by Karen Ross
‘Barclay’s in Australia. Learning to do something called parkour.’ Zoe clocks my blank expression and explains. ‘As far as I can tell, it’s the most dangerous sport on the planet. He’s holed up in a warehouse near Melbourne, learning how to scale skyscrapers, run across rooftops, and the like. It’s one step off skydiving, only without a parachute. I’m out of my mind with worry.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ I lie. ‘Guys like Barclay always land right side up, wouldn’t you say?’ Zoe flinches from the scorn in my voice.
‘He’s so ashamed,’ she mumbles. ‘We both are.’
‘That makes everything okay then.’
‘Of course not.’ This time, Zoe sounds irritated. More like her old self. ‘Look, Nina. I genuinely didn’t want an undertaker in Primrose Hill. The whole death thing gives me the creeps. You know that. So it was easy for me to go along with my father’s instructions about not letting you join the Traders Association and the like.’
‘By which you mean reporting me to the police and the council. That sort of thing. All in a day’s work for you, is it Zoe?’
‘How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?’
Zoe’s twisting the stem of her wine glass so hard I’m sure it’s going to break. I’m relieved when she plonks it down on the table and dives into her handbag to produce what looks like an email printout.
‘I know you think my brother and I are scum, but we’re trying to make things right. We’d have done it sooner, but the man we needed to get hold of was out of the country.’
Zoe passes what turns out to be five sheets of A4 across the table to me and for the next few minutes, while I scan the correspondence, the only sound in the kitchen comes from Chopper, slurping at his water bowl.
When I’ve finished reading I look at Zoe and ask, ‘Does my dad know about this?’
‘He’ll be informed tomorrow. I hope the promotion and the pay rise go some way to redress the injustice.’
Eddie Banks’s friend – the one who made my dad redundant – has been generous. Dad’s about to become a Regional Project Manager with a forty per cent salary bump.
‘I appreciate what you’ve done.’ Zoe and Barclay are trying to buy me off.
‘I’ve never seen Barclay so enraged as when he discovered our father was trying to get at you with the redundancy thing. He’s been determined to put that right ever since.’ Zoe absentmindedly pops a crisp into her mouth. ‘Father’s always been one to bend the rules. But he’s gone too far. He seems to think he’s Tony Soprano. As for his crazy plan to ruin the high street by driving all the shops out of business … that’s never going to happen, I assure you. In fact, we’ve forbidden him to set foot in Primrose Hill for the foreseeable future.’
Okay, so it’s not Eddie Banks grovelling as he does in my fantasy, but Zoe is definitely apologising. To my surprise, she takes another handful of crisps.
‘These are delicious!’ she declares. ‘It’s been years since I had junk food. You want some?’
She pushes the bowl across the table, and I take one, if only to be companionable.
‘You’re trying to decide whether or not this is a genuine apology, aren’t you?’
Zoe Banks has many faults, but I knew as soon as I set foot in her palatial home that she was a shrewd operator.
‘Yes,’ I say, simply. ‘I need to work out what would have happened if it hadn’t been for the fire. And if I hadn’t seen the file. Would your father still have found a way to put me out of business? Or would you and your brother have stopped him?’
She doesn’t exactly answer the question. Instead, she says, ‘By way of sincerity, I’d like to invite you to join the Traders Association. Our next meeting’s in January. I hope you’ll be able to make it.’
Wow!
‘And if you need any help marketing Happy Endings, just let me know. Although I have to say you seem to be doing very well on your own. I saw all the media coverage about that artist guy’s funeral. I’m starting to understand what it is you do, Nina … funerals that manage to be uplifting. In their way. Although Barclay says you’re not charging enough.’
Zoe eats another crisp, as if to stop herself from saying anything more. But then she mumbles, ‘The other thing. Look, it’s really personal, but I know that you and my brother … well, I know the two of you … he never took you to bed, did he?’
I can feel my face turning the colour of every fire engine that came rushing to Chalcot Square that night the basement burned.
