In Another Life, page 6
‘News of the World,’ said Dave under his breath. ‘Lightweights.’
Loretta took her place at the squat wooden table with Tracey to her left and Dave opposite her, leaving the stool to her right for Malcolm, who soon returned from the bar, a tray of teetering drinks in his hand.
‘So,’ he said after he’d sat down and taken a gulp of his pint. ‘Tell us about yourself.’
Loretta shuffled in her seat and pulled at her skirt.
‘Not much to tell, really. I’m twenty-one, fresh out of uni. I live in Barnet with my sister, Natalie. And I want to be a journalist.’
Malcolm looked slightly disappointed, as if he had been expecting something more explosive.
‘It’s a start, I suppose. But what about you? What are you like?’
He cocked his head to look at her and his hair flopped down over his forehead again. He brushed it back.
Loretta thought for a moment.
‘Okay,’ she began slowly. ‘Well, I’m intensely curious. I’m calm under pressure. I’m persistent. I have good attention to detail. I like to think I’m empathetic. I’m pretty courageous. And my favourite band is Joy Division.’
Dave let out a little sound of approval.
‘Yeah. Love them,’ he said. ‘Shame about Ian Curtis.’
‘What makes you think you’re courageous?’ asked Malcolm.
Loretta met his gaze. His eyes behind his glasses were pale grey, almost without colour at all. There was a pause whilst she considered. This was none of his business, but something told her that if she wanted to be taken seriously then she needed to be more than the latest apprentice who may or may not stick the course.
She decided to press on, not because it would elicit sympathy – she really didn’t think it would from Malcolm – but because what had happened over the summer had become part of who she now was. She couldn’t hide it away.
‘My parents were both killed in an accident in July,’ she said, without breaking eye contact. ‘My younger sister and I are all that’s left of our family.’
Dave blew out a low whistle and Tracey’s hand shot to her mouth but Malcolm continued to stare steadily. She stared back. If he wanted courageous, she could give it to him. He broke away before she did. He took another gulp of his pint.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s courageous.’
13
Loretta’s first week of work seemed to go well. Mr Redpath didn’t lighten up but he didn’t get any darker either. When he set her a task, she worked hard to complete it asking as few questions as she could. He was head of the crime desk, it turned out, and so the stories he reported on were interesting and horrifying in equal measure. She heard about devastating house fires, men accused of rape, and plenty of theft and fraud. It was only a few months since the Yorkshire Ripper had been imprisoned and once or twice she heard Mr Redpath bemoaning the loss of the story, but Loretta thought there seemed to be plenty more crime to get their teeth into without the need for a new serial killer.
When she got stuck she had a quick word with Malcolm or Dave, making a detour on her way to wash up or fill her boss’s pristine mug, but only staying for a moment before steering back on course for the tea bay. She appreciated how they seemed to have taken her under their wings and she wanted to prove herself worthy of their attention.
So she took shorthand and filed Mr Redpath’s copy with the appropriate desks and listened to him talk. He had yet to take her out of the office with him, which was disappointing, but she assumed he was waiting to make sure that she was fully house-trained before he presented her to the outside world. But that was all right. Loretta had time. She could wait.
At home, things were less positive. Only six weeks had passed since the accident and it was perfectly natural that they would be grieving, but Loretta had her new job and with the excitement and the adrenaline that it brought, she found that hours and sometimes an entire working day would go by without her thinking about her parents once. When she did remember she felt dreadful that she could let them leave her mind so easily, but then she knew they wouldn’t have wanted her to do anything to scupper this opportunity. The job at the newspaper was what they had all been moving towards for years and Loretta felt she owed it to her parents to give it her best shot.
However, Natalie was a very different story. With school over and no university place to go to, Natalie was lost. Loretta didn’t know what time she dragged herself out of bed but sometimes she hadn’t managed it by the time Loretta returned home from the newspaper. She didn’t get dressed for days on end and there was every sign that she wasn’t even washing.
Loretta, thinking it might help if she had a focus for her day, suggested that Natalie might cook for them in the evenings. In fact, there was a whole range of household duties that Natalie could turn her attention to and which Loretta would have dealt with if she had been the one at home all day, but Loretta could see that Natalie was struggling and didn’t want to burden her with too much.
One Friday, after they had eaten a meal of fish fingers, chips and peas, a Loretta post-work staple, she took Natalie’s hand and led her to the sofa. Natalie drifted along after her like a zombie and flopped into the cushions, her hair dark and hanging in greasy clumps and her eyes sunk deep.
‘This is going to sound stupid,’ Loretta began, ‘but what’s up, Nat? You can’t carry on like this. What’s the matter?’
She understood her sister well enough to know that Natalie would get what she was really asking. This was more than grief. There was that, of course there was, but there was something far more desperate at play here that Loretta was struggling to grasp.
When Natalie finally raised her head there was a blankness to her expression that frightened Loretta. Where was the fun-loving, live wire of a sister? There was not one iota of that person still visible in Natalie’s demeanour.
