Five Wakes and a Wedding
Five Wakes and a Wedding
Karen Ross
Undertaker Nina Sherwood is full of good advice. For example, never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes. Nina is your average 30-year-old with a steady job, a nice home – and dead bodies in her basement. As an undertaker, she often prefers the company of the dead to the living – they’re obliging, good listeners and take secrets to the grave. Nina is on a one-woman mission to persuade her peers that passing on is just another part of life. But the residents of Primrose Hill are adamant that a funeral parlour is the last thing they need… and they will stop at nothing to close down her dearly beloved shop. When Nina’s ‘big break’ funeral turns out to be a prank, it seems like it’s the final nail in the coffin for her new business. That is, until a (tall, dark and) mysterious investor shows up out of the blue, and she decides to take a leap of faith. Because, after all, it’s her funeral… The perfect antidote to all those books about weddings, this book will make you laugh until you cry, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley’s Bridesmaids, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Good Place.
Five Wakes and a Wedding
KAREN ROSS
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Karen Ross 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock
Bells © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Karen Ross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008354350
Version: 2019-06-18
For Francesca
Table of Contents
Cover (#u7a660c48-637c-5049-a543-ab4a98759f53)
Title Page (#ubf066b55-4bb7-5e8b-af54-e2a8a4ad02d2)
Copyright (#uc3827f0d-5b50-503e-b04e-cc45974edbad)
Dedication (#u7bc79154-7a37-5ba0-afe5-d187515ec290)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Funeral Number One
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Funeral Number Two
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Funeral Number Three
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Funeral Number Four
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Funeral Number Five
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Acknowledgements
Nine Book Club Questions and a Suggestion
About the Author
About the Publisher
1 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
‘Nina! One of the fridges is making a weird noise.’ Gloria’s voice is a welcome distraction from my latest attempt at flower arranging. At least, until I realise what I’ve just heard.
Shit.
I abandon the cornflowers, delphiniums and rust-coloured foliage, dash through to the back room, and hurtle down the stairs that lead to the basement storage area. With every step I take, a measured ‘beep, beeep, beeeep’ – like the sound of hospital machinery hooked up to someone in a coma – grows louder.
‘Something must have tripped the alarm! What did you do to the fridge?’ I ask as Gloria comes into sight.
‘Nothing.’
Gloria is unruffled by my accusatory tone. She’s my housemate.
‘I was looking for the cleaning spray,’ she says. ‘To take the whitewash off the window.’
The fridge’s mournful signal of distress continues.
‘Maybe buying my equipment on eBay wasn’t such a good idea,’ I manage. ‘But at least there’s nothing in it yet.’
As if to prove it, I open the door to the beeping fridge.
The noise stops and is immediately replaced by the sound of a wooden object being hit – repeatedly – by a hammer. ‘That must be Edo!’
Gloria hears the relief in my voice. She manoeuvres herself around the fridge, squeezes my shoulder and says, ‘C’mon. Let’s go see.’
My hand is still on the fridge door. Tentatively, I close it.
Beep
Beeep.
Beeeep.
The damn thing isn’t even cold enough to keep an ice lolly from melting.
Whereas I am shivering with anticipation.
This is going to be an amazing day and I’m not going to let a dodgy fridge spoil a single moment. I shrug, and reopen the door to silence the skull-piercing sound. I’ll deal with it later. For now, I follow Gloria back the way I’ve just come.
Presuming we’re not being burgled and it really is Edo, the rhythmic hammering means he’s been as good as his word. He’s made me a shop sign and it seems he’s fixing it in place. He’s been hugely secretive about the design – ‘Nina, I’m an artist! It’ll be awesome!’ – and I’m finally going to get to see what he’s done.
Except Gloria can’t get out of the door.
She’s inched it open, only to find herself nose to nose with a hulking white Transit van parked extremely illegally and mostly on the pavement.
It’s Edo’s van and I realise he’s standing on the roof of it to put up the sign above the door. A good idea because it’s a lot cheaper than scaffolding. And as it’s before eight o’clock, when the Primrose Hill traffic wardens begin their daily rounds of terror, he’ll get away with it.
Gloria steps back from the door. ‘Best to let Edo get on with it,’ she advises. ‘Anyway, how are you feeling, sweets? Ready for the off?’
Everything’s been such a rush, there’s been no time to arrange those delphiniums let alone smell the roses. But there’s no need to pause for thought.
‘I’m ridiculously excited!’ I declare. ‘It’s like being a five-year-old on Christmas Eve. I’m so impatient for everything to start happening.’
I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago. I must have thought about it a thousand times, but never dared.
‘What about the fridge?’
‘Let’s not talk about the fridge.’
Gloria begins to clean the display window she helped me whitewash when we started fitting out my shiny new shop. I watch the murky coating that’s kept the outside world from seeing how I’ve transformed the space disappear and think about my own transformation.
I still can’t believe it. Only a couple of months ago, I was snuggled deep inside my own little comfort hole. It wasn’t until change started happening all around me that I even began to realise I’d been snared. Then fate gave me a push – although at the time, it felt more like a mighty kick up the arse – and after that everything fell into place.
Now here I am. Captain of my own ship. In charge of my own destiny. Queen of my own little slice of heaven.
I am a shopkeeper. Owner of a small business.
It’s a tiny business in every sense and, although I have no idea where my first customer will be coming from, I’m determined to be properly prepared. Fortunately, I have more than one fridge.
I do a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn and survey my miniature kingdom. Everything looks right. Better than right. Perfect. Between us – that’s me, Gloria and especially Edo – we’ve done a great job.
The shop had been empty for ages and we’ve definitely breathed new life into it. Floorboards sanded, filled, and painted white. Walls in a soft shade of blue. Gentle, subtle lighting. A small reception desk to the right of the door to make the shop look friendly and approachable to passers-by. A pair of comfy couches on either side of a fashionable low table. The whole effect is warm and inviting, and today, even before any of the lights are turned on, it seems the place is brighter than I’d imagined.
Ah, that would be because Gloria has finished with the window, and Edo has shifted the van. Which means—
Before I can complete that thought, Edo appears. Dressed in his usual uniform of ripped jeans and tight black T-shirt, his shaggy black hair frames a baby face that makes him look more like a sixth-former than a recent art school graduate. Swinging a hammer from his left hand he throws his surprisingly muscled right arm around my shoulder. Cheeky!
‘Come and look,’ he says. ‘I know I’ll be in trouble if the sign’s not dead straight. And I’m worried you’re not going to like it.’
Him and me both.
Most of the work in Edo’s portfolio is what you might – politely – call ‘out there’. Installations that make Tracy Emin’s ‘Bed’ look more sedate than a watercolour by Degas.
And all I need is a shop sign.
But my doubts disappear the moment I take in Edo’s work. Wow! He’s done me proud.
‘I don’t like it,’ I say in my best Simon Cowell impersonation, complete with theatrical pause. ‘I absolutely love it!’
It feels … it feels official. There for all the world to see. Classic hand-painted lettering. A shop sign that manages to be cool, clean, chic and somehow rather sexy – at least I think so – and announces: ‘HAPPY ENDINGS’.
I’m still admiring the sign when I realise my feet are no longer on the pavement. Edo has scooped me into his arms and we’re crossing the high street, dodging a dustcart and – as I begin to struggle – almost bumping into a Boris bike.
‘Put me down!’ I insist. ‘I’m about to become a pillar of the community.’ Edo laughs and carries me, undaunted, over the threshold of Happy Endings.
Gloria watches with a smirk that says, Didn’t I tell you Edo’s got a giant crush on you? But I figure he’s just grateful I let him continue to live in the shop between the time I signed the lease (he was squatting there, called it one of his own installations) and today, when I open my brand-new business.
‘Put her down and go sort the fridge,’ Gloria orders. ‘The alarm comes on every time you close the door.’
Edo retreats – I think he’s scared of Gloria – and a moment later, the beep-beeep-beeeeping resumes.
Gloria turns to me and says, ‘So what’s next?’
‘I need to get changed before Mum and Dad arrive.’
‘Before you do, I want to say how proud I am of you. The way you’ve pulled everything together so quickly. You’re going to be a huge success, sweets!’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help—’
I’m interrupted by Edo yelling, ‘Great! I can see what’s wrong. Don’t worry. It’s an easy fix.’
A moment later, Gloria and I flinch at the sharp thwack of a hammer against metal. Then silence. As if Edo has murdered the fridge with a single blow.
