Chapter 4
The high-pitched wailing has not stopped all day.
It didn’t stop once as they brought in John’s casket, it did not stop during the eulogies, and it has not stopped even here at the upmarket pub where they’re hosting a wake.
Not even as the wailer in question consumed five and a half cucumber and salmon sandwiches.
‘Do you think she’s all right?’ Paula asks Tilly, concern in her voice.
Tilly huffs. ‘Oh, she’s bloody well fine, Mum.
There’s always someone at a funeral who makes everything about them.
It’s not actually about mourning, or even celebrating the deceased, it’s about having all eyes and attention on their grief.
She’s a grief thief!’ She regards her mum curiously.
‘You should be the one crying, not her.’
‘John did always say Bridget was prone to hysterics,’ Paula whispers, glancing anxiously across the room at her husband’s former secretary. As if on cue, Bridget’s wailing inches up yet another octave. It is now that very special pitch employed by Bond villains to kill secret agents’ brain cells.
Tilly winces at the sound, then tuts. ‘That’s sexist, Mum. You wouldn’t call a man hysterical.’
Paula looks flustered, murmuring an apology. She’s always saying the wrong thing around her daughter.
‘Here,’ Seb appears from the bar, holding two glasses. ‘Mum, I got you your usual.’ He hands her a Malibu and Coke and she sighs, accepting it. More fabric softener.
Seb swigs his beer, his eyes bloodshot. Paula would like to believe it’s from the stress of the day. Or that maybe he’s been up all night, weeping the loss of his father. Except that rather strong smell of marijuana wafting around him would indicate otherwise.
‘Can we leave yet?’ her thirty-year-old-going-on-thirteen son asks.
‘No!’ Tilly hisses at her little brother.
‘There are still sandwiches to be eaten. And none of the uncles are even drunk yet. They’d be furious.
Everyone has to have time to grieve properly.
’ Her eyes slide across her mother’s face.
‘Grief has tentacles, have I mentioned that?’ Paula nods, trying not to grimace at the imagery.
‘Ugh, fine,’ Seb shrugs, then rubs his sore-looking eyes. ‘Well, can someone at least tell that crying woman to chill?’
‘John used to say there was no point trying to calm a woman down,’ Paula observes solemnly. ‘It’s best to let her get it out of her system.’ She shoots a fearful look at Tilly. ‘Am I being sexist again?’
Her daughter nods disapprovingly, then sighs, placing a conciliatory arm around Paula.
‘It’s not your fault, Mum. It’s your upbringing.
You just agreed with everything Dad said.
It’s a generational thing.’ She releases the arm, moving to face her mother.
‘But it’s high time you started embracing the new world.
I know it’s been a difficult time for you, but you’re .
. .’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘You’re rich now, Mum!
Super rich!’ She checks behind her shoulder for eavesdroppers before hissing, ‘You’ve won the bloody lottery!
This is your chance to have fun and enjoy your life.
It’s your chance to make friends and meet new people.
’ She waves her hands excitably. ‘You can do anything you want . Absolutely anything! It’s time for a fresh start. For an adventure.’
The background wailing drowned out some of Tilly’s speech, but what she caught makes Paula fearful.
She doesn’t want a fresh start or an adventure.
Losing her husband in a car accident was as close to being in a soap opera as she ever wants to come.
And she couldn’t care less about being rich.
Yes, not having to worry about paying the heating bill will be very nice, and maybe she’ll even be able to get someone out about that ceiling stain, but otherwise, she hasn’t a clue about budgeting or how to spend her money.
John always looked after all that. She wouldn’t even know where to start with twenty-one million pounds.
‘Look, I know your life has been on pause for the last month, while we waited for the ashes and made arrangements.’ Tilly looks earnest. There are new wrinkles around her eyes that weren’t there before all of this.
‘But this is it, Mum. This is the funeral. After this, you’re allowed – you’re supposed – to start moving on. To start living your life again.’
‘What life?’ Paula asks, but she’s drowned out by sudden yelling, over at the bar.
‘Oops,’ Seb nods towards the noise, blinking red eyes. ‘Looks like the uncles are rectifying that sober situation.’
Paula follows his eyeline to where Pete, Tom and Leonard are roaring loudly with each other over what looks like more whisky. They’re laughing over a childhood spent torturing one another.
‘And then we held John’s head down the loo and flushed it five times!’ yells Pete, and Paula feels the room’s eyes turning in the direction of the booming men.
‘Bloody idiots,’ Tilly murmurs, as twenty feet away, Bridget the Secretary is forced to wail even louder to outdo the uncles.
‘Do you remember when he tried to hit us with an axe and we locked him outside in the garden?’ Tom yells, delighted by the childish violence.
He’s wearing one of John’s shirts, Paula realises.
He took possession of her husband’s clothes so quickly after the will-reading a week and a half ago.
Paula keeps opening that side of the wardrobe to stare at the emptiness there.
It still smells like John, but otherwise, it’s like half of her has disappeared along with the shirts.
And that’s when she found the notebook. Tucked away on one of John’s shelves, previously buried under his Next T-shirt collection.
Her heart beats faster just thinking about it. About what it means.
She discreetly pats her coat pocket. It’s still in there.
‘You know what we should do?’ the oldest, Pete, is shouting, looking excited. ‘We should have a game of snooker in his honour!’ They collectively look around the room, disappointment lighting their eyes as they find no trace of a snooker table.
‘Not even a pool table!’ Leonard cries, pouting.
Paula wonders, as she often has, how snooker and pool can be different things when they’re both about hitting colourful balls.
