The Last Minute

by Eleanor Updale

  ‘Ritzi!’ Bernie shouts after the fleeing dog, but his cry is drowned out as a drill starts up again.

  Sharon flings herself at Anthony. ‘You can’t leave me!’ she pleads, convulsed in sobs.

  Mariam tests her bathwater again. It’s cool enough to get in. She starts unbuttoning her pyjamas.

  Through the wall, Noel Gilliard is getting ever more irritated. It seems to him that the email link is taking ages to come up.

  Marco is lying on his belly on the floor, reaching underneath the drying machines for the lost valve. His sleeve is picking up dust and grease. Obviously the new cleaning lady hasn’t been mopping the nooks and crannies. He makes a mental note to tell her off when she comes in tonight.

  ‘Give me a break,’ says Nick to the florist. There’s just a hint of a catch in his voice, and Janine realizes that he’s probably just as hard up as she is.

  Max’s mother, still talking over her shoulder to her friends, giggles at his question about the coffin.

  Juliet realizes she knows the woman with the three spoons: it’s Felicity Milner, a work colleague who never returned from maternity leave three years ago. She’s let herself go, thinks Juliet; smiling, just in case Felicity recognizes her, too. There’s no sign of a response.

  The vicar sneezes.

  Across the road, in the petrol station, the taxi driver shouts and waves, but his passenger either can’t hear him, or chooses to take no notice.

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ the air-traffic supervisor asks the trainee.

  TOCK

  6 seconds to go . . .

  ‘I’M NOT SURE,’ says the trainee air-traffic controller.

  Paul is striding downhill towards Deanna, with Lotte still shouting after him: ‘Watch that scarf!’

  Anthony Dougall tries to muffle Sharon’s declarations of love by holding her close to him.

  ‘And Jack said . . .’ It’s the denouement of the beggar’s joke. The healthy man is going to tell the sick man why he is miserable.

  ‘ . . . and seven . . .’

  The architect has done as much as possible without actually entering the dance studio, and he can see that now would be a bad time to do that. He ponders whether to go back to his office or to grab a quick drink at the coffee shop.

  The policeman has changed his mind. Much as he would like to deal with the motorcyclist, it’s more important to get the traffic moving. He signals to Kelly to wind down her window.

  At last, the webmail menu is on Noel’s screen. He enters another password: D1cken5.

  ‘Two minutes, then,’ says the florist, tucking her scissors back in place.

  Brian Eglington, the pet-shop man, is furious at the accusations on the poster. He tears it from the window, but instead of confronting Kate, he storms back into his shop. He’s got a better idea of how to get back at her.

  The taxi passenger breaks into a run.

  The man with the backpack is still fiddling with his battery.

  Lucy is too embarrassed to leave the shop without buying anything. She stops at the counter and asks for a lottery scratchcard.

  Max’s mother shrugs her shoulders and rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as she yells across to her friends, ‘What a moment . . .’

  TICK

  5 seconds to go . . .

  ‘ . . . TO EXPLAIN THE mysteries . . .’

  The air-traffic supervisor speaks sternly: ‘Well, find out,’ he says, listening across the line to hear how the trainee handles his first little difficulty.

  Exhausted and embarrassed, Lorraine disentangles herself from Bernie. She is still fighting for breath. ‘Just give me a minute,’ she tries to say, knowing from experience that it won’t take long for her to be back to normal, but all that comes out is a wheeze and a grunt.

  Despite the confusion around him, Matey continues with his story, mainly for the benefit of Frank, the funeral director, who is trying to look as if he isn’t listening while waving the hearse on. The beggar’s changed his accent again. Now he’s speaking as cockney Jack. His tone is full of hungover misery, grievance and self-pity: ‘“It’s all right . . .”’

  ‘A pound’s worth of hope,’ the newsagent says with a smile, as he takes Lucy’s lottery money.

  ‘ . . . and eight.’ Breathless, aching and humiliated, the new woman at the back of the exercise class has decided that she won’t be coming back next week.

  ‘Miss!’ shouts Kayleigh on the coach.