‘Believe one thing if nothing else,’ Zoe gulps, ‘I don’t want to be having this conversation, either.’
After I have poured us generous third helpings of wine, I busy myself popping a steady supply of crisps between Chopper’s eager jaws so I don’t have to look at Zoe while she continues to address the kitchen table.
‘It was when Barclay told me how serious he is about you. I implied you were just the latest in his long line of conquests and there’d soon be someone else. He went very quiet.’ Zoe’s confession has a ring of truth to it. ‘Not cross, just quiet. Then it all came tumbling out. He said he was he was crazy about you. Believe me, Nina, I’ve spent hours listening to my brother describe your virtues.’
At this, I look up from my crisp-feeding duties and the two of us exchange not unfriendly glances.
‘Barclay knew he had to do the right thing. The honourable thing. Lord knows, neither of us is perfect, but I think we might have inherited a sense of common decency from our mother. Barclay said he woke up every day diminished by the fact he was still working for our father.’ Zoe pauses to claim a handful of the diminishing supply of crisps.
‘He was about to tell you everything,’ she continues. ‘Make a clean breast of it. Hope you’d forgive him and start over, with you.’
If only I’d never read that ghastly file. If only events had unfolded the way Zoe says he intended, then – most likely – I’d have been able to forgive Barclay for the sins of his father.
‘So what’s with the never coming back? Didn’t he plan to go for just eight weeks?’
‘He wasn’t going to go at all. Not until you told him to take a hike. And now he’s discovered parkour. Look at this.’ Zoe whips out her phone, taps on the screen and passes it to me.
A video.
A smiling man jumps confidently across a series of knee-high fence posts, spaced a couple of feet apart. So far, so good. Until the camera pans to reveal this feat of athleticism is taking place on top of a high office block. If he misjudges a single step, he’ll become road-kill on the motorway below.
I shudder.
Now a teenager waves at the camera from his vantage point at the top of a crane looming high over a city. Berlin? The kid pops a yellow lollipop into his mouth, then works his way along the horizontal bar of the crane, hand over hand, until he reaches the outer edge. Next – and by now, I can barely look – he hoists himself onto the ledge of the bar itself, which seems no thicker than his own arm, in order to perform a handstand.
It makes a James Bond stunt look tame.
‘I love my brother.’ Zoe’s voice is wobbling. ‘I don’t want him coming home in a box.’
46
That night, after Zoe and I sank two bottles of wine and Chopper ate almost his entire body weight in crisps, I went back to my bedroom and stared at the ceiling for even longer than usual.
Eventually, I bowed to the inevitable.
According to my World Clock app, it was lunchtime in Australia. This time, I didn’t withhold my number. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to say – something between, ‘Come home, most is forgiven,’ and, ‘You’re scaring your sister to death!’ – but when Barclay’s phone went straight to voicemail I got so lost in the sound of his voice I forgot to speak at all.
It was thirteen – unbearable – days before I got a reply.
A text: Dropped phone off Tasmania’s tallest building. Only just got replacement. Sorry to have missed your call.
I can’t ge
t past the fact that Barclay’s polite acknowledgement of my attempted call is minus even a single kiss. Something that hasn’t encouraged me to try again, so I suppose we’re currently at stalemate.
In the meantime, I’m doing my best to get on with my life. This afternoon, I’ve had two ‘Know Before You Go’ clients – one of them a lovely man in his seventies who wants to make sure that if he dies first, his wife will receive a red rose from him every Friday without fail – and I’ve just posted a piece on the Happy Endings Facebook page about the recently departed Labour MP whose coffin was made from recycled copies of the Guardian.
Now, before I call it quits and go home to enjoy Edo’s cooking, there’s one final phone call I have to make. Kelli’s widower, Keir Mahoney, is in Houston and I want him to know I’m thinking about him.
Keir picks up after a couple of rings. ‘Nina, how are you? How’s Primrose Hill?’ He sounds pleased to hear from me.
