by Ruth Hogan
It was time for Eunice to go. She must leave, but until she did she still had Bomber, and so she couldn’t bear to go. But every minute was just a marker between now and then, not time to be cherished. Because the decision had been made. Eunice knew that there would only be one chance; one moment when all the love she had ever felt for this man would crystallize into the inconceivable strength that she would need. It was time. The imprint of the key was embedded into the flesh of her palm where she had gripped it so tightly. Eunice unlocked the windows and opened them, leaving them just ajar. She wanted so desperately to hug him one last time; to hold his warmth and feel him breathing against her. But she knew that if she did, her strength would desert her, so instead she placed the key in his hand and kissed his cheek.
“I’m not going without you, Bomber,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t leave you this way. You’re coming with me. Let’s go.”
And then she left.
CHAPTER 45
ELDERLY MALE IN DEATH FALL AT CARE HOME
Police are investigating the death of an elderly male resident of the Happy Haven care home in Blackheath who fell from a second-floor balcony early on Saturday evening. The man, who has not yet been named, was suffering from Alzheimer’s and is believed to have been a retired publisher. A postmortem is due to be carried out later this week and police inquiries into what they are calling “an unexplained death” are ongoing.
THE LONDON EVENING STANDARD
CHAPTER 46
“There’s a dead person in the study,” Sunshine announced in a conversational tone. She had come to find Laura, who was in the garden cutting roses for the house, to tell her this piece of news and to chivvy her along into making lunch. Carrot was lolling lazily on his back in the sun, with his legs in the air, but as Sunshine approached he jumped up to greet her.
It had been a year now since the website had launched and it kept both Laura and Sunshine busy. Sunshine had learned how to take photographs and post them and the details of objects onto the website, and Freddy had even shown her how to run a Keeper of Lost Things Instagram account. Laura dealt with the e-mails. They were still working their way through Anthony’s collection, as well as adding the new things that Sunshine gathered on her walks with Carrot. Laura and Freddy had also got into the habit of picking up things they found wherever they went, and now people had begun to send them lost items as well. At this rate the shelves in the study would always be groaning.
“A dead person? Are you sure?”
Sunshine gave her one of her looks. Laura went inside to investigate. In the study, Sunshine showed her a sky-blue Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin. Its label read:
HUNTLEY & PALMERS BISCUIT TIN CONTAINING CREMATION REMAINS?—
Found, sixth carriage from the front, 14:42 train from London Bridge to Brighton. Deceased unknown. God bless and rest in peace.
Lupin and Bootle funeral directors (est. 1927) was on the corner of a busy street opposite a fancy bakery. As she stood outside, Eunice smiled to herself, remembering Mrs. Doyle’s and thinking that this was an appropriate place for Bomber to end up. He had been dead for six weeks now, and Eunice still hadn’t been to his funeral. The coroner had eventually returned a verdict of accidental death, but the staff at Happy Haven had been severely criticized for their cavalier approach to health and safety procedures and had only narrowly escaped prosecution. Portia had wanted Sylvia’s head in a bedpan. She had been mourning extravagantly all over the press and the media, but Eunice couldn’t help wondering whether it was fueled by genuine grief or the associated publicity it was bound to generate for her forthcoming book tour. Portia was too famous to talk to Eunice directly now. She had assistants for that kind of trivial task. Which was why Eunice found herself staring through an immaculate plate-glass window at a scale model of a horse-drawn hearse and a tasteful display of arum lilies. The only information she had been able to extract from the lowliest assistant twice removed, was the name of the funeral directors who were dealing with all inquiries. She could have telephoned, but the temptation to be in the same building as Bomber was too great.
The woman behind the reception desk looked up at the sound of the bell and gave Eunice a smile of genuine welcome. Pauline was a large lady, dressed in Marks & Spencer’s finest, with an air of capability and kindness. She put Eunice in mind of a brown owl. Unfortunately, the news she had to deliver was the cruelest and most shocking that Eunice could possibly hear.
