She helps me up and it’s obvious what’s happening here. Rules for us, none for her. It’s not fair. To keep our places in the community, we have to think about every, little thing we do in our personal lives and yet she just does as she pleases and still keeps her job.
“It’s not fair, Warrick. She’s behaving like a loon. I think she looked drunk!”
“Nah, she wasn’t.” I shake my head. “She wasn’t drunk. That’s just the look she always has in her eyes. Overdosed on anger, all the time.”
On the pavement, Jules checks my eye and says, “No blood, we just need to ice you before it swells.”
Joe comes jogging up to us, earphones in, sportswear on. He’s been doing a few laps of the neighbourhood it seems. “What’s happened?” he asks, jogging on the spot, one earphone out.
“Jules was going to punch your mum but punched me instead. It’s better this way.” As I say it, I know how senseless that sounds.
He shakes his head, upset, I can tell. Hands over his face, he looks up at the sky. “I’m so sick of this, Dad. I’m fifteen and I feel like the adult, this isn’t right.”
“I caught her on camera, within fifty feet of me. The authorities will have to deal with her now,” Jules tells us, “she won’t help herself, she needs help. You just have to hope some wily copper spots she’s off her head because you know what, she must seem sane to the rest of them, if she’s been getting away with it this long.”
Joe pushes the buggy while Jules helps me down the street with my dizzy head. I can’t remember where I parked the car now but Jules spots it and we all pile inside. I sometimes have to pinch myself that Jules is really mine and Anna’s words about Jules leaving hurt, stabbing my core. Then I realise, no other woman has ever thrown a punch for me before. Jules constantly puts herself out there for me when I know she would much rather hide in a cave most days. Sniggering to myself, I say to Joe, “Son, when we get home I think we need Real Housewives to remind us what real crazy is.”
He helps Jules belt the car seats in as I struggle to belt myself up in the passenger seat. He laughs, saying under his breath, “My street cred is legit, but it won’t be if you say that again in public. Nobody is meant to know.”
“You sad gits!” Jules exclaims, laughing. She becomes subdued and adds, “I might have popcorn, actually.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jules
I’m sitting here, wondering, why am I here? Do I care? I don’t feel like I do. Warrick’s calm beside me, watching proceedings unfold as I am, in a numb sort of fashion. However, if this was Terry’s funeral let’s say, I know Warrick wouldn’t be sat here like I am, trying to force himself to care.
It’s cold in this chapel even though it’s warm outside and I wonder why they force people to be cold. Is it cold in here when it’s a wedding, a christening, or do they put the heating on then? How can you heat a chapel this old, anyway? It must be Saxon going by the ceiling height and the craggy walls, the tiny windows and the echoing spirits haunting this place (clearly).
Barton-upon-Humber has never been forgiving, not to me. For some it might seem beautiful, it might be home, but all it is to me is a swamp of pain, where I will never find any solace whatsoever.
I moved across the water to escape my pain, but you know what, it came with me. It travels with me everywhere, no matter how hard I try to run from it.
To the other side of me, Amy whispers, “It’s so sad.”
I glance at her, with her hankie, and ask, “What is?”
I can feel my face contorting with questions that aren’t appropriate – questions I desperately want to ask but won’t, not today.
Like, Did you enjoy fucking my father? Who came onto who? Did you take precautions? Did he satisfy you?
Hell, I’m getting as bad as Anna and she’s currently out on bail for breaching her restraining order.
“He was so young, really, wasn’t he?” She cries into her sopping hankie, and then takes to snivelling into her sleeve instead.
I still can’t cry.
“Is she alright?” Warrick whispers in my ear.
I turn and whisper in his, “Emotional,” my tone a little sarcastic.
