He moved his face closer to the mirror. Maybe he should buy some cream or other to sort out those dark circles under his eyes. But then again, he did feel an odd sort of attachment to them, perhaps because they were the closest thing to a distinguishing feature he had. Everything else about him was just so . . . normal. Part of him longed to have “a thing”—like those men who decide to compensate for being five foot five by spending hours in the gym, ending up incredibly muscly yet still having to walk a bit faster than their friends to keep up. Or maybe he’d choose a dominating nose, or jutting-out ears— the sort of feature that, if possessed by a celebrity, would lead to their being described as “unconventionally attractive” by the press. “Ordinary”-looking women were saddled with “Plain Jane.” There didn’t seem to be an equivalent for men. Maybe, Andrew thought, he would take on that mantle. “Standard Andrew”? “Standy Andy”? The benchmark for men with light brown hair and unremarkably straight teeth. It would be one way to leave a legacy.
He stepped back and smoothed out a crease on his shirtsleeve. “You know what you look like? A wilted carrot with a face drawn on it.” He puffed out his cheeks. What in god’s name had he been thinking to agree to this?
The Sentinel 4wDH was speeding around at a pleasing pace, hypnotic on the figure-eight track he’d set up. He’d deliberately chosen Ella’s “But Not for Me”—smooth and languid and beautiful—to try to calm him down, but it wasn’t helping much. This was why he didn’t socialize, because just the thought of it was making his stomach cramp up. The temptation to stay in and carry on his conversations on the forum was very much in danger of winning out. But in the end he forced himself to leave the house. Diane, he had decided, was having to pull a late one at work, but he’d managed to get a babysitter last minute.
He Googled the pub before he left and was concerned that it might be dangerously close to “cool,” judging by the ominous photos of chalkboards by the door with their aggressive slogans promising—with 50 percent accuracy—“beer and good times,” but when he got there he was relieved to see it looked fairly normal, from the outside at least. Nevertheless, he did three walk-bys, pretending to be on his phone so if Peggy or her friends saw him from the inside he could pretend he’d just been finishing a call before he came in. The timing of his arrival was crucial. If he got there too early he’d be forced into making conversation. Too late and he’d feel like an interloper. Ideally he’d join them in time to say a quick hello just before the quiz began—then the focus would be on the questions and nobody would feel like they had to make an effort to include him in conversation.
The next time he passed by he glanced through the window and spotted a group of people in the far corner. It was them. Peggy was sitting next to a man in a leather jacket who had long brown hair and a goatee. Steve, presumably. He seemed to be in the middle of an anecdote, his gestures getting more expansive as he built to what was obviously the punch line. He banged the table as the others laughed. Andrew saw a few people standing at the bar looking around to see the reason for the noise. Peggy, he noticed, was only half joining in with the laughter.
He braced his hand against the door, but then he froze.
This wasn’t him. This wasn’t what he did. What if he literally didn’t know one correct answer in this quiz, or was forced to take sides in a heated debate? What if they were on course to win and then he ruined it for everyone? And even then, it wasn’t as if the quiz was continuous—there’d be gaps where people could question him about his life. He knew how to deal with people at work when it came to talking about his family. He could predict what things they’d ask him and knew when to duck out of conversations when he felt uncomfortable about where they were going. But this was uncharted territory, and he’d be trapped.
A car pulled up behind him and he heard someone get out and offer a familiar “Have a good night”—a farewell that could mean only one thing. He turned and saw the cab’s yellow light, a welcoming beacon promising sanctuary. He rushed over and rattled off his address to the driver, yanking the door open and throwing himself inside. He sank down low into the seat, his heart racing as if he were in a getaway car leaving a bank robbery. A quarter of an hour later he was outside his building, his evening over, twenty pounds down and he hadn’t even bought a drink.
Inside his building’s hallway, in among the junk mail delivered that morning there was an envelope addressed to him in pen. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket and hurried up the stairs. Inside his flat, his urgency to get music on and a train moving around the track felt even greater than usual.
He pushed the needle down roughly on the record player and turned the volume up, then knelt down and tugged at the rail track, pulling the middle of the eight apart and pushing it out to create one loop instead of two. He set the train running and sat in the newly created circle, his knees folded to his chest. Here, he was calm. Here, he was in control. Trumpets howled and cymbals crashed, and the train fizzed around the track, encircling him, guarding him, keeping him safe.
After a while he remembered the envelope in his pocket. He took it out and opened it, pulling out the message inside. As he did so he was hit by a waft of rich aftershave.
Your disappearing act meant you weren’t around long enough to hear Sally’s will being read this morning. You little bastard. Did you know? Because I certainly didn’t. Twenty-five grand in her savings—you’d have thought she’d have mentioned that to me, wouldn’t you? After all, we were trying to grow the business—that was the dream. So you can imagine it came as something of a shock to find out about it, and that she had decided to leave the money not to me, but to you.