“It was very small. Family only at the crematorium. The sister organized it; the one who writes those mucky books.”
It was clear from the ring of repugnance with which Pauline imbued the word “sister” that she and Portia had not exactly bonded. Eunice felt her head go into a tailspin and the floor rise up to meet her. Not long afterward she was sitting on a comfy sofa drinking hot, sweet tea with a nip of brandy and Pauline was patting her hand.
“It was the shock, love,” she said. “Your face went as white as a ghost.”
Fortified by tea, brandy, and biscuits, Eunice was made party to the whole dreadful story by a very forthcoming Pauline. Portia had wanted it done and dusted as quickly and quietly as possible.
“She was off on her book tour, you see, and she didn’t want her schedule disrupted.”
Pauline took a sip of her tea and shook her head vigorously in disapproval.
“But she’s having a proper showy-offy shebang when she gets back; a memorial service and then a burial of the ashes. She’s inviting ‘everyone who is anyone, darling,’ and the music will be provided by choirs of angels with His Holiness the pope presiding by the way she was talking. It’ll knock Princess Diana’s do into a cocked hat, apparently.”
Eunice listened in horror.
“But that wasn’t what he wanted at all,” she whispered tearfully. “He told me what he wanted. He was the love of my life.”
And now, right at the last, she was going to fail him.
Pauline was good at listening and mopping up tears. It was her job. But deep inside her sensible suit and her easy-iron blouse beat the brave heart of a maverick. Back in the day, her blond bob had been a pink Mohican and her nose still bore the tiny scar of a safety-pin piercing. She handed Eunice another tissue.
“All the boys are out at a big funeral this afternoon. I wouldn’t normally do this but . . . Follow me!”
She led Eunice through from the reception area down a corridor past the staff kitchen, the Chapel of Rest, and various other rooms to the place where the cremation remains were stored awaiting collection. From one of the shelves she took down an impressive wooden urn and checked the label.
“Here he is,” she said gently. She checked her watch. “I’m going to leave you alone with him for a bit to pay your respects. The boys won’t be back for another hour, so you won’t be disturbed.”
Less than an hour later, Eunice was sitting on a train with Bomber’s ashes in a Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin on the seat beside her. She had had to think and act fast after Pauline had left her. She found a plastic carrier bag and a biscuit tin in the little kitchen where Pauline had made tea. She emptied the biscuits into the bag and then tipped Bomber into the biscuit tin. She refilled the urn with the biscuits, but it was too light. Frantically searching for additional ballast, she found a box of decorative gravel samples in one of the other rooms. She threw in a couple of large handfuls and then screwed the lid back on as tightly as she could and returned the urn to its shelf. As she made her way out through the reception area clutching the biscuit tin, Pauline didn’t look up from her desk, but raised her thumbs to Eunice in a good-luck gesture. She hadn’t seen a thing.
As the guard blew his whistle, Eunice patted the tin affectionately and smiled.
“Brighton it is.”
Laura was astonished. She picked up the tin and gave it a gentle shake. It was certainly heavy.
“Don’t shake it!” said Sunshine. “You’ll wake him up.” And then she giggled at her own joke.
Laura was wondering
what else might be lurking in the dark corners of the study.
“No wonder this place is haunted,” she said to Sunshine.
After lunch, Laura helped her to post the details on the website, but this was one thing she was fairly certain no one would come forward to claim.
That evening, Freddy, Laura, Sunshine, Carrot, Stella, and Stan had a celebratory dinner in the garden of the Moon Is Missing, to mark the birthday of the website. Sunshine was full of stories about all the things that were currently posted, but most especially about the biscuit tin.
“It’s certainly a queer thing to lose,” said Stella, tucking into her crumb-dusted, sautéed crayfish tails with hand-cut chips. “And why on earth would you put your loved one in a biscuit tin?”
“Perhaps that’s just it, love,” said Stan. “Perhaps the bloke in the tin wasn’t particularly loved and someone was just trying to get rid of him.”