Natalie closed her eyes, as if she wanted the world and everything it contained to leave her in peace. Loretta hoped this didn’t include her. She tried again.
‘I can see something’s not right, more than just Mum and Dad,’ she said. ‘And I want to help. But I don’t know where to start. I need you to give me a clue.’
Natalie sighed deeply and for a moment Loretta feared that was all the response she was going to get. But then she spoke.
‘I don’t get it either,’ she replied, her eyes focused on the pattern on her nightdress. ‘I just can’t seem to . . . It’s like something has emptied my brain so all that’s left is one room with nothing in it. And I can’t find my way back to how it was before. I’m trapped on the wrong side of the door. Does that make any sense?’
It didn’t. Loretta couldn’t imagine anything even close to what Natalie was describing.
‘Why don’t you try doing something with your days? Maybe you could go and see Chrissie or your other friends.’
Natalie shrugged.
‘What would I say?’ she said, and Loretta could see her point. What news did she have when all she did was lie in bed or on the sofa?
‘Well, how about looking for a job? You said you wanted to go grape picking and that you’d save up first. I know there aren’t many jobs around but there must be something.’
Natalie’s expression was of genuine confusion.
‘Grape picking? Did I say that?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember. It doesn’t sound like me.’
‘Oh, it does!’ encouraged Loretta. ‘It sounds exactly like you. Wanting to go exploring the world on an adventure. We could get Mum’s atlas out and have a look, plan out a route.’
Loretta half stood up, ready to whisk the atlas down from its shelf, but Natalie didn’t react at all so she sat back down.
‘I’m worried about you, Nat,’ she said gently. ‘I know that you’re really hurting but I don’t know how to make it stop.’
Natalie looked up at her with so much sadness in her dark eyes that Loretta wanted to hold her tight and never let her go.
‘Don’t worry about me, Etta,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort it out. I just need a bit of time.’
‘Shall I run you a bath, with lots of bubbles like we used to have when we were little? We can wash your hair and get some clean clothes on you. That’ll make you feel better.’
Loretta was pleased with her suggestion. Whenever she’d been under the weather for a few days it always helped to get fresh and clean. She stood up, tugging at Natalie’s hand to take her with her, but Natalie resisted and stayed where she was.
‘Maybe later,’ she said.
14
2022 – Ripon
‘I’m Etta’s sister,’ the stranger said slowly, her eyes meeting Marc’s angry glare.
Bronte could see the thoughts flit across her brother’s mind. They were all there on his face for her to read. First they said, ‘Don’t lie to me. My mother didn’t have a sister.’ Then, ‘How can I get this woman to move without causing a scene?’, and finally Bronte saw resignation that there was nothing he could do in that moment as their mother’s funeral was about to start. He tutted under his breath and took his seat next to Sara, his wife.
Then the vicar stepped forward and the service began and Bronte’s attention slipped from the woman who claimed to be her aunt and on to her mother. It was only when she became aware of the woman shuddering with sobs next to her that she remembered she was there. Prepared to let her mind wander at will rather than concentrate on the sadness of the funeral, Bronte thought about what the woman had said, which was almost nothing.
She was Etta’s sister.
This was peculiar on two counts. Their mother was an only child. They knew this to be true. She had had no sister, or brother for that matter. And no one had ever called their mother Etta. She was either Loretta or, more commonly, Lori. In fact, now she came to think about it, Bronte had a vague childhood memory of her mother being quite sharp with someone who had addressed her as Etta. Bronte had just assumed she didn’t like it and wanted to make that clear before the shortened name stuck. Weird then that this woman, who claimed to be her sister, would choose to call her that.
Marc stood up to give his eulogy and Bronte pulled her attention back to the service.
‘Our wonderful mother, Loretta, was a mainstay of this community,’ he began. An appreciative murmur hummed around the cathedral. ‘I’m certain that somehow or other she or her deeds will have touched every person in this little city of ours. Whether you were in the Brownies or appreciated the flowers in the market square. If you used the bike sheds outside the library or enjoyed one of her fabulous creations at a school cake sale. We, her beloved family, were never quite sure how she achieved so much. She was clearly gifted more hours in the day than the rest of us . . .’ – a little laughter rose up from the congregation – ‘and what she accomplished on a daily basis puts us to shame.’
‘Hear, hear,’ called out a man behind Bronte.
Marc continued along this vein for a while and then moved into family anecdotes. There was barely anything about Loretta’s life from before they were born, no details of her early years, her education. This didn’t strike Bronte as odd. Their mother always said that her life didn’t really get going until she moved to Leeds and met their father. Until then she had lived in London, with her parents, who had died before Loretta married. She’d had an unremarkable office job after she left school that she said was so unmemorable even she had forgotten the details. She hadn’t gone to university either and had made such a huge fuss when her children had got the grades to go, even though Garth’s family had all attended higher education.
There had been no mention of any siblings. Bronte assumed one of them must have asked at some point, although she didn’t think it had been her. It would have been Marc, being the eldest, and then when there was nothing to learn on that score they had stopped wondering. Their mother had no family except them and that was that.
