Five Siblings at 23, page 23
Alan stood and asked Charlie to contact him if he needed any help, and then he quietly left, not wishing to intrude on a moment of private grief. Soon the two brothers were sat at the table outside, by the pool, Tyler still tearful but able to talk.
‘She’s asked us to go home,’ he said. ‘Mum. She’s asked if we can fly home as soon as possible.’
And that was when Charlie realised Peter’s death was going to present him with a serious dilemma. Because he had absolutely no wish to return to the UK.
CHAPTER 42
Tyler could tell, from the moment Angel’s friends arrived at The Lodge, that his father’s funeral was not going to run smoothly. They clustered at the front of the house, more than a dozen of them, all wearing dark clothes, but none of them, apart from Angel, actually in black. The Fletchers took refuge at the back of the house, all in black suits and dresses, quietly biding their time. The moment the funeral cars arrived, the hearse carrying Peter’s body and two gleaming black limousines, Angel and her friends swarmed across the gravel driveway and filled all the seats.
Tyler was the first member of the family to reach the front door, and he realised immediately what had happened, that the funeral cars had been commandeered by Angel and her unpleasant group of friends. But he knew that, apart from his mum, none of the family had the energy or the will for an argument, so he swiftly made alternative travel arrangements.
‘Mum can drive Lizzie and me,’ he said as the family joined him in the hall. ‘Billy, can you take Emma, Vicki and Jack?’ And without any fuss, the Fletchers got into their own cars and followed behind the funeral procession.
At the chapel, Angel and her friends formed into a tight group behind Peter’s coffin, and so the family were the last to enter. By the time they had managed to pass through the large wooden doors, the front three rows on both sides of the aisle had been filled.
Tyler knew his mother would consider that beyond the pale. He watched as she set about her business, marching down the aisle, pushing a few stragglers out of her way as she went. And then she started loudly telling the strangers sat in the front seats they needed to move. ‘Peter’s children are sitting here,’ she told them, with a clear aggression in her voice.
‘Sorry,’ someone replied, a middle-aged man in a shiny blue suit, and what looked like the early stages of gin blossoms on his face. ‘Angel specifically wanted all of Peter’s friends to sit up front.’
Carol glanced across the aisle to the seats on the other side, where Angel was sat at the front, dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief, perhaps using it to hide a smirk. And then she returned her attention to the man who had spoken to her. ‘You listen, mate. Me and the kids have stumped up the money to cover the cost of this funeral. And if I am paying for this gig, I expect a front-row seat.’
No one moved. They simply looked at Carol as if she had no right to even speak to them, and with that single act of contempt, Carol no longer felt the need to hold her tongue. ‘Move!’ she yelled.
Immediately, the front two rows cleared, and Carol gestured to the Fletchers to claim their seats. ‘These are ours,’ she said, and then she turned to Angel and mouthed a single word, one that anyone with even the slightest ability to read lips could easily decipher. Angel’s eyes widened with surprise as if she had never been called that before.
Once the Fletchers had taken their seats, the chapel fell quiet. Tyler looked to his knees and began to wonder why he didn't have a greater sense of loss. Once he had overcome the initial shock of Peter’s death, he had found his grief to be not as cutting or deep as he had expected. He did have some fond memories of his dad, mostly from his childhood, some fun times, when Peter had occasionally visited him at Carol’s house.
But in truth, he had seen far more of Susan than Peter during those years, and at times, it had felt more like he had two mums rather than a mum and a dad. In the years after his Auntie Susan’s death, Peter’s reliance on alcohol had become more prominent and Tyler had seen even less of him. And then, after the accident, prison stole his dad away entirely.
Tyler had started to write to him at least once a month, but he eventually stopped when he did not get a single letter in response. For many years, Peter became just a name, someone the family would occasionally talk about, swapping notes on prison visits or Peter’s repeated failures to persuade the parole board to release him early.
