Two electric candles dripping with fake wax were plugged into a socket on the altar. Stella recognized the scent as one of the flower fairy ranges of Asquith & Somerset and doubted it could be on the NHS preferred supplies list. A bunch of fresh freesias drooped out of a cream plastic vase beneath a stained-glass panel of the Madonna and Child. She made a mental note to order lavender spray for Mrs Ramsay in St Peter’s Square. On her last visit, there had been a stale odour; she suspected the old lady of smoking, although she claimed to have given up.
This led her to think about her other clients and, getting out her phone, she scrolled through her messages. Jackie had signed up someone responding to the advert in the local paper and had trialled a new cleaner in the office after Stella had left for Sussex. The woman had not passed, but Jackie wanted to know if she should hire her anyway. Stella tutted at this, the noise distinct in the silence; rapidly her fingers busied on the keypad as she instructed Jackie not to take on someone who had failed the cleaning test. As Stella dreaded, her business could not carry on without her being there.
Paul had texted, wanting to see her. She had not told him about Terry, nor did she want to. He would be hoping that over a bottle of wine he could persuade her to let him move in.
Jesus, pale and chipped upon the Cross, gazed down at her with blank eyes as she typed: Let’s call it a day. We know it’s not working. Stella.
She hesitated before adding an ‘x’, but then, just before she pressed ‘send’, she deleted the kiss. She did not love Paul – whatever love was – and it was better to be honest. She watched the envelope icon tumble into infinity to become a dot, and insisted to herself she was doing Paul a favour; he could find someone who loved him.
Having mustered up the wherewithal to release herself from a relationship about which she had been ambivalent for too long, Stella tackled the NHS bag. Each item was in a sealed packet, which did not stop a sour reek of sweat escaping, sickly and clinging. Her stomach coiled. She extracted the leather wallet with delicate fingers – the crackle of plastic was loud in the chapel; she had given it to Terry for his fiftieth birthday over fifteen years ago. She had asked the shop to have his initials embossed in silver: ‘TD’, forgetting about ‘Christopher’. The letters had rubbed away to the merest indentation. Terry had folded up the birthday wrapping paper, smoothing it flat on his coffee table, and let slip how his colleagues nicknamed him ‘Top Cat’. Stella had been infuriated, although she could not have said why. The policeman in her office had momentarily stepped out of role to exclaim that Terry was a ‘top man’ but if this was meant to console her, it had landed wide.
The clothes he was wearing had been folded and placed together. His dark grey suit was from Marks & Spencer’s Autograph range: the jacket had a tear under the shoulder; a blue cotton shirt striped with brown was also torn with loose threads trailing where the paramedics had ripped away the buttons. Applying the method of fixing the age of a tree, salt rings under the arms indicated to Stella that Terry had worn it for two days. Little though she saw him, she knew Terry ironed his shirts and kept his hair washed. On the few occasions that she kissed him – in greeting, or on departure – his chin was smooth and scented with Gillette Series Aftershave Splash Cool Wave, his hair smelling of Boots anti-dandruff men’s shampoo. He would not wear anything more than once. She looked up and caught Jesus looking at her balefully. She considered that the detective, whom her mother insisted was happier with tagged corpses and evidence bags than with his family, was now a collection of belongings sealed in plastic and backed up by a sheaf of paperwork. Terry would have hated such an end.
Stella passed over underpants, shoes, a T-shirt and balled-up socks and stuffed them all back in the bag, inhaling deep the chapel’s flower fairy scent.
The nurse who had taken her to see Terry’s body must have been on some training course about dealing with bereaved relatives. She was keen that Stella should banish timidity in the presence of her dead father.
Stella had noted his greasy hair was brushed the wrong way and the stubble on his chin was white. A stained tooth was visible between stiffened lips. She had not seen Terry lying down since she was a child. He was naked under the sheet, draped loosely over the gurney.
‘It’s OK to touch him,’ the nurse had whispered encouragingly.
Stella pretended not to hear. Keeping her hands in her pockets, she nodded in confirmation like an actor in a police procedural drama and muttered: ‘Yes, that’s him.’
Identification was not an issue; the hospital had his driving licence. She refused the offer of ‘time alone with your dad’, thinking what was the point? At the nurses’ station, she caught sight of Terry’s name on a form: ‘Certification of Life Extinct’.
Beneath these words she scanned his admission notes. Words floated free of their sentences as she read, her brain fighting to dismiss meaning: ‘Attempted to resuscitate. Police called. Date of death Monday 10 January 2011. Last seen alive, Broad Street, Seaford, 8.25 a.m. today. Means of identification: personal papers – driving licence, bank cards. No suspicious circumstances.’
A doctor had signed his or her name and underneath the signature had printed more legibly: ‘May he rest in peace.’
The chapel door banged and a wheezy man in a fluorescent jerkin that showed off his beer gut pattered in, sighing.
Stella drew her jacket around her and tipped Terry’s Accurist watch into her palm. She put her hand through its heavy bracelet and snapped shut the clasp. Her wrist looked childlike and the watch slid up her arm, cold against her skin. It would need links taken out to fit. Terry kept it three minutes fast for punctuality, a tip Stella followed. In the same bag was his wedding ring. Her mother had thrown her own in the bin. Stella presumed Terry wore it to make women think he was married, just as Suzanne’s ringless finger signalled she was unattached. Stella had retrieved her mother’s ring from a wad of damp tea bags. She now had both rings.
There was no spare underwear or toothbrush and this confirmed her growing suspicion that Terry had not expected to be away overnight. What was he doing in Sussex?
The last bag was labelled ‘Contents of pockets’ and comprised a half-eaten packet of chewing gum, £7.80 in change, a scratch card with a winning prize of ten pounds and the head of a yellow rose. She took the flower out of the bag; it had no scent and was browning. She did not think Terry liked flowers. She found his keys.
Stella knelt up on the chair, leaning over the kitchen table, and worked her way through each key.
‘Daddy has lots of doors.’ She began to chatter on and bang went his chance to have a read of the paper. Propped on her elbows, she questioned him about each one like a detective. When she behaved like a grown-up, going all serious, he had to try not to laugh.
He started by answering promptly, as if it was a quiz, but after a while had to admit he got fed up; it had been a long night and he needed his bed.
‘Do you lock up murderers and throw away the key?’
He snatched the bunch off her.
‘Where’d you get that from?’
‘You know where.’ In came her mother. Suzanne has to have a go.
Game over.
Stella dangled the keys from her forefinger. When she was twenty-one Terry handed her his door keys; in case of emergency, he had explained. He had cancelled her birthday dinner that year to attend a fatal stabbing on the White City estate. Her mother said giving her his keys was his idea of a rite of passage and that would be her lot. Once she was over eighteen, Stella had told herself she had no need of a father.