‘So there’s no one on the scene at the moment?’ he says jokily. ‘No fella back home in your swish London pad?’
‘Oh, give it a rest, Paul,’ I say as I stand up. ‘You know I’m a terminal singleton. Now, tell me more about the funeral. Did many people come?’
‘A few,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I press.
‘Yes,’ he snaps. ‘I didn’t let your mum down, okay? We gave her a good send-off.’
He sighs and pushes a stray bit of hair away from his eyes. He suddenly looks exhausted.
‘I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me. I know these last few weeks must have been hard for you and I really am grateful you were here for Mum at the end.’
I put my hand on his shoulder and he looks at me and smiles.
‘It has been hard,’ he says. ‘But we coped. We got through it.’
I watch as he picks up the sweet peas and puts them in the stone vase by the grave.
‘All the old crowd turned up,’ he says, arranging the flowers. ‘Your aunt Meg came down from Southend and a few of your dad’s mates from the pub.’
‘And Sally? Did she come?’
He rests his hands on the stone and closes his eyes.
‘Paul?’
‘She – she wasn’t well enough,’ he says. ‘And then . . .’
‘Paul, what is it? Come on, you can tell me.’
He gives up trying to keep it in. ‘When she heard about your mum she just lost it. She’s locked herself in the conservatory with a stash of booze and she won’t come out except to buy more drink when I’m at work. She doesn’t wash, she barely eats. I don’t know what to do, Kate. I’m scared.’ He buries his face in his hands.
I kneel down next to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
‘It’s okay,’ I say soothingly. ‘You’re not on your own. I’ll do what I can to help.’
‘Will you?’ he says, looking up at me. ‘Do you mean that? You see, I’ve tried everything – kindness, tough love, I even tried forcing her to AA – but none of it’s worked. She needs you; even though she pushes you away, she needs you.’
I stand up and look at my mother’s name on the headstone. She would want me to do whatever I can to help Sally.
‘I made sure they played all her favourite hymns,’ says Paul softly as he gets to his feet. ‘“I Watch the Sunrise”; “Queen of the May”; and “Abide with Me” as they brought her in.’
As I stand listening to Paul’s account of the funeral I close my eyes and imagine my mother’s coffin sitting in front of the altar; a tiny casket, hanging there in the air like a frail bird.
Beside me, Paul starts to sing the opening lines of ‘Abide with Me’. I look at that damned mulberry tree as Paul sings about the eventide and I wish my mother hadn’t had to deal with such violence. She was a good person and she didn’t deserve it.
Paul stops singing and looks at me.
‘Sally chose the reading,’ he says. ‘Even though she couldn’t make the funeral, she still wanted to have a bit of input.’
‘What reading was it?’
‘One from the Bible,’ he says. ‘She said your folks had it at their wedding. What was it again? “Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” That one.’
My body goes cold and any sympathy I was beginning to feel for my sister dissipates. Why would she choose such a thing? It was nonsense, and a huge slap in the face to our mother, a woman who had endured more than she should ever have had to at the hands of that man.
‘So you see, Sally did care,’ says Paul. ‘She still wanted to be involved.’
‘Paul, you know very well that Sally couldn’t stand our mother.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Yes, they had their ups and downs but they loved the bones of each other really.’
‘Which is why it was you who arranged Mum’s care home and drove her to mass and ferried her to the shops,’ I reply, feeling the anger pounding in my temple like a pulse.
‘I cared about your mum, too,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mind doing those things because she was a lovely lady. She welcomed me into the family so kindly, especially after my own mum died. I was happy to help.’
‘I know you were,’ I say gently. ‘And you’ve been a great son-in-law. Better than either of us were as daughters. I just wish I’d seen more of her in her final years.’
As I stand here I have a sudden memory of Ground Zero, where I first met Chris. I see the forensic anthropologists in space-age suits hauling bodies from shallow graves. The perversity of that image, the ‘wrongness’ of a body coming out rather than going into its grave, makes me go cold.
‘Come on,’ says Paul, noticing the state I’m in. ‘Let’s get you home.’
He takes my hand and guides me back through the graves, past the Minnie Mouse balloon and Alexandra Waits, past the church holding my mother’s secrets, but it is all too much and as we reach the gates I let go of his arm and sit down on the grass verge. The tears that I’ve spent the last few weeks holding in come springing forth and I put my head in my hands and cry for the mother I’ve lost.
9
Herne Bay Police Station