‘You silly little idiot,’ her father ranted. ‘What happens when the contract ends and you’re out of a job with rent to find? You’ll come running back then, no doubt, expecting us to bail you out. You can’t just up sticks and move to Manchester for three months’ work.’
Emma had let him talk, tried to ignore his comments, thought only of being somewhere else, somewhere better. Of being someone else, someone new. And now here she was, independent, in her own flat, sitting on the toilet lid, cleaning a razor blade.
Andrew
The morning of the funeral, and Martine turned up. She apologized for the intrusion, but she had news.
‘As a result of the publication of the e-fits, a number of names have come up, one of them repeatedly, and the inquiry team will be regarding these as persons of interest,’ she said.
‘Meaning what?’ Val asked, her face set with tension and interest.
‘The team will be keeping them under surveillance and gathering additional evidence.’
‘Who are they?’ Val said.
‘I can’t tell you that at present.’
Val stood up. ‘Why not?’
‘We need to be sure, we need to establish that we have found the right people, and if we have enough evidence to make any arrests, you’ll be informed.’
Martine had no idea that Andrew already knew it was Tom Garrington she was talking about, and that Luke had made a bitter enemy of Tom at the party. He was tempted to challenge her with these facts, but he hadn’t spoken to Val about meeting Louise, about the name she had given him, there hadn’t been a chance, and it would be dreadful to tell her now in front of the police officer.
* * *
Val’s friends Sheena and Sue arrived and they went out to greet them. The weather was calm, grey, cold and foggy. A sweaty scent clung in the air; Andrew couldn’t put a name to it. Then Colin and Izzie and their two arrived, and Jason’s friends. Warm greetings were exchanged, murmurs of mutual sympathy, questions about the schedule for the day. They waited for the hearse.
Ideally they’d have used a horse-drawn carriage and walked behind it, respecting Jason’s views on carbon footprints, but the woodland burial site was miles away, and it simply wasn’t practical. Andrew thought of the old rural maps he’d seen in Ireland, where mass paths were rights of way to enable the devout to reach their parish church to celebrate mass. He recalled images from a film, though its name was lost to him now, of villagers carrying a coffin across a hillside for burial.
He moved among the visitors crowding the house and felt that distanced sensation again. The notion that he was going through the motions, living someone else’s nightmare. He remembered being in a similar state at their wedding, even though that was a happy occasion. The focus on the right sequence of trivia, the whole thing more of a rehearsed ordeal than a joyous celebration. The distortion of ritual.
He faltered when he saw his parents, their wobbly faces, the ravaged expressions in their eyes. Hard to conceal their pain. He hugged his father, thinking, why Jason and not you, but with no hint of malice as he felt the old man’s belly bulging out, and noted the rounding slope of his shoulders.
Andrew hadn’t expected the press. They were set up at the ready as the cortège entered the cemetery site. Family and friends emerged from the cars to the snick and whir of the lenses. He watched as Jason’s good friends, along with Colin, took instructions from the director and carried the coffin into the chapel.
Two nights before, the boys had turned up to decorate the coffin, armed with memorabilia, computer printouts and photographs, PVA glue, felt pens, paint and scissors. Andrew had cleared space in the conservatory and found a wallpaper table to put the coffin on. The event took on a party atmosphere, helped along by the pizzas and six-packs of beer that the boys had brought.
The collage grew: riotous, lively, spreading over the sides of the coffin. One of the girls, an art student, used paint to connect the different images together, spirals and tendrils and leaf shapes.