For some reason – nerves, most likely, because the destruction of a key piece of equipment really isn’t funny – I laugh. Then say to Gloria, ‘You know what? This is the best day of my life!’
‘Really?’ Gloria looks surprised. She knows I’m not the sentimental type.
‘Well, maybe apart from the day Mum and Dad finally weakened and let me have a kitten … or that time at uni with Lin, when we took an impulse trip to Dieppe and ended up in Brussels. And the day I passed my driving test. Sixth time lucky.’
‘Didn’t know that,’ she says. ‘But it explains a lot!’
Before she can tease me any further, Edo’s back. ‘Loose connection with the fan,’ he says. ‘Fixed. Shall I sort out these flowers?’ He notices my doubtful expression and adds reassuringly, ‘I used to arrange them at college when we did the still-life module.’
‘That would be great.’ We haven’t known Edo very long, but he’s a definite asset, and fast turning into a friend.
I go through to the back room and begin to change out of my paint-stained denims and into my working clothes. I’ve been dithering for days about what to wear. I finally settled on tapered black linen trousers, teamed with a turquoise top and my smartest black jacket. The one with turned-back cuffs lined with turquoise and pink patterned silk. And, of course, my lucky silver earrings. I’d feel naked without them. It’s an outfit that makes me look professional but still me. I give myself a final once-over in the mirror, quickly apply a fresh coat of lip gloss, then rejoin my friends.
Edo has worked magic with the flowers. Gloria has finished with the windows. The fridge is behaving itself.
In less than an hour, Happy Endings will be open for business. And any moment now Mum and Dad will arrive to inspect what they’ve taken to calling ‘The Investment’.
Dad stepped in after the bank took all of three minutes to turn down my application for a start-up loan. ‘You’re to take my pension pot and put it into your business.’ After he left the navy, Dad went into the construction business. Without his help, Happy Endings would never have got off the drawing board. He’s got so much faith in me it’s scary. Then again, as he says, I’ve got a great location on a busy high street, slap bang in the middle of London, how can I fail?
And I know I can do this. It’s what I want more than anything. From now on I’m devoting myself to business. Nothing else matters. Not that there is much else, to be honest. Other than Gloria and Edo, I don’t exactly have a red-hot social life. My choice, I know. Over the past five years, I’ve become a bit of a recluse.
But today, I can’t even begin to describe my sense of purpose. I’m nervous, yet exhilarated.
In short, I’ve never felt more alive.
Which is a bit odd perhaps. Because I see dead people. All the time.
It’s an occupational hazard.
2 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Whenever I meet someone new and we get to the bit where they ask me, ‘So what do you do?’ and I say I’m an undertaker, I get one of three reactions:
1. ‘You’re kidding!’
2. ‘Eeuw.’ Usually accompanied by that two-fingers-down-the-throat gesture.
3. ‘So, okay, when you were small did you pull the wings off flies?’
I wish I could make people understand. It’s not torture. Quite the opposite. I love my job. And is it really so strange?
Think of it this way. I’m an organiser. An event planner. A good listener. A shoulder to cry on. A public speaker. A negotiator. A seamstress. An accomplished multi-tasker. A stylist. I can remove a stain from almost any fabric, I’m a dab hand with a make-up brush, and I’m full of good advice. For example: never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes.
When the unexpected happens, I am expected to rise to the occasion. And I do.
Do I touch dead people? Yes, of course.
What do they feel like? Mostly, they feel cold.
Am I weird? I don’t think so …
I’m just a typical millennial who enjoys shopping, movies, holidays and – mysteriously – housework. I probably keep myself to myself a bit too much but I’ve always enjoyed my own company and I’ve never been great in a crowd.
More than anything else, I’m proud to be an undertaker. Not to mention enormously proud to be opening my own shop. It’s the biggest leap of my life and it still seems unreal – particularly when you think that until recently, I was a semi-disgraced ex-employee.
My life started to go pear-shaped late last year when the business I worked for, a firm of undertakers run by the original owner’s great-great-great-grandson, was taken over by a huge funeral group with headquarters in New York and branches on every continent.
As soon as the deal was done we were summoned to meet our new manager, Jason Chung. ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ he promised us.
But everything did.
Being accountable to a manager who’d never even carried a coffin was a huge change in itself. And that was just the beginning.
My former boss, the great-great-great grandson, was gone in a matter of weeks. He quit the day our new owners announced that from now on we would only be offering headstones made from Chinese granite, a decision that was all about profit rather than the best interests of our clients.
Even while two sets of lawyers continued to argue about whether or not the name of the family firm could be removed – it’s there to this day, because the new owners know the public prefer to deal with supposedly genuine local firms – our professional vocabulary began to change. At staff training sessions, words like ‘care’, ‘service’, ‘respectful’ and ‘time of need’ were cast aside in favour of sentences that were strong on ‘sales’, ‘targets’, ‘commission’ and ‘underperforming’.
That sort of mindset makes me want to throw up. In fact, at a subsequent regional training day, I was overheard during the coffee break saying something to that effect – how was I supposed to know it was Jason Chung’s mother standing behind me? – and my comments resulted in me being sent to Siberia.
Not the place. Even though the new owners have business interests all over Europe, so far as I know, the people of Russia are not yet obliged to be commemorated with slabs of Chinese stone. No, Siberia was our name for the back office. To call it an office was actually an insult to offices.
Thanks to Jason’s mother’s need to overshare my private conversation, I spent ten days there, closeted in a small windowless space that used to be a store room, with only the low throb of the mortuary fridges on the other side of a thin partition for company.
Jason himself cloaked my punishment with a mirthless smile. ‘This is an excellent opportunity for Nina to focus on her administrative skills without any risk of distraction,’ he told everyone.
In practical terms that translated as one mountain of paperwork swiftly followed by another. A cross between school detention and prison. Gloria insisted my incarceration breached several employment laws, and since she’s almost a qualified lawyer she’s probably correct.
Then again, my solitary confinement wasn’t entirely bad. I enjoyed breaking the office-hours monotony by going through all the product catalogues and samples that got sent to us in the post. I didn’t usually get to see these – although I have stacks of them now – so it was interesting to discover you could pick up a third-hand hearse for under four grand. Which I seriously considered once I got into the preparations for Happy Endings, although in the end I splashed out on a simple pale blue van with my business name and contact details discreetly on the side and a properly equipped interior from a company that was offering a cheap finance deal. I think it looks uplifting yet still properly respectful.
Happy Endings may be a shoe-string start-up, but if it weren’t for what happened on my final day at work, it probably wouldn’t exist at all. So I shall always be grateful Jason Chung’s mother is a sneak.
Here’s what happened on that last day.
I’d spent most of the morning on the phone, unenthusiastically informing recent clients that by completing a customer satisfaction survey they could win a weekend in Devon. Then, having finished with the post, I moved on to the next batch of papers, and discovered a pile of burial applications in need of processing. They were going to take me at least forty-five minutes – always supposing the Wi-Fi in Siberia wasn’t playing up again – and I was so not in the mood.
It was a quarter to one, fifteen minutes before my lunchbreak was supposed to start, and I was feeling peckish. I’d been trying to stick to the 5:2 diet and this was one of the days when I was not required to starve myself.
I straightened the applications, grabbed my coat and umbrella – the April showers were in full flood – and prepared to make a dash for the deli next to Queen’s Park tube station.
I knew that if Jason saw me leave so early, he’d do that annoying looking-ostentatiously-at-his-Rolex-while-tapping-the-glass thing that was supposed to remind me he’s the boss. Happily, he was nowhere in sight and by the time I got safely beyond the reception desk I was weighing the relative merits of tuna and cucumber on sourdough versus a jumbo salt beef hot wrap. And a chocolate orange cupcake, of course. Or maybe the vegetarian choice: a trio of chocolate orange cupcakes.
There was only the door standing between me and seven hundred calories, and I flung it open, umbrella at the ready. This particular April shower had turned into a full-blown downpour and the raindrops were bouncing off the pavement so hard I could actually hear them.
It must have been the thought of my lunchtime cupcake that made me fail to look where I was going. I stepped onto the street and literally fell over a woman for whom the phrase ‘drowned rat’ could have been invented.
She was sitting – slumped was probably more accurate – in the doorway.
Before I could apologise and ask if she was okay, I realised she was anything but.
And before I could speak the woman grabbed my leg and looked up into my face. She was about my age, dressed in a jacket and skirt that looked as though they’d been left out to drip-dry. Her pretty face was framed by two bedraggled blonde tendrils and her mascara was in ruins.