The man who returned to The Lodge all those years later was not his father. The boyish charm and movie-star good looks were gone. The man who left prison was old and ill, bitter, rude and relentlessly self-pitying. He surrounded himself with people no one in the family really knew, Angel and her strange circle of friends. And he spent the final few months of his life aggressively drinking himself into an early grave, as though that was what he wanted.
Tyler wondered if, perhaps, Peter’s horrible behaviour had been a blessing in disguise, that it had lessened the blow of his death. Vicki, usually so emotional, had hardly cried at all and Lizzie, only fifteen years old, had appeared more preoccupied by what she was going to wear to the funeral. And then there was Billy, whose immense capacity for forgiveness had been tested to the limits by Peter’s awful conduct. In all the days that had passed since Tyler had returned home, he hadn’t seen anything in Billy’s behaviour that suggested he was grieving. Instead, Billy seemed relieved, not that Peter was dead, but that the family had a chance to reset and move forward with their lives.
And then Tyler thought of Charlie, and he found himself wishing he was there. He understood entirely why he wasn’t, why his brother simply could not face their father’s funeral. But when Tyler had caught the plane home, Charlie had told him he would follow, that he would be there, at some point, to be with the family. And even though Charlie had lived abroad for many years, Tyler suddenly felt the Fletcher family was painfully incomplete without him.
The funeral celebrant appeared, a middle-aged man in a smart suit, and he made a point of stopping to quietly console Angel before taking to the small podium at the front of the chapel. As he began to speak, it became clear that all the notes and special memories the Fletchers had shared with him had been left out of the service.
There was no mention of Peter’s parents or siblings, or of Susan, or any of his children, or his grandson Jack. The celebrant did little but speak about Angel and the extraordinary love she had shared with Peter, and her selfless commitment to him throughout his years of incarceration.
And then he read a short poem that Angel had written especially for Peter: ‘You captured a beautiful bird, but you didn’t put her in a cage. You showed her love, and you let her fly, free. As free as a bird. You understood that bird was not yours to own, but you loved her anyway. And that bird loved you back. I am that bird, Peter. And I will always fly free, with your love in my heart.’
When he had finished speaking, all of Angel’s friends applauded, but the Fletchers just exchanged puzzled expressions, apart from Vicki, who had to cover her face with a handkerchief because she was giggling so much. The service ended with a recording of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, and as it played, Carol ushered the family from the chapel and back to their cars.
‘Mum, is something wrong?’ Tyler asked, ‘I know that was awful, but it’s still dad’s funeral. Shouldn’t we stay to the end?’
‘I just don’t trust that woman. I want us to get back to The Lodge.’ Carol looked at Vicki and Billy and they both nodded, understanding her concerns.
‘Yeah, let’s go,’ Billy said, despondently. ‘Angel can stay and do all the handshaking. It’s not as if we know anyone here.’ And with that, the Fletchers got into their cars and drove away from Peter’s funeral.
As they approached the house, Tyler realised his mother’s concerns had been justified. Parked on the kerb outside The Lodge was a small van with the words ‘Johnston Locksmiths 24-Hour service’ emblazoned on the side. Carol didn’t even pull onto the drive. She simply parked behind the van and hurried to the house, and Tyler quickly followed her.
There was a woman dressed in dark clothes, standing at the front door, someone Tyler recognised from the chapel, one of Angel’s friends. He recalled seeing her sat alone at the back of the chapel, just inside the entrance. She was watching over a man in blue overalls who was drilling the lock on the front door. When she looked up and saw Carol storming towards her, she very obviously flinched.
‘You can’t come in,’ the woman said nervously. ‘Angel’s changing the locks.’
‘That woman has no fucking right to change anything!’ Carol shouted back. ‘Oy you, with the drill!’ she yelled, and stomped up to the locksmith and prodded him on the shoulder. ‘You need to stop doing that. It’s criminal damage. I will phone the police.’
