In Another Life, page 2
Bronte thought her sister was probably right, but she couldn’t begin to contemplate wearing anything other than the darkest, most mournful clothing.
‘So, nothing dark, then?’ asked Marc. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
Annie nodded enthusiastically. ‘Precisely.’
Bronte looked at her father. He was older than their mother by seven years, a gap she had barely noticed before, but now he suddenly looked like the kind of old man who struggled to prise open a jar or use the self-checkout: grey, lined and bewildered by how things could have changed so much in such a short period of time.
‘What do you think, Dad?’ she asked. ‘Would you prefer people to wear black or colour?’
Garth sat slumped in his chair, shoulders hunched and spine rounded. Everything about him screamed broken.
‘I’ll wear a suit,’ he said in a voice that was barely audible. ‘And they’re all dark, but I have a jazzy tie, the one with the pink and blue flowers. Your mother bought it to cheer my wardrobe up a bit. She said that just because I was an accountant there was no need to look gloomy.’
His face blossomed into a sad smile briefly before slipping back.
Bronte reached out, took her father’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. She felt no echoing response.
‘So, we’re agreed then?’ asked Annie. ‘No black?’
They had all nodded even though none of them looked fully convinced except Annie.
Now, Bronte stared at the fuchsia monstrosity in horror. She had chosen this dress because it was the brightest, boldest item she could find, hoping that wearing something so intense would signal the depth of her sorrow in Annie’s topsy-turvy no-black world. But now the day had arrived, she wanted to rip it off. It screamed her pain too loudly when all she wanted to do was shrink into herself and never come out.
It was too late, however. Nothing else in her wardrobe was smart enough, or clean enough, or brightly coloured enough. She didn’t even have a decent black dress. Dressing in pink felt all kinds of wrong, though, as if she was going to a wedding not a funeral. She should have stood up to her siblings, objected to the plan when she had a chance, but, as ever, she had let them get their way. She could hardly complain now when she hadn’t done so then.
She made her way downstairs to wait for the time to pass. Food was too much to contemplate but she made herself a cup of coffee, which she then let go cold. Her phone buzzed endlessly. Many were messages from Marc, confirming details that she already knew, and then Annie complaining about Marc’s officiousness. Then there were some from friends of her mother’s sending yet more condolences, explanations why they may not be at the funeral but would get there if they possibly could, as if Bronte needed to know or would notice. They meant well, she knew that, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Picking up her phone, she flicked to the last message from Joel. He had temporarily unblocked her to send a short and formal note expressing his sorrow at her mother’s passing. Bronte had been unable to read anything in the twenty-five-word message beyond what he had intended, despite her attempts to unearth a hidden meaning.
For what must have been the thousandth time, she determined to delete the message thread. What good was it doing anyway? Reading over all the messages from happier times just made her feel more desolate and it wouldn’t change the situation. Yet every time she went to remove it, she thought about how final that would be and changed her mind. It would feel like deleting her dreams, the life that she had thought lay ahead of her. She wasn’t delusional – she knew he was never coming back to her – but she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to all those plans. Not yet at least.
When it was time to leave for the funeral, she picked up her bag, checking for the hundredth time that it contained enough tissues. Marc had said the car would pick her up en route but parking was tricky on her little terraced street and her house was five minutes’ walk from her parents’. She would make her own way there, she had told him, and he had sniffed as if this decision were breaking some unwritten funeral rule.
Avoiding her jarring reflection, Bronte left the house and pulled the door closed behind her. Outside, the day held promise. The sky wasn’t quite blue but the clouds weren’t very convincing, as if one decent breath of wind would see them all off. On any other day, Bronte would have enjoyed a circuit around the Seven Bridges Valley, a favourite run of hers, but there would be no running by the river today. She took a deep breath and set off towards her parents’ house, keeping her head down.
As she approached, she could see a pair of sleek black cars already parked outside and her heart began to race. Was she late? Would Marc have cause to complain? She checked her watch anxiously, but no. She was exactly on time.
She averted her eyes as she walked past, not wanting to catch a glimpse of the coffin. It was silly. She knew her mother wasn’t really inside – not the vibrant, capable, loving woman that she knew at least – but her body was and that was an image Bronte didn’t want in her head. It would come, she knew, but she wasn’t ready to face it just yet.
She turned towards the house and went up the stairs to the front door.
‘Only me,’ she called as she let herself in.
Marc was in the hallway, smoothing down his eyebrows in the mirror. He was wearing a red jacket that Bronte had never seen before.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You look nice.’
He looked down at himself with a little shrug and then looked at her properly.
‘Bloody hell. That dress takes no prisoners,’ he said.
‘Is it too much?’ Bronte asked fearfully. She knew it was.
But Marc shook his head.
‘No, it’s perfect. Mum would have loved it. She always liked pink.’
This was true.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Bronte replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
Annie tripped down the stairs in a yellow sundress covered in a daisy print, looking like she’d stepped out of a shampoo commercial.
‘Morning, Bront. Great dress.’
‘Thanks,’ Bronte muttered. ‘Is Dad okay?’