The pressure on my leg increased. ‘Please,’ the woman sobbed. ‘You have to help me.’
3 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
‘So two years we are here. My husband Grigor and me. We are sad to leave home but things are better in England …’
Whenever I think about the drowned rat – her name is Anna – which is often, I am grateful I took an early lunchbreak that day. It’s as if fate decided our two paths needed to collide.
Sitting in the deli with her, I had remembered her story right away. ‘Grigor Kovaks,’ I said. ‘I read about it—’ I stopped myself from reciting the details of the horrific accident that had left Anna’s husband in hospital with life-threatening injuries.
‘Yes, Grigor. My lovely Grigor.’ Her smile was so full of love it pierced my heart. ‘We find a flat in Camberwell and Grigor works nights for a bank in Canary Wharf. Security guard. And I am a cleaner. Then three weeks ago, on the Tuesday, Grigor is offered an extra shift, and of course we say yes.’
I listened carefully. It’s so important not to interrupt. Being there for someone at the worst time in their life, letting them tell their own story in their own way, can make it just a tiny bit better.
‘He is so proud of his bicycle,’ Anna continued. ‘Cleans and polishes it like it is a sports car. He needs his bike. The fares on your underground, they are so expensive. Not like in Budapest … After the accident I am living more or less at the hospital. Grigor stays in the coma. He looks asleep and I keep waiting for him to wake up. But nothing. And … last night I agree with the doctors that the machines are turned off. Then later the nurses were so kind but I could not speak to them. I need a little time on my own. So I go to the hospital chapel to pray for my man and when I come back to the ward, Grigor is not there.’ Anna started to cry. Fortunately, the deli was filling up fast, and nobody took any notice of us.
She took a sip of her now cold espresso, composed herself, and continued. ‘And that is when they tell me he has been taken already to the funeral place. Your funeral place.’
Oh God.
Please.
No.
I think I know what’s coming next. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.
A phone call to a ‘friendly’ undertaker during the night.
Money changing hands.
And someone like Anna Kovaks, a woman who’s just lost someone she loves and who has not slept for thirty-six hours, delivered like a lamb to the slaughter into the grubby paws of a business that sees every new client as a cash machine.
If this were BC – Before Chung – it would have been unthinkable. Our standards were always so much higher.
Gently, I encouraged Anna to continue.
‘When I arrive, the man seems very nice. Very full of sympathy.’
Full of something else if you ask me, but I keep my professional face in place.
‘He takes me into his office, and asks me many questions about my Grigor.’ For a moment, Anna’s voice faltered, but then – as is so often the case – she summoned her inner strength. ‘I tell this man, this Mr Chung of yours, how Grigor and I meet when we are both twelve years old. That we grow up together. That we have so many big dreams. And how our life begins when we come to London. And now Grigor has been accepted to do teacher training in September. He is so good at mathematics. They put him on the fast track and he will work at a big school in Beckenham.’
Anna drained her coffee cup, then fumbled in her bag and produced a soggy linen handkerchief. I recognised it at once. Jason orders them by the dozen. ‘Quality handkerchiefs make a statement about our business,’ he informed us at a staff meeting. I happened to agree, but in this case Jason’s largesse meant we were putting up our prices. Again.
Anna continued, ‘Then Mr Chung tells me it is an honour and a privilege that your firm has been chosen to make the arrangements. That is how it works in England. The hospital decides on the funeral place, right?’
A million times wrong.
‘So first of all, he invites me to choose the … the coffin. I pick the one that costs the least. But Mr Chung tells me that as Grigor is going to be a professional man, a teacher, it is a bad choice. He wants me to pick the one made of ma … ma—’
‘Mahogany,’ I supplied.
Anna nodded. ‘And then he tells me about embalming. It needs to be done, right?’
Absolutely not.
‘Mr Chung says I will want Grigor to look his best when relatives come to visit him before the funeral. I tell him that everyone is in Hungary, and he seems very glad. Before I say anything, he picks up the phone and talks about re … re—’
‘Repatriating the body.’
‘Yes. But I can tell from the conversation that this will be much too expensive. I explain we have started saving for the deposit on a flat, but only recently. And that I must do what Grigor wanted for us most. Stay here in London and raise our child to have the best chance in life.’ Anna noticed my startled face and softly added, ‘Fourteen weeks. The two weeks before … before the accident … they were the happiest time we ever spent. Now I truly believe that the peanut – that was our name for the baby – is a gift from God. I have to think that. Or …’ Anna was unable to continue.
‘So what did Mr Chung suggest?’ I prompted.
‘He said he would find Grigor a nice home at a cemetery in a part of London called Kilburn. He says it is a very nice district, right?’
Anna has obviously never been there.
‘And there will be many flowers. And car for me to ride in alone. And a stone to remember Grigor that will come all the way from China. I want to ask questions, but your Mr Chung, he talks very fast. He tells me we shall need a double plot so we can be together always. And that it will be a good idea for me to take out a funeral plan for myself at the same time. He makes me very nervous, Mr Chung, because I can tell all this will be very expensive.’
I’m surprised only that Jason didn’t insist on a horse-drawn hearse accompanied by the skirl of bagpipes and a juvenile chimney sweep.
Anna resumed, ‘In the end I tell Mr Chung that I shall spend all our savings for the flat deposit. Every penny. We have eleven hundred pounds in the Santander account. And you know what?’
Sadly, yes.
Having snatched Grigor’s body from the hospital in order to hold it to ransom in the corporate fridge, Jason Chung had been deeply unimpressed with the size of Anna’s life savings.
‘I knew it was expensive to live in London. But I never imagined it will cost so much to die.’ Anna’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘But Mr Chung says he wants to help me give Grigor the ceremony he deserves, and that he has a solution. I am not to worry because there is a nice organisation that will help me. They are called Doshdotcom. You know them?’
Kill me now.
Jason Chung actually suggested this poor woman, deep in shock on the worst day of her life – someone who was expecting a baby and had no regular income – should take out a payday loan?
I had no idea what to say.
‘By now I am very worried.’ Anna looked me in the eyes. ‘Mr Chung says that in England a cheap funeral costs about eight thousand pounds. That is correct, yes?’
‘No.’ My single word came out as a whisper, because I could barely trust myself to talk at all.
A weak smile. ‘So I do the right thing. When Mr Chung says he will fetch an application form for me to pay for the funeral I run away. I need time to think. But then I fall over outside your shop. And then you come. Like you are running away also. And you fall over me.’
I reached across the table and squeezed Anna’s hand. ‘I’m so glad that happened,’ I said. ‘Mr Chung … Mr Chung hasn’t worked for our firm for very long. Please accept my apology for your … your experience with him. I hope you will allow me to put things right. Here’s what we’re going to do.’
I began by reassuring Anna that she didn’t need to get herself into debt to give Grigor a respectful funeral. She might even be entitled to a government grant to help cover the costs. But then I realised she was no longer listening.
She was staring at Jason Chung. Marching towards us, a trail of plump raindrops scattering in his wake. His suit looked as though it was midway through an intensive wash cycle, and he was angrier than I’d ever seen him.
‘Mrs Kovaks,’ he said. ‘Found you at last. So glad Nina’s been looking after you.’ A meaningful glare in my direction. ‘Let me escort you back to the office, so we can sign those forms and ensure your husband has the dignified funeral he would have wanted. I’ve settled the bill,’ he added. ‘Coffees on me.’
So Jason Chung shepherded us out of the deli as if we were two felons under arrest. We were waiting for a gap in the traffic so we could cross the road when a cab pulled over a few yards in front of us and its passenger got out.
‘Quick!’ I grabbed Anna by the hand and dragged her into the taxi. ‘Just drive straight ahead,’ I ordered the driver. The cab had stopped on double red lines, so he didn’t need to be told twice.
As our getaway vehicle sped away, I turned round in time to see my boss’s furious face. His clenched fists were high in the air and he looked almost as though he was doing a rain dance.
In other circumstances I might even have laughed.
4 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
That’s what I said that night, when I told Gloria the story of Anna Kovaks. ‘In other circumstances, I might even have laughed. Jason was bouncing up and down on the spot, waving his arms around as if he was putting a curse on me! Or a spell to make everyone believe that the more you love someone, the more you need to spend on their funeral.’
‘So the whole thing was what you might call an R-I-P off?’
