Ghosts in the Morning

Chapter 15



‘Thank you so much, Deirdra, it was really kind of you to come,’ I said.

‘Sure, now, Andrea, it’s no bother. Now, like I told you, any time ye want to call me, ye don’t hesitate, okay?’ Deirdra gave my shoulder a squeeze and walked away from the church with a little wave.

There was a crunch on the fine gravel that surrounded the church’s imposing entrance and a man reached out and shook my limp hand, muttering his sympathies. I didn’t recognise him, somebody from Graham’s firm perhaps. There were a lot of people milling around outside the church, I could hear snippets of conversation. ‘Such a young bloke too, a real shame’, and ‘a good turnout for the funeral, a popular guy for sure’ and ‘poor woman, tough on the kids too’.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Andrea.’ An American style phrase, it sounded pretentious, out-of-place, and I looked up to see that the words had been uttered my Nikki, Graham’s secretary.

My lips involuntarily curled up in distaste, but I forced them down, and gave a slight nod and a whispered ‘thank you’. Nikki would not see the hate in my eyes, she wouldn’t have that satisfaction, I was wearing sunglasses; large frames and impenetrable jet-black lenses.

‘Andy, darling, my poor girl, come here,’ Anita said, and squeezed me in a tight bear hug. She was dressed in a long, black dress peppered with a pattern of dark red roses. She managed to look glamorous and garish at the same time. ‘Are you okay, my poor darling?’

Vague memories of the times I had argued with Anita, or felt angry at her for some silly reason, they all melted like summer snow, and then something broke inside me and I began to sob. Anita squeezed me tighter, my face mashing into her ample bosom, I could feel the bridge of my sunglasses cutting into the top of my nose. She patted my head tenderly, as my shoulders shook and the tears streamed, and I felt my arms encircling her, squeezing her back. I didn’t want to move, I just wanted to be held, nobody had ever held me like she did at that moment, not even Graham. We stayed like that for what seemed an eternity, until eventually my racking sobs eased, and the tears began to dry. The top of my nose began to throb.

Anita finally pulled away and we stood looking at each other for an awkward moment. ‘Did you borrow those sunglasses from Jackie Onassis?’ Anita said, and we both laughed. ‘Now look, Andy, I’m not going to bother saying all the bullshit that one usually does at these things. You know I’m there for you whenever you need me, Andy, and all that stuff, I’m not going to say any more. Right, now, I’m just going to see how your boys are doing, and then I’m coming back to yours for a drink.’

The boys weren’t doing too well. They had taken the news very hard, they couldn’t understand why their father had taken his life. He seemed happy enough, it didn’t make sense, how could their Dad do this to them?

Surprisingly, Simon had been the strongest, he had been a rock for his brothers. Daniel was in pieces, he had hardly come out of his bedroom for a week. That morning both Ian and Daniel had said they weren’t sure if they were going to come to the funeral, they didn’t think they could handle it. But I had heard Simon gently cajoling and encouraging them, telling them how important it was that they went to the funeral, they would regret it for the rest of their lives if they didn’t. In the church too, Simon had stood between his brothers, every now and again resting a reassuring hand on their shoulders.

We hadn’t discussed what happened yet, we hadn’t talked about the police investigation, and I hadn’t told them about the note. Daniel had tried, had pushed me with questions, and at times I had wondered if his questioning seemed a bit...well, searching, as if he’s unsure about something, but I’ve put that down to paranoia on my part. I’ve told him – I’ve told all of my boys – that the time for all of that talk is not now. Now, it’s the time for grieving, it’s the natural order of things.

The questions would come later, but I knew how to handle that.





Epilogue



2 YEARS LATER



‘I’ll probably be late back tonight, Andrea, I’ve got a load of papers to mark after school, I’ll see you later,’ Tony shouted as he dashed out of the front door.

I sighed. I didn’t think he had any papers to mark.

Tony was a teacher. We had been married for a year now. I had met him when I moved to the mainland, six months after Graham’s death. I had bought a lovely little cottage on the outskirts of Southampton; I had wanted to get away from Jersey, to start afresh. It’s strange, really, as I sometimes thought of Jersey as an island that had imprisoned me for too long, yet I hadn’t wanted to move too far away. It was nice to be able to go back now and again, just a short hop on the plane. The boys had made a fuss when I first decided to move away, they didn’t want me to leave. But they got over it soon enough; amazing what the receipt of a large endowment can do. I knew they missed their father, they all loved him so much, but they were gradually getting back on with their lives.

