Nirvana Bites

by Debi Alper

  I realised with a jolt that the service had finished without me registering a single word. The coffin was held aloft on the shoulders of six sombre-faced men. I wondered if they had an allowance for osteopaths’ fees. Behind them, the mourners trailed, self-conscious in their roles. Kate didn’t so much as twitch an eye in my direction, but I could tell from the particular set of her mouth that she’d seen me. Dennis nodded at me, then registered what I was wearing. His eyebrows shot up, as he yanked his sons by the wrists to rush them past me before I could contaminate them.

  I didn’t care. My gaze was riveted on Len as he sat, blank-eyed and listless, in his wheelchair, pushed along by the burly orderly. There had never been anything wrong with Len’s legs. They must have numbed his mind so much that his body was no longer able to function. I could only hope it was just to get him there that day and not permanent.

  We filed out of the chapel behind them. My eyes drilled into the broad back of the minder as the sad little straggle followed the coffin along the paths. We stopped by an open grave. I stood to one side as they did the coffin-lowering routine. I couldn’t take my eyes off that frail figure slumped in the wheelchair. The chief mourners did the sniffing and eye-wiping bit before heading off back towards the land of the living. Kate gave me a withering I’ll-deal-with-you-later look and hustled the children away. Den did an apologetic half-wriggle, half-shrug in my general direction.

  Before the orderly could follow them, I stepped in front of the wheelchair and squatted down. I took Len’s limp hands in mine and stared straight into eyes that were mirror images of my own.

  ‘Len?’ I whispered. ‘Len? It’s me. It’s Jen.’

  There was no response. A thin line of dribble hung from the corner of his slack mouth. His eyes were blank and unseeing.

  The minder shifted his weight. Before he could tell me about the futility of trying for a response, I tried again.

  ‘Len! Please. Look at me,’ I urged, my voice louder, but with a definite crack. ‘Len! Len!’

  There was a tiny pressure on my hands. I returned it tenfold. His eyes swivelled, his breathing speeded up. His head shot up, his eyes cleared and he gasped with the effort of groping through the pharmaceutical fog. He gazed straight back into my eyes.

  ‘Jenny!’ he cried.

  His body racked with huge gulps for air, his limbs twitched convulsively. I saw the minder reach into his pocket. I knew without looking that he would have a loaded syringe in there. I launched myself forward and flung my arms round Len’s skinny shoulders. He sobbed with the intensity of an unrepressed child. I stroked his back, smoothed his hair and kissed his head as I soothed him in the way I had seen our mother do countless times for all of us.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I crooned. It’s OK, Lenny. He’s gone now. He’s gone. He can’t hurt us any more.’

  The painful sobs began to subside. I drew my head back a little and wiped his eyes and nose with a tissue.

  ‘He’s gone, Len,’ I repeated, emphasising each word. ‘We can all move on now.’

  He held my gaze just a moment longer, then the lights went out again. His body lost its tautness and flopped back as though someone had sucked his bones out. Where would Len move on to? It was hard to visualise him ever being able to exist outside an institution.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the minder gather himself. I hauled myself to my feet as he pushed the wheelchair back along the path. I watched them recede into the distance.

  My cheeks were wet. I hadn’t noticed it was raining. I raised my face to look up at a cloudless sky. Cloudless, yet blurred. I snaked out my tongue and tasted salt.

  I was crying.

  As soon as I realised it, the dam burst. I sank on to the bare earth beside my father’s grave and wept until I understood the concept of heartbreak. I cried for Len, for Nick, for Della. I cried for me and for the child I had never been allowed to be and for the pain I’d caused to my friends. I cried for all the sad damaged people in the world who can’t break free and who perpetuate the pain and abuse they suffer in their own lives by repeating it on the next generation. People like my father. So I suppose, in a roundabout way, I was crying for him too.

  The big fear for people who deny themselves tears is that once they start they won’t be able to stop. It’s not true, of course. My friends stood back and allowed me the space to grieve. As my sobs abated, they judged the moment had come to change the nature of their support.

  Gentle hands pulled me to my feet, enveloped me and held me close. They guided me on to the path and back up towards the chapel. A lively throng of people was already massing outside, ready for Della’s funeral. It looked like there was going to be a huge crowd. We walked towards them together. I didn’t look back.

  EPILOGUE

  WE WERE PREVENTED from making it a hat-trick of funerals: Nick’s parents made it crystal clear none of us would be welcome. We held a wake of our own in the garden. I know which one Nick would have preferred to be at.

  Stan was picked up for questioning but released without charge. Apparently, it’s not against the law to be a prat. More’s the pity. What goes around comes around, though. The media got hold of the story. The tabloids had a field day with headlines like THE MONSTER IN THE MP’S MARRIAGE and lots of innuendo round phrases like ‘Party whip’. Catherine Highshore made strenuous denials of any knowledge of her husband’s proclivities and instructed her lawyers to initiate immediate divorce proceedings. It didn’t help. She was forced to resign ‘for the sake of the party’. Stan’s career was already history.

  Gunther refused to co-operate with the police. They held a Crimewatch Special, with the guy playing Nick hanging out in Soho. Several witnesses came forward to say they remembered him sitting in a coffee bar for hours with a bottomless cup of cappuccino. He’d spent the day engaging people in conversation, talking about friends in Sicily and dropping hints about dodgy dealings at the BBC. One woman, a waitress, recalled him talking with a man she later identified as Gunther. They left together. She said Nick had seemed excited. The cops also found a local bondage shop which had a credit-card receipt signed by Gunther for items bought earlier that same day.

  So Gunther had had Nick all along. That was his trump card. It was also how his cronies had traced Stan to Nirvana. Not by following us back from Docklands, as Stan had suggested. Nick had gone to Soho to check out Mafiosi, but had bumped into Gunther instead. Coincidence? Or seriously bad karma? You decide…

  There was ample forensic evidence linking Gunther with Della’s fatal beating. He was charged with both murders and got life. The cops never did find out who took those photos. Gunther refused to say and Stan said he had been too out of it at the time and couldn’t remember. I wonder sometimes about the blonde woman Cathy and Pat mentioned seeing with Stan… Some questions are destined never to be answered, I suppose.

  The Koi Korner conspiracy was blown wide open in a glare of publicity. The shadowy figures who weren’t picked up in the first wave disappeared underground. No doubt they are regrouping and could surface any time now…