“Perhaps it’s not human remains at all. Maybe it just the sweepings out of somebody’s fireplace. That’s exactly what it looks like,” said Freddy, taking a long swig of his ice-cold beer.
Sunshine was about to remonstrate with him, when he winked at her and she realized he was only joking.
“It is a dead person and he was the love of her life and she will come and get him,” she replied defiantly.
“Okay,” he replied. “Let’s have a bet. What do you want to bet me that someone will come and get the biscuit tin?”
Sunshine screwed up her face in concentration and fed Carrot a couple of chips while she was thinking about it. Suddenly a huge smile lit up her face and she leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest with a sigh of victorious satisfaction.
“You have to marry Laura.”
Laura spilled her wine in shock.
“Steady on, old girl,” said Stan. “Blimey, Sunshine, you certainly know how to frighten the horses.”
Laura could feel her face reddening. Stella and Stan were chuckling merrily and Sunshine was grinning from ear to ear. Laura wished that the ground would open up and swallow her, and so swallowed her wine too quickly and ordered another large glass. Freddy said nothing. He looked as though he was somewhere between annoyed and disappointed, but then when he saw Laura’s face, he leaped to his feet and thrust his hand out to Sunshine.
“It’s a bet!”
It was hot that night and the air was heavy with the warm velvet scent of roses as Freddy and Laura wandered round the garden while Carrot searched the shrubbery for intruders. Laura was still fretting about the bet that Freddy had made. He had been very quiet on the way home from the pub. Although they had been together for a little over a year, and Freddy virtually lived at Padua now, they had never made any real plans for the future. She counted herself very lucky to have a second chance at both life and love, but she was still afraid that any attempt, however lighthearted, to tether their relationship might cause love to bolt. And she did love him. Not in the silly, girlish way that she had been infatuated with Vince. This had, for her, grown stealthily into an abiding love, sparked first by passion and then sustained by friendship and trust. But alongside her love for Freddy grew the fear of losing him; the two emotions cruelly shackled together, each feeding the other. Laura had to say something.
“That bet with Sunshine, it’s just a joke. I don’t expect you to . . .” She was so uncomfortable that she didn’t know how to continue. It suddenly dawned on her that marrying Freddy might be exactly what she wanted and that was why she was so upset. Her foolish hopes of a “happy ever after” had been turned into a joke, and she felt like a laughingstock.
Freddy took her hand and swung her round to face him. “A bet’s a bet, and I’m a man of my word!”
Laura pulled her hand away. In that moment, all the doubts about their relationship, all the fears of failure, and all the frustrations at her own imperfection converged to create a perfect storm.
“Don’t worry,” she snapped. “You don’t have to wait until you’ve worked out a ‘dignified escape route’! I’m fully aware that I’m the one who’s hitting above my weight in this relationship!”
“Punching,” replied Freddy quietly. “It’s ‘punching above your weight.’”
He was trying to find a way of breaking into the emotional vortex that Laura was whipping up, but she wouldn’t listen.
“I’m not a charity case! Poor old Laura! Couldn’t keep her husband out of someone else’s knickers and the only date she’s had in years was an unmitigated disaster, so what did you think, Freddy? Take her out and make her feel like she’s worth something and then let her down gently when someone better comes along?”
Like a songbird caught in a trapper’s net, the harder she fought, the more entangled she became, but she couldn’t help herself. She knew how unreasonable she was being, how hurtful, but she couldn’t stop. The insults and accusations flew while Freddy stood silently waiting for her to burn herself out, and when she turned to go back into the house, he called after her.
“Laura! For God’s sake, woman! You know how much I love you. I was going to ask you, anyway. To marry me.” He shook his head sadly. “I had it all planned. But then Sunshine well and truly stole my thunder.”
Laura stopped, but couldn’t face him, nor silence the desperate and completely untruthful coup de grace with which she finally broke her own heart.
“I would have said no.”
As she walked on to the house, silent tears ran down her face, but somewhere in the darkness of the rose garden there was the sound of someone else weeping.