Gloria said it as though it were a pun I hadn’t heard before. I scrubbed the cast-iron orange saucepan that went with my dad to the Falklands War (and came safely home again) even harder, removing the final traces of our bolognese supper.
Truth be told, I was a bit irritated. If Gloria hadn’t wanted to know what happened to me at work that day, she probably shouldn’t have asked. On the one hand, we both knew she was only making a rhetorical enquiry before launching into tonight’s instalment of her Disastrous Relationship with Thrice-Wed Fred. But just this once, Fred's latest crimes could surely wait until we’d resolved something more serious.
My entire life.
I’m the first to admit I haven’t exactly cracked the work–life balance thing. It’s almost all work – not least because whenever there’s the faintest whiff of romance in the air, I tend immediately to think about my husband’s funeral. The only place my life is properly rounded is at the hips.
Gloria, to her credit, realised from my tense posture at the sink that despite my light-hearted remark about Jason, his behaviour towards Anna was no laughing matter. The two of us had shared a home long enough for her to know what I was going to say next.
‘So you’re going to resign,’ she pre-empted me.
‘What else can I do?’
‘Let’s back up a moment,’ Gloria said. ‘You did absolutely the right thing, taking Anna to the no-frills funeral services in Putney. Eight hundred and fifty quid as opposed to thousands of pounds she simply didn’t have.’ Gloria rose from the kitchen table and headed for our emergency supplies cupboard.
This was definitely going to be a two-bottles-of-wine Wednesday.
‘I take it Jason will release the body?’ she asked.
An invisible hand grabbed my stomach and twisted. Until then, I’d completely overlooked – repressed, more likely – the fact that the bloke who started up his budget cremations business because he was scandalised by the cost of his own mother’s funeral would need to liaise with my employers if he was going to have Grigor’s body to cremate. I folded a damp tea towel into quarters, gave the glass hob a quick polish, then sat down at our kitchen table and reached gratefully for my fresh glass of wine.
‘Jason won’t have any choice,’ I said. ‘Which means I need to hand in my notice first thing tomorrow. Otherwise, I’m as bad as he is.’
‘What about the others? Surely when you tell them what happened, they’ll help you take Jason to task? Force him to behave properly from now on.’
As if.
Our staff turnover had been horrendous since the business was sold. Apart from a couple of the senior drivers, I’d been there longer than anyone else. Five years.
The newcomers seemed to have bought into Jason’s marketing-speak: monthly sales targets and promises of big bonuses. For all I knew—
No, surely it was impossible that everyone except me was up-selling in the worst possible way?
‘I’m not certain I can count on anyone for support,’ I said. ‘So the only question is, how much do you get on the dole these days?’ I managed to sound a lot less frightened than I felt, as I started to face up to the true cost of my good deed. Ah well, I’d experimented with just about every diet in the universe, so perhaps the Poverty Diet would succeed where the rest had failed.
‘I won’t be out of work for long.’ It was a promise to myself as much as to Gloria, although I was already wondering where my next job was coming from. Independent funeral companies were becoming an endangered species, and my battle charge towards the moral high ground, in flagrant defiance of corporate policy, was unlikely to impress any of the big chains – none of which I had ever wanted to work for anyway.
Gloria broke into my alarming thoughts. ‘Sweetie, I’ve been telling you for three years,’ she said. ‘You pay me too much rent.’
Gloria is – not to put too fine a point on it – rich. Which is to say, Gloria’s dad is an ex-banker whose name was never far from the headlines a few years ago, usually alongside words like ‘disgraced’ and ‘fat cat’. These days, he seems to spend most of his time playing golf and gently taking the piss out of his adored only child for choosing to work at a community law centre. ‘Sins of the fathers are one thing,’ he’d chided last time he visited, ‘but surely you could do good in a more lucrative way? There’s plenty of women eager to pay handsomely for good divorce lawyers.’
This house, the house we live in here in Kentish Town, was Gloria’s eighteenth birthday present. (Imagine that. I thought I was really privileged when Mum and Dad celebrated my coming of age with driving lessons.) And since the community law centre no longer has any budget for staff, my rent money is what Gloria lives off. Topped up by her trust fund, admittedly. Then again, for someone who needn’t work at all if she chose not to, Gloria is pretty damn dedicated to her various causes. It’s one of the things I love about her. However, I wasn’t about to become her latest charity case and I resolved that first thing in the morning I’d start putting out feelers for a new job.
I drained my wine glass. ‘I’m going to go and compose my resignation letter. I’ll send it by email.’
‘First of all,’ Gloria topped me up with a generous glug of Malbec before I could get my glass to the safety of the sink, ‘listen to me a moment.’ I knew what she was going to say, and sure enough … ‘It’s always easier to get a job when you’re already employed.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So why not go marching in there tomorrow and apologise for your momentary lapse in professionalism which interrupted his bereavement consultation, or whatever it is he’s calling it this week …’
‘Intake appointment,’ I muttered.
‘Whatevs. Anyway, my point is that you can stick to your principles without becoming a martyr. Take your salary for a few more weeks, while you get yourself sorted somewhere else. And leave with a good reference.’
I could see the logic in what Gloria was saying. And thinking about it, none of my erstwhile colleagues had gone to work for rival funeral directors. One took a job as a cosmetics consultant at the Westfield Centre, another went travelling, and the third member of what used to be our team said there were no decent jobs out there, just junior positions with zero hours contracts, so he went off to retrain as a hotel manager.
None of that was for me. I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do.
My job is part of who I am.
What was I going to do?
What was I going to do?
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and visualised. It’s a really useful technique I use whenever I need to adjust to change. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself going off to work as … as … all I could see was Siberia, the miserable little back office at work where, less than twelve hours ago, I had been – frankly – a lot happier than I was right then.
So maybe my brain was telling me change was unnecessary. But in my heart I already knew that if I kept drawing my salary, even for a little while, it would be a betrayal of my profession.
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll just go and type my resignation letter. See how it feels to put into words the fact that Jason is a blemish on our industry. Perhaps I’ll suggest he’s the person who should quit, rather than me.’
Before Gloria could say anything more, the doorbell rang.
So far as I knew, we weren’t expecting visitors. Not unless …
By the way Gloria leapt to answer, I wondered if Thrice-Wed Fred had decided to pay an unscheduled nocturnal visit.
But no, Gloria came back alone. An envelope in her hand. ‘Came by courier,’ she said, sliding it across the kitchen table to me.
Inside the big brown envelope with my name on it, there was a small white envelope with my name on it. And inside that, a single sheet of paper. Also with my name on it.
Dear Ms Sherwood,
Please accept this letter as formal notice of your dismissal for a wholly unacceptable act of gross misconduct committed today.
Our HR Department will calculate any outstanding salary and holiday pay and remit to your bank account in due course, and your personal belongings will be forwarded to you by courier tomorrow. I should add that you are no longer welcome on our premises.
On a personal note, I am extremely disappointed by your behaviour and respectfully suggest you are probably better suited to employment in a not-for-profit enterprise.
Jason Chung
There went my chances of a glowing reference. Wordlessly, I handed the letter to Gloria.
By unspoken mutual consent, we opened a third bottle of wine. And since there was no longer any need to debate whether or not I needed to resign, we soon moved on to discuss Gloria’s favourite topic of conversation. Fred Carpenter QC. Visiting Professor of Law at one of London’s most prestigious universities. Older than Gloria and me by at least ten years. George Clooney hair. The fathomless brown eyes of a Labrador puppy. A silver tongue that effortlessly charms juries, judges and almost every woman under the age of eighty. And an ego the size of Uranus.
Also answers to the name of Thrice-Wed Fred. Or rather he doesn’t. That’s what Gloria and I started to call him when he appeared on the scene late last year, before Gloria got embroiled with him. Foolishly embroiled, if you ask me, although whenever I’ve tried gently to remind Gloria that Fred’s a married man, she turns somewhere between defensive and downright shirty.
Then again, who am I to judge?
Two months ago, I had a one-night stand with Jason Chung.
5 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Jason and I happened because of a train strike. That and a serious, alcohol-fuelled misjudgement.
I was supposed to travel to Nottingham to collect a hearse from another business in our group. (We’d acquired a National Logistics Director who continually shuffled vehicles from one branch to the next, ‘To ensure maximum capacity at all times,’ as he so charmlessly put it.) The strike meant I couldn’t go, but rather than leave it an extra day, Jason announced the two of us would drive there together.