‘Cold,’ I say. ‘Ice all over the park every morning this week. Chopper’s still trying to work out why his paws come under attack every time he steps on the grass.’
‘Beautifully sunny here. Clear blue skies. Couldn’t have wished for better weather for my lovely Kelli.’
‘I just wanted to say I hope everything goes well.’
‘They’re wonderfully efficient. And the rocket looks amazing. Blast-off in four hours. Drink when I get back?’
‘I’ll look forward to that. Take care.’
I put on my coat and decide to walk home, even though the temperature has barely risen above zero all day. On the way, my thoughts are with Kelli.
After her funeral – since which one hundred and thirty thousand people have signed the organ donation register – Keir came to me with his rocket-to-space idea.
‘Tell me if I’m crazy,’ he’d said. ‘But I’m thinking about sending Kelli’s ashes into space. You know at the start of her career she had a role in Star Trek?’
Keir had already done his homework. He’d come across a firm that offers to deliver ashes to the surface of the moon. Another whose package includes an app that allows you to ‘track your loved one’s journey in orbit’. Finally, after I agreed Kelli would have been up for an adventure up among the stars in deep space, Keir chose the Texan company that’s been providing memorial spaceflights for more than thirty years.
‘I want to set her free to soar,’ was how he’d put it.
As I turn the corner into our street, I hear Kelli’s wonderful laugh. Clearly, as if she were walking alongside me. ‘Twinkle, twinkle.’ She arches an ironic eyebrow. ‘If it makes my darling husband happy. Well … beam me up!’
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard – or seen – Kelli. We’ve had plenty of other conversations. In fact, we’ve been talking to one another almost since the day she died. And no, as I’ve explained to Gloria and Edo, it’s not the same as that movie-in-my-head-thing of Ryan’s imaginary funeral.
That was on a loop, the same scene over and over again.
Kelli and I … well, we just hang out together. I know she’s dead, but honestly, I hear an authentic version of my friend.
It’s actually pretty common. I’ve had more than a dozen clients tell me they still see and hear people they’ve lost. Maybe we’re all hallucinating. Or letting our imagination run riot.
My head tells me our exchanges are a way of processing my grief, but in my heart, I’m just so thankful Kelli hasn’t vanished from my life.
‘Have a great flight!’ I silently say to her. ‘Come back soon.’
‘Bye for now. Love to Edo and Gloria.’
I’m not the only one who’s been spending a lot of time in their bedroom.
Edo’s been doing the same thing.
We all cope with anguish in our own way, and Edo’s way has been to work incessantly on his tribute website to Dele Dier.
It goes live at midnight.
But first, Gloria and I are about to get a preview.
I’ve just finished clearing the table – Edo’s supper turned out to be a selection of microwavable delights from Marks and Sparks, but none the worse for that – and Edo’s fetching his laptop.
‘Now look,’ Gloria says. ‘What Edo’s been doing … it’s going to come as a bit of a shock. You need to get past that.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
For a moment, I feel betrayed. But I’m aware, too, that Edo and Gloria have grown really close. They’re even talking about setting up some sort of project that combines art, gardening and the local community. Gloria sees it as a not-for-profit, but Edo has other – more commercial – ideas.
Before I can ask Gloria anything else, Edo reappears, laptop in hand. He puts it on the table and says, ‘Sooooo.’
Then silence.
‘Edo, you have to tell her.’ Gloria moves to Edo’s side and puts her hand on his shoulder. ‘Maybe if you just show her the Sky News piece?’
‘The what?’ Now I’m apprehensive, as well as confused. ‘What’s your website doing on the news?’
‘It’s not my website.’ Edo’s voice is little more than a whisper. ‘It’s Dele’s.’
‘A tribute to him, right?’ I reach for the computer, but Edo shoves it beyond reach.
‘Not exactly,’ Edo manages. He looks at Gloria who gives him a nod of encouragement. Then continues, ‘Remember my project? Design for Death.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, Dele is the project.’
‘I’m not understanding.’