Looking around, I don’t see many people here. Dad’s twin brother left for Australia more than twenty years ago and never came back. I don’t blame him. I thought about looking him up while I was out there but I didn’t for some reason. The only family I’ve ever really had is Warrick. My mother died when I was so young, my grandmother died when I was fourteen and my grandfather (Dad’s dad) left when my dad was a baby. I don’t count my father as family, not after everything he did. My mum’s family all live in Poland, where she originated from. They came here for a better life in the Seventies but soon went back home, for whatever reason. They hated she wanted to marry a Russian descendent (my dad) and so, my mother got left behind. Maybe that’s why I feel I never belong, I have too much different blood in me, from so many corners of the world.
There is one woman sitting in the pews far behind us who has my interest. She’s middle-aged, maybe the same age as Dad was, and she’s sat with no expression in her eyes whatsoever, a bit like me. She’s attractive though and there’s something about her. She’s also alone and I wonder why.
Some of my father’s care workers are here too, denoted by their uniforms, probably having been given just an hour off between shifts to attend this funeral. Other congregants are more than likely neighbours of his, maybe passing acquaintances, nobody he knew very well anyway.
There’s no widow here with black mascara running from her eyes, no burly sons or grandsons, nephews or cousins to carry his coffin. Instead, his casket has been rolled about on a trolley all day long and will be rolled into a furnace not long after this.
They’ve asked me if I want the ashes but I said no, asking they scatter them on his farm, where he seemed happiest. That’s what he told Warrick and me, the last time we saw Julian, my father, my namesake.
The farm is being sold and all money and assets handed over to me. I told them I don’t want any of that, but if they would, could the lawyers put it in trust for my sons and Joe. They thought it was a little odd but I know that when Joe gets his big break and wants out of our world, he’s going to need money setting up in a new one. I know that’s not what Warrick wants for Joe but it’s inevitable and I will see Joe right.
The vicar delivers a generic eulogy, an overview of Dad’s life which goes nowhere near to touching the mark of who he really was.
When the service is over, we all stand and sing ‘Abide With Me’, which doesn’t seem to make any sense. Not much is making sense today, actually. The vicar sings loudly, as if to make up for the lack of attendance. Warrick contributes his baritone voice enthusiastically, too, and it makes me proud to have a husband like him. He doesn’t care what people think.
This not being a crematorium and Dad wanting a church service, the coffin’s going to be transported away now on its own because I don’t want to be there when his matter is transferred into ashes.
Outside the church, what few of us there are stand and watch as the funeral directors load his coffin onto a hearse and drive away. Once out of sight, the two care workers come over and ask, “Are you Julianne?”
I nod slowly. “I am, but people call me Jules,” I snap slightly, “and this is my husband Rick,” I gesture without looking them directly in the eye.
He shakes their hands for me, thanking them on my behalf. I can’t. I’m blocking everything out, I know I am, but this is what I do. This is what makes it easier.
“Did he suffer?” I ask under the collar of my big coat.
“He didn’t, Jules. He was forgetful, he was getting worse all the time, but he never suffered. It came out of the blue in some respects.”
I look up at the open, kind face of the care worker. “I didn’t get your name?”
“Janice, and this is Kerry,” the elder of them says, motioning to the young woman beside her, another care worke
r. I shake their hands finally but behind them, in the distance, I notice the odd, lone woman I spotted before stood staring at us all. She seems determined to come over and speak to us, I feel sure of it, except when I stare back, something in her jerks at my stare and she jumps.
Turning on her heel quickly, she leaves.
“Janice,” I touch her arm “who was that? That woman. She’s racing off, look,” I point.
“Oh,” she sees who I’m talking about, “she must have crept in when we weren’t looking. That’s Miranda.”
“Miranda?” I shake my head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, should it?”
“She was his care worker. We cover one another when the others have holidays, but she was his main carer. She barely had a holiday the past year, seemed she was taken with him.”
Warrick’s hand slips into mine and squeezes. He kisses the side of my head.
When the care workers look at one another with the sort of expressions I don’t like, I ask, “What don’t I know?”