‘A great opportunity for me to brief you about the new commission opportunities from engraving,’ he threatened. ‘We’ve partnered with a firm that’s going to pay us by the letter.’
I’m afraid my immediate thought was that Jason’s Holy Grail of a client would be a recently deceased nanny whose compliant relatives could be persuaded to put ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ on her tombstone.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Okay is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary. It can cover a multitude of sins. On that occasion, it meant that since I had no choice in the matter, I’d do my best to behave like a good employee.
As it happened, our journey up the M1 was a revelation. Jason’s A–Z lecture about payment-by-the-letter – all I remember now is that capitals were apparently more valuable to the firm than words in lower case, so make that ‘SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS’ – drew thankfully to a close just before we reached Dunstable. Then, to my surprise, the further we got from London, the more he started to relax.
I’m a good listener – another part of the job – and Jason is a great talker. Most of what he says is total bollocks of course, but on this occasion, he chose a topic that aroused my curiosity. He started talking about himself.
‘I know you think I’ve got it easy, Nina.’ Jason shrugged his shoulders and gave me a sidelong glance that also incorporated the interior of his ridiculous, show-off Porsche. ‘But at least you’re doing this job because you choose to.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s either this or my parents threatened to banish me to bloody Beijing.’ That was the first time I’d heard Jason swear. ‘It’s not as if I’ve ever set foot in China in the first place,’ he continued. ‘We’re the American side of the family.’
My wet-behind-the-ears boss was a nephew of the ultimate owners of our business and beneficiary of unimaginable wealth, luxury and jobs for the boys. Or so the office grapevine had it. But once Jason started talking, a different picture emerged.
Boarding school in New Hampshire. Business school in Pennsylvania. ‘And then they told me – told me – I’d have to do this job for the next three years. And that unless my sales figures were fifteen per cent higher than every other manager in the group, I wouldn’t have any say in my next assignment.’
‘Okay.’
‘Not okay, at all. I wish you’d stop saying that. It really pisses me off.’
Blimey. Jason Chung was suddenly turning into a human being, right before my eyes.
‘Okay.’ But this time, I giggled as I said it, and Jason laughed, too. ‘So what is it you’d rather be doing?’
‘What I really want is to be a landscape gardener. When I told my parents, you’d have thought I wanted to run away and join the circus. Or the Democrats.’
By the time we arrived in Nottingham, Jason was babbling on about the joy he gets from growing flowers and vegetables in containers on his balcony. I’d learned about the correct time of year to set out poppies, plant onion sets, and seed sweet peas. Also about a bumper crop of strawberries, fit to grace Wimbledon. And then there was Jason’s relentless fight against super-slugs the size of a prizefighter’s fist. It was almost like having a conversation with Gloria, whose latest project involved making a wildflower meadow in a dustbin lid.
Once we’d arrived at our destination, the paperwork for transferring the hearse to our branch took about twenty minutes.
Back in the car park, Jason watched me get into the hearse and adjust the vehicle’s seat and mirrors. I wound down the window and said, ‘I’ll race you back to London!’
Jason produced the keys to his Porsche. ‘Okay.’ A grin. Then, ‘Tell you what. We’re almost into the rush hour so the M1’s going to be really busy. I know a nice little place just off the motorway. Follow me there and we’ll grab a bite to eat.’
‘Okay,’ I said. Driving in the slow lane surrounded by packs of impatient lorries and white van fleets isn’t my idea of fun, so I was super happy to agree to divert myself with food until the traffic thinned out.
Twenty-five minutes later, I was beginning to wonder if Jason had changed his mind. I had no idea where we were – maybe he’d decided to take the scenic route back to London – but just as I heard my stomach rumble, he pulled over into a little red brick development that boasted both a Little Chef and a Travelodge.
I got out of the hearse and said, ‘You certainly know how to spoil a girl.’
‘Sorry.’ Jason was flustered. ‘The place I was looking for seems to have disappeared.’
He obviously wasn’t about to tell me he couldn’t find it.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’m starving. Let’s see what the Little Chef has to offer.’
It turned out the Little Chef was able to come up with a decent glass of wine, which washed down quite well alongside our meal. I’d meant to have mushroom soup, but when the waitress arrived to take our order, the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘I’ll have the foot-long hot dog with a side of beef chilli and as many chips as you can fit on the plate.’ Jason opted for a more sedate plate of ham, eggs and chips.
By the time we’d finished eating, it was dark outside. Jason excused himself from the table and I thought he was settling the bill, but then our waitress arrived with another glass of wine. Five minutes passed … ten. Had Jason done a runner? No, there he was outside, talking intently on his phone. Ah well. I had nothing on that evening, so I might as well relax.
I sat there thinking about my plans for the weekend – a trip to the cinema and Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad in Southampton – until Jason returned, accompanied by a pancake stack fighting for space on the plate with a giant dollop of vanilla ice cream.
‘Really sorry,’ he said. ‘Office stuff. I thought you’d be able to manage dessert, though. What’s that you were singing to yourself?’ he added. ‘Ah, got it! Mary Poppins! My mum loves that movie!’
After we’d finished, we made our way back to the car park. ‘I’ve had a good day,’ Jason said. ‘Much better than being stuck in the office. See you tomorrow.’ He stood and watched me get into the hearse.
But when I turned the ignition, nothing happened.
‘Must be the battery,’ Jason said. ‘Let’s take a look.’ A minute or so later he confessed, ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. We’re going to need a garage.’
And that was how – once we’d discovered the hearse needed a new alternator that couldn’t be located until the morning – we came to spend the night at the Travelodge.
One thing I liked about Jason was that he seemed unruffled by the fact our simple errand was not turning out as planned. He took charge of the situation, booked us a couple of rooms and invited me to join him in the bar.
Three drinks later, I was bold enough to say, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t tell me to sleep in the hearse while you drove back to London. Maybe I’ve misjudged you.’
‘Oh, I’m probably as bad as you think. Although not entirely without manners.’ Jason topped up our glasses. ‘But Nottingham can pay for the repair bill and the cost of our accommodation. And our dinner. I’m damned if it’s coming off my bottom line.’ This sounded much more like the Jason Chung I knew and was obliged to tolerate for forty hours a week. ‘But let’s not talk about work. Tell me about you, Nina. I know nothing about you.’
As someone who’s much more comfortable operating a spotlight than basking in its glow, I hate it when I’m invited to talk about myself. But more than that … if I’m honest, my personal life has been a wilderness for longer than I care to confess.
I’m an only child. I gave up line-dancing when it became evident I have two left feet. Apart from Gloria, I have a few close friends I met at uni – people I can call at four in the morning and know they’ll be there for me – but unfortunately none live in London. The pancakes I rustle up on a Sunday morning are infinitely superior to those of Little Chef. And the nearest thing I do have to a personal life, by which I mean a romantic life, is listening to Gloria’s ill-advised adventures with Thrice-Wed Fred.
My continuing silence was becoming uncomfortable for us both.
‘Okaaaay,’ I finally began. ‘I live in Kentish Town …’ And within five minutes, I was telling a story about Gloria’s plan to infiltrate the Regent’s Park Garden Festival with a pop-up edible hedge that involves bareroot blackberries, cherry plums, crab apples and wild pears, all the while hoping Jason had forgotten he asked about me.
Sure enough, it worked. Soon, he was jabbering about the ins and outs of sweetcorn, and I was beginning to think he might even shape up into a suitable replacement for Thrice-Wed Fred.
But Jason had other ideas.
And I had no inkling, until he walked me to the door of my room, took me in his arms and kissed me. Rather well.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that for hours,’ he murmured. ‘Mysterious Nina. Beautiful Nina.’ Then he kissed me again.
It wasn’t the right time to tell my boss I hadn’t had sex for five years.
Ever since …
An image of my husband’s funeral. Ryan. His coffin, draped in the regimental colours, danced in front of my eyes. Was I really going to spend the rest of my life as a born-again virgin?
Apparently not.
Work 101: Never sleep with the boss.
Never.
Ever.
(Not that we got much sleep.)
When I woke the next morning, I felt …
More than anything else, I felt reassured to know my body hadn’t seized up through lack of use. But I was under no illusion. The night before had been about opportunity and circumstance rather than any genuine emotional connection.
And that suited me just fine.
I know Gloria thinks it’s time I moved on with my life, even though she’s never put it quite that way. Mum and Dad, for their part, would be thrilled if I turned up with a new man, although they know better than to say so. We had that particular discussion the Christmas before last and it ended with me sobbing that unless I could be sure of a relationship as strong and long-lasting as theirs, I’d far rather spend the rest of my life alone.