The man did as he was told and raised his hands, innocently. ‘I’m just doing a job,’ he said. ‘I’m not here for any trouble.’ He looked over Carol’s shoulder and could see a group of young people forming behind her, none of whom looked happy to see him. ‘Look, look… I’ve only just started. I can put it back exactly as it was, if you want,’ he said. ‘No charge.’
‘You do that,’ Carol said, and went to walk into the house, but Angel’s friend blocked her route. ‘You can’t come in,’ she said again, still clearly very nervous.
Carol glared at her, then spoke quietly but very clearly, ‘I swear to god, woman, if you do not get out of my fucking way, Peter won’t be the only person leaving this house today in a box.’
The woman quickly stepped aside, and Carol and the rest of the family walked into the house.
‘What was that all about?’ Tyler asked, as they all gathered in the kitchen. ‘Why’s Angel changing the locks?’
Instinctively, Carol started to unpack the sandwiches and rolls from the fridge and laid them out on the breakfast bar. ‘We’re not going to talk about it,’ she said. ‘We will sit it out until everyone’s gone, and then I will talk to Angel.’ Exasperated, Carol stopped what she was doing and looked at them all. ‘Let’s be honest,’ she said, a defeated tone to her voice. ‘Peter made a complete mess of his life, but he still deserves some dignity in death. Even if you don’t think we owe it to him, we do owe it to Susan. We need to make sure Peter gets a respectable send-off, and that his funeral reception runs smoothly. Everything else can wait.’
There seemed to be a shift in the atmosphere, and suddenly, everyone was in motion. Billy and Emma joined Carol in the kitchen, helping her to set out the food, bottles of wine, and a pile of plates interspersed with paper napkins. Tyler and Lizzie started to lay out some of the food, crockery and glasses on the large dining table while Vicki and Jack opened the doors to the garden to organise the patio furniture for the many smokers in Angel’s circle of friends.
For Tyler, everything felt very familiar again, the Fletcher family preparing The Lodge for guests. His only unease was that Angel might not realise that she was one of the guests.
CHAPTER 43
By the time Angel and her friends began to arrive back at The Lodge, Peter’s funeral reception was all prepared, and it was soon obvious it was going to be a funeral reception in two halves. An imaginary boundary formed where the breakfast bar split the kitchen and the dining area. The Fletchers sat together at the dining table and on the couch and chairs inside the French doors while Angel and her friends remained in the large kitchen area. Two tribes keeping firmly to their territories.
Carol, sat with Tyler and Lizzie, had positioned herself at the top of the dining table, where she could see into the kitchen and carefully monitor Angel’s conduct. From the moment Angel had stridden into the room emanating obvious disapproval, it was clear she was furious that her plan to change the locks had failed. Carol wanted to keep an eye on her, to check she wasn’t up to any further mischief. But no one said anything about the locksmith. None of Angel’s friends approached the Fletchers, and the Fletchers ignored Angel and her friends with equal vigour.
For a while, the atmosphere remained cordial, with quiet chatter and some laughter too. But as the reception continued into its second hour, it occurred to Carol that no one was leaving. It was as if the people standing in the kitchen were waiting for the Fletcher family to vacate the house just as much as Carol was waiting for Angel’s friends to leave, so she could speak to Angel alone.
The chatter and laughter from Angel’s friends suddenly died down. Carol glanced over to see why, and she saw that everyone in the kitchen was staring towards the kitchen door. Someone had arrived.
The group shifted slightly, to clear a path through the centre of the room, and then Charlie appeared, smartly dressed in a black suit and tie. He passed through the kitchen, ignoring all the people he did not know and, without saying a word, walked directly to Carol who stood and embraced him.
‘I cannot imagine how hard this is for you,’ she whispered, ‘but I am so pleased you’re home.’
Charlie didn’t say anything, but as he stepped back, he smiled at her, warmly, and she could tell he was trying his hardest to hold himself together, and not cry. Then everyone else stood, the whole family on their feet, hugging Charlie and kissing him, not a loud or excessive show of emotion, just a family quietly and happily welcoming home one of their own.