Annie squeezed her lips together and nodded tightly, making it immediately apparent that their father was far from okay.
‘We’ll look after him,’ said Bronte, and suddenly the thought of having someone else’s pain to deal with made her own feel more manageable. And then he was there on the stairs, looking so fragile and vulnerable that she had to fight the urge to go and take his arm. He gave them a thin smile.
‘Don’t you all look lovely,’ he said. ‘Your mum would have been so proud.’
Bronte felt a sob building in her chest and she closed her eyes and concentrated hard on keeping it where it was.
Finally, Marc’s wife, Sara, appeared. She was wearing a trouser suit in a powder blue. It was classy and understated, and immediately made Bronte hate her choice of dress even more. Why hadn’t she thought harder about her decision? Sara had a phone pressed to her ear and acknowledged them with a raise of an eyebrow as she continued her conversation.
‘I know, but if Grandma said it was his turn then . . .’
She pulled the phone away from her ear and Bronte heard a child, she assumed one of her nephews, shouting the injustice of something down the line. Sara remained calm.
‘I know, but I can’t deal with it now. Grandma is in charge. Please do as she says. I’ll see you later. Can you put Grandma back on?’ There was a pause. ‘Hi, Mum. Yes . . . Thanks . . . We’re just leaving now . . . I’ll be back around seven . . . Good . . . Will do. Bye.’
She slipped the phone into a convenient pocket in her powder-blue bag and tutted as if her children were a nuisance.
‘Mum sends her love,’ she said to no one in particular.
Bronte suppressed a scowl. If she had children, she wouldn’t tut at them. Not that there would be any children. Not now.
‘Right. Shall we go?’ asked Marc. ‘Might as well be waiting there as here.’
Bronte would rather have waited until the last possible second before leaving, but what was the point of that? And anyway, Marc was already outside, working out who would sit where in the car.
3
Annie had been right. The cathedral was full to bursting. Bronte stood alone on the threshold and stared at row after row of heads. Colour predominated, a veritable rainbow of shades, albeit with varying levels of commitment to the theme. One or two people were in dark coats, as if they hadn’t heard, or had but couldn’t bring themselves to shake off the old traditions.
Marc, her father and Annie were all pallbearers, Bronte precluded by being a head shorter than Annie, and she felt horribly at sea with no clear task to perform. Sara shuffled about next to her, muttering about what a good turnout it was, how beautiful the cathedral flowers looked, but Bronte wasn’t listening and Sara quickly gave up, picking up an order of service and studying it as if she hadn’t already seen one.
A couple of faces turned to look Bronte’s way and offered sympathetic smiles, which she tried to return. Still people filed in. Bronte recognised her former geography teacher, the woman who coordinated the litter picking, the man who ran the hardware shop in the market square. There seemed to be no end to them, the great and the good of the city, all people whose lives her mother had touched in one way or another. It was a wonderful tribute to her, or it would have been if it wasn’t so very sad.
A lady in a floral shirtwaister dress stopped, head cocked to one side, and gave Bronte the empathetic look that she was beginning to recognise. The woman was something to do with the parish council, although Bronte wasn’t sure what.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said. ‘Your mother was an amazing woman. So much energy and drive. She put us all to shame. It’s all such a terrible shock, her passing like that. A bee sting. Honestly, who’d credit it. I can’t quite take it in. I’m not sure how Ripon will manage without her.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Bronte weakly. ‘And thank you for coming.’
‘The very least I could do,’ replied the woman and then bustled off to take one of the few remaining seats.
Gradually, a hush fell over the echoing space as one by one the mourners realised that the family had arrived. The organist, who had been playing something generically mournful, brought the piece to a pleasing cadence, paused, and then began to play the Chopin that the family had chosen for the entrance of the coffin. The music was unfamiliar to Bronte, a point in its favour as it had no previous associations, and she thought she was unlikely to remember it afterwards.
She could hear whispering behind her and then shuffling footsteps as the pallbearers found their rhythm, the coffin steady on broad shoulders. Bronte stepped to one side to let them pass and then fell in behind them. They walked so slowly that she worried she might overbalance. Concentrating hard on putting one foot in front of the other without wobbling, she kept her head bowed to avoid making eye contact with anyone.
Finally, they reached the front and Bronte watched, her heart in her throat, as the coffin was balanced carefully on the catafalque. Then the undertakers withdrew and the family turned towards the row of seats that had been reserved for them at the front.
Bronte’s view had been blocked by the coffin but now she saw that there was someone sitting there already.
‘Who’s that?’ whispered Annie, raising her eyebrows and nodding towards the woman.
Bronte frowned. She didn’t recognise her. She had an angular face with strong bone structure and dark eyes. Her hair was white and cropped short in a spiky pixie style and she was dressed in Lycra leggings and trainers with the kind of fleece jacket that you might wear to walk a dog. Her clothing was all black but that was the only concession to the occasion.
Bronte looked at Annie and then at Marc. Marc shook his head and rolled his eyes.
‘For God’s sake,’ he muttered under his breath. He liked things to run according to his plan and getting someone to move seats would interfere with his sense of decorum.
