by Maeve Haran
‘And will it be a burial or cremation?’ Mrs Lal enquired.
‘Oh, burial definitely. He said he liked to think of the sun still shining on him, even if he was six feet under.’
‘Perhaps he might prefer a Parsi burial where the body is consumed by vultures?’ Mrs Lal suggested enthusiastically.
‘Do you know, dear, I think he’d prefer C of E.’
Claudia and her daughter Gaby made sure that their adored father and grandfather got a funeral he’d have enjoyed going to himself. All his favourite hymns, especially ‘Plough the Fields and Scatter’, funny and tender evocations of the man they all remembered, a vicar who actually got his name right.
To their surprise there was an unscheduled addition. Hiro suddenly moved on his mechanical wheels and declaimed:
‘He is not dead, this friend – not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Gone some few, trifling steps ahead . . .’
and returned to his pew.
Ella threw a comforting arm round Claudia’s shoulders. ‘That was very sweet.’
‘I know it seems a bit far-fetched since Hiro isn’t mortal at all, but they really were good friends.’
‘Well,’ Sal added in a low voice just for Claudia’s ears, ‘if you’re going to exploit artificial intelligence it’s a lot better than a sex doll.’
‘Sally Grainger!’ Ella rebuked her, shocked. ‘And at her father’s funeral too.’
‘Dad would have laughed and asked where he could get one for Hiro,’ Claudia smiled, wiping away her tears for the father she’d loved so much.
‘So what’s going to happen to Hiro now?’ Ella asked. ‘Your mum hates him, doesn’t she?’
‘I have no idea. I’d better ask Lou. Technically Hiro belongs to him and he’s spent a fortune developing him.’
‘What are you going to do with Hiro, Lou?’
‘I would be happy to find a use for him in the shop if you were agreeable,’ chimed in Mrs Lal. ‘I’m sure he would be a considerable attraction.’
‘So it is you behind the shop transformation?’ Ella replied, impressed. ‘I have to say it looks absolutely amazing.’ She’d only just got back from London and was behind with the gossip.
‘I’ll talk to Hiro,’ Lou replied cagily. ‘And see what he wants.’
Mrs Lal moved off in the direction of Murdo Binns just as Olivia arrived with a tray of canapés. ‘Eat up. It was always the food that Leonard most enjoyed about funerals. I think he would have particularly enjoyed this one.’
They all fell silent, thinking of the irony of this statement. Finally Ella spoke. ‘We were all discussing the amazing window Mrs Lal’s created in the charity shop.’
‘I know,’ Olivia nodded. ‘And the two volunteers were convinced Vera the manageress was going to go ballistic. What fun. We haven’t had excitement like this since Mr Benson’s rampant goat got out and terrified all the womenfolk.’
‘Mrs Lal does seem to create excitement wherever she goes,’ commented Rose acidly as she joined the group.
‘That’s why we’re trying to contain it,’ Olivia replied, ‘rather like nuclear fission, for the benefit of all mankind.’
‘As I recall’ – Rose watched Mrs Lal simper as she accepted a glass of white wine from Murdo – ‘nuclear fission can cause a lot more danger than it does benefit.’
In the corner by the bar Claudia finally managed to tie down her mother for a moment. ‘Are you all right, Ma? Really?’
‘I suppose it hasn’t really hit me properly.’ Olivia sat down next to her daughter. ‘I don’t suppose it will until all the hoo-ha has died down and everyday life reasserts. At least there’s one good thing. I’ll be able to get rid of that revolting robot.’
Claudia put her arm round her mother. She could see her husband Don the other side of the room and beckoned him over. ‘Why don’t you take over handing out canapés and give Ma a break?’
‘Delighted.’
‘No, dear,’ Olivia insisted, ‘I prefer to be doing. But thank you all the same.’
‘She can’t wait to get rid of Hiro.’
‘She was obviously jealous of him, and then embarrassed about it. She’ll miss your dad.’
‘Even though her main communication with him was through nagging.’
‘I don’t think he paid a lot of attention.’