‘You know how some people leave their bodies to science?’ Edo tries again. ‘Well, Dele’s left his body to art.’
For all the sense he’s making, Edo might as well be speaking Serbo-Croat
‘His grave at Highgate Cemetery … it’s more of an installation.’
‘You’re planning some sort of sculpted tombstone, you mean?’
Edo takes a very deep breath. ‘No,’ he says. ‘That’s not what I mean. I’ve created a multi-media show. I put Wi-Fi-enabled cameras inside Dele’s coffin. The afternoon before he died, he swallowed five microchips with cameras. They’ll be automatically activated once they’re broken down in the stomach.’
‘You what?’ Before Edo can explain himself further, I think back to the aftermath of Dele’s death.
The three of us, accompanied by Joshua Kent, had brought Dele’s body from the hospice to Happy Endings, placing him to rest safely in my eBay fridge – which continues to behave itself perfectly.
Unlike Edo.
Now I’m remembering how, on the morning of the funeral, Edo had requested some ‘alone time’ with Dele’s body. To say goodbye, or so I presumed.
Far from paying his last respects, Edo had been rigging the corpse of Dele Dier with cameras that would show—
‘Do you have any idea what happens to a body when it goes into the ground?’
‘Of course.’ Edo actually manages to look self-righteous. ‘Right now, Dele’s corpse is teeming with life. It’s the cornerstone of a complex ecosystem that’s going to flourish and grow as decomposition proceeds.’
‘On camera?’
‘I’ve set up a dedicated live stream on the new website. And there’s going to be a YouTube channel. Should be really useful for artists and scientists alike. But that’s only one strand of the installation.’
If there were a register for undertakers – and I’ve always thought there should be – this in itself would be enough to get me struck off.
‘What else?’
‘Immortality,’ Edo announces with a half-smile. ‘Dele Dier is going to live forever on social media. I’ve built a digital doppelgänger. Like an avatar, only more advanced. All that time I spent at the hospice, Dele and I were working together on my project. We recorded thousands of words and phrases. He’s given me his entire photo collection, plus access to his Facebook and Twitter and Instagram accounts. By the time I’ve finished programming everything, Digital Dele Dier will have been trained to speak and interact with people. He’ll
be able to answer questions. Initiate conversations, even.’
Gloria touches Edo on the shoulder again. ‘How about you show Nina your TV interview,’ she prompts.
Edo fiddles with his laptop. The screen of which fills with a picture of Edo – dressed in a suit – and a voiceover saying something about a collaboration between a famous, recently deceased artist and his associate.
Edo begins to speak. ‘The installation is called Liquidated Assets,’ he tells the camera. ‘It won’t be to everyone’s taste, and I expect some will find it downright offensive. But art has been controversial throughout history. And Dele’s not the first to use parts of the human body for art itself. Do you know about the sculpture of a human head … made with the artist’s own blood?’
I have to hand it to him. Edo is doing for art what Brian Cox does for science and Mary Berry does for cakes. He’s expert, authentic and hugely likeable.
He might just get away with this.
Edo pauses the interview. ‘It’ll be going out after midnight,’ he says. ‘I hope you’re not too angry with me. It’s what Dele wanted. He signed papers with his lawyer to say so.’
I straighten up from the laptop and give Edo a hug. ‘If you’d told me what you were going to do with the cameras, then yes, I’d have stopped you,’ I admit. ‘I’m not sure how Highgate Cemetery’s going to respond, but I’ll do my best to smooth things over. And Edo,’ I add, ‘you’re right. Dele would have loved this. He’d be proud of you. And so am I.’
47
Edo is famous. And to a certain extent, I am basking in reflected glory.
Liquidated Assets – Edo’s Digital Dele Dier installation – has divided the media, not only in this country but across the world.
Including Australia.
A couple of days after the website went live, Barclay texted me a couple of links to the Herald Sun. In one story, a group of Melbourne funeral directors were praising me for my ‘innovative approach’ to undertaking, and in the other, Edo was referred to as ‘the enfant terrible of British art’.