Janice smiles, reading me, her eyes telling me she knows my relationship with Dad was bad. “She was sacked, day after your father died. None of us know why and I’m betting that’s why she just bolted.”
That’s why she looked torn, between coming and delivering her condolences and scarpering with her life intact.
“Why do people in your line get sacked?” I ask Janice, though I’m not looking at her and my lip is getting chewed to bits.
“Gross negligence, misconduct, mainly. Some things they can sweep to the side, others they can’t. You’d better ask her.”
I spot Amy behind Janice and Kerry, waving she has to go. Looks like she’s just cornered the vicar about getting her unborn baby’s christening booked in already; she was twittering about that earlier, before breaking out the waterworks at the funeral. I let Amy know it’s fine to go, holding my hand up and waving back. She mouths sorry, text you later, and off she heads, back to her shop.
“We’d better go,” Kerry the care worker says tapping her watch, dragging my attention back on them, “if we’re late, it knocks on all day and you know it.”
Janice nods her head and shakes my hand quickly. “We’ve got to go, but just wanted to say, he talked about you… all the time.”
She leaves me with those words and after everyone’s dispersed, even the vicar, there’s just Warrick and me stood in our funeral clothes with funereal expressions on our faces. He wraps his arms around me and I cuddle into his chest.
“Can of worms?” he asks, kissing my hair.
“You’re telling me. Why would she get sacked?”
“Well, I meant that he talked about you all the time.”
“Well, of course he did, I was the only decent thing he ever did!”
Warrick tuts and I want to tut at him.
“Can’t we just book a holiday and go? This world feels so bleak at the moment and spring’s not our friend. All it’s brought so far is rain, death and an insinuation foul play may have been involved in my father’s death.”
Warrick pulls back and I look at his sincere face, his calm brown eyes. He’s beautiful, more than he knows, more than he will ever see. Falling in love with him made him this beautiful. Many people have tried to break him, to push him down on the ground, but it seems I’m the only one capable of doing that. Otherwise, he’s staid, solid, holding up the world on his shoulders.
My thoughts lead me to wonder, did that Miranda woman know my father’s susceptibilities, and did she know he had money? I wonder. Janice said the woman had a thing for Dad. Did she kill him? Did she?
“What’s going on in here?” He taps my head.
“That woman, Miranda. I have to know. I have to.” I scratch my face, a stress rash creeping over my skin.
“We know what locking down feelings does to people, remember?” he says gently, “why don’t you just admit you’re sad he’s gone?”
“’Cause I’m not!!” I’m actually not, either.
He folds his arms and stands there, challenging me.
I start walking away and insist, “I’m not doing this with you. I’m not falling out with you, not when the bitch is loose on parole. We need to consolidate, not fall apart. I’m not letting any of them win.”
He opens the car when we get to the car park and drives us away, still tutting under his breath.
“You can grumble all you want, I’m going to find out who that Miranda woman is. I’ll ring the lawyers and see if they know, he might have left her something too, for all we know.”
“Leave it Jules,” he growls, gripping the wheel.
“Why?” I ask as we travel over the bridge, to the side of the river I feel more comfortable on.
“No good can come of any of it. You can’t bring him back. I know, okay? I know.”
“Don’t start on me,” I retaliate, “I’m the one sitting here, you know, having buried two parents now. Don’t you dare start to imagine how I feel.”
I’m fracturing. I hate this. He knows it and he backs off with the words, “Jules, I didn’t… I can’t say the right thing.”
“I’ll be fine, but you need to let me deal with things in my own way.”
I don’t know if my way is the right way, but it’ll be my way or the highway. I know that. He’s too wise to fight me anymore.
***
We picked the kids up from Kitty’s on the way home and went via the supermarket, so the cupboards are full but for some reason, Warrick got changed when we got home and said he needed to go out for something. What? I don’t know. We don’t need anything. He’s probably just pissed off with how I’m dealing with everything at the moment.
