A week later, he had just come out of the church, having attended the funeral of a seventy-five-year-old former driving instructor who’d drowned in the bath, when he turned on his phone to find a voicemail from an HR person asking him to interview for one of the jobs he’d applied for. Ordinarily this would have thrown him into a panic, but he always felt curiously numb after the funerals, so when he heard the message he felt calm enough to call back immediately to arrange the interview. This was his chance to escape and finally stop the lies.
Another week later, he was climbing the stairs at the council office and feeling horribly out of breath, trying to convince himself that this was because he was suffering from a disease—possibly fatal—and nothing to do with the fact he hadn’t exercised for two decades, when his phone rang again. A few seconds later, he was wheezing that yes he’d be very happy to come in for a second interview. He spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at his desk and imagining how it would feel to tell Cameron he was handing in his notice already.
“You and the family up to anything nice this weekend, Andrew?” Bethany asked.
“Barbecue on Saturday if the weather’s nice,” Andrew said. “Steph’s decided she’s vegetarian, so not quite sure what’s going to be on the menu for her.”
“Oh, I am too! It’s fine—just do some halloumi cheese and some Linda McCartney sausages. She’ll love it.”
They were still discussing weekend plans some minutes later when Andrew got an e-mail from Adrian, the recruitment person who’d called him, asking him to confirm what dates he was free for the second interview. Andrew excused himself and escaped to a toilet cubicle. He didn’t want to admit to himself quite how warm and comforted he felt after little moments like this with Bethany and the others when discussing family stuff. The thought returned to him again: Where was the harm in what he was doing? He wasn’t upsetting anyone. People had actual families that they did actual diabolical things to, harming loved ones in all sorts of awful ways, and what he was doing wasn’t comparable to that in any way.
By the time he’d gotten back to his desk he’d made up his mind. He would make peace with what he was doing. He wasn’t going to turn back now.
Hi Adrian,
I’m really glad for the opportunity to have met with Jackie, but after a bit of soul-searching I’ve decided to keep on in my current role. Thank you for your time.
From then on, things started to get easier. He could happily join in with family chat feeling guilt-free, and, for the first time in a very long while, he felt happy more often than he felt lonely.
— CHAPTER 6 —
Andrew emerged from the station and—soddiest of sod’s laws—found himself walking just behind Cameron. He hung back and pretended to check his phone. To his surprise, he actually had a new text. To his disappointment, it was from Cameron. He read it and swore under his breath. He wanted to like Cameron, he really did, because he knew that his heart was in the right place. But it was hard to warm to a person who a) commuted on one of those mini-scooters that had suddenly been deemed acceptable for people above the age of five, and b) was unwittingly trying to ruin his life, having waited barely twelve hours before texting him to ask whether he’d had a chance to reconsider the dinner party plan.
The idea of losing his family didn’t bear thinking about. Yes, there was still the occasional tricky moment in conversation that sent him briefly off balance, but it was worth it. Diane, Steph and David were his family now. They were his happiness and his strength and the thing that kept him going. Didn’t that make them just as real as everyone else’s family?
—
He made a cup of tea, hung his coat on its usual peg and turned to see there was a woman sitting in his seat.
He couldn’t see her face because it was obscured behind his computer, but he could see her legs, clad in dark green tights, under his desk. She was dangling one of her black pumps on her toes. Something about the way she was flicking it back and forth reminded Andrew of a cat toying with a mouse. He stood there, mug in hand, not quite knowing what to do. The woman was swiveling in his chair and tapping a pen—one of his pens—on her teeth.
“Hello,” he said, realizing that even for him this was a record, to feel his cheeks reddening as the woman smiled and offered him a cheery hello in response.
“Sorry, but you’re, um, sitting in . . . that’s sort of technically my seat.”
“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” the woman said, jumping to her feet.
“It’s okay,” Andrew said, adding, rather needlessly, another “sorry” himself.
The woman had dark, rusty red hair that was piled high on top of her head with what looked like a pencil poking through it, as if to pull it out would make her hair cascade down like some sort of Kerplunk Rapunzel. Andrew guessed she was a few years younger than him, late thirties perhaps.
“What a great first impression to make,” she said, getting to her feet. Then, seeing Andrew’s confusion, “I’m Peggy—it’s my first day.”
Just then Cameron appeared and bounded over like a quiz-show presenter on a now-defunct digital channel.
“Excellent, excellent—you two’ve met!”
“And I’ve already stolen his chair,” Peggy said.
“Ha, stolen his chair,” Cameron laughed. “So anyway. Pegs—do you mind if I call you Pegs?”
“Um . . . No?”
“Well, Pegs, Peggy—the Pegster!—you’re going to be shadowing Andrew for a while just to get you up to speed. I’m afraid you’re rather in at the deep end this morning as I believe Andrew has a property inspection. But, well, no time like the present to get stuck in, I suppose.”
He proffered a violent double thumbs-up and Andrew watched Peggy recoil involuntarily, as if Cameron had just pulled out a knife. “Righto,” Cameron said, oblivious to this, “I shall leave you in Andrew’s capable hands.”
—
Andrew had forgotten they had a new person starting, and he felt uneasy at the prospect of being shadowed. Entering a dead person’s house was still strange and unsettling, and the last thing he wanted was someone else to worry about. He had his own methods, his own way of doing things. He didn’t really want to have to keep stopping to explain everything along the way. At the start, Keith had been the one to show Andrew the ropes. He had seemed to take it relatively seriously at first, but before long he started to just sit in the corner and play games on his phone, pausing only to make crude jokes at the deceased’s expense. Andrew might have welcomed a bit of gallows humor, though it wasn’t really his style, but Keith didn’t seem to possess a shred of empathy. Eventually, Andrew had approached him in the office kitchen and suggested he carry out inspections on his own. Keith had mumbled his agreement, barely seeming to notice what Andrew had said (though this may have been due in part to him struggling to extract his finger from the can of energy drink it was stuck in).
From then on, Keith stayed with Meredith in the office, registering deaths and arranging funerals. Andrew much preferred doing the inspections alone. The only problem with being unaccompanied was that news traveled fast when someone died, and suddenly a person who’d expired in complete solitude now had posthumous well-wishers and dear, dear friends who arrived during his inspections—caps in hand, beady eyes darting about the place—to pay their respects, and, just on the off chance, check if that watch the deceased had promised them in the event of their death, or fiver they owed them, happened to be on the premises. It was always the worst part, having to shoo these people away, the threat of violence hanging in the room long after they’d gone. So at least with the newbie alongside him he’d have a bit of backup.