Maybe now you’ll begin to realize just how sick with guilt she was, all because you never forgave her, no matter how hard she tried to help you. You were like a brick tied around her ankles, weighing her down. Well, I hope you’re happy now, Andrew. It was all worth it, wasn’t it?
* * *
—
Andrew read Carl’s letter through several times, but it still didn’t make sense. Surely Sally giving him money was some sort of administrative mistake? Ticking a wrong box? Because the alternative explanation, that it was a last-gasp attempt to make things right, to rid herself of guilt that she had lived with and that he could, and should, have absolved her of, was too desperately sad for him to contemplate.
— CHAPTER 11 —
For the next three months, each time he returned home it was with trepidation at the prospect of another envelope addressed to him in Carl’s spidery scrawl.
The letters arrived erratically. Some weeks there would be two or three—tearstained and inkblotted—then there would be four weeks without one at all. But Carl’s anger never wavered—if anything he furiously doubled down on how Andrew had conned Sally out of her money. You are pathetic and cowardly and worthless, and you don’t deserve Sally’s forgiveness was how he’d ended his latest note. Andrew wondered if Carl would be surprised to know that he was broadly in agreement with this assessment.
Each time he opened the door to find a letter he would trudge upstairs and sit on the side of his bed, turning the envelope around in his hands. He told himself to stop opening them, but he was trapped in an unforgiving cycle: the more he read, the guiltier he felt, and the guiltier he felt, the more he thought he deserved Carl’s anger. This was especially true when Carl once more accused Andrew of contributing to Sally’s ill health by never reaching out to her, because the more he thought about it, the more he started to convince himself that this was true.
* * *
—
It was long enough now after Sally’s death for some sense of normality to have returned in the way that people were treating him. Cameron had gone through a phase of putting a hand on his shoulder when he spoke to him, looking at him with his sad, bulbous eyes and knitted eyebrows and doing the head tilt, but thankfully that had now stopped. More of a relief still was the fact that K
eith, who had briefly restrained himself, was now back to being a complete arsehole.
After several aborted attempts, he’d finally built up the courage to tell the subforum about Sally.
Hi, chaps. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet of late. Had some sad news. I lost my sister. I’m still feeling a bit numb about it all, to be honest. As soon as he’d hit “post” he wondered if he’d done the wrong thing, but they’d all responded with sympathetic, well-judged messages and, in a move of touching solidarity, had changed their avatars from dancing tomatoes and cheerful fat controllers to match Andrew’s plain, sky-blue square.
But while things were largely back to normal, there was something that had been brought sharply into focus, something that Andrew was finding hard to ignore. He had always justified continuing to lie about having a family on the grounds that it was harmless. But, subconsciously, the fact that Sally was still around (no matter how strained their relationship) had meant that the fantasy he’d created just existed alongside his real life, and he knew deep down that he had something tangible to fall back on in his sister. But now, with her gone, he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about Diane, Steph and David. As a result, when family came up in conversation with Cameron, Keith and Meredith, he no longer felt the little thrill he used to when inventing some mundane detail about how things were at school or what his weekend plans were. But it was worse—much worse—when it came to Peggy. The day after he’d bailed on the pub quiz, he’d been racked with guilt and apologized far more earnestly than was necessary, much to Peggy’s amusement and confusion. After a few more weeks in her company Andrew realized she wasn’t the sort of person to sweat the small stuff like that. She had continued to shadow him, so they had spent almost all their time at work together: attending more property inspections, as well as the office grind of registering deaths and compiling details of unclaimed estates to send on to the treasury.
And then there had been the funeral.
Andrew had mentioned in passing to Peggy that he was going to attend the service of Ian Bailey, having not been able to track down any friends or family. He wasn’t expecting Peggy to ask if she could come.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “It’s not compulsory—or technically part of the job, in fact.”
“I know, but I’d like to,” Peggy said. “I’m just following your lead, really. If the point is to help see the person off with some company, then me doubling the numbers is a good thing to do, right?”
Andrew had to concede that this was a good point.
“Not to sound patronizing,” he said, “but it’s maybe worth taking a bit of time to prepare yourself for it. As I’ve said, they can be pretty bleak affairs.”
“Don’t worry,” Peggy said. “I was thinking I could do a bit of karaoke to cheer things along. ‘Africa’ by Toto, something like that?”
Andrew looked at her blankly. He saw her face falter. God, why couldn’t he just respond normally to things? He forced himself to try to rectify the situation.
“I’m not sure that’d be appropriate,” he said. Then, before Peggy could respond sincerely, “I think ‘The Final Countdown’ might be more fitting.”
Peggy chuckled while Andrew went back to his screen, torn between self-reproach at trivializing the funeral and relief and pride at managing to successfully devise and deliver a real-life joke to a real-life human being.
That Thursday they stood in church, waiting for Ian Bailey to arrive.
“It’s nice—well, not nice, but, you know, a good thing, there being two of us today.” Andrew winced slightly at how clumsily this had come out.
“Three of us actually,” Peggy said, pointing up at the rafters, as a sparrow flitted over from one beam to another. They were quiet for a moment, watching the bird, which then briefly disappeared out of sight.