‘I wonder who she’ll decide to nag next,’ Don grinned. ‘I do hope it isn’t me.’
‘Hey.’ Claudia knitted her arm through his. ‘I thought that was my job.’
Laura couldn’t remember last feeling this excited. Gavin was actually coming next weekend and they were going to meet at last. She looked at the photograph she had of him that she kept on her phone and noticed that he’d sent her another three texts since lunchtime. It must be a slow day at the solar power installation. The messages were getting sexier and sexier too. A sudden terror came over her again that he’d be disappointed with her. He was five years younger and maybe he hadn’t really taken in how old she was. She looked into his warm brown eyes and willed a message to him that she couldn’t wait to see him. She needed Sal’s chutzpah or Ella’s calm confidence or even Claudia’s feeling that women were just as good as men. All her feelings of rejection by Simon for a younger woman flooded back.
She began to worry that this meeting she’d been looking forward to so much, and the secret belief she’d allowed herself that Gavin would turn out to be someone she could love, maybe for the rest of her life, was stupid and unfounded. That he might take one look at her and go back to Beirut.
She went into her bedroom and opened her wardrobe. For about the third time that week she riffled through her clothes trying to pick the outfit that made her look youngest and prettiest.
His newest text didn’t exactly help.
My Laura, I can’t wait to be next to you with your lovely body next to mine. It can get so lonely out here in the desert. Your Gavin
Funny, she didn’t think Beirut was in the desert but no doubt that was her geography again. She wasn’t remotely techie enough to find where a message came from and thought for an instant of asking her daughter, Cory, who was good at these things. But of course Cory would tell her to be careful, so that was out.
Ella was due to go and have supper with Claudia and Don and Claudia’s mother Olivia a few days later to cheer her up a bit after the funeral but she had a spare couple of hours first so she made herself a large mug of tea and got out her laptop. She had mixed feelings about what she was about to do – genuine affection for Laura and also a sense of guilt from the past, remembering how betrayed Laura had felt by her when she’d blogged about the collapse of Laura’s marriage. She hadn’t used Laura’s name but Laura had instantly recognized the circumstances and been bitterly hurt all the same. She suspected Laura would feel the same about this. And yet Ella had an uneasy feeling about this mysterious Gavin which she couldn’t shake.
She started by googling online romance and of course a hundred dating apps appeared – Match.com, which seemed to be the biggest, the wittily named Plenty of Fish, Elite for professional singles, who all no doubt thought they were worth it, Our Time, aimed at the over-fifties, Tinder of course – she’d encountered young people who’d met on that – Happn, which showed you photographs of people you’d crossed that day in the street who might be interested in meeting and even one called Three-Ender, apparently aimed at setting up threesomes. It was such a different time. No more drinking six ciders and getting off with someone at a disco.
Ella sipped her tea, reeling from the shock of how far this world was from the one she’d grown up in when she’d met her husband Laurence at university and they’d got married five years later. Since Ella was doing well as a lawyer they’d delayed having children until her mid-thirties and had an extremely happy marriage until Laurence had been killed in a train crash on an average Tuesday afternoon five years ago.
She put down her mug and conjured his face, sad that it was becomi
ng more indistinct. Would she have ever thought of putting a toe into this unknown world of online dating? She shuddered, grateful that she had given up all that and come here instead, though she could see Laura’s circumstances were very different to hers.
The next thing she moved on to was dating scams. Ella was amazed at just how much there was on this topic. One thing she noticed were the constant references to something called ‘catfishing’. Catfishing, it seemed, was deliberately using a fake profile, often using a photograph stolen from someone’s Facebook page or other social media, to dupe innocent people, sometimes cheating them of quite large sums of money. There was even a TV show in America where the host confronted one of these catfishers on camera.
Ella felt a horrible cold shadow of apprehension, the kind of feeling she hadn’t had since she’d seen a uniformed policeman walk up her front steps in London on the day of Laurence’s death, and had known there was something terribly wrong.
