LITMIR.BIZ

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I’ve got some lunch for Drew.’

      ‘He’s out the back with Ron.’

      ‘Can I go out there and give it to him?’

      ‘Of course you can!’ She pats my hand. I can see where Drew gets his natural warmth. ‘You can’t offend anyone there. They’re all tucked up in our refrigerator so you won’t see a thing. I hope the families hurry up and arrange funerals. In the summer we always get pressed for space, oldies keeling over in the heat, families on holiday so funerals delayed, and storage filling up faster than we can move them.’

      This insight into the logistics of juggling bodies is fascinating to someone with my kind of mind, so I head to the behind-the-scenes department of the funeral business. I’ve not been in here before but I find a purpose-built area with a concrete floor, complete with cold-storage compartments in a special fridge like I’ve seen in police dramas. Who wakes up one morning and thinks, ‘I know, I’ll go into the business of making corpse refrigerators’? I’d like to meet them, whoever they are.

      Drew and his father, Ron, have just finished closing a coffin for the afternoon’s funeral. They have a special mechanised loading platform with the casket on rollers to minimise the lifting. Care of backs is a chief health-and-safety concern for funeral directors, it would seem. I wonder if there is an inspection regime? A government department for the regulation of the dead? There’s one for abattoirs.

      Cease and desist, Jessica, this is not the same thing at all! I wish I could tune out my stupid internal monologue sometimes.

      ‘Hi. I’ve made you some lunch, Drew.’ I hold up the plastic bag of cheese, pickle and salad sandwiches. Is it odd to have food here? I’m not sure of the protocol.

      Drew checks his watch. ‘Is there time, Dad?’

      ‘Of course there is. Take a break. We’ll leave at two.’ Ron winks at me, a small jovial man with a sun-tanned complexion, the result of a couple of weeks in the Bahamas last month.

      Drew takes off his overalls and washes his hands. It’s very warm outside in the little courtyard compared to the air-conditioned shed. We sit side by side on a bench, the only free space as the rest is given over to the shiny black hearse already backed up to load from the double doors.

      ‘How’ve you got on this morning?’ Drew asks, making a start on his lunch.

      ‘Good, thanks. If I’m going to ask one of the families whether they have a contact for Jacob, I think Latifah’s might be my best bet, or Ramona’s mother.’

      ‘But you don’t sound keen.’

      ‘It’ll be a difficult conversation and they have no reason to help me.’

      ‘Except you’ve tried to help them by investigating what’s happened to their daughters.’

      ‘I’m not sure I would’ve given them the contact details if I’d got that far. Both girls may have had good reason to run away. I tend to be on their side.’ I close my eyes and tilt my chin so the sun warms my face. A plane rumbles overhead. ‘I ran away once.’

      ‘Really?’ I can feel him shift to look at me but I don’t open my eyes. ‘Seriously, or when you were little and only got as far as the end of the road?’

      ‘No, the real deal. I was gone for four months – missed the beginning of the school year. I slept rough – not something I’d recommend.’

      ‘I want to ask why, but you don’t have to tell me.’

      ‘I don’t mind telling you.’ But I’m not going to tell him the whole story; no one will ever hear that. I’ve buried it deep and am not going to dig it up again. I choose the simple version. ‘Imagine your dad and now imagine his absolute opposite – that’s what I grew up with. My father was an evil bastard, impossible to live with. In our house, we were in terror of him and his moods. He would fume then explode. Nothing my mother and I did was ever right.’ A knot of anger forms in my chest like a fur ball I’ve never been able to cough up. I swallow, trying to force it down as I can’t get it out. ‘Any show of emotion on our part was forbidden, as nothing could divert from his stage-centre performance. We weren’t allowed to be angry or challenge him over anything. His word was law. It was his house, his garden, his wife, and I was his daughter.’ When I think of him, all I remember now is a pair of screwed-up muddy-grey eyes and a flushed face. He’s become a cartoon of himself in my memory. It lessens him, and that helps me no end.

      ‘Jess, he sounds an appalling man. What happened to him? Tell me he died of testicular cancer.’

      Life isn’t fair like that. Nice men get horrible diseases; ones like my father hang on like cockroaches after a nuclear winter. ‘Don’t know, don’t care. He was actually Mum’s second husband. She had a daughter already, my older sister Miriam.’

      ‘Didn’t I meet her once? Formidable woman.’

      ‘Yes, that’s Miriam. She should be in charge of the free world, not just a farm. Anyway, her dad was a good bloke called John but he died of a heart attack in his forties. Miriam left home as soon as she could after the second marriage as she didn’t like my father, so she never saw the bastard at his worst. After I ran away, Miriam finally realised how bad things had got and helped Mum leave.’

      ‘That was brave of her.’

      ‘Yeah, we got lucky. Miriam had just married Bill – he’s a farmer, great guy – and could offer Mum a home well away from my father. By the time they found me, Dad was history. I was sixteen so my opinion was taken into account in the divorce settlement and I wasn’t forced to see him again.’

      ‘Rough, though.’

      ‘It could’ve been much worse. You know those news stories where some guy flips and kills his ex and her kids? Well, I thought that would be us. I was convinced for a long while that he’d come round and murder us all in revenge one day, but he never bothered. Maybe Bill’s farm dogs and rifle scared him off. He’s probably still sitting in his house, moaning about how his wife, his daughter, abandoned him.’

      Drew scrunched up the empty bag and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘I have to say it, Jess, but don’t you see a similarity between your domineering father and Michael?’

      ‘Are you saying I’m repeating family history? No, Michael’s not that bad.’ He isn’t, is he? ‘He recognises I have a life separate from his – he positively encourages it. He often says he doesn’t want us to live in each other’s pockets. My father would never have done that.’ My phone pings. A text from Michael. Come home immediately. ‘Speak of the devil. The eagle has landed. I’ve got to go back. Thanks for looking after me.’

      Drew leans over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. He smells of cheese and pickle with an undertone of varnish. ‘You know you’re welcome back anytime. I like having you around.’

      ‘I like being around you.’ It’s true. He makes me feel wanted. I rest my forehead on his shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

      I arrive back in Clapham to find a police car parked outside our house. Christ, not another tripped alarm? It’s really not my fault this time. I definitely closed the kitchen door and set it correctly. Drew will be able to back me up on the latter, as he would have heard the buzz as I locked the front door.

      I use my key to enter and call out a wary ‘Hello?’

      ‘In here, Jessica,’ replies Michael from the conservatory half of the kitchen which is out of sight of the hallway. I go in and find he is serving tea to the officers, two of them sitting at the scrubbed pine table. They look up expectantly as I enter.

      ‘What’s going on? Did we have a break-in?’ I drop my bag on the fourth chair.

      ‘Where’ve you been?’ asks Michael. He’s still in what I think of as his conference uniform: lichen-green linen suit, jacket, and shirt. He cuts a patrician figure with his thick auburn hair and large frame. In the States, he would’ve done well as a newscaster

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