  Miss Hunter flicks her hair behind her ears.

  Kayleigh’s mother is still watching the exercise class with contempt.

  Six miles away, at the other end of the phone, Kelly’s dad can hear her distant voice and the beeping of a reversing vehicle, but he can’t understand what is going on.

  The postman is annoyed. There’s still no response from Mariam, and so now he is going to have to write out a card telling her to collect the package herself. It will take time, and these days everything he does is measured and monitored. If his deliveries take too long, he will be in trouble when he gets back to the sorting office. He reaches for his pen.

  Deanna sidesteps the postman’s cart. She’s just a few metres from Paul now, and he is picking up speed, with Lotte’s voice echoing behind him: ‘Get something shorter!’

  Preparing to send/receive says the message on Noel’s computer.

  Someone comes out of the shop at the petrol station, carrying a plastic fuel can. He is walking in the direction of the shops and the car park. The delivery tanker is still dribbling fuel.

  The vicar rummages in his pocket for his handkerchief.

  On the school coach, Rory Lennahan starts up a song: ‘Why are . . .’

  TOCK

  4 seconds to go . . .

  ‘ . . . WE WAITING?’

  As Kate and the cyclist discuss the politics of animal rights on the pavement outside his shop, Brian Eglington is dialling her father’s radio phone-in. He knows the number by heart. It’s repeated constantly every morning, but until now he’s always resisted the urge to call and vent his views on everything from immigration to capital punishment. But now he can’t stop himself. He’s going to reveal to that smug slug Daintree exactly what his daughter is up to, and he’s going to break the news in public.

  Bernie has a moment’s indecision. He can tell from Matey’s tone of voice that he has almost finished, and he’s torn between running down the hill after Ritzi and staying to hear the end of the joke.

  ‘“ . . . for you . . .”’ The beggar pauses for a beat, hoping his listeners will be aghast that a fit man could envy someone who is dying.

  ‘Good luck,’ says the newsagent, handing over Lucy’s scratchcard, and smiling down at Chloe, who is waving her gloved hands in the air.

  In the coffee shop, Max’s mother tries to prise her son’s fingers off the window, but she keeps on laughing with her friend about her unexpected predicament of having to explain matters ‘of life and death’ to a three-year-old.

  Lifting her mug of black coffee, Juliet Morgan smiles at the little boy’s innocence, and wonders whether she will ever have babies of her own. Maybe her weight loss will help. Thank goodness she didn’t give in to that cake.

  At the back of the café, the chocolate-cake woman is struggling to lift her children onto high stools to eat their sugary feast.

  The architect decides that, since the traffic is so slow, he might as well stay in Heathwick a little longer. He turns towards the coffee shop.

  Terry Potts rests his head against the window, listening. He feels that his friend is now stable enough for him to be able to leave for work. He hopes he won’t get into too much trouble for being late, but if he does, it was worth it. He might have saved a precious life.

  Preparing to send/receive says the message on Noel’s computer.

  Confused to see his passenger rushing away, the taxi driver gets back in his cab. If he can find a way through the traffic jam, he’ll chase after him.

  As Stuart gets into position behind the oak
tree, his phone rings. He automatically uses his free hand to lift it to his ear, spreading dirt across the side of his face.

  ‘And lift!’ Only seven repetitions to go.

  The air-traffic control supervisor takes the trainee’s microphone and calls out himself: ‘GX413 . . .’

  The vicar feels another sneeze coming on, and whips out his handkerchief.

  Paul can’t hear Lotte any more, but she is still shouting to him: ‘We wouldn’t want . . .’

  The policeman hears a male voice calling from the foot well of the car: ‘Kelly!’

  Gillie Dougall looks up and sees Anthony and Sharon clasped in each other’s arms. Suddenly all her imagined worries are subsumed into a real horror she never expected to feel.

  TICK

  3 seconds to go . . .

  CONFETTI FLIES ACROSS the entrance to the church just as the mourners start to flood in.

  ‘ . . . and two . . .’

  ‘Kelly!’

