“I’m not that good.”
“You are, you know.” She felt him smiling. When Joe smiled, it was like the very air around him changed and the world became a little warmer. She allowed herself to bask for one more moment. “We’d better join the throng; I need to be there when he’s interred.”
They left their quiet alcove and fell in with the crowd.
“Will you tell your sisters about the eviction?” Joe asked.
“Why would I?”
He changed the subject.
“Belinda did well to keep God out of the service,” he said as they followed the slow procession. “No mean feat for a vicar.”
Belinda was vicar for the parish of Rowan Thorp: a gregarious woman of ample cleavage with a ring through her nose and a laugh like Sid James. She was rumored to wear leather trousers beneath her cassock in winter.
“She’s been brilliant. It’s not easy to write a eulogy for a father more devoted to the open road than his children.” There was no malice in her voice, only a sad resignation.
Joe reached for her hand. She felt his warm fingers lace through hers and squeeze. She smiled up at him, gently freed her fingers, and drove her hand deep into her coat pocket. The flicker of hurt across his face sliced through her, but it was better this way; she wouldn’t give him false hope.
The grass was spongy and slick with mud as they trampled the rest of the way in silence. The hole in the earth ahead of them yawned black and hungry, and neither the muddied Astroturf sheets around the opening nor the flowers strewn atop it lessened the ugliness.
* * *
Star had never seen so many velvet cloaks in one place, which was really saying something. The little churchyard at St. Swithun’s resembled a wizarding convention as the funeralgoers clustered to watch Augustus’s environmentally friendly cardboard coffin being lowered. Despite her sadness, she was relieved when it touched down in one piece; she had been worried that the heavy rain would break down the cardboard’s integrity.
Though technically surrounded by her family, Star felt very alone. Perdita hung on to a man in a Viking costume, complete with horned helmet. For all her histrionics, she knew her mother was enjoying herself. Simone still wasn’t speaking to her, and if she couldn’t put her grievances aside on today of all days, then Star held out little hope of a reconciliation in the future. And Maggie was being Maggie, organizing her corner of the world and everyone in it. She had greeted Star with a hug and checked on her several times since, but it felt perfunctory, as though she was yet another item to be ticked off Maggie’s to-do list.
“You all right there, Star, love?” asked Betty, stepping forward and throwing a clod of earth from the pile onto the coffin before turning to look at her. Betty was a keen member of the Women’s Institute and a doyenne of Rowan Thorp and was never so formidable as in a crisis. She’d known the sisters all their lives.
“I think so. Why do you think he never stuck around?”
Betty sucked in a breath as she deliberated. “Ants in his pants, I suppose. You ought to know all about those. Of the three of you, you’re the most like him.”
“My roams are more circumstantial than Dad’s were.”
“Well, I suppose that’s to be expected. You’ve never had the chance to let your roots grow.”
“If I had children, I wouldn’t want to leave them behind. I’d never make them feel as though they weren’t enough to make me stay.” Her voice sounded more forceful than she’d intended.
“Is that how you feel, duck?” Betty’s voice was kind.
Star’s sniff was partly to stifle her tears and part derision. She forced a laugh into her words. “I think the evidence is irrefutable.” She looked over at her mother in time to see her kiss a rose and drop it into the grave while the Viking held her firmly by the waist. “I’m easy to discard.”
“We’ll have none of that nonsense, my girl.” Betty’s voice was sharp. “Some people are like sharks; they can smell low self-esteem a mile off. You need to stop attracting the sharks.”
“Easier said than done.”
“That man of yours still in prison?”
“Stu’s not my man anymore, but no, he got out a couple of weeks ago.”
“You keep away from him. He’ll drag you down with him.”
Star nodded. She didn’t mention that despite trying her hardest to keep away from the man in question, he had found her and was not taking kindly to being dumped. Stu—her ex-boyfriend, a drug addict, and a terrible house burglar—was the reason Simone no longer spoke to her.
“Right, I’m going to shoot off and start laying out the buffet,” said Betty, and she began to push her way back through the crowd jostling for a ringside spot. “Chin up! Be the architect of your own destiny!” she called back.
The rain picked up, huge drops sploshing down onto the muddied cardboard.
“Bye, Dad,” she said under her breath. It didn’t matter that throughout their childhood, the North sisters only spent four weeks of the year with their father. It didn’t matter that as each of them reached adulthood Augustus had all but disappeared from their lives like emperor penguins leave their young after the winter. She would miss him still.
At thirty-eight, she was the baby of the family, and she was never allowed to forget it. Admittedly she was up against Simone, a qualified, well-respected physiotherapist, and Maggie, single mother of two who ran her own business and was top level at adulting. How was she supposed to compete with that? No. She corrected herself. That is the wrong attitude. Let this be the catalyst. From this moment, I turn things around. I will be the architect of my own destiny. I will hold down a job and buy houseplants, which I will not kill. No more trying to fix broken men, no more picking up the guy in the bar least likely to have his own flat or job. From now on I am only looking for proper grown-up men who can appreciate that I am a proper grown-up woman, with a potential to own plants.
She looked up to find a man, dressed in a brightly colored harlequin costume and holding three juggling clubs, looking at her from the other side of the grave. A black mask covered the top half of his face, but his grin was pure sexy wickedness. Oh, hello! Her heart skipped a beat. She smiled back at him. Maybe tomorrow was the right time to put her new plans into action.
4
The wake was held in the Stag and Hound, where the deceased’s numerous former lovers shared stories of making love with Augustus on mountaintops, riverbanks, forest floors, behind waterfalls, and in one instance a disabled toilet at Butlin’s in Skegness. Tales of their father’s conquests became more graphic as the sherry consumption racked up. Maggie, Simone, and Star could only grimace and keep the women topped up with vol-au-vents—courtesy of Betty’s café along the high street—and pray that the nightmare would end soon.