As she thought about it now, Bronte realised she had liked that her mother had always seen herself in terms of her husband and children without being an entity on her own. And it was far nicer to believe that she’d had no life before them. It made Bronte feel important, special. So she hadn’t enquired any further about her mother’s past. If there had ever been anything more important than the three of them and their father in Loretta’s life then she hadn’t wanted to know.
Bronte realised that she had stopped listening to her brother’s eulogy and pulled her attention back to the present. Before the service, she had assumed it would be the thought of her mother lying just feet away in the coffin that she would have to distract herself from, not the arrival of a mysterious mourner. Either way, she was grateful. Anything that made the funeral easier to get through had to be a positive of sorts.
And then it was all over. Those who had wanted to speak had spoken, the readings had been read, the hymns sung. The committal was for family only, giving anyone who wanted to escape the wake an opportunity to slip away discreetly in the gap between the two. Should she invite this woman? If she really were her mother’s sister then she ought to be there, but the idea that she could be was so ludicrous that Bronte was having difficulty making sense of it. And then there was Marc, who most definitely wouldn’t take kindly to such a suggestion.
Her father, Marc, Sara and Annie were gathering themselves for the sombre procession out of the cathedral. Annie blew her nose noisily on a tissue and Bronte reached over and squeezed her arm. Annie looked at her through watery eyes and suddenly seemed much younger than she was. Looking out for her little sister helped to ease Bronte’s sorrow, albeit temporarily, and Annie so rarely required any help that it made the moment even more poignant.
Sara looked as composed as ever. Cool, even. She really wasn’t part of this, Bronte thought, not a real Ashton, despite being married to Marc, and then she chastised herself for thinking it. She watched as Sara slipped an arm around Marc, pulling him close. He leaned into her, whispering something into her hair.
Their father looked utterly broken and the sight of him sent Bronte to his side.
‘Are you holding up okay, Dad?’ she said quietly.
He turned to her, face pale and eyes red-rimmed, and nodded bravely.
‘Shall we go?’ she asked him, more a statement than a question because the answer was clear.
Then she turned to speak to the stranger. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, whether she would insist that the committal was family only or invite her to come along. But as it turned out, which she would have chosen was immaterial.
The woman was gone.
15
Bronte scanned the cathedral, her eyes searching for the woman with the pixie haircut. She had been at her side just a moment ago and now she was nowhere to be seen. All around her people were gathering themselves to leave, tissues and orders of service being stuffed into pockets and bags, but there was no sign of the stranger. She had entirely disappeared.
Turning to face the front once more, Bronte concluded that the woman choosing to leave of her own accord would make things simpler. There would be no confrontation later in the day and that suited her. She pushed the incident to the back of her mind and focused on supporting their father through what was still to come.
It was only later, when the mourners and those well-meaning but slightly overbearing women who had stayed behind to tidy up had all left, that Bronte thought about the stranger at the funeral. With peace restored in the house, Annie and her father were slumped on the sofa. They both looked wrung out by the day. Their father had a tumbler in his hand but the level of whisky hadn’t dropped all afternoon as far as Bronte could tell. Annie had kicked off her shoes and cried away all her make-up. She had the slightly dazed look of someone who has been woken abruptly from a deep sleep.
Marc was in an armchair, not the one their mother favoured, which no one would ever be able to sit in again, but the one nearest the window. Sara, who was clearly itching to leave, didn’t sit but hovered by the door sending increasingly frantic signals to Marc, which he was failing to pick up.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think that went very well.’
He probably wasn’t consciously seeking praise for his organisational skills, Bronte thought, but that was how it came across. She obliged.
‘Yes. Well done for pulling it all together, Marc. You did a great job.’
Marc accepted her words with a small shrug and a modest dropping of his head.
‘I’m just glad it all went off without a hitch,’ he said. ‘And Mum would have been pleased, I think.’
They all agreed that Loretta would, indeed, have been delighted by her send-off. All her favourite people in one place would have thrilled her, even if it was for such a sad occasion.
‘What about that woman, though,’ said Annie. ‘At the start. That nutcase who said she was Mum’s sister.’
Marc let out a little huff.
‘You often get that type at a funeral. Sad little people who are just looking for attention. Annoying that she sat with us through the whole thing, but I don’t suppose it matters really. She disappeared fast enough at the end. Wanted to get out of there before people started asking questions, I assume.’
‘Did anyone see her go?’ asked Annie. ‘Was she there for the whole service?’
‘I think so,’ said Bronte, ‘but I didn’t see her leave. I turned round and she’d just disappeared.’
‘In shame, no doubt, for trying to ambush someone else’s day,’ added Marc. ‘Anyone for another drink? Dad? Annie?’
Bronte heard Sara suck in a deep breath from over by the door.
‘We really should be going, Marc,’ she said. ‘I told Mum we’d be back before seven. It’ll have been a long day for her.’
It’s been a long day for us, Bronte thought but didn’t say.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Annie said, the snip in her tone barely concealed. ‘The boys will be in bed by now anyway. Not much point you racing home.’