  ‘Ritzi!’ shouts Bernie, as the pup bounds on towards the park.

  Lorraine’s phone vibrates again. This time she reaches for her pocket.

  Lenny Gibbon is struggling with a knot in his laces. His mother reaches down to untangle it for him. He pushes her away.

  The hatred he feels for his mother is mirrored by the love drawing Deanna and Paul ever closer, as Lotte cries out her warning: ‘ . . . something awful . . .’

  The gas man is shouting, but no one is looking. No one can hear.

  In the launderette, the fumes are making Marco quite woozy. He wishes Stefano would come back.

  Stefano is crossing the road.

  There is no way the taxi driver can get out of the petrol station to pursue his passenger. He looks back at the man’s luggage – the big heavy bags he helped load up earlier. The man might be in a rush to catch his plane, but why would he abandon them?

  A message from the plane comes into the controller’s headphones: ‘This is GX413 . . .’

  ‘Joe!’ The baker’s parents are still trying to attract his attention.

  On the coach, more voices join in with the song: ‘Why-aye are . . .’

  ‘Gotta go, mate,’ says Terry Potts.

  Down in the street, Matey echoes his words, grabbing the edge of Bernie’s coat to hold him there as he reaches the climax of his joke. He’s finishing with a cockney flourish: ‘“ . . . I’ve gotta go . . .”’

  TOCK

  2 seconds to go . . .

  ‘“ . . . TO WORK NOW!”’

  Bernie has missed the punch line of the joke. He’s thundering down the hill in pursuit of Ritzi, almost as breathless at the start of his run as Lorraine was at the end of hers. His bag of poo swings from his fingers, twisting in the air as he runs after his dog.

  ‘ . . . we waiting?’

  Rahil has started the YouTube clip again. Calum still can’t help laughing as the car tears the lady’s dress away, but this time he’s thinking of his own mother, and how awful it would be (for him as well as her) if she were the woman in the film.

  Kate, the animal-rights girl, is fumbling in her bag. Alongside her, the florist is trying to be patient, but wishing that she’d never let the charity boy start talking. She nods respectfully at two of the mourners as they make their way past. You never know. They might want to take flowers to the burial.

  Seeing the shower of confetti, a mourner walking up the church path gives the vicar a filthy look.

  Paul is out of earshot now. Lotte’s last words are swallowed up by the digger: ‘ . . . to happen to you!’

  ‘ . . . and three . . .’

  From the floor of Kelly Viner’s car, her father’s voice calls out again, ‘Kelly!’

  Downloading message 29 of 33 . . . Noel can tell without opening them that all the emails are spam so far.

  Max won’t come away from the window. His mother yields, crouches by his side next to the glass, and ponders how to tell him about coffins and funerals.

  Juliet, with a table to herself, steeped in pride at having resisted the cakes, and revelling in the relief of not being recognized by someone who has only known her as a fat slob, feels at last that her future may be truly happy. She moves her bag from the chair beside her just in case the smart gentleman who is just coming in needs a seat.

  The asking price for the dress is inching upwards, but no one has yet bid as much as she is prepared to offer. It may really become hers in just a few seconds’ time.

  Across the road, Lorraine is bent almost double, with one hand braced on her knee to steady herself, while the other holds her phone to her ear. The person who has called can hear only traffic noise and heavy, wheezing breaths. It’s Lena, one of Lorraine’s original running buddies – one of the marathon dropouts – guiltily calling to see how she is, and to catch up on the progress of the scanner sponsorship drive. She’d meant to call earlier, to suggest that Lorraine should come over to her side of town so they could go for a jog together there. But Lena was distracted by something on the TV breakfast show. It was only when that awful cook came on that she’d got round to dialling Lorraine’s number. Too late, obviously. Lorraine is already out training.

  The postman pushes the card through Mariam’s letter box.

  ‘I’m trying to help!’ snaps Mrs Gibbon.

  Stuart’s mother means well, too, when she says, ‘All set, dear?’ not realizing that her call has got him into even more of a mess.

  And the baker’s mother shouts out ‘Joe!’ once more.