After all the pain I’ve been through – not to mention the guilt, however misplaced, that I was in some way to blame – why take any more risks? I only have to think how often Thrice-Wed Fred fails to deliver on his empty promises to Gloria. At least if I’m alone, the only person with the power to disappoint me is myself.
I was having this conversation with myself because, thankfully, I had woken up alone. Jason was long gone. His Porsche, too. An hour or so later, while I was still waiting for the alternator and the mechanic to show up, I discovered a note in my jacket pocket. That was wonderful. You look beautiful when you’re asleep and I can’t wait to see you again. J xxx
No!
There was only one thing to do.
I sent Jason a text. LAST NIGHT DIDN’T HAPPEN, it said. PLEASE DELETE.
6 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Jason was never the same after that. He was worse. Never missing a chance to criticise my work, berating me for missing sales targets, and even giving me a verbal warning for being five minutes late.
And yet …
It’s Jason I have to thank for this huge makeover in my life. If he hadn’t fired me, Happy Endings wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be standing here in my new shop today.
Actually, I’m sitting at my reception desk. It’s been two hours since Gloria and Edo left to take Mum and Dad out to breakfast, and I flipped the sign on the door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’. I’ve passed the time by making sure I understand the various software packages that came with my new computer, dusting the display shelves (twice) and making sure the fridge in the basement continues to behave itself.
I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, which means I need to run to the loo again, but before I can leave my desk, the door opens and a woman comes in.
She’s five foot nothing, dressed head to toe in a bright orange ensemble of blouse, skirt, tights and clumpy boots. Her outfit clashes magnificently with her thick, shoulder-length hair, dyed in that unfortunate yet ubiquitous shade Gloria and I always refer to as menopause red, topped by a purple fedora that adds several inches to her height.
‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m Sybille Newman. Your neighbour.’
The shop next door to mine is The Primrose Poppadum – ‘Modern Organic Indian Classics, Free from Dairy, MSG, Wheat & Egg’ according to its sign – and Sybille Newman doesn’t fit my image of a restaurateur. Then again, I’m probably not her idea of an undertaker.
‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I say cautiously.
‘So you’re the owner, are you?’ Sybille Newman has a cut-glass accent and she sounds cross.
‘Yes, I’m Nina Sherwood. Today’s my first day and—’
‘Never mind that. I’ve come about the roof.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The roof. My husband and I live above the dreadful Indian restaurant.’ Sybille gestures towards The Primrose Poppadum with a flash of her Guantanamo orange fingernails. ‘Make sure you never go there – I’ve seen them arriving with carrier bags full of stuff from Asda. Organic my foot! We’re trying to get them shut down because of the dreadful smells. My husband has a respiratory disorder and they’re making it so much worse. But that’s not the point. The roof is leaking and we need a new one.’ She looks expectantly at me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘But I don’t understand why your roof is any of my business.’
‘It’s a single structure that covers both properties.’ Sybille Newman frowns at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse. ‘Ned and I have lived here for twenty-three years, and even when the betting shop was downstairs, back in the nineties, there was trouble with the roof.’ She leans on my reception desk and adds, ‘We’ve had it replaced twice, but now there’s water leaking into our living room again every time it rains. We’ve got a good jobbing builder who’s been patching it up, but we shouldn’t have to be doing that at our own expense. Not when it’s supposed to be a shared cost. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the purlin’s rotted. And there’s a ticking noise coming from the rafters that keeps us awake every night. Woodworm probably. Or beetles.’ Sybille smiles slyly. She seems almost pleased at the prospect. ‘So I’ll get some roofers round to supply estimates and let you have copies.’
‘Okay.’ I presume she wants me to pass them on to my managing agent.
‘And you need to complain to the council about the restaurant smell. Not that they’ll do anything about it.’
There’s something about the way she says this that makes me think Sybille Newman enjoys being a victim, that she’s the sort of woman who is happy only when she’s got something to complain about. I’ve already got a feeling that no matter how hard I try to be a good neighbour, nothing I do will be ever good enough.
Our conversation seems to have run its course and I’m wondering if I should walk Sybille to the door when she says, ‘I take it your stock will be arriving soon?’
I’m not planning to carry a supply of coffins. The shop’s too small. But it’s a weird question.
Sybille continues, ‘Ned intends be your first customer.’
Ned? Didn’t she say her husband’s called Ned?
I’m still working on the implications of that sentence when she continues, ‘Ned’s always got his nose buried in a novel. I presume you’ll give him a discount. The old bookshop always did. So sad when they closed. Business rates went through the roof. But don’t let me put you off.’ Sybille has noticed my startled expression. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a huge success of Happy Endings.’ She says this with an almost-sneer that suggests precisely the opposite. ‘There’s plenty of children around here, and it’s so important to get them reading at an early age, stop them frying their brains with electronic gadgets.’
‘Yes, reading’s important,’ I agree. ‘But actually … Actually, Happy Endings isn’t a bookshop.’
‘Not a bookshop?’ Now it’s Sybille who is perplexed. ‘Everyone’s been saying that’s what’s opening. If it’s not a bookshop, then what is it?’
‘A funeral parlour.’
‘A WHAT? Really? That’s totally unsuitable. No-one asked Ned and me about this. I’m sure we were entitled to be consulted. My husband’s health is very fragile, and having an undertaker’s downstairs … Well, it’s hardly going to cheer him up, is it?’
With that, the woman turns abruptly on her orange heel. At the door, she shoots a baleful look in my direction.
‘Poor Noggsie.’ She says it as if she’s spitting a pair of marbles from her mouth. ‘He was always so helpful about the roof. He’d be spinning in his grave if he knew about this. About you.’
Funeral Number One (#ulink_39519335-e327-5fd7-ae61-f4acb49b8d19)
††††
In Memoriam
PETER JAMES NOGGS
1933–2019
††††
The vicar looked nervous, Gloria thought. And understandably so. Everyone present in the church had known Noggsie, whereas few of them, including Gloria herself, knew the vicar, who seemed to be an earnest young man, clearly overwhelmed by the many famous faces staring back at him.
A final rustle of his papers, and the vicar began. ‘Peter …’ he said. ‘How strange to call him Peter, when all of us here knew him as Noggsie. He was the beating heart of our community for as long as any of us can remember.’
Primrose Hill royalty had turned out in force to pay their respects, and were now sitting in clusters surrounded by many of their less recognisable neighbours. A tribute to the fact Noggsie always treated everyone exactly the same, celebrity or not. To him, the famous customers were just ordinary people who happened to be doing a bit of shopping on their local high street. And there was nothing celebrities liked more than being treated as ordinary people – at least when they were off-duty and on their home turf. As a result, a surprising number of high-profile diaries had been cleared, with filming schedules rearranged, recording sessions postponed and fashion shoots put on hold. Even Tottenham Hotspur had to manage at training that morning without their most famous striker.
Outside the church, private security, police and paparazzi hung around in their separate tribes. Passers-by stopped to see what was happening and any number of teenage truants – almost exclusively female – tried unsuccessfully to blag their way inside.
Jamie Oliver and James Corden were seated three pews in front of Gloria, suited and booted, heads close together, cook and comedian whispering for all the world like a pair of overgrown schoolboys. Probably, Gloria thought, discussing recipes for Cornish pasties. At the front of the church, Chris Evans and Nick Grimshaw were bookending a pair of elderly women both wearing black hats that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a state funeral.
Gloria felt a ripple of movement behind her and turned in time to see Mary Portas – her recognisable-at-two-hundred-paces auburn bob a little longer than usual – arriving in time to swap ‘Good mornings’ with Harry Styles.
But no sign of rock-god Jake Jay. The man who’d won more Grammys than anyone on the planet was said to be back in rehab, this time at a facility somewhere north of New Mexico, accessible only by helicopter. Maybe Robert Plant would show up instead, and treat everyone to a verse of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
Double Oscar winner Kelli Shapiro was also conspicuous by her absence. She had sent her regrets – accompanied by an arrangement of peonies the size of Kew Gardens – and the word was that she was in Geneva, waiting for the scars of a neck lift to heal, rather than suffering from the sudden and unfortunate bout of food poisoning that was her official reason for failing to attend.