Their reunion was interrupted by the loud ‘clink’ of a glass being firmly set down on the breakfast bar. Angel strode forward to meet the new arrival. ‘Charlie,’ she said, rather theatrically, as though performing for her friends. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Charlie paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, then coolly turned to face her. ‘With the greatest of respect, Abigail, it's really none of your business why I am here.’
Angel raised an eyebrow, and then made a show of looking incredulously at her friends, some of whom were shaking their heads, as though unbelieving of Charlie’s audacity. ‘Well Charlie, with the greatest of respect, I wanted all of my stepchildren at my husband’s funeral. Peter was your father, and whatever issues you may have had with him, they’re in the past. If you couldn’t show enough respect to him to attend the service, then I am deeply unhappy that you think it’s OK to attend the reception.’
Someone in the kitchen said, ‘Hear, hear,’ and there followed a grumble of support from Angel’s friends.
Charlie stared hard at Angel, and then he gestured towards her friends, all stood with glasses of wine and plates piled high with food. ‘Considering my family and I paid for Dad’s funeral, including the reception, I would say again, Abigail, that it's none of your business who attends. So, when your friends are stuffing their faces with food and guzzling back glasses of wine, perhaps they should all take into account that Peter’s grieving widow couldn’t be bothered to cough up a single penny for your own husband’s funeral.’ He swept a look over her friends, many paused mid-mouthful. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, contemptuously.
Charlie then noticed something, a woman, a stranger, stood towards the back of the kitchen, holding the antique music box from the sitting room. He stepped forward. ‘What’s she doing with that?’ he demanded.
The woman, confused at first, looked down at the music box and back to Charlie. ‘Angel gave it to me. As a gift.’
Charlie gritted his teeth and calmly addressed Angel, ‘Your friend needs to put that back in the sitting room.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Angel replied, offended. ‘I’ve started to clear the house, Charlie. I know Peter would love nothing more than to see some of these old things being shared with his friends. Friends who were there for him, when he needed them.’
‘Well, you can give away any of Dad’s stuff, Abigail. But there are very few things in this house that he owned. That antique music box, for instance, belongs to Vicki.’
At the mention of her name, Vicki quickly walked to Charlie and stood at his side. ‘She’s got my music box?’ She glared through the throng at the woman who was holding it. ‘Yeah, sweetheart, you want to put that back really quickly. It’s mine.’
Angel now had a confused expression on her face. ‘Nothing in this house is yours, Vicki. I own everything in this house now,’ she said, loudly, ‘and I can give it away as I please.’
‘Story of her life,’ Carol muttered, under her breath.
Charlie and Vicki looked at each other, both bewildered by Angel’s behaviour. They both knew their father had led a confusing life, his relationships filled with affection and deceit in equal measure. But they still could not understand why Angel was acting with such inexplicable entitlement.
‘Perhaps I can explain,’ Vicki said, addressing Angel’s friends. ‘Peter’s first wife, our mum, was called Susan. They were married for twenty-three years, and they had four children together. I thought I should mention this, because even though my mum was the single most important person in Dad's life, your friend Angel appears to have decided that she didn’t deserve even a passing mention at his funeral.’
Charlie flinched, very obviously. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Mum wasn’t even mentioned?’
Solemnly, Vicki shook her head, ‘Sorry Charlie. We weren’t mentioned either.’
Angel scowled at them, ‘I am Peter’s widow. When he died, I was all the family he had. Perhaps you Fletchers need to remember that.’ There was a clear inflection in her tone when she spoke their surname, a spite and an anger, that had clearly built up against Peter’s family over the years.
Vicki clenched her fists, trying her best to suppress her rising anger, ‘When Mum discovered she was dying, she was worried that, once she was gone, Dad would go through this house and just start selling stuff, to make some quick money. Which, as we all know, is exactly what he would have done.
‘To stop him from doing that, Mum left a long and very detailed will. A list of all her possessions, and who she was leaving each possession to. That antique music box was left to me. It is my legal property. If your friend doesn’t get her grubby little mitts off it and tries to take it with her when she leaves, she’ll be stealing it. And I will very happily have her arrested for theft.’
