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Chapter 6 (#ulink_1d8afa4c-8d35-5ea8-9ef2-73d05da46cb2)
‘Grace!’ my mum shrieked. ‘Coo-eee! Gracie!’
Tina Salmon had always talked too loudly. She was one of those people who simply believed that the world desperately needed to hear what she had to say, whether the world liked it or not. Right then, her louder-than-average voice had to compete with the whiny strains of a saxophonist in the local band. An enthusiastic but tone-deaf singer was screeching into a microphone too close to his mouth. It was also about three hundred degrees. Bodies squeezed to get closer to the wrought- iron bar, desperate for the harassed members of staff to serve them.
Despite my protestations that I’d long given up celebrating and that my birthday had already come and gone, my mum had other ideas. It had been too long, she’d insisted, since we’d all got together, and this was the first evening all of us could make – hence my presence at a noisy bar in town. Still, I would really rather have been at home working on Mr Thomson’s service. Coming out on a Friday night wreaked havoc with my anxiety levels. Thankfully she had at least managed to get a table. She was perched on a high stool, with absolutely no lumbar support whatsoever, at a high table tucked into the corner.
I slowly headed over to her. I was still trying to put a positive spin on the Ask A Funeral Arranger event I’d rushed here from. But I just felt embarrassed. How could I have thought I could get the people of Ryebrook to come to a draughty church hall on a Friday night to hear me chattering on about funerals? The only thing to be taken from this evening was that I should trust my instincts. I’d stepped out of my comfort zone, left the safety of my flat, and put myself out there. I was annoyed at how much time I had wasted in preparing for the event, and in sitting alone in that musty hall before anyone arrived. Time I could have spent productively planning for the services I had coming up next week. I still hadn’t tracked down the perfect top hat to go as a coffin topper for Mr Deacon, a local milliner who’d recently passed away. I really wasn’t convinced that running the event again next week would have a more positive outcome, but I’d agreed to it, so it didn’t look like I had much choice.
‘Ooh! Grace! Over here!’ Mum was still waving a tanned arm in my direction, despite the fact I was heading her way. Rolls of mature skin were stuffed into the unforgiving, low-cut, shiny black vest top, and she jiggled as she beckoned me over. I sighed. Climbing into my bed seemed a long way off.
Next to her was my half-brother, Freddie, his face lit up by the blue hue of his phone screen, eyebrows knotted together, lost in some virtual world, ignoring Mum and the man on his right. That must be her new boyfriend. Tonight we were ‘being introduced’. Brian? Barry? Bobby?
‘Grace! Isn’t this brilliant!?’ Mum energetically jumped from her stool. Her cherry-red patent stilettos skidded slightly on the tiles as she pulled me into an over-the-top embrace. She smelt of cigarettes and red wine and a sickly floral perfume. She’d had her nose pierced since I saw her last.
‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, breathing through my mouth.
Freddie looked up, nodded in my direction, then went back to his phone.
‘Oh happy birthday, my darling girl!’ she shouted in my ear, pulling out an empty stool for me to sit on. The metal legs scraped in resistance. ‘Grace, this is Brendan.’
‘Alright!’ Brendan flashed a toothy, nicotine-stained grin and tilted his half-empty glass of lager in my direction. His round head nestled onto folds of stubbly flesh spilling from his tight, dark grey turtleneck. ‘So, the famous Amazing Grace. Lovely to finally meet you. Happy birthday and all that.’
‘Thanks, er, it was a couple of weeks ago but thanks.’
‘Freddie, make room for your sister!’
‘Half-sister,’ he muttered, moving over half an inch to let me get past.
‘Brendan got you a bottle of fizz to celebrate but you’ve taken so long to get here that we had to make a start,’ Mum admitted, without a hint of an apology, flicking her heavily mascaraed eyes to the upturned bottle of cava in a watery ice bucket.
She knew I didn’t drink. No matter how many times she’d tried to encourage me to lighten up and let my hair down, I had to continually repeat that I didn’t need alcohol to have a good time.
More for me then, was always her reply, after a quiet but audible, If I hadn’t given birth to you then I’d swear you’re not my daughter.
‘Ah, well, thanks. That’s very, er, thoughtful,’ I said politely to Brendan. He winked and made a clicking sound with his mouth, helping Mum get back up on her stool.
‘What took you so long, anyway?’ Mum rearranged herself with a wobble.
‘Work emergency,’ I lied. I couldn’t bear to go into the church hall disaster.
Freddie made a strange noise between his pursed lips, flecks of spittle jumping from his mouth onto the glossy tabletop. ‘What? Too many stiffs to deal with?’
Brendan smiled as if he understood the joke. Then realised he didn’t. ‘Stiffs?’
‘Yeah, did Mum not tell you?’ Freddie said.