Bronte was less concerned. It was clearly a mistake. The woman had obviously seen a free row of chairs and sat down, not realising that this space was meant for family only, and so before Marc could be rude Bronte took the lead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, ‘but this row is reserved for the family.’
She expected the woman to leap to her feet, apologising wildly, but she didn’t move.
Annie chipped in. ‘I think there’s some room at the back,’ she said, gesturing with her arm, but the woman showed no sign of getting up.
Bronte, not wanting to make a fuss in front of a whole cathedral of people, sat down next to her. What did it matter who sat where anyway? The main thing was that they had a seat.
Annie frowned hard but then took her place next to Bronte, and her father sat next to her, leaving seats for Marc and Sara on the end.
However, Marc was having none of it. He tutted and muttered under his breath, unhappy with this wrinkle in his carefully curated plan. Instead of sitting down, he stood in front of the woman, looming over her.
‘I really must insist that you move,’ he began. ‘This row is for immediate family only.’
The woman stared up at him coolly, unintimidated.
‘I am immediate family,’ she said.
Marc’s eyebrows knotted together. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said with the air of someone playing the winning card.
The corners of the woman’s mouth turned up into a sad smile, her eyes meeting Marc’s angry glare.
‘I’m Etta’s sister,’ she said.
4
1981 – London
The world was Loretta’s oyster and it felt amazing. Twenty-one years old, recently graduated from a top university with a first-class degree in journalism and a job lined up with the Daily Chronicle on Fleet Street. It really didn’t get much better than this and Loretta was riding the crest of the wave.
The best part was that she had done it all herself. When she’d said she wanted to work on a newspaper, her mother had assumed she wanted to be a secretary and had been delighted by her daughter’s aspirations. When Loretta explained her true ambitions, her mother had been doubtful. ‘Are you sure, love?’ she’d asked with concern in her voice. ‘People like us don’t do jobs like that,’ which had made Loretta all the more determined to succeed. No one was going to tell her what she could and couldn’t do – she didn’t care who they were.
And she had made it. She didn’t want to brag and pulled her face into as neutral an expression as she could manage when talking to her fellow graduates who were still searching for a position, but inside her heart sang. Loretta Halliday, daughter of a welder and a laundress and hailing from a council estate in Barnet, was on her way right to the top.
But the job didn’t start until September and today was her graduation ceremony. Loretta was the first Halliday to go to university and so her parents’ pride in what she’d achieved was mixed with a fear of showing themselves up in front of the other families. There had been huge consternation over what they should wear so they ‘didn’t let our Etta down’. Loretta wasn’t sure what was expected but she thought her mother’s hat might be a step too far and was relieved when it was left behind, although she was touched by how seriously they were taking her big day.
Loretta’s main concern was whether their rusting Austin Allegro would make the journey without overheating at the side of the road, which was a regular event. So far, however, all was well. Her parents were in the front seats and she and her younger sister, Natalie, were in the back. Natalie sprawled, her head resting in Loretta’s lap and her bare toes sticking out of the window. The rest of her was folded in a way that was clearly uncomfortable if the way she wriggled and squirmed was anything to go by.
She groaned quietly.
‘I am never drinking again. Don’t let me, Etta. Promise.’
Their mother turned round in her seat.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
Natalie widened her eyes at Loretta, imploring her not to tell, and Loretta grinned back. Natalie’s secrets were safe with her. Her own teenage years had had their fair share of high jinks but she had been positively angelic by comparison. However, what their parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them and Loretta was always on Natalie’s case, making sure she didn’t get in any serious trouble.
‘Nat was just saying . . .’ Loretta began, her mind working hard to make something up, but her mother cut across her.
‘Oh, Natalie. Sit up straight, would you. You’re creasing Etta’s dress. And put your feet down. What will people think?’
‘They’ll think that they wish they could ride along with their toes in the fresh air,’ replied Natalie, but she shuffled herself up to a sitting position and then slumped down the other way so her head was resting against the door.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ she asked their father in time-honoured tradition, but he ignored her. ‘Now, the letter says we get a drink on arrival,’ said her mother, peering for the hundredth time at the details for the ceremony.
‘Do you think they’ll have beer?’ asked her father.
‘You’ll take what you’re offered and not make a fuss,’ said her mother. Her eyes dropped back to the very well-thumbed letter. ‘And you have to collect your cap and gown, Etta. Where do you go for that then?’
Loretta could feel her mother’s panic starting to bubble up again.
‘It’s fine, Mum. I’m sure it’ll all be clear when we get there. And I can just ask someone if I’m not sure.’
Her mother looked horrified at this, as if asking for help would reveal the extent of her ignorance, but she refolded the letter and put it back in her bag.
‘What’s it matter if we do the wrong thing,’ said her father. ‘We’re the Hallidays and we have just as much right to be there as anyone else.’
He turned round in his seat to nod at Loretta and her mother nudged him in the ribs.
‘Watch the road, Bob,’ she hissed. ‘You’ll have us all dead in a ditch.’
Her father turned back round.