‘She’s asked us to go home,’ he said. ‘Mum. She’s asked if we can fly home as soon as possible.’
And that was when Charlie realised Peter’s death was going to present him with a serious dilemma. Because he had absolutely no wish to return to the UK.
CHAPTER 42
Tyler could tell, from the moment Angel’s friends arrived at The Lodge, that his father’s funeral was not going to run smoothly. They clustered at the front of the house, more than a dozen of them, all wearing dark clothes, but none of them, apart from Angel, actually in black. The Fletchers took refuge at the back of the house, all in black suits and dresses, quietly biding their time. The moment the funeral cars arrived, the hearse carrying Peter’s body and two gleaming black limousines, Angel and her friends swarmed across the gravel driveway and filled all the seats.
Tyler was the first member of the family to reach the front door, and he realised immediately what had happened, that the funeral cars had been commandeered by Angel and her unpleasant group of friends. But he knew that, apart from his mum, none of the family had the energy or the will for an argument, so he swiftly made alternative travel arrangements.
‘Mum can drive Lizzie and me,’ he said as the family joined him in the hall. ‘Billy, can you take Emma, Vicki and Jack?’ And without any fuss, the Fletchers got into their own cars and followed behind the funeral procession.
At the chapel, Angel and her friends formed into a tight group behind Peter’s coffin, and so the family were the last to enter. By the time they had managed to pass through the large wooden doors, the front three rows on both sides of the aisle had been filled.
Tyler knew his mother would consider that beyond the pale. He watched as she set about her business, marching down the aisle, pushing a few stragglers out of her way as she went. And then she started loudly telling the strangers sat in the front seats they needed to move. ‘Peter’s children are sitting here,’ she told them, with a clear aggression in her voice.
‘Sorry,’ someone replied, a middle-aged man in a shiny blue suit, and what looked like the early stages of gin blossoms on his face. ‘Angel specifically wanted all of Peter’s friends to sit up front.’
Carol glanced across the aisle to the seats on the other side, where Angel was sat at the front, dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief, perhaps using it to hide a smirk. And then she returned her attention to the man who had spoken to her. ‘You listen, mate. Me and the kids have stumped up the money to cover the cost of this funeral. And if I am paying for this gig, I expect a front-row seat.’
No one moved. They simply looked at Carol as if she had no right to even speak to them, and with that single act of contempt, Carol no longer felt the need to hold her tongue. ‘Move!’ she yelled.
Immediately, the front two rows cleared, and Carol gestured to the Fletchers to claim their seats. ‘These are ours,’ she said, and then she turned to Angel and mouthed a single word, one that anyone with even the slightest ability to read lips could easily decipher. Angel’s eyes widened with surprise as if she had never been called that before.
Once the Fletchers had taken their seats, the chapel fell quiet. Tyler looked to his knees and began to wonder why he didn't have a greater sense of loss. Once he had overcome the initial shock of Peter’s death, he had found his grief to be not as cutting or deep as he had expected. He did have some fond memories of his dad, mostly from his childhood, some fun times, when Peter had occasionally visited him at Carol’s house.
But in truth, he had seen far more of Susan than Peter during those years, and at times, it had felt more like he had two mums rather than a mum and a dad. In the years after his Auntie Susan’s death, Peter’s reliance on alcohol had become more prominent and Tyler had seen even less of him. And then, after the accident, prison stole his dad away entirely.
Tyler had started to write to him at least once a month, but he eventually stopped when he did not get a single letter in response. For many years, Peter became just a name, someone the family would occasionally talk about, swapping notes on prison visits or Peter’s repeated failures to persuade the parole board to release him early.
The man who returned to The Lodge all those years later was not his father. The boyish charm and movie-star good looks were gone. The man who left prison was old and ill, bitter, rude and relentlessly self-pitying. He surrounded himself with people no one in the family really knew, Angel and her strange circle of friends. And he spent the final few months of his life aggressively drinking himself into an early grave, as though that was what he wanted.