One article actually listed the most common things to look for. Usually they had a job which meant they had to travel a lot – pilot, soldier based abroad, engineer. Quite often they said they were in the SAS or the Special Boat Service, adding a dash of James Bond glamour to their profiles. Ella could remember Laura saying Gavin worked abroad, but she couldn’t remember his actual job.
They were very eager to get you off the dating websites, which it seemed were monitored for dodgy behaviour, and onto messaging or email. They often employed the technique of ‘lovebombing’, sending you loving texts many times a day. Very often they became intensely passionate even though you had never met.
And then they asked for money.
There were countless stories of victims, nearly all of them middle-aged women, who had been taken for a ride. ‘I am neither stupid nor naive,’ asserted one rather attractive woman who had given away thousands of pounds to an unknown scammer. ‘I just happened to be very lonely.’
Ella looked at her watch. She would find all this riveting if she wasn’t so worried about Laura. But it was time to go.
Ella turned off her laptop reluctantly. Bloody hell, she was getting pulled into this weird and addictive world herself! No wonder Laura, raw and wretched after the end of her marriage, had been easy game.
But was she? Maybe Gavin was a perfectly normal man who happened to be a long way away and was feeling lonely himself. Maybe he was just what Laura needed.
Whatever kind of person he was, they would soon find out. He was due to arrive at Heathrow Terminal 5 in less than a week.
Ella was surprised to find that Mrs Lal had been invited to supper at Olivia’s request, and that she and Olivia were behaving almost like old school friends, but they ought to be grateful as it was clearly proving a comfort to Olivia. Just as surprising was that Don had cooked the meal, and it was delicious.
‘It’s this Men’s Shed thing he’s joined,’ whispered Claudia, looking as stunned as anyone. ‘It’s amazing. Not only is he now the King of DIY, but he’s moved on to cooking!’
‘I don’t suppose he could be the new chef,’ Ella ventured.
Mrs Lal, looking elegant but decidedly overdressed for a kitchen supper in the country, immediately took offence.
‘Rose McGill is convinced it was I who caused the cook to go. But all I did was suggest a different way of cooking steak I had enjoyed in a French restaurant. Why would the man object to that? In India it would be a compliment that I was interested.’
Nobody could think of an answer to that, so Claudia swiftly changed the subject. ‘This really is delicious, love.’ She pointed to the tortellini with homemade ragu, amazed that Don had actually made his own pasta.
‘I enjoyed it.’ He winked at Mrs Lal. ‘But I’d appreciate it if Mrs Lal didn’t give me a better recipe for the filling. Hey, we can’t go on calling you Mrs Lal. What is your first name?’
How strange we all call her that still, Ella thought.
‘Lalita,’ announced Mrs Lal as if she were presenting a precious gift.
‘That’s a pretty name,’ Claudia acknowledged.
‘Thank you,’ conceded Mrs Lal graciously.
‘Anyway,’ intervened Olivia gleefully, ‘you’ve seen what Mrs Lal has done to the Minsley branch of Good Age? She’s utterly transformed it!’
‘Yes,’ Ella agreed. ‘I was stunned when I saw it. But equally amazed they just let you go in and do it.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Lal admitted, ‘I was rather naughty, but the large sum I have donated will help calm things down, I can assure you. But wait and see what happens next. When I have finished it will be better than Selfridges. Perhaps not Harrods, but it is a mistake to be unrealistic.’
Claudia, who always found Selfridges rather dauntingly full of stylish things she couldn’t afford, nodded.
‘We’re going to win the Best Charity Shop UK,’ announced Olivia proudly.
‘Starting tomorrow,’ endorsed Mrs Lal. And they suddenly embraced each other like Bush and Blair deciding to invade Iraq.
Good Age clearly didn’t know what was going to hit it.
Spike, the lone representative of youth (if you didn’t count Bella and Noah), smiled to himself that he’d enlisted more people than expected for his oldie exercise class. His friends all laughed at him for living here, but he rather liked it. A city lad by birth and upbringing, the countryside was new and exotic. He got free food and lovely, comfortable lodging and all he was supposed to do was organize a few classes, help Ella with the gardening, and generally inject a sense of youthful liveliness. Actually, he was a bit stuck here because it wasn’t as if the people living here were really old, more his grandparents’ age, and thinking about it, he didn’t actually talk to them much. His gran talked to him, non-stop. But what about? He was suddenly struck by the fact he’d never asked his gran or granddad anything about their lives. She’d spent most of her life cleaning doorsteps or placing endless minimum bets at the bookies.