  The gas worker in the trench is waving furiously, unseen.

  At air-traffic control, the pilot’s voice comes across as confident and calm. ‘We have a problem.’

  Up his ladder outside the church, Matthew Larkin makes another paint stroke, carefully ensuring that he hasn’t gone over the line. He wouldn’t want to imply that the restoration fund is healthier than it really is. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees flight GX413 coming in from the east. Its wheels are down; the wing flaps set for landing. He wonders whether it’s his daughter’s plane.

  ‘You take care,’ Terry says, with feeling. He knows he’s going to worry about his friend all day.

  The passengers who got off the bus down the hill are congratulating themselves on their decision to walk. One has even decided that he’s saved himself enough time to pop into the newsagent’s to buy a paper. The crossword might come in handy if the address at the funeral is over-long.

  ‘Not long now,’ says another, whose wife, wearing tighter shoes than usual, has been wearied by the walk. They step over Matey, barely noticing that he is there.

  ‘Just a second,’ Joe the baker calls to his mother, giving Lotte a peck on the cheek.

  TICK

  1 second to go . . .

  FRANK, THE FUNERAL director, stifles a laugh, in case any of the mourners are looking. As he steps forward to pat Dime and Dollar, and to take his place in front of the hearse, he puts his hand in his pocket, looking for some change to throw to the beggar.

  The horses nuzzle each other’s noses, and the carriage driver swings himself up into his seat, ready to move off when the traffic clears.

  ‘Whatever,’ snarls Lenny Gibbon in the shoe shop, adding a mumbled, but audible, ‘Cow!’

  Stumped for a reply to his mother, Stuart switches off his phone.

  Brian Eglington’s heart beats a little faster as he waits for his call to the radio station to be answered. Any moment now, he will be able to make Kate’s life a living hell.

  As the church bell continues to toll, the mourners pick their way along the crowded pavement. They still have a hope of beating the cortège to the church. Serena Dunn, the deceased’s long-suffering secretary, looks through the window of the hearse at her old boss’s coffin, and refrains from saying the words that come into her head: Late for his own . . .

  Gillie Dougall takes her foot off the box lid, and straightens up, holding the cake before her. Both her eyes are watering now, and her body has started to shake. Part of her brain is sear
ching for an innocent explanation for the scene before her, but she knows there can’t be one. Just an hour ago, Anthony told her he was about to board a plane in Salzburg. It’s a two-hour flight. He was lying. There was no conference, and from the look of that woman (surely it can’t be Sharon, who’d helped her plan the party, and advised her on what to wear for her photo as the perfect wife?), that wasn’t the first lie.

  Like the controller, the pilot is speaking with deliberate calmness. ‘Trouble with a passenger,’ he says. The controller isn’t sure what to make of that yet, but he pushes a button alerting the airport fire brigade to stand by.

  ‘You’re a marvel,’ says Lena, humbled by Lorraine’s commitment to her cause.

  Yet again, PC Lewis hears the deep male voice coming from the floor of the car: ‘Kelly!’

  Terrified of being late for the university and in trouble with the police, Kelly is in tears now.

  Send and receive complete. Definitely no fan mail then. Noel Gilliard shrugs and reaches out for someone who does think he’s the world’s greatest writer – indeed the world’s greatest human being. Vita the cat, still curled up on the towel on the radiator, stretches out in her sleep.

  Max’s mother puts on a soft, earnest voice to explain the coffin to her son. ‘Well, you see . . .’ she says.

  ‘ . . . and four . . .’

  One of the women in the fitness class spots her daughter looking out of the coach and gives a thumbs-up sign.

  The girl, embarrassed, ducks out of sight.

  The gas man in the trench is still shouting and waving. Paul and Deanna raise their arms, ready to embrace. In just a moment they will be reunited. ‘Je vais à l’amour!’ he cries, beaming with love.

  ‘Shut up, you fool,’ hisses Anthony Dougall, bending his head closer to Sharon’s ear.

  Shaking with fury and pain, Gillie Dougall dashes the birthday cake to the ground.