Tyler wondered if, perhaps, Peter’s horrible behaviour had been a blessing in disguise, that it had lessened the blow of his death. Vicki, usually so emotional, had hardly cried at all and Lizzie, only fifteen years old, had appeared more preoccupied by what she was going to wear to the funeral. And then there was Billy, whose immense capacity for forgiveness had been tested to the limits by Peter’s awful conduct. In all the days that had passed since Tyler had returned home, he hadn’t seen anything in Billy’s behaviour that suggested he was grieving. Instead, Billy seemed relieved, not that Peter was dead, but that the family had a chance to reset and move forward with their lives.
And then Tyler thought of Charlie, and he found himself wishing he was there. He understood entirely why he wasn’t, why his brother simply could not face their father’s funeral. But when Tyler had caught the plane home, Charlie had told him he would follow, that he would be there, at some point, to be with the family. And even though Charlie had lived abroad for many years, Tyler suddenly felt the Fletcher family was painfully incomplete without him.
The funeral celebrant appeared, a middle-aged man in a smart suit, and he made a point of stopping to quietly console Angel before taking to the small podium at the front of the chapel. As he began to speak, it became clear that all the notes and special memories the Fletchers had shared with him had been left out of the service.
There was no mention of Peter’s parents or siblings, or of Susan, or any of his children, or his grandson Jack. The celebrant did little but speak about Angel and the extraordinary love she had shared with Peter, and her selfless commitment to him throughout his years of incarceration.
And then he read a short poem that Angel had written especially for Peter: ‘You captured a beautiful bird, but you didn’t put her in a cage. You showed her love, and you let her fly, free. As free as a bird. You understood that bird was not yours to own, but you loved her anyway. And that bird loved you back. I am that bird, Peter. And I will always fly free, with your love in my heart.’
When he had finished speaking, all of Angel’s friends applauded, but the Fletchers just exchanged puzzled expressions, apart from Vicki, who had to cover her face with a handkerchief because she was giggling so much. The service ended with a recording of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, and as it played, Carol ushered the family from the chapel and back to their cars.
‘Mum, is something wrong?’ Tyler asked, ‘I know that was awful, but it’s still dad’s funeral. Shouldn’t we stay to the end?’
‘I just don’t trust that woman. I want us to get back to The Lodge.’ Carol looked at Vicki and Billy and they both nodded, understanding her concerns.
‘Yeah, let’s go,’ Billy said, despondently. ‘Angel can stay and do all the handshaking. It’s not as if we know anyone here.’ And with that, the Fletchers got into their cars and drove away from Peter’s funeral.
As they approached the house, Tyler realised his mother’s concerns had been justified. Parked on the kerb outside The Lodge was a small van with the words ‘Johnston Locksmiths 24-Hour service’ emblazoned on the side. Carol didn’t even pull onto the drive. She simply parked behind the van and hurried to the house, and Tyler quickly followed her.
There was a woman dressed in dark clothes, standing at the front door, someone Tyler recognised from the chapel, one of Angel’s friends. He recalled seeing her sat alone at the back of the chapel, just inside the entrance. She was watching over a man in blue overalls who was drilling the lock on the front door. When she looked up and saw Carol storming towards her, she very obviously flinched.
‘You can’t come in,’ the woman said nervously. ‘Angel’s changing the locks.’
‘That woman has no fucking right to change anything!’ Carol shouted back. ‘Oy you, with the drill!’ she yelled, and stomped up to the locksmith and prodded him on the shoulder. ‘You need to stop doing that. It’s criminal damage. I will phone the police.’
The man did as he was told and raised his hands, innocently. ‘I’m just doing a job,’ he said. ‘I’m not here for any trouble.’ He looked over Carol’s shoulder and could see a group of young people forming behind her, none of whom looked happy to see him. ‘Look, look… I’ve only just started. I can put it back exactly as it was, if you want,’ he said. ‘No charge.’