I noticed Mum’s painted red lips tighten. She picked up a tired-looking cocktail list, zoning out from this conversation.
‘Our Grace here is the local Morticia Addams.’
Brendan looked at me and back to Freddie.
‘She’s a funeral director,’ Freddie explained.
‘Arranger. A funeral arranger,’ I corrected. Frank wouldn’t be happy with me stealing his job title. Not that detail mattered to someone like Freddie. He thought feminists were hairy, angry lesbians, and still called women ‘birds’. I’d once overheard him explain, in depth, that it was scientifically proven you couldn’t get wasted two nights in a row, something to do with the first night cancelling out the second.
‘Really?! You work with dead people!’ Brendan literally recoiled, a little precariously on his stool.
‘I’m going to get a mojito. Anyone else want one?’ Mum said loudly, pretending to be oblivious to the topic of conversation. ‘Or maybe a pornstar martini?’
‘It’s sick, innit. I see dead people…’ Freddie said in a little boy’s voice, ignoring her.
Brendan leant forward, placing an elbow in a small puddle of lager. His eyes widened. ‘Wow, Grace, you work with corpses, what’s that like?’
Inwardly I sighed.
‘It’s just my job and I love what I do.’
‘Yeah, but it’s like… you know… death.’
‘And?’
‘I’m not in denial, don’t get me wrong. I’ve even planned my funeral.’ Brendan sat up straighter. ‘I know exactly what I want.’ Mum looked up from the cocktail list. ‘I want “I Am A Cider Drinker” playing as they carry me in for a start –’
‘You’re joking? You want The Wurzels played at your funeral?’ She blurted out an incredulous laugh.
‘Why not?’ Brendan winked to hide any embarrassment. ‘They’re only like the greatest band in the world, ever!’ I could see his shine fading as Mum frowned at him. ‘Just a little underrated, that’s all.’
‘But at your funeral? I really don’t think it’s appropriate. Plus, the greatest band in the world are Queen. That’s who Freddie’s named after.’ She squashed my brother’s cheeks in her hands.
‘Alright, Mum.’ He swatted her away.
‘No. We won’t be having some country hicks play at your funeral,’ Mum decided for him. ‘Anyway, you won’t even be there so you can’t complain. Right, can we please change the subject? We’re meant to be here celebrating Grace and her birthday. You know, Grace, who is still alive!’
‘I’m going for a piss.’ Freddie sprang to his feet, making a comment about how my birthday was actually ages ago and that this was a load of bollocks.
‘So Grace, is your boyfriend joining us later?’ Brendan asked. I squirted a dollop of antibacterial hand gel in my palms and rubbed them together, hoping to avoid the question.
‘She’s single and ready to mingle!’ Mum sang.
‘Well…’ I have never been ready to mingle in my life. Just the very word made me want to uncomfortably scratch my arms and hide under my duvet.
‘Ah, I get it. I guess it must be tough finding someone because of what you… do.’
‘I don’t know why you didn’t see more of that Ian. Cheryl said he’s a lovely bloke, when I bumped into her last,’ Mum piped up, sloshing red wine from the bottle into her empty, lipstick-stained glass. How much had she got through this evening? Cheryl was my mum’s chiropodist and Ian was another of her clients.
‘Cheryl isn’t the best judge of character,’ I said tactfully, desperate to move the conversation on.
I’d never told my mum about Henry. We had promised each other not to tell anyone about us – it was part of the deal. A deal that felt like it suffocated me at times. But it was a promise I had stuck to, despite everything that had happened. The only living soul who knew was Maria, but, well, that was different.
‘You need to get yourself on Tinder,’ Freddie had returned from the bathroom, waving his lit-up phone screen in my face, the brightness blinding me for a second.
‘Ah, Tinder,’ Brendan said wistfully, before sticking his reddened face into his wine glass as Mum glared at him.
‘Right! Present time!’ Mum shrieked. ‘Freddie, put your phone away now. This is family time.’
Freddie muttered but obeyed, and slid his phone into the pocket of his tight chinos.
‘Grace, Brendan and I got you this.’ She rummaged in the tie-dye pillowcase thing that acted as a handbag. I’d have palpitations thinking about her gallivanting off to the next country on her travels with such a badly designed bag; a pick-pocketer’s dream. She pulled out a slightly crumpled gift bag that had a boiled sweet wrapper stuck to the back and an almost perfectly spherical tea-stain ring in the top right-hand corner.
‘Whoops,’ she picked off the wrapper and dropped it to the floor. ‘Right, well, happy birthday my little Gracie.’
‘You really didn’t have to…’ I started to protest as I cautiously took the packet off her and peeled it open. Last year she’d got me a clunky handmade Tunisian shell necklace. It was still in its bubble wrap, sitting patiently in the half-empty Tesco Bag for Life that was destined for my next trip to Oxfam.