Ian had gone travelling again – he was in Asia at the moment - and in our last face-to-face call over the internet, he told me that he was thinking of buying a bar on one of the islands off the coast of Thailand.

Daniel had set up his own plumbing firm, but it seems work is getting harder to come by in Jersey, the recession has hit late and hard there, and Daniel says there’s not as much work around as he’d hoped. He said he is toying with the idea of relocating to Australia. He tells me he’s still single, though whenever I phone him it’s always a woman’s voice that picks up the phone. Most times, it doesn’t sound like the same woman.

Simon quit university. He met a kitchen-fitter – fell madly in lust by the sounds of it - and together they have set up a business, mixing the kitchen-fitting with Simon’s new-found love for interior design. I told him to be careful, it wasn’t wise to mix business with pleasure, but they do seem to be blissfully happy together. They’re talking about getting married soon.

I lost a lot of weight after Graham’s death, I managed to regain some of the youthful good looks I once had. I got myself a personal trainer, a lovely guy called Craig who helped me shed the pounds, encouraged me to change my diet and join a gym. That’s how I met Tony - at the gym. Tony spends a lot of time at the gym, he is a very fit, active guy ; he is always one of the first to volunteer when they’re looking for teachers to accompany the kids on ski-trips or mountaineering expeditions.

I’ve put a few of those lost pounds back on in recent months. It coincided with the end of our honeymoon period. It’s probably my own fault, we shouldn’t have got married so quickly, but neither of us seemed to think hard enough at the time, just rushed headlong into it. I think Tony was just looking for some stability at the time, perhaps I was a rebound thing, as he’d not long received his final divorce papers. Decree absolute. For me, I was just pleased that someone seemed to fancy me, and he’s very good-looking so...perhaps I should have waited...

It was about a month ago when I noticed that Tony’s eye had started to roam. Although, it’s not just his eye, now, I think. It seems that he has grown close to the French teacher at the school where he works. Too close. Miss Haze, her name is, I don’t know her first name yet. I am sure he doesn’t have any papers to mark tonight.

Our cottage – or rather, my cottage for I bought it and it’s in my name – has a lot of charm, it’s very rustic. It has a lovely large fireplace and exposed wooden beams in the living-room. A cottage of real character and history, the estate agent told me. He told me that it was owned many, many years ago by a wealthy merchant, who had made his fortune from shipping wine through Southampton’s docks. ‘The current owners have spent a small fortune lovingly restoring it to its glory of earlier years’, the estate agent had added. He was a typical salesman, all grease and bullshit, but I bought the cottage anyway. I had liked it from the moment I had laid eyes on it.

Tony has a ritual before bedtime; every night, before he goes to bed, he turns the television off – assuming it’s on, because sometimes he just sits and reads a book in there – and then he flicks on the tall lamp in the corner of the living-room. The body of the lamp is a silver mermaid, her curling tail forming the base of the lamp. Her upstretched hands with their slender fingers clasp the frosted glass shade. I’m sure that some would say it’s a bit tacky, a bit kitsch, but I like it. With the dull glow from the lamp casting a cosy illumination, like the moon in thin fog. Tony then turns off the main lights and reaches into the small drawer beneath the oak coffee table that sits in the middle of the living-room, and takes out a packet of cigarettes and a Zippo lighter. Finally, he sinks down into the large, overstuffed armchair in front of the fireplace. He lights a cigarette, takes a deep breath and then smokes the cigarette in the semi-darkness. Just one cigarette, that’s all he ever has. Every day, just one. He says that he used to smoke a lot, it scared him that he’d never be able to give up, and his Mum died of lung cancer. He says that he found it really hard to quit, but he had hit upon this ritual of allowing himself just this one each day, this small, guilty pleasure. He says by doing this, he is convinced that he won’t start smoking properly again.

I don’t much like the smell of smoke, and, at first, I thought about stopping him smoking in my house. But I realised that, once we were married, this was supposed to be our house, so I decided that I wouldn’t begrudge him this little nightly routine. I mean, it’s not really doing me any harm.

But the thing is, I have warned him that he needs to be careful. There has been the odd occasion where he has fallen asleep during the cigarette. I’ve come into the living-room and found him in the chair with the cigarette butt smouldering in the ashtray. That overstuffed armchair is old and highly flammable, they didn’t worry so much about health and safety when they made that chair. And, of course, the floors are all made of wood, and with those wooden beams as well...

He should be very careful. I wouldn’t want him falling asleep in that chair with a burning cigarette in his lap, now, would I?


THE END