‘You do that,’ Carol said, and went to walk into the house, but Angel’s friend blocked her route. ‘You can’t come in,’ she said again, still clearly very nervous.
Carol glared at her, then spoke quietly but very clearly, ‘I swear to god, woman, if you do not get out of my fucking way, Peter won’t be the only person leaving this house today in a box.’
The woman quickly stepped aside, and Carol and the rest of the family walked into the house.
‘What was that all about?’ Tyler asked, as they all gathered in the kitchen. ‘Why’s Angel changing the locks?’
Instinctively, Carol started to unpack the sandwiches and rolls from the fridge and laid them out on the breakfast bar. ‘We’re not going to talk about it,’ she said. ‘We will sit it out until everyone’s gone, and then I will talk to Angel.’ Exasperated, Carol stopped what she was doing and looked at them all. ‘Let’s be honest,’ she said, a defeated tone to her voice. ‘Peter made a complete mess of his life, but he still deserves some dignity in death. Even if you don’t think we owe it to him, we do owe it to Susan. We need to make sure Peter gets a respectable send-off, and that his funeral reception runs smoothly. Everything else can wait.’
There seemed to be a shift in the atmosphere, and suddenly, everyone was in motion. Billy and Emma joined Carol in the kitchen, helping her to set out the food, bottles of wine, and a pile of plates interspersed with paper napkins. Tyler and Lizzie started to lay out some of the food, crockery and glasses on the large dining table while Vicki and Jack opened the doors to the garden to organise the patio furniture for the many smokers in Angel’s circle of friends.
For Tyler, everything felt very familiar again, the Fletcher family preparing The Lodge for guests. His only unease was that Angel might not realise that she was one of the guests.
CHAPTER 43
By the time Angel and her friends began to arrive back at The Lodge, Peter’s funeral reception was all prepared, and it was soon obvious it was going to be a funeral reception in two halves. An imaginary boundary formed where the breakfast bar split the kitchen and the dining area. The Fletchers sat together at the dining table and on the couch and chairs inside the French doors while Angel and her friends remained in the large kitchen area. Two tribes keeping firmly to their territories.
Carol, sat with Tyler and Lizzie, had positioned herself at the top of the dining table, where she could see into the kitchen and carefully monitor Angel’s conduct. From the moment Angel had stridden into the room emanating obvious disapproval, it was clear she was furious that her plan to change the locks had failed. Carol wanted to keep an eye on her, to check she wasn’t up to any further mischief. But no one said anything about the locksmith. None of Angel’s friends approached the Fletchers, and the Fletchers ignored Angel and her friends with equal vigour.
For a while, the atmosphere remained cordial, with quiet chatter and some laughter too. But as the reception continued into its second hour, it occurred to Carol that no one was leaving. It was as if the people standing in the kitchen were waiting for the Fletcher family to vacate the house just as much as Carol was waiting for Angel’s friends to leave, so she could speak to Angel alone.
The chatter and laughter from Angel’s friends suddenly died down. Carol glanced over to see why, and she saw that everyone in the kitchen was staring towards the kitchen door. Someone had arrived.
The group shifted slightly, to clear a path through the centre of the room, and then Charlie appeared, smartly dressed in a black suit and tie. He passed through the kitchen, ignoring all the people he did not know and, without saying a word, walked directly to Carol who stood and embraced him.
‘I cannot imagine how hard this is for you,’ she whispered, ‘but I am so pleased you’re home.’
Charlie didn’t say anything, but as he stepped back, he smiled at her, warmly, and she could tell he was trying his hardest to hold himself together, and not cry. Then everyone else stood, the whole family on their feet, hugging Charlie and kissing him, not a loud or excessive show of emotion, just a family quietly and happily welcoming home one of their own.