Gloria was surprised to see Eddie Banks had been prepared to sacrifice the sunshine of Monte Carlo – along with one of his ninety tax-free days in the United Kingdom – to attend Noggsie’s funeral. Bit of a surprise that he dared show his face at all, given the havoc his double-decker, nine-thousand-square-feet basement dig-out was causing along Chalcot Square. Banks and his giant underground extension had been the talk of the Primrose Hill Easter Festival the weekend before. Everyone knew the man was richer than God, but could it possibly be true that he’d instructed the builders to line the walls of his new chill-out zone with solid gold sheeting? Rumour also had it he’d offered his neighbours a week on Richard Branson’s Necker Island by way of an apology for the noise, the dirt, the disruption and the damage caused by his building project, but they weren’t to be bought off so cheaply, and were holding out – politely but with vicious determination – for the title deeds to luxury lodges at a Banks development in the Lake District. Gloria knew that piece of gossip was well-founded. Her parents were among the neighbours.
The Primrose Hill of her childhood had been a different place. Back then it was just another anonymous London backwater, albeit one with a bohemian edge, and the family had moved there only because her father’s fast-track junior banker’s salary wouldn’t stretch to a house in Hampstead.
Just look at it now. Home to so many of the best-known people in Britain. And, increasingly, overseas owners who boasted to their friends about their charming home-from-one-of-their-other-homes in a neighbourhood that had grown stealthily into Britain’s answer to Beverly Hills. Gloria, however, retained her affection for the Primrose Hill she had once known, and especially for Noggsie, whose General Hardware Store had been a local landmark for longer than she could remember.
As the years passed, Noggsie’s business had survived and thrived. Car showrooms, coal merchants, computer shops, curry houses, coffee shops … butchers, bakers, bookshops, betting shops, builders’ merchants … dry cleaners and drapers … fish-and-chip shops, furniture shops, florists … laundromats and lending libraries … glaziers, greengrocers, Apple Stores … Their custodians came and went, but the General Hardware Store was a permanent fixture, a family business that continued undaunted by the changes happening around it, rather like Ian Beale in EastEnders, which was one of Gloria’s many guilty pleasures.
This time last year, Noggsie’s shop was still a much-loved anachronism, its green-tiled façade a shabby yet proud island in the present sea of Michelin-starred restaurants, cupcake shops, art galleries, pampering places, frock shops, interior designers, more cupcake shops (mostly gluten-free; some of them also vegan), wine bars and – briefly – a pop-up shop that specialised in miniature replicas of fairground attractions whose price tags might reasonably have been thought sufficient for the full-size originals.
Noggsie himself had remained in excellent health for eighty-five of his eighty-six years. ‘It’s the work and the customers that keep me going,’ he insisted whenever Gloria or anyone else asked whether it wasn’t time he relaxed and took it easy. ‘Besides, if I weren’t here, who else would sell you a couple of curtain hooks or half a dozen nails?’ In Noggsie’s opinion, blister packs were the work of the devil. No matter what you needed, from a kettle to a casserole dish, from a single tap washer to a wooden toilet seat, the chances were high that Noggsie had it in stock.
He had been a kind man, too. ‘Hear you’re involved in some urban gardening project,’ he’d said to Gloria when she popped in on an errand to collect dishwasher salt for her mother. ‘Take these.’ And Noggsie had produced half-a-dozen planting troughs along with three bags of compost, refusing all offers of payment.
Now Noggsie was gone and the General Hardware Store along with him. It had been shut for several months, ever since the day its proprietor collapsed across the counter with the first in a series of strokes, and was one of several shops in the high street that continued to stand empty. It had come an unwelcome surprise to many of the locals – Gloria included – to discover that even Primrose Hill was not immune from the toxic effects of hard times, greedy freeholders, ridiculous business rates, and the residents’ own growing tendency to go shopping without ever leaving home.
Whoops!
Gloria realised she had been lost in her trip down memory lane and stood up hastily, a second or two later than the rest of the congregation. She fumbled for the order of service and stood in respectful silence as the three members of a boy band whose strategic failure to win Britain’s Got Talent a couple of years earlier had launched them on the path to international stardom (and adjoining mansions in Regent’s Park) began their acapella arrangement of ‘Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven’.
The hymn’s final notes died away and everyone sat down again. All except for Eddie Banks. He inched out of the pew, negotiating around his two grown-up children, Zoe and Barclay, then walked purposefully towards the lectern.
‘Noggsie was my neighbour, my friend, and my inspiration.’ Eddie Banks paused as if he expected to be challenged about what he had just said. ‘He watched me grow up, and I watched him grow old.’ Unexpectedly eloquent for Banks, Gloria thought. He was a man who tended to call a spade a bloody shovel. Or worse. She wondered how many of his PR people had been working on the eulogy.
Everybody present knew the story of Eddie Banks. Local boy made billionaire. Born in a council house along Chalcot Road, and now reminding his captive audience about the car cleaning business he’d started aged nine, equipped only with a bucket-load of ambition, a green sponge and a jumbo bottle of Fairy Liquid, purchased with his Christmas money from Noggsie at the General Hardware Store.
‘Noggsie taught me so many things,’ Eddie Banks continued. ‘But most important of all, he taught me to dream big. When I told him I had no time to clean more cars, he told me to recruit my friends to help out. And that wasn’t just so he could sell more Fairy Liquid.’
A pause for gentle laughter. ‘When I told him my first business was about to go bust and my best bet was to go work for someone else, he told me to get over myself. And fail better the next time round. Then later, once I’d stopped failing,’ a modest shrug, ‘and could afford to buy Noggsie a decent dinner or two, I asked him … “Noggsie,” I said, “you’ve told me I’m capable of conquering the world, and I believe you. But what about you? What is it that you dream of? What is that you want? And how can I help you have it?” You know what he replied? He told me, “I’m blessed to have found a way to earn a living doing something that contributes to others, yet doesn’t rob my soul. I’m lucky enough to have found my calling, which allows me to continue the tradition of helping my community and to know that in my own small way, I’m making a difference.”’
Banks’s excellent eulogy made Gloria think of Nina. She imagined her friend casting a professional eye over the proceedings. What was it Nina had said the day before? About the way funerals were changing, with more people drawing up plans for their own farewell appearance while they were still alive and well. A question of matching the occasion to the person, she had explained.
Gloria made a mental note to tell Nina the Traders Association had organised a wreath in the shape of a giant hammer.
Then she realised she could do so much better.
At the champagne reception that followed Noggsie’s funeral, Gloria cornered Eddie Banks and told him about Nina and her ideas about dragging funerals into the modern era.
Banks immediately offered to do what he could to help, and Gloria had been impressed that someone so successful was prepared to go out of his way to help a woman he’d never even met achieve her dream.
Noggsie would definitely have approved.
And later, listening to the way Nina talked – enthusiastically yet respectfully – about the people she intended to help once she had refurbished Noggsie’s shop, Gloria was convinced Happy Endings would have had his blessing.
7 (#ulink_ce8a1eda-d187-5d38-b9f1-aa13011d85d5)
Here I am in Primrose Hill, one of the most fashionable parts of London, and it ought to be wonderful.
But it’s not.
I’ve spent all morning watching the world stroll past my shop window oblivious to my presence.
All morning, feeling I don’t fit in.
All morning, every morning.
Monday to Friday.
Afternoons, too.
It’s been an entire week and I almost wish I was back in Siberia. When Jason banished me to the back office, at least I had a sense of belonging.
I keep reminding myself it’s like being the new girl at school. Too soon to have made any friends, too shy to approach anyone, but knowing that before too long, someone will be kind.
Maybe Eddie Banks lulled me into a false sense of security. I’ve never actually met him because he’s almost always in Monte Carlo. But I spoke to him on the phone after Gloria’s brilliant idea about me taking over Noggsie’s shop.
The moment their conversation ended, Eddie Banks had apparently marched right up to Noggsie’s son and told him, ‘I’ve got the perfect tenant for your father’s shop. Young entrepreneur by the name of Nina Sherwood. I know you’re back off home to Australia tomorrow, so shall I have my people sort out the lease and the terms on your behalf? Save you the hassle, and get that shop open again.’
The two men shook hands and Eddie Banks’s team proceeded to process the paperwork in record time, which was just as well, because apparently another retailer was showing serious interest in opening a business. I felt especially fortunate that Noggsie’s son had even been talked into letting me have an initial discount on the rent. All I’d had to do was sign the agreement.
It had felt like destiny. But now I’m not so certain. Still, it was foolish of me to imagine customers would fall into my lap. That only happens once a business has proved itself and the recommendations roll in. For now, it’s important to get a proper feel for the neighbourhood. Which makes the people-watching important rather than just a time-filler or an activity to stop myself fretting about the future.