‘Oh…’
I wrapped my fingers around a red and yellow hand-woven cotton bracelet. The type of thing you’d give your school friend when you were about thirteen. A tiny peace sign was threaded in the centre, next to a small metal disc that was engraved with my name.
‘It’s personalised! Do you love it? Put it on!’
I smiled tightly and let her tie it around my wrist. I could cover it up with my watch without hurting her feelings.
‘There’s something else in there too!’
The other gift was a yellow plastic radio in the shape of a bumblebee. Two slim silver antennas had been coated in black paint, it’s bulbous behind was covered in wire mesh for the speakers, and two thick black stripes over a sunflower-yellow body were the dials. There was no kind way to put it…
It was hideous.
‘It’s a radio! Isn’t it funky!’ Mum beamed, clapping her hands together. Freddie scoffed into his pint glass. ‘I picked it up at this market in Latvia and thought it would really brighten up your house. It’s about time you added a touch of personality to that place. It’s so very… sterile.’
‘Perfect for Grace then,’ Freddie said with a smirk, before Mum told him to be nice to me as it was my birthday.
Neither Mum nor Freddie visited my home very often. In fact, Freddie had only been once for about five minutes, when he was waiting for his friend to pick him up for a football match and it was chucking it down with rain. Whenever Mum was back in England, she sporadically popped in for a cup of tea but preferred to stay at the hotel near the library as she could fill up her bag with all the miniature toiletries. A low-cut top was all she needed to get a discount on a room from the male receptionist.
‘Right, wow. Thanks.’ I forced a smile, running my fingers over the chubby bee radio. There was no doubt in my mind it would be destined for the Bag for Life too.
‘My gift is… on its way,’ Freddie muttered. Code for he’d completely forgotten.
‘It’s fine. My birthday was ages ago and I really didn’t expect anything anyway.’
‘Is there really no one on the scene?’ Mum pushed. Now presents were out the way she clearly hadn’t given up on the previous conversation.
‘No. I’ve told you. I’m fine like this.’
‘You not worried about, well, you know… tick-tock, tick-tock?’
This usually happened after a bottle of wine. She would grill me about my lack of a nice young man. She would be slurring about missing out on grandchildren in another few glasses, mark my words.
‘Mum, please…’
‘I thought you said Grace were only twenty-seven? She’s got plenty of time for babies and all that.’
‘She’s thirty-three! And not getting any younger, may I add!’
I could see Brendan doing the maths in his head, working out Mum’s real age, a fact as unknown as the location of Cleopatra’s tomb. She’d been clinging onto her early fifties for the past few years.
‘You’re ancient, Grace,’ Freddie unhelpfully joined in. ‘You may as well stop being so picky and go for the next bloke that walks in here.’ He never got a grilling, despite only being three years younger than me.
‘Ooh yes! It could be fate, bringing them together!’ Mum clapped her hands and the three of us glanced towards the door. Brendan still stared at Mum, looking utterly perplexed.
‘Wait – not them.’ Mum dismissed the group coming in with a wave of her hand. ‘That’s a bunch of women.’
‘Unless… ‘Freddie raised an eyebrow and gave an unsightly smirk.
‘I’m not gay,’ I said to my glass. No one else was listening. They all had their eyes trained to the door of the bar, like a dog waiting for its owner to return.
‘Him! That one!’ Mum squealed. Freddie collapsed into a fit of laughter. In walked a man who must have been there for his first legal drink. Angry red spots burst across a painful shaving rash.
‘I don’t think –’
‘Grace! Go and talk to him!’ Mum bellowed, yanking my elbow.
‘No, I –’
‘Go on. Go and talk to him, it’s not going to kill you!’
‘I said no.’ I roughly pulled away from her grip. ‘Can we leave it please?’
‘Ooooh! Touchy!’ Freddie’s voiced raised an octave or two.
Brendan was gently rubbing Mum’s hand, frowning at me as if I’d intentionally hurt her.
‘Sorry, Mum, I said I didn’t –’
‘It’s fine, Grace. I just don’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life. But, whatever. I’m only doing it because I care. I’m going to the ladies’.’ She scraped her stool back and wobbled off.
I was half listening to Freddie waffle on to Brendan about the outrageousness of United’s Premier League position, and half wondering what possessed a man in his late fifties to wear a single silver earring, when I felt my heart stop. I blinked hard to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me but when I opened them again he was still there.
On the other side of the bar was Henry. My Henry.
The air left my body.
What the hell was he doing here?
‘Grace?’
I heard my mum’s loud voice behind me, apologising to the couple of girls on the next table for spilling their drinks as I roughly knocked past them.
