Andrew was aware that someone else had appeared to tend to a grave a few feet away. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I wrote you a letter, once, very soon after we got together, but I was too scared to give it to you because I thought you might run a mile. It started life as a poem, too, so you were really let off the hook. It was full of hopelessly romantic sentiment that you would have quite rightly laughed your head off at, but I think one bit remains true. I wrote that I knew the moment we first held each other that something in me had changed forever. Up to that point I’d never realized that life, just sometimes, can be wonderfully, beautifully simple. I only wish I’d remembered that after you’d gone.”
He had to stop to wipe his eyes with his coat sleeve, smoothing his hand along the stone again. He stayed there, quiet now, feeling a pure and strangely joyful pain wash over him, knowing that as much as it hurt, it was something he had to accept, a winter before the spring, letting its ice freeze and fracture his heart before it could heal.
—
The next train to Swansea was pulling into the station as Andrew got there, but he felt reluctant to leave so soon. He decided to stop in a pub nearby instead. As he approached the door old habits kicked in and he hesitated just outside. But he thought of Diane watching on, no doubt mouthing swear words in his direction, and he pressed on. And though the regulars looked at him somewhat curiously, and the barman poured him a pint and threw a packet of salt and vinegar on the bar without much enthusiasm, their reaction to him was benign rather than unwelcoming.
He sat in the corner with his beer and his book, and felt, for the first time in a very long while, content.
— CHAPTER 37 —
Andrew turned the pair of tights inside out and shook out a bundle of notes onto the bed.
“Bingo,” Peggy said. “Enough to cover the funeral, do you reckon?”
“Should be,” Andrew said, leafing through the money.
“Well, that’s something. Poor old . . .”
“Josephine.”
“Josephine. God, I’m the worst. It’s such a lovely name, too. Sounds like the sort of woman who’d always bring loads of food to a harvest festival.”
“Maybe she did. Did she talk about church in the diary?”
“Only when she was slagging off Songs of Praise.”
Josephine Murray had penned scores of diary entries, as she’d noted, “in an old Smith’s notebook, using a chopping board resting on my lap as a makeshift desk, much like I imagine Samuel Pepys did.”
The diary’s subject matter was largely mundane—short, spiky critiques of television programs or comments on the neighbors. Often, she combined the two: “Watched a forty-five-minute advert for Findus Crispy Pancakes interrupted sporadically by a documentary about aqueducts. Could barely hear it over the noise of Next Door Left rowing. I really wish they’d keep a lid on it.”
Occasionally though, she’d write something more reflective:
“Got in a bit of a tiz this evening. Put some food out for the birds and felt a bit dizzy. Thought about calling the quack but didn’t want to bother anyone. Silly, I know, but I just feel so embarrassed about taking up someone’s time when I know I’m probably fine. Next Door Right were out having a barbecue. Smelled delicious. Had the strongest urge—for the first time in goodness knows how long—to take a bottle of wine round there, something dry and crisp, and get a bit tiddly. Had a look in the fridge but there wasn’t anything there. In the end I decided that dizziness and tiddlyness wouldn’t have been a good mix anyway. That wasn’t the tiz, by the way, that came as I was trying to drop off to sleep when I suddenly remembered it was my birthday. And that’s why I’m writing this now in the hope it helps me to remember next year, if I haven’t kicked the bucket by then of course.”
Peggy put the diary in her bag. “I’ll have a look through this back at the office.”
“Right you are,” Andrew said. He looked at his watch. “Sandwich?”
“Sandwich,” Peggy confirmed.
They stopped off at a café near the office. “How about here?” Andrew said. “I must have walked past this place a thousand times and I’ve never been in.”
It was warm enough to sit outside. They munched their sandwiches as a group of schoolchildren in hi-vis bibs were led along by a young teacher who was just about managing to keep track of them all while taking the time to tell Daisy that Lucas might not appreciate being pinched like that.
“Give it ten years,” Peggy said. “I’ll bet Lucas will be dying to get pinched like that.”
“Was that your flirting technique back in the day?”
“Something like that. Bit of pinching, few vodka shots, can’t go wrong.”
“Classic.”
A man marched by them in an electric-blue suit, shouting incomprehensible business jargon down the phone, like a peacock who’d managed to learn English by reading Richard Branson’s autobiography. He strode out into the road, barely flinching as a bike courier flashed inches past and called him a knobhead.
Andrew felt something vibrating against his leg.
“I think your phone’s ringing,” he said, passing Peggy’s bag over to her.
She pulled out her phone, looked at the screen for a second, then dropped the phone back in the bag, where it continued to vibrate.
“I’m going to guess that was Steve again,” Andrew said.
“Mmm-hmm. At least he’s down to two calls a day now. I’m hoping he’ll get the message soon enough.”
“How are the girls doing with it all?”
“Oh, you know, about as well as you’d expect. We’ve got a long old road ahead of us. But it’s still absolutely for the best. By the way, Suze asked about you the other day.”
“Really? What did she say?” Andrew said.
“She asked me whether we’d be seeing ‘that fun Andrew man’ again.”
“Ah, I wonder which Andrew she was thinking of there, then,” Andrew said, mock-disappointed, but unable to entirely conceal how proud he really was, judging from the smile on Peggy’s face.
Peggy reached into her bag again and brought out Josephine’s diary, flicking through the pages.
“She seems like such a lively old lass, this one.”
“She does,” Andrew said. “Any mention of a family?”
“Not that I can see. There’s lots more about the neighbors, though never by name, so I’m not sure how friendly they all were. I suppose if one lot of them was always rowing then maybe she didn’t feel like talking to them. The others, though, the barbecuing lot—I might go back later and have a chat with them if I can’t find anything here. Part of me’s just intrigued as to whether she did ever decide to go round there for a drink or anything.”
Andrew shielded his face from the sun so he could look Peggy in the eye.
“I know, I know,” she said, holding her hands up defensively. “I’m not getting too invested, honestly. It’s just . . . this is yet another person who spent their final days completely alone, right, despite the fact she was clearly a nice, normal person. And I bet if we do find a next of kin it’ll be another classic case of ‘Oh, dear, that’s a shame, we hadn’t spoken in a while, we sort of lost contact, blah blah blah.’ It just seems like such a scandal that this happens. I mean, are we all really content to say to these people, ‘Sorry, tough luck, we aren’t even going to bother trying to help you poor lonely bastards,’ without at least offering them the chance to have some company or something?”