She would ask the brothers, but they didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms after the will-reading the other week.
By the end of their visit, Paula had been on the verge of transferring the whole twenty million, but Tilly overruled her.
‘Let’s do karaoke instead then!’ shouts Tom, who has always been the biggest show-off. He’s also got one of John’s belt buckles on. The other two regard him sceptically.
‘Did John actually like karaoke?’ Leonard asks.
‘Who cares?’ comes the reply, as Tom downs his whisky in one and waves for another.
There is no karaoke machine, or indeed, even any access to a microphone, so the unsanctioned funeral karaoke begins, consisting mostly of the men shouting the words to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’.
Which, honestly, feels far too on the nose for Paula’s liking.
The widow and her children watch agape. Misha tiptoes towards them, looking mortified.
‘Is this . . .’ She waves at the singing ‘Is this OK ?’
‘No!’ Tilly replies firmly, taking her wife’s hand as they all watch with horror. ‘It’s really not OK.’
‘Should we do something?’ Paula asks in a whisper.
‘Yes,’ her daughter says with determination, turning to face her. ‘You should say something, Mum. You’re the grieving widow. You need to tell them to stop! They’re making a mockery of Dad’s funeral.’
Beside them, Seb quietly joins in with the singing, his foot tapping. Across the room, Bridget’s wailing is now in tune.
Paula gulps. Is it really her responsibility? Couldn’t someone else be in charge today? She can’t stand confrontation at the best of times and this is . . . a lot. John’s brothers have always terrified her, and when they get like this, they’re even harder to restrain.
Tilly tuts. ‘Come on, Mum, it’s time to stop being so agreeable and meek!’ She waves a finger with authority, as Paula nods meekly, agreeing. ‘They don’t get to do this at my dad’s funeral! Dad didn’t even like his brothers that much.’
‘He didn’t mind them,’ Paula protests diplomatically, afraid someone might hear them through the din. ‘And people seem to be enjoying it.’ She waves at the crowd, who are variously dancing and singing along.
Paula eyes the room now, wondering about John’s work colleagues at the IT consultancy.
He worked there for twenty-five years, and not one of them has made an appearance today.
She shakes her head at the injustice of everything.
They were the ones who sent John on the trip to Austria for the conference.
They were the ones who pushed when he said he didn’t want to fly.
They’re the ones who suggested John drive the twenty-plus hours across Europe.
Paula is here today because of them. John’s not here today because of them.
Perhaps his colleagues were too ashamed to be here. Perhaps there’s an internal investigation going on. Perhaps people are busy covering for his absence. Or perhaps John just wasn’t particularly popular. In her more generous moments, Paula can understand some of those reasons.
How different might things have been if he’d taken a train or hired a car? Or if someone else had been driving? What would’ve happened if he’d just . . . not gone? How different things might’ve been. How the same they might have been.
She reaches again into her pocket, stroking the thin cardboard of the notebook cover. John’s notebook, containing all of his secrets. All of their secrets. She’s been carrying it around since she found it, like some kind of security blanket.
If he hadn’t gone on that trip, at the very least, she wouldn’t be here in this dim room, watching his three brothers murder one of the best songs of her generation.
The singing gets louder and Misha squeezes Paula’s arm.
‘You OK?’ she asks for the hundredth time in a low voice and Paula nods as enthusiastically as she can.
But she suddenly feels very emotional. Her daughter-in-law’s affection has made her miss her own long-gone mum.
She was always good in a crisis. She would’ve given Paula lots of cuddles and helped her figure out what the hell she was supposed to do.
But she’s dead now, too, and there’s every chance she wouldn’t have come anyway.
She never much liked John. No one was good enough for her only daughter.
Beside her, Tilly’s had just about enough of her uncles. ‘That’s it,’ she says with determination, grabbing Paula by the arm. ‘Come on.’
Misha and Seb watch as Paula is marched across the room. As they approach, Leonard spots them and trails off, missing his cue to harmonise. Tom eyes his sister-in-law furiously, and then pointedly gets louder singing the chorus.
Paula stares at each of them, dumbstruck, as Tilly tuts. ‘Can you lot stop this?’ she shouts, trying to be heard over the racket. Tom ignores her but Pete eyes her angrily.
‘Why should we?’ he replies coldly. Paula can feel eyes on them. Anyone who wasn’t watching before, definitely is now.
‘It’s my dad’s funeral!’ Tilly yells and Pete glowers back.
‘It’s my little brother’s funeral! We’re celebrating him.’
Paula reaches for Tilly. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she murmurs, desperate to get away from the escalating horribleness.
For a long moment, her daughter and brother-in-law glare hotly at one another, before Tilly turns away at last. As they walk away, Pete shouts something at their retreating backs.
It is louder than the argument, louder than the karaoke, louder than the room’s low conversations.
Every single person hears his words – acquaintances, relatives, neighbours, bar staff.
‘You don’t deserve the twenty-one million! I deserved to win the lottery so much more than any of you!’
Paula feels her stomach drop right out of her.
She turns in slow motion to stare at Pete.
His face is red and twisted, he’s panting lightly.
She catches a few gasps from the room’s occupants and whispers of lottery and twenty-one million .
All eyes are on her. She feels Tilly take her arm.
Her heart racing, she reaches for the notebook, squeezing it tightly.
‘Let’s get out of here, Mum,’ her daughter says and her voice is shaking slightly. ‘The sandwiches are all gone anyway.’
Somewhere in the faraway distance, Paula notes that John’s secretary, Bridget, is still wailing, as loud as ever. And who could blame her?