He walked past an open window where music was blaring at maximum volume, just like one of those cars with their speakers booming out rap music so loudly the whole town can hear it. Faintly, beneath the deafening music, Spike could hear the sound of a Black & Decker drill, and even worse, someone singing along.
‘Too loud for you, is it?’ asked a voice, straining to make itself heard over the music.
‘Don’t you have rules about this sort of thing?’ marvelled Spike. ‘I mean, you’re supposed to be some new-age community, all peace and love, not heavy metal at eleven a.m.! Surely it’s a nuisance?’
‘It’s just Don building some shelves in the lounge,’ Lou grinned. ‘You young people, you should go to more live music. We all grew up standing next to the speakers at Rolling Stones gigs.’
‘But Lou,’ protested Spike, ‘it’s Status Quo!’
‘Point taken. Why don’t you go and ask him to put on someone else?’
Spike wasn’t sure if confronting an angry Status Quo fan holding a Black & Decker was really such a good idea.
Sal emerged with a worried expression she was trying to hide behind a smile, and began to belt out ‘Whatever You Want’.
Lou turned round, smiling hugely.
‘What a voice!’ He opened his arms to her. ‘You sound like Janis Joplin. Spike here can’t take the volume. He wants to know why we don’t ban it in our new-age community.’
‘Spike, haven’t you worked it out yet?’ she asked naughtily. ‘We’re just a bunch of old rockers!’
‘What?’ Lou instantly batted back. ‘Even Mrs Lal?’
‘Mrs Lal is a law unto herself. How do you know, in the privacy of her own home, she doesn’t do levitation while chanting Om to the sound of Iron Maiden?’
‘Now, now,’ Lou chided, ‘don’t insult the sacred mantras of Eastern religions.’
‘I hope you’re not a load of wackos who’re going to arrange a mass suicide one of these days,’ Spike muttered.
‘Actually, that’s not a bad idea,’ Lou nodded seriously. ‘I’ve always thought we
live far too long. What’s the point of living till you’re a hundred when you’ve got no fucking idea what day of the week it is? Good thinking, Spike. I’ll definitely look into it.’
‘Come on, Lou,’ Sal said with unusual abruptness, ‘that really isn’t funny.’
He looked at her, suddenly concerned. ‘Hey, are you okay?’ He had to shout over the deafening Phil Collins that had followed Status Quo. ‘There isn’t anything you’re not telling me?’
‘Come on,’ she replied. ‘Let’s go into the village for a coffee. I want to look at this famous window of Mrs Lal’s.’
‘Oh,’ Spike shouted, suddenly smiling, ‘speaking of the devil, I may have found you a chef.’
They exchanged glances. A chef that Spike knew would probably be a just-graduated catering student or someone who’d lost their job from a gastropub.
‘Oh, well, if you’re not interested,’ Spike shrugged. ‘He’s my uncle as a matter of fact, but he’s more your age than mine. He’s thinking of retiring and I thought maybe if you offered him a house here he might consider it.’
‘Right.’ Lou winked at Sal. ‘Where’s he been working till now?’
Spike repressed a grin and shouted, just as Phil suddenly broke into ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, ‘At the Ritz, as a matter of fact.’
And he walked off, confident that Lou and Sal would be standing stock still watching his departure.
Laura was grateful today was one of her days at LateExpress. Mindlessly stacking shelves was just what she needed. Also, she admitted reluctantly to herself, she could do with the company.
Of course she had Gavin, and the wonderful texts he sent her to read in bed. It was amazing to be welcomed into the day by someone who told her he loved and desired her rather than her surly ex-husband who’d blundered silently out of bed and to the loo without even acknowledging her existence for twenty-five years. Simon had not been a morning person.