Anthony
By the time Laura stirred from her chair in the study, her limbs were stiffened by cold. Outside, in a black sky, hung a perfect pearlescent moon. Laura sought warmth in the kitchen, and set the kettle to boil as she pondered Anthony’s requests. The scattering of his ashes she would do gladly. Returning the lost things was not so simple. Once again she felt those stones in her pocket, reminding her of who she really was. Laura’s parents had been dead for some years now, but she had never been able to shake the feeling that she had let them down. They had never said as much, but in all honesty what had she ever done to repay their unfailing love and loyalty and make them proud? She had dodged university, her marriage had been a disaster, and she had failed to give them a single grandchild. And she had been eating fish and chips in Cornwall when her mother died. The fact that it had been her first holiday since she had left Vince wasn’t any kind of excuse. When her father had died just six months later, Anthony filled some of the void that had remained, and perhaps now the task that he had left her would be her chance to make some sort of amends? Perhaps this was her opportunity to finally succeed at something.
And then there was Sunshine. In this, at least, she was ahead of Anthony, but she couldn’t take any credit for being so. It was Sunshine who had offered her friendship first and even then Laura had been—was still—reluctant to reciprocate. She thought about all the times that she had seen Sunshine before Anthony had died, and done nothing. Said nothing. Not even hello. But Anthony had done what little he could even after his death. Laura was disappointed in herself, but she was determined to try to change. She took her tea upstairs to the rose-scented bedroom she had claimed for her own. Or rather that she had chosen to share with Therese. Because she was still there. Her things were still there. Not her clothes, of course, but her dressing table set, the photograph of her with Anthony, which was inexplicably facedown once more, and the little blue enamel clock: 11:55. Stopped again. Laura put down her cup and wound the clock until its gentle ticking resumed. She went to bed leaving the curtains wide open, and outside the perfect moon veiled the rose garden in a ghostly damask of light and shade.
CHAPTER 17
1984
“At Christmas time we da, di, da and we vanish shade . . .”
Mrs. Doyle was in fine voice as she served the man in front of Eunice with two sausage plaits and a couple of squares of Tottenham cake. She paused for breath to greet Eunice.
“He’s a great bloke, that Bob Gelding, getting all those pop singers to make a record for those poor blighters in Ethio . . .”—the rest of the word slipped away from Mrs. Doyle’s lexical grasp—“in the desert.”
Eunice smiled in agreement.
“He’s almost a saint.”
Mrs. Doyle began putting donuts in a bag.
“Mind you,” she continued, “it’s not as though that Boy George and Midget Ure and the like can’t afford to do a bit of charity. And those Bananas—lovely girls, but not a hairbrush between them, by the looks of things.”
Douglas was undisturbed by Eunice’s returning footsteps up the stairs. His gray and grizzled muzzle twitched and his front paws flicked gently as he dreamed of who knows what. But it must have been a happy dream, Eunice thought, because the corners of his mouth were turned up in a smile. Bomber was watching him from his desk like an anxious child from a window watching his snowman begin inevitably to melt. She wanted to reassure him, but there was nothing she could say. Douglas was getting old. His days were growing shorter in length and in number. He would die and hearts would break. But for now he was warm and content, and when he eventually woke, a cream donut would be waiting for him. The switch from jam to cream (which was actually jam and cream) was an effort to keep Douglas’s old bones padded with a little of the flesh that seemed to mysteriously dissolve with each passing year.
Bomber, however, was experiencing the exact opposite. In the ten years or so that Eunice had known him, he had eventually managed to grow a very modest tummy to add a little softness to his still-rangy frame. He patted it affectionately as he said for the umpteenth time:
“We must stop eating so many donuts.” A comment completely unaccompanied by any purpose or intent, and duly ignored by Eunice.
“Are your parents coming into town this week?”
Eunice had grown very fond of Grace and Godfrey and looked forward to their visits, which were unfortunately becoming less and less frequent. It was all too apparent that old age was an unforgiving wingman. Godfrey in particular was becoming less solid in both body and mind; his reason and robustness inexorably stealing away.