moments.”
“Like what?” Peggy said, leaning forward slightly.
Andrew immediately pictured the chair man.
“A man once turned up with a blue armchair,” he said. “I’d not been able to find any friends or family, so I wasn’t expecting anyone there. It turned out this man—Phillip—had been on holiday when his friend died. He was the one person who was allowed into the guy’s house. The deceased was obsessed with this chair getting somehow damaged, though the color had already begun to fade. Phillip wasn’t sure why he was so attached to it, but he had a feeling his friend’s late wife used to sit there. Phillip eventually persuaded the man to let him take it away and get the color restored, but by the time he’d come to collect it from the repair place after his holiday the man had died. Phillip saw the notice I’d put in the local paper that morning and headed straight to the funeral. He even brought the chair into the church so it was next to us during the service.”
“Wow,” Peggy said, sitting back. “That’s heartbreaking.”
“It is, yes,” Andrew said. “But—” He stopped abruptly.
“What?” Peggy said.
Andrew cleared his throat.
“Well, it actually made me determined to keep going to the funerals.”
“How come?”
“Oh, well, I’m not exactly sure,” Andrew said. “It just felt like I sort of . . . had to.”
The truth was that it had made him see that everyone who died alone had their own version of that chair. Some drama or other, no matter how mundane the rest of their existence was. And the idea that they’d not have someone there to be with them at the end, to acknowledge that they’d been a person in the world who’d suffered and loved and all the rest of it—he just couldn’t bear the thought of it.
Andrew realized he’d been spinning his glass on the table. He stopped and the liquid swirled for a moment before falling into a gentle rotation. When he looked up at Peggy, she seemed to be studying him, as if recalibrating something.
“Well, what a first morning on the job this has been,” she said.
Andrew took a big gulp of beer, enjoying the fact that tipping liquid into his face meant the onus on him to talk briefly disappeared.
“Anyway,” Peggy said, seeming to sense Andrew’s discomfort, “we should talk about something more cheery. Like, who am I going to hate working with in the office?”
Andrew relaxed slightly. This felt like safer territory. He weighed the question up. If he were being professional about it he’d toe the party line and say that while of course it could be a challenging environment to work in, which meant there was the occasional personality clash, everyone always pulled together in the end. But then again he had just had half a pint of lager at one p.m. on a Wednesday, so sod it.
“Keith.”
“Keith?”
“Keith.”
“I think I remember him from my interview. He sat in with Cameron. He kept putting his finger in various parts of his body and eating whatever came out when he thought I wasn’t looking.”
Andrew winced. “Yeah, that’s sort of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his personal hygiene.”
Still feeling somewhat reckless, Andrew found himself divulging his theory that there was something going on between Keith and Meredith. Peggy shuddered.
“Sadly, Keith reminds me a bit of this boy I had a dalliance with in my teenage years. He smelled like unwashed PE kit and had long, greasy hair, but I was besotted. And I wish I could say that was because he was incredibly charming and kind, but he was a complete idiot. He was, however, the lead guitarist in a local band, a band I subsequently joined to play maracas in.” Andrew was instantly transported back to his teenage local and watching the first—and last—performance by Sally and (then boyfriend) Spike’s band, Driftwood, where they nervously murdered Joni Mitchell covers in front of an audience of Andrew and twenty empty chairs. Sally had seemed unusually vulnerable that night, Andrew recalled, feeling a rush of affection for his sister.
“What was your band called?” he said to Peggy.
She looked at him with an unmistakably mischievous glint in her eye. “Get another round in and I’ll tell you.”
* * *
—
It turns out that if you haven’t had a drink for a long time, two halves of 4 percent lager on an empty stomach will actually have quite a strong effect. Andrew didn’t feel drunk as such, just fuzzy and warm and aware that he would happily punch a puffin if it meant he’d get some crisps.
As promised, Peggy revealed the name of the band she’d been in (Magic Merv’s Death Banana), and they’d moved on to talking about their previous jobs. Peggy had also been axed from her position in a different part of the council and been shunted across. “I was ‘business support officer for the Access, Inclusion and Participation Team,’” she said, “which was as fun as it sounds.”
Andrew had been trying to place her accent. He thought it was probably Geordie. Was it rude to ask that question? He rubbed at his eyes. God, this was a bit ridiculous. They should really have gone straight back to the office. Not that he had any desire at all to do so. But two beers, though. Two! At lunchtime! What was he going to do next—throw a television out of a window? Ride a motorbike into a swimming pool?
Just then the quiet was broken as a group of women bustled in, all talking loudly over each other. Their boisterousness was entirely at odds with the subdued atmosphere, but they didn’t seem at all embarrassed, as Andrew would have been, to be causing any sort of disruption. He got the sense that this was a regular fixture, a midweek tradition, perhaps: the way they all headed for a particular table without deliberation. Why is it that we find traditions comforting? he thought, stifling a belch. He looked at Peggy and was suddenly struck by the promise of asking her this incredibly profound question. Inevitably, it didn’t sound quite so clever when he said it out loud.