“Have you ever imagined your own funeral?” Peggy asked.
Andrew kept his eyes on the rafters. “I can’t say I have; you?”
Peggy nodded. “Oh yeah. Loads. When I was about fourteen I got really obsessed and planned the whole thing, right down to the readings and the music. I seem to remember everyone was going to be dressed in white, so it was different from normal, and Madonna was going to do “Like a Prayer” a cappella. Is that weird? I mean, the planning of it, not the Madonna part—I know that’s weird.”
Andrew saw the sparrow flit to another beam. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it makes sense. We’re all going to have one, so why not think about how you want it to go?”
“Most people don’t want to think about it, do they? Understandably, of course. But then for some of us, it’s always at the back of our minds. I think that’s the only real explanation why some people do such stupid, impulsive things.”
“Like what?” Andrew said, giving in to neck ache and lowering his head.
“Like people who embezzle money from their business even though they’re obviously going to get found out. Or . . . that woman who was on the news for getting caught pushing a cat into a wheelie bin. It’s like, in that moment, they’re sticking a middle finger up to death. You’re coming for me, I know you are—but watch this! It’s like a pure burst of living, isn’t it?”
Andrew frowned. “You’re saying pushing a cat into a bin is a pure burst of living?”
Peggy had to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing, and for one dreadful moment Andrew thought they were both about to get the giggles, like naughty schoolchildren. Then a memory came to him, quite out of the blue, of he and Sally convulsing with laughter in a fish and chip shop as they exchanged fire with chips across the table, while their mother was distracted by a conversation with a friend at the counter.
Try as he might, as the service proceeded he found it impossible not to think about Sally. Surely there had been more moments like that? Had her leaving for America been such an all-consuming betrayal that it had biased his memory? After all, he thought, suddenly feeling faint, there had been one particular memory that he’d spent the last twenty years trying to let go, where Sally had done her utmost to help him, and he hadn’t let her. He pictured himself in his flat, rooted to the spot, hearing the phone ringing on and on and on, unable to answer. When he’d finally picked up, he heard her voice, pleading with him to talk to her, to let her help. He’d let the phone slip from his hand. He told himself he’d answer the next day when she called, and then the day after that, and every day for the next month after, but he never did.
Andrew’s mouth had gone very, very dry. He was only vaguely aware of the vicar’s soft address. At Sally’s funeral, he had been numb, horribly self-conscious next to Carl. But now, all he could think of was why he hadn’t answered the phone.
His breathing had become shallow. The vicar had just finished delivering part of the service and nodded to the back, whereupon an organ clunked into life. As the first chord filled the church, Peggy leaned over to Andrew. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said. But as he stood there, the music getting louder, his head bowed, the church floor swam in front of his eyes, and he had to grasp onto the pew in front with both hands to stop himself from falling. His breaths were coming in shuddering bursts, and as the music echoed around the church, and he realized he was finally beginning to mourn his sister, he was vaguely aware of Peggy’s hand gently rubbing his back.
By the time the service was over he had managed to compose himself. As he and Peggy walked out of the churchyard he felt it necessary to explain.
“Back there,” he said, “I was a bit . . . upset . . . because I was thinking about my sister. Not the person—Ian. Not that I wasn’t thinking about him, but . . .”
“It’s okay, I get it,” Peggy said.
They walked on in silence for a while. Andrew began to feel the tightness leaving his throat and the tension draining from his shoulders. He realized Peggy was waiting for him to be the
one to speak first, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, he found himself softly humming Ella’s “Something to Live For.” He’d been listening to it the previous evening—the version from Ella at Duke’s Place. He’d always had an odd relationship with the song. He loved it for the most part, but there was a particular moment that always seemed to leave him with a gnawing pain in his gut.
“There’s a piece of music,” he said, “which is one of my favorites. But there’s this moment, right at the end, that’s jarring, and loud, and sort of shocking, even though I’m expecting it. So when I’m listening to the song, as much as I’m enjoying it, it’s always sort of spoiled by the fact I know this horrible ending is coming. But there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? So, in a way, it’s like what you were saying earlier, about people who are comfortable with the fact they’re going to die: if I could just accept the ending’s coming, then I could concentrate on enjoying the rest of the song so much more.”
Andrew glanced at Peggy, who seemed to be trying to suppress a smile.
“I cannot believe that you had that pearl of wisdom up your sleeve,” she said, “when you let me wang on about someone pushing a cat into a bin.”
* * *
—
Peggy began to attend all the funerals with him after that. Without really thinking about it, Andrew realized that he now felt relaxed around her, glad to have her company. It was an odd sensation to feel so normal discussing everything from the meaning of life to whether the vicar was wearing a wig. He was even starting to hold his own when it came to playing along with the games she and her kids had invented. His proudest moment had been coming up with one of his own, devising a challenge where you had to argue in favor of arbitrary opponents: the color red versus Tim Henman, for example. On occasion, at home in the evenings, he found his mind wandering, thinking about what Peggy might be up to at that moment.
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