Their reunion was interrupted by the loud ‘clink’ of a glass being firmly set down on the breakfast bar. Angel strode forward to meet the new arrival. ‘Charlie,’ she said, rather theatrically, as though performing for her friends. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Charlie paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, then coolly turned to face her. ‘With the greatest of respect, Abigail, it's really none of your business why I am here.’
Angel raised an eyebrow, and then made a show of looking incredulously at her friends, some of whom were shaking their heads, as though unbelieving of Charlie’s audacity. ‘Well Charlie, with the greatest of respect, I wanted all of my stepchildren at my husband’s funeral. Peter was your father, and whatever issues you may have had with him, they’re in the past. If you couldn’t show enough respect to him to attend the service, then I am deeply unhappy that you think it’s OK to attend the reception.’
Someone in the kitchen said, ‘Hear, hear,’ and there followed a grumble of support from Angel’s friends.
Charlie stared hard at Angel, and then he gestured towards her friends, all stood with glasses of wine and plates piled high with food. ‘Considering my family and I paid for Dad’s funeral, including the reception, I would say again, Abigail, that it's none of your business who attends. So, when your friends are stuffing their faces with food and guzzling back glasses of wine, perhaps they should all take into account that Peter’s grieving widow couldn’t be bothered to cough up a single penny for your own husband’s funeral.’ He swept a look over her friends, many paused mid-mouthful. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, contemptuously.
Charlie then noticed something, a woman, a stranger, stood towards the back of the kitchen, holding the antique music box from the sitting room. He stepped forward. ‘What’s she doing with that?’ he demanded.
The woman, confused at first, looked down at the music box and back to Charlie. ‘Angel gave it to me. As a gift.’
Charlie gritted his teeth and calmly addressed Angel, ‘Your friend needs to put that back in the sitting room.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Angel replied, offended. ‘I’ve started to clear the house, Charlie. I know Peter would love nothing more than to see some of these old things being shared with his friends. Friends who were there for him, when he needed them.’
‘Well, you can give away any of Dad’s stuff, Abigail. But there are very few things in this house that he owned. That antique music box, for instance, belongs to Vicki.’
At the mention of her name, Vicki quickly walked to Charlie and stood at his side. ‘She’s got my music box?’ She glared through the throng at the woman who was holding it. ‘Yeah, sweetheart, you want to put that back really quickly. It’s mine.’
Angel now had a confused expression on her face. ‘Nothing in this house is yours, Vicki. I own everything in this house now,’ she said, loudly, ‘and I can give it away as I please.’
‘Story of her life,’ Carol muttered, under her breath.
Charlie and Vicki looked at each other, both bewildered by Angel’s behaviour. They both knew their father had led a confusing life, his relationships filled with affection and deceit in equal measure. But they still could not understand why Angel was acting with such inexplicable entitlement.
‘Perhaps I can explain,’ Vicki said, addressing Angel’s friends. ‘Peter’s first wife, our mum, was called Susan. They were married for twenty-three years, and they had four children together. I thought I should mention this, because even though my mum was the single most important person in Dad's life, your friend Angel appears to have decided that she didn’t deserve even a passing mention at his funeral.’
Charlie flinched, very obviously. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Mum wasn’t even mentioned?’
Solemnly, Vicki shook her head, ‘Sorry Charlie. We weren’t mentioned either.’
Angel scowled at them, ‘I am Peter’s widow. When he died, I was all the family he had. Perhaps you Fletchers need to remember that.’ There was a clear inflection in her tone when she spoke their surname, a spite and an anger, that had clearly built up against Peter’s family over the years.
Vicki clenched her fists, trying her best to suppress her rising anger, ‘When Mum discovered she was dying, she was worried that, once she was gone, Dad would go through this house and just start selling stuff, to make some quick money. Which, as we all know, is exactly what he would have done.
‘To stop him from doing that, Mum left a long and very detailed will. A list of all her possessions, and who she was leaving each possession to. That antique music box was left to me. It is my legal property. If your friend doesn’t get her grubby little mitts off it and tries to take it with her when she leaves, she’ll be stealing it. And I will very happily have her arrested for theft.’