“Hmm,” Peggy said, not looking fazed, to Andrew’s relief. “I suppose it’s probably just because it’s a moment in time where you know exactly what’s about to happen, so there are no nasty surprises waiting for you. I dunno, maybe that’s a bit of a pessimistic way of looking at it.”
“No, I know what you mean,” Andrew said. He pictured Sally looking at the calendar, realizing it was time for their quarterly call. Maybe there was some solace, some comfort, in the regularity of their interaction. “I suppose it’s about having a balance,” he said. “You need to keep making new traditions, otherwise you start to resent the old ones.”
Peggy lifted her glass. “I feel like I need to toast that. To new traditions.”
Andrew looked dumbly at her for a minute before quickly grabbing his glass and knocking it clumsily into hers with an ugly clink.
There was a collective cooing from the women in the corner. Peggy looked past Andrew’s shoulder at them. After a moment she leaned forward and looked at him conspiratorially. “Be subtle,” she said, “but don’t you just love looking at everyone’s reactions when someone’s talking about getting engaged?”
Andrew swiveled around.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—I said subtle!”
“Sorry.”
This time, he half turned in his chair and pre
tended to be inspecting a framed caricature of a drunken cricketer on the wall. He glanced as casually as possible at the group before turning back. “Was there something specific I was supposed to notice?” he said.
“Look at their smiles. It’s all in the eyes.”
Andrew was lost.
“Most of them are genuinely happy for her, but there are at least a couple of them who don’t think this is a good idea,” Peggy said. She went to take a gulp of beer, then decided what she had to say was more important. “Me and my friend Agatha, right, for ages we had this game that whenever we found out someone we knew was getting married and we didn’t really approve we’d guess what their first post-proposal argument would be about.”
“That’s . . . that’s a bit . . .”
“Mean? Awful? You betcha. I very much learned my lesson after I got engaged to my fella, Steve. When I saw Agatha I jokingly made her guess what our first fight had been. Unfortunately it backfired in a pretty major way.”
“How so?”
“She guessed that it was because Steve had told me he was already having cold feet about the whole thing.”
“And what was it about really?”
“It was over a badly washed-up spatula.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. Turns out she’d never really approved of him at all. But we made up in the end, thankfully. All it took was five years of stubborn silence before bumping into each other, both hammered, in a kebab shop and putting the world to rights. She even bought me a spatula for mine and Steve’s tenth wedding anniversary. Funnily enough, that was the first thing I reached for to chuck at his head the other night when he came back from a two-day bender having ‘just popped out for a quick drink.’ God, life’s weird sometimes.” Peggy let out a hollow laugh and Andrew joined in, unsurely. Peggy took a long gulp of Guinness and landed her glass with a thud. “I mean,” Peggy said, “go out, get wasted, we’ve all been there, right?”
Thankfully, Andrew judged this to be rhetorical and kept quiet.
“But just don’t lie about it, you know?”
“Absolutely,” Andrew said. “That’s the last thing you should do.”
Peggy sighed. “Sorry, this is stupidly unprofessional of me, banging on about my marital problems.”
“Not at all, it’s fine,” Andrew said. He suddenly realized what he’d just opened the door to. He could sense the question coming a mile away.
“You married, yourself?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So I can’t now not ask you: what was your first post-proposal argument?”
Andrew thought for a moment. What would it have been? He had the feeling it should be something equally as trivial as Peggy’s.
“Whose turn it was to take the trash out, I think,” he said.
“A classic. If only all the arguments were about domestic chores, eh? Anyway . . . just nipping to the loo.”
For one dreadful second Andrew nearly stood up, too, out of politeness. Calm down, Mr. Knightley, he thought, watching Peggy disappear around a corner in search of the toilets. He looked around, accidentally catching the eye of a man sitting at the bar, who gave him the slightest of nods. Here we are, the look seemed to say. On our own. As usual.
Well, not me this time, Andrew thought, feeling a prickle of defiance. When Peggy returned he looked at the man, feeling rather smug.
There was a shriek of laughter from the other table. However insincere her friends were being, the bride-to-be was very obviously glowing with happiness.
“Bloody hell,” Peggy said. “Last time I smiled like that it was after I’d found a twenty-pound note in my dressing gown. I screamed so loud the dog farted.”
Andrew laughed. And perhaps it was just the beer on an empty stomach, or the fact he hadn’t had to go straight back to the office to face another afternoon of Keith and the others, but he was feeling really rather happy and relaxed all of a sudden. He made a mental note to try to remember how it felt not to have his shoulders tensed so much that they were practically touching his ears.
“Sorry again for dragging you to the pub,” Peggy said.
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m actually having a good time,” Andrew said, wishing he hadn’t sounded quite so surprised. If Peggy found this an odd thing to say, then thankfully her face didn’t show it.
“By the way, how are you at pub quizzes?” she said, half distracted by a man on a mobility scooter edging his way through the door, shepherded by the barman.
“Pub quizzes? I’m . . . I don’t really know,” Andrew said. “Normal, I suppose?”
