Chapter 4
4
Zazz stomped her way around her local park, furious with herself. She shouldn’t have pushed her mother so hard about the funeral. And she definitely shouldn’t have hung up on her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know Francine, like Agnes, had zero patience regarding Oscar. Never mentioning his name if they could avoid doing so, never talking to her about him even though he was – had been – her only living grandfather.
As for this non-funeral business. It wasn’t that she was sanctimonious as her mother had called her, or even religious, she simply found it sad and upsetting that no-one cared enough to attend the final disposition of another human being.
The fact that both her mum and gran had assumed she wouldn’t find the news upsetting because she had never met Oscar was wrong. She did find the news upsetting. She knew he was an old man who had made more enemies than friends during his life but he’d still been her grandfather even if they had never been allowed to meet. Both her parents and grandmother had always stressed the four of them were a family and as a family they would always care for each other – but Oscar was certainly not considered a part of their small family. Persona non grata was the phrase that summed him up in their family.
Down through the years this lack of communication with the French side of her family had built up a mountain of resentment in Zazz. She was half French for goodness’ sake, she was entitled to know about her heritage, even if it turned out not to be one to be proud of. Her grandfather surely couldn’t be that horrible. There had been times growing up when she’d longed to meet him. Her parents had taken her to France on several occasions during her childhood. Camping holidays on islands off the Atlantic coast, a Provencal gite with its lavender fields, the Loire Valley with its chateaux and once they’d spent almost a week in Paris. All happy memories of French family holidays but not one of them had been spent in the South of France. Zazz had never dared to rock the boat by asking why they couldn’t go to the Riviera, knowing it would upset both her mother and grandmother.
Buying a coffee from the small wooden cafe hut in the park, Zazz sat on a nearby bench and thought about her future. The new life she planned to kick-start this summer was one which she’d discussed with nobody, including her mother and father. Or even her boyfriend, Rufus. On her own she’d weighed up the pros and the cons, done her due diligence as her dad would have urged her to do, saved some money – enough to live on for nine months – and decided the time was right to go for it. If it was a gigantic mistake she was young enough to pick up the pieces of her life and begin again. But she was confident it would work out well.
The day she’d told Iris, her flatmate, that she was moving out in a couple of weeks, was also the day she’d handed in her notice at the small digital publishing company in Bath where she’d worked for the last year. Marcus, her immediate boss, had initially tried to persuade her to stay but had ended up wishing her good luck and telling her to stay in touch.
Yesterday had been her last day in work and Iris’s new flatmate was moving in on Monday. Thankfully, as the furnished flat belonged to Iris there was only her personal stuff to pack into a large suitcase. Her immediate needs, including her laptop, passport, phone went into a rucksack. So, in theory, everything had slotted into place for her to begin her new life. She’d go home as she’d planned, spend some time with her parents and granny, Agnes, and tell the three of them all about her plans for the future, reassure them that yes, she did know what she was doing. And then simply go sometime next week.
Before then she had to talk to Rufus and tell him her plans, plans she’d deliberately kept from him too for several reasons. The main one being she had no idea how he would react to their current relationship becoming even more sporadic than it had been for the past nine months or so – ever since she’d decided to become a social media influencer. She’d been so busy trying to build up all her social media platforms, Instagram, Bluesky, her lifestyle blog and now her YouTube channel, ready for all of them to contribute to her earnings in her new life, that she’d cancelled several dates with him.
Zazz watched as a couple of magpies on the path in front of her squabbled and fought noisily over a crust of bread until one beak yanked it away from the other beak and it broke into two pieces. Triumphant, one bird flew away with its prize to a nearby oak tree.
Why did she feel so unsettled? Grandfather Oscar’s unexpected demise would merely serve to disrupt things initially but, as sad as she found it, it was unlikely to have any real impact on her own life after so many years of being kept at arm’s length. Impossible now to become closer to a grandfather she’d been kept away from but easier in many ways to accept his death because of the lack of personal memories.