CHAPTER 47
Eunice
2013
Portia gave the biscuits a magnificent send-off. She had wanted St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but finding that even her obscene wealth couldn’t buy them, she had settled for the ballroom of a swanky Mayfair hotel. Eunice sat at the back, in her designated seat, which was bedecked, like all the others, in an extravagant black silk chiffon bow, and took in the splendid surroundings. The room was truly stunning, with a sprung wooden floor, floor-to-ceiling antique mirrors, and, judging by the acoustics breathing Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” into the rarefied air, a state-of-the-art sound system. Either that or Portia had the entire Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus hidden behind a screen somewhere. The mirrors reflected the monstrous arrangements of exotic lilies and orchids that loomed from shelves and pedestals like albino triffids.
Eunice had come with Gavin, a long-term friend of Bomber’s since their school days together, who now made a living cutting, coloring, and cosseting the hair of both genuine and manufactured celebrities. His client list was one of the reasons that Portia had invited him.
“Bloody hell!” hissed Gavin, under his breath. Well, almost. “Talk about rent-a-mob. Most of these people didn’t know Bomber from Bardot.”
He smiled superciliously at the photographer who was prowling up and down the aisle between the rows of seats snapping any of the “mourners” whom the public might recognize. Portia had sold the rights for the occasion to a glossy magazine that any intelligent woman would only ever admit to reading at the hairdressers. The seats were mostly filled with Portia’s own friends, associates, and hangers-on, with the occasional celebrity punctuating the populace like a sparse sequin on an otherwise dull dress. Bomber’s friends were gathered at the back around Eunice and Gavin, like theatergoers in the cheap seats.
At the front of the room, on a table festooned in yet more flowers, stood the urn. It was flanked on one side by an enormous framed photograph of Bomber (“He’d never have chosen that one,” whispered Gavin; “his hair’s a complete mess”) and on the other by a photograph of Bomber and Portia as children, with Portia on the crossbar of Bomber’s bike.
“She had to get her face in the frame, didn’t she!” fumed Gavin. “She can’t even let him be the star at his own bloody memorial! But at least I managed to persuade her to invite some of Bomber’s real friends and include something in this whole damn fiasco that Bomber might act
ually have liked.”
Eunice was impressed. “How on earth did you manage that?”
Gavin grinned. “Blackmail. I threatened to go to the press if she didn’t. ‘Selfish Sister Scorns Brother’s Dying Wishes’ wasn’t the kind of headline her publisher would want to see, and she knows it. Speaking of which, where is Bruce the Bouffant?” He scanned the rows of heads in front of him searching for the offending barnet.
“Oh, I expect he’ll come with Portia,” Eunice replied. “What exactly are you doing?”
Gavin looked very pleased with himself.
“It’s a surprise, but I’ll give you a clue. You remember the wedding at the beginning of Love Actually where members of the band are hidden in the congregation?”
Before he could go any further, the music changed and Portia and her entourage swept down the aisle to “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. She was wearing a white Armani trouser suit and a hat with a brim the size of a tractor wheel swathed in black, spotted net.
“Jesus Christ!” spluttered Gavin, “You’d think she was marrying Mick Jagger!”
He clutched Eunice’s arm, barely able to contain his hysteria. Eunice’s eyes filled with tears. But they were tears of laughter. She only wished that Bomber was here to share the fun. In fact, she wished she knew where Bomber was at all. She hadn’t told Gavin about it yet. She was waiting for the right moment. The service itself was strangely entertaining. A children’s choir from a local school—private and very exclusive—sang “Over the Rainbow,” Bruce read a eulogy on Portia’s behalf as though he were delivering a soliloquy from Hamlet, and an actress from an minor soap opera read a poem by W. H. Auden. Prayers were said by a retired bishop whose daughter was apparently an old friend of Portia’s. They were short and rather difficult to decipher on account of the whiskey that he’d had with his breakfast. Or perhaps for his breakfast.
And then it was Gavin’s turn.
He rose from his chair and stood in the aisle. Using the microphone he had concealed under his seat, he addressed the gathering with a theatrical flourish.