“A few of us get babysitters and do the one at the Rising Sun on the South Bank. We come last every time and Steve usually ends up getting into a fight with the quizmaster, but it’s always a laugh. You should come.”
Before he could stop himself, Andrew said, “I’d love to.”
“Champion,” Peggy yawned, rolling her head around her shoulders. “I hate to be the one to say this, but it’s nearly two—I suppose we better get back?”
Andrew looked at his watch, hoping that there had been some sort of glitch in time so that they had another few hours. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.
Even when they were approaching the office and climbing the rain-slick steps outside, which seemed especially keen to have him slip on them today, Andrew found he couldn’t stop grinning. What an unexpectedly pleasant end to the morning that had been.
“Hang on a sec,” Peggy said as they came out of the lift. “Remind me: Keith, Cameron . . . Melinda?”
“Meredith,” Andrew said. “The one I’ve decided has a thing for Keith.”
“Oh yeah. How could I forget? A late summer wedding, maybe?”
“Hmm, spring, I think,” Andrew said, and in the moment it felt somehow perfectly natural for him to perform a semitheatrical bow as he held the door, gesturing for Peggy to go through first.
Cameron, Keith, and Meredith were sitting on one of the sofas in the break-out space and all got up straightaway when Andrew and Peggy walked in. Cameron’s face was ashen.
Oh shit, Andrew thought. We’ve been rumbled. They know about the pub. Maybe Peggy was just a stooge, hired as a one-off to investigate improper practices. The pub trip was all just a fucking ruse and it served him right for daring to hope to pretend he could be happy. But a quick glance at Peggy and he saw she was as nonplussed as he was.
“Andrew,” Cameron said, “we’ve been trying to get in touch. Has someone managed to call you?”
Andrew pulled his phone out of his pocket. He’d forgotten to turn it off silent after leaving Eric White’s flat.
“Is everything okay?” he said.
Keith and Meredith shared an uneasy glance.
“Someone called earlier, with some news,” Cameron said.
“Right?”
“It’s about your sister.”
— CHAPTER 8 —
Andrew had been three and Sally eight when their father had died of a heart attack. Rather than this bringing the two siblings together, Andrew’s early memories of his sister tended to feature her slamming doors in his face, screaming at him to leave her alone, and their occasionally vicious scraps when he was brave enough to stand up to her. He sometimes wondered if their dad had been around how their relationship might have differed. Would they have bonded more, or would their dad have had to be constantly intervening to stop them from fighting, getting angry himself at their relentless squabbling, or perhaps using a gentler approach—telling them in a soft voice how they were upsetting Mum. For her part, their mother was never on hand to stop their squabbling. “She’s taken to her bed,” was the confusing expression Andrew had once overheard a neighbor say, unaware that he was lying in the border by the garden fence, recovering from Sally’s latest pummeling. At the time he couldn’t comprehend that his mum was crippled with grief. Nobody explained this t
o him. All he knew was that if she’d opened her bedroom blinds it was going to be a good day—and on good days he got sausage and mash for dinner. Occasionally she’d let him climb into bed with her. She’d lie facing away from him, her knees pulled up to her chest. She would hum songs and Andrew would rest the tip of his nose on her back, feeling the vibration of her voice.
By the time Sally was thirteen she was already a good six inches taller than the biggest boy at school. Her shoulders grew broad, her legs meaty. There was a large part of her that seemed to embrace being different, stalking the corridors, actively seeking out people to intimidate. Looking back, Andrew realized this was obviously a defense mechanism, a way for Sally to strike preemptively against any bullies, while also providing an outlet for her grief. He might have been more understanding if he hadn’t been her punching bag of choice on quite so many occasions.
When some of the boys came back after summer holidays having had growth spurts, the bravest of them were confident enough to tease Sally, provoking her until she went for them, pursuing them across the playing fields, a manic glint in her eye, windmilling her arms at whoever she managed to corner.
One day shortly after Andrew had turned eleven, he had waited until Sally had gone downstairs before creeping into her bedroom and just standing there, smelling his sister’s smell, wanting desperately to perform some sort of spell that would change her and make her care about him. He had his eyes closed, tears pooling behind his eyelids, when he heard Sally hurrying up the stairs. Maybe the spell had worked; maybe Sally had felt the urgent call to find him and tell him everything was going to be fine. It only took Andrew a split second to realize that Sally advancing toward him was going to end with a punch in the gut, not an arm around the shoulder. He received a gruff apology later that day, though he couldn’t be sure if it was guilt that made Sally do it, or a rare instance of their mother stepping in. In any case, Andrew was only afforded a few days’ respite before another scrap.
But then out of nowhere came along Sam “Spike” Morris, and everything changed. Spike had only joined the school when he was sixteen, but he had a quiet confidence about him that meant he soon made friends. He was tall, with shoulder-length black hair, and, much to the jealousy of his bumfluff-sporting male peers, possessed a full-on folk singer’s beard. Almost immediately, the word went around that Spike had somehow incurred Sally’s wrath, and that he was in for a windmilling if he crossed her again.
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