If he wants me to cry for my father now we’ve buried the old sod, he will be waiting a shitting long time. He’s gone, and all that rubbish from my past, with him.
I sit and play with the boys for an hour on their play mats until their eyes droop, ready for sleep. I place them in the travel cot and pick up the phone.
Dialling my dad’s solicitors Jacques and Sinclair, I reach the secretary, Lydia Birch, who I’ve had dealings with already. The woman is a scab.
“Ah, Mrs Jones, a pleasure, as always,” she cuts out through her clenched teeth (I can tell, even over the phone), “what can we do for you?”
“I need to speak to Mr Sinclair about my father’s last will and testament. Specifically, I need to know whether anyone else benefited from his will. Even if it was an old coin collection he left someone, I need to know. It’s a matter of utmost importance, I assure you.”
She clears her throat, surely thinking me demented. Just because I’ve had to pay out to set up the trust funds for my kids does not make me a nitwit, it makes me sensible. I’m not going to take a penny from the arsehole, my dad. She thinks I’m mad, I know she does (not taking my father’s money and blowing it on something ridiculous, like a horse or a house in France or something). Nobody gets what he did to me and nobody knows how filthy his money feels, to me, especially after he died on me without letting me know he was dying. I’ve let my thoughts get away from me and missed half of what she’s telling me in response…
“…I assure you, you’re more than enough of a beneficiary to deal with and your father didn’t include a single other soul in his will.”
“Just me?”
“Just, you,” she says, and I can just imagine her sat there in her tight suit, with her tight smile, her tight hair and her manicured claws tapping the desk. Smarmy cow.
“Fine, you’re sure?”
“Quite sure. Well, unless…”
“What, what?”
She drops her posh, silky voice and says, “Some people, dear, they hide money under the mattress, and none are more guilty of this than farmers. The police attended didn’t they, but according to the itemised list of possessions we received, no cash was found on site.”
“Hmm, good point.” She’s making me think Miranda is guilty, but then again, Ms Birch might just be trying to wind me up.
&nbs
p; “Farmers do tend to keep petty cash, don’t they? To pay for deliveries, oh, I don’t know, pay farm hands on occasion, odd-job men. Just strange how no cash, not a penny, was found among his possessions in the search carried out immediately after his death.”
“I need to speak to Sinclair,” I repeat, “because at the funeral, I found out my father’s care worker was dismissed from her position the day after he died and… I want to know why.”
“Oooh, I say,” she responds, sounding thrilled, “a case, hmm? I’ll get him to call you back. For what it’s worth, I’ve met a few care workers, and they’re all money grabbing if you ask me.”
I ignore her statement (Terry’s girlfriend Wendy is a care worker) and reply, “Do tell him to call me, then. Goodbye Ms Birch, and I do hope not to be billed for this call with you.”
I put the phone down. She’s a viperous old snippy-pants if ever I met one.
Warrick walks through the door and announces, “Honey, oh honey, dear, cheerful, honey, I’m home!”
Standing in the kitchen, I snicker to myself. While I listen to him take his jacket and shoes off, I ask, “Where have you been?”
“Well, first I went to chuck a pint down my neck and then I remembered, not only dead people deserve flowers.”
He enters the kitchen carrying an enormous spray of red roses, lilies, tulips and all manner of foliage. My hands over my mouth, I giggle. “Where the bloody hell am I going to put this? How did you walk down the street with it? It’s huge!”
He chuckles. “It’s been a long time since I bought you flowers. It’s about time I made up for that.”
He lays them down on the kitchen sideboard and walks over to me. Wrapping my arms around him, I say, “Sorry. And thank you.”
“What for?”
“The flowers. And… for earlier. I forgot the funeral. I forgot–” It’s hard for me to say.
He says it for me. “Yeah, I’m not going to lie, today did remind me of Mum’s funeral.”
Beyond Angel Avenue Page 13