I’ve certainly seen one or two strange sights, including a family of four dressed all in matching tweeds riding along the road on a double tandem the length of a hearse. Then there’s Sybille Newman, my neighbour with the roof issue. Always dressed in orange. She’s just spent five minutes telling off a road sweeper for doing a sloppy job. (I’ve privately taken to calling her Mrs Happy, because she treats me to a scowl every time she marches past the shop, pretending not to look inside.) There’s also a man on rollerblades who seems to be circling our block of shops … I’ve seen him go past at least five times, and here he is again.
In between studying the locals, I try to knuckle down and practise my daily exercises in creative visualisation. I imagine myself busy and productive, doing a good job for satisfied customers, opening bank statements that demonstrate increasing prosperity, then the look on my parents’ faces when I present them with tickets for a luxury weekend in Sardinia to say thank you for their backing.
And the rest of the time? I’m scared I’ve made a dreadful mistake.
Marry in haste and repent at leisure, isn’t that what people say? I begin to think I’ve achieved the retail equivalent, and that I should have looked a lot more carefully before I leapt into self-employment.
My watch tells me it’s still far too early for lunch, although talking of food, word must have got out that Happy Endings has nothing to do with coffee or cupcakes. No-one’s asked me if I’m selling either since Wednesday.
But I’m still being mistaken for a bookshop and every time I explain I’m an undertaker, the outcome is more or less the same. I get an, ‘Oh, what a shame, dear!’ as though I’ve missed out on tickets for Glastonbury or the Latitude Festival. And that’s on a good day. There have been two or three others who, like Mrs Happy, have made no secret of the fact they believe my business has no business being here.
‘How dare you give your shop such a misleading name?’ The woman who berated me for that didn’t hang around long enough to let me explain my conviction that the best funerals are those that honour someone’s life and give a true sense of who that person really was – and are far from morbid or mysterious affairs – which is why I think ‘Happy Endings’ is such a great choice.
Not, of course, that anyone’s showing any signs of choosing me. I still have no idea when I’ll be called to action. I firmly remind myself this is par for the course. In my line of work, there’s mostly no lead time.
Obviously, I feel sorry in advance for the person who’s going to be my first customer, because organising a funeral is a distress purchase. But at least when it happens, I’ll know how to help them and the people they leave behind. It’s what I’m best at.
In the meantime, there’s no point drooping around an empty shop like one of my wilting delphiniums. I’ve got plenty to do. The cremation urns are still down in the basement. I’m incorporating them into my inaugural window display – the empty window has turned out to be a mistake rather than the minimalist statement I had been aiming for – to eliminate any further misunderstandings about the nature of my business.
Edo promised to help me haul everything out front this afternoon, but there’s still no sign of him, so I might as well get on with the admin instead of wallowing in procrastination.
In particular, I need to compose an email to Zoe Banks.
Zoe is not only Eddie Banks’s daughter but also a fellow retailer – her shop is called The Beauty Spot – and she’s the driving force behind the Primrose Hill Traders Association. I really want to get to know my fellow shopkeepers, and I need to get cracking. I activate my computer with a flick of the mouse and begin.
Dear Zoe Banks,
My name is Nina Sherwood and I am the new kid on the block. As you may know, my shop is called Happy Endings, and in many ways, it is thanks to your father that it is here at all. My friend Gloria was present at Noggsie’s funeral, and afterwards, when she was talking to Mr Banks, my name came into the conversation.
There goes that man on the rollerblades again, whizzing past the shop. On the pavement this time. Close enough to flash me a smile. And for me to grin at his T-shirt, which declares, Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. I’m probably imagining his smile, but he’s certainly around a lot. Training for some sporting event, perhaps. Anyway, back to my message …
Mr Banks generously used his powers of persuasion to ensure I could get the lease, and without this initial help, my business would never have got beyond the dreaming stage. In case you’re wondering, I previously worked for an established funeral director in Queen’s Park but this is my first solo venture and I am hugely excited about it all.
Gloria says The Beauty Spot is one of Primrose Hill’s most successful shops, so Zoe must have inherited her father’s business acumen along with an appetite for hard work and the ability to be both popular and profitable. I hope that as we get to know one another, she might teach me some of the secrets of maximising income without ripping anyone off.
I hope you will wish me well and I look forward to meeting you in the near future. I am also very keen to participate in the activities of the Primrose Hill Traders Association. Could you please advise me of the procedure for joining? Is there a meeting coming up some time soon that I could attend? Finally, I am sure you are very busy, but if you fancy a break, then I would love to have a chat with you. Shall we meet in the wine bar? Drinks on me!
Best wishes,
Nina Sherwood, Happy Endings
I send the email and try to convince myself I’m having a good day at work. Now for those cremation urns …
8 (#ulink_8e71ee0b-7044-58b5-b040-602b4d6d36db)
The next morning, I wake to discover two significant additions to our household.
First off, I hear footsteps crashing up and down a flight of stairs so I get out of bed, shrug into my dressing gown, nudge my bedroom door and realise Edo is here. On his way to the little room at the top of the house. He’s juggling an assortment of bin bags and holdalls plus a red and white ‘NO ENTRY’ sign that is still attached to the mid-section of a lamp-post.
By the time I am decently dressed he’s on another trek, this time laden with a bunch of canvases. I observe that Edo’s favourite colour is purple. And that he has at some stage persuaded at least four different women to pose for him while naked. One of them – a curvy redhead with spectacular breasts – has her cellulite-free thighs teasingly splayed around the ‘NO ENTRY’ sign.
‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Are you storing your stuff in the attic?’
Edo looks puzzled. ‘Didn’t Gloria tell you I was moving in? That’s why I didn’t get to the shop in time to help you yesterday. Sorry about that.’
Um, no. Gloria’s said nothing. ‘Want some coffee?’
‘Awesome!’
I get my head around Edo’s news as I make my way to the kitchen. He did say the place he found after he moved out of Happy Endings was a bit too dirty and a touch too noisy for his liking. Typical Gloria to say he could stay – she’s both generous and impulsive, and it’s her house, of course – but I’m surprised she didn’t at least discuss it with me first.
An even bigger surprise awaits me in the kitchen.
A dog.
Eating breakfast.
Actually, he appears to be on his third breakfast.
The creature is almost the size of a Shetland pony. It looks as if it’s been dreamed up by Disney, but is acting out a script from Tarantino – working title The Andrex Puppy on Drugs.
The pristine kitchen I remember from last night is a wreck. Two chairs have been overturned. The floor is covered in a collage of broken breakfast bowls, with several million breadcrumbs and a gooey patch of what looks like blood but is hopefully nothing more sinister than strawberry jam added for texture. A steady trickle of milk is dripping onto the floor from an overturned carton on the table. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, the roll of paper towel we keep on the kitchen table in lieu of napkins has three Shetland-pony-sized chunks bitten out of it.
The dog gives me a cursory glance then shamelessly returns to the plate of ham, cheese and salami that’s occupying his attention. In fairness, his table manners seem to be improving with every chomp. He’s figured out he’s the perfect height so that his head – and jaws – can get to the food without the need even to flex his paws, let alone knock food to the floor. Perhaps he’s cleverer than he looks.
A split second later, just as the dog’s inhaling the final scrap of meat, Edo arrives in the kitchen. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘Maybe this was a mistake.’
I give him a look.
‘There was this bloke in the pub last night.’ Edo has got himself a part-time job pulling pints. ‘Said he and his partner had come to the conclusion their place was too small for Chopper. That’s his name, Chopper. They took him to Battersea, but the people there admitted that if they couldn’t rehome him, he’d be put down. The guy was literally sobbing into his beer, so I called Gloria and she said it would be okay. Then today, I wanted to get off to a good start and be a good housemate, so I put breakfast together before I moved my stuff in. Which turned out to be a mistake. Do you know anything about dogs?’
‘Only that they appear to enjoy granola and salami. But I guess I’ll learn.’ The truth is, I’ve always wanted a dog.
‘He’ll be my responsibility. I promise this will never happen again. I’ll clear up all the mess. And he’ll sleep in my room. I’m going to make him a bed out of wooden crates. And then I thought I might paint him.’
‘Purple?’ I enquire.
Edo’s enthusiasm is somehow infectious. Even though Chopper has wrecked our kitchen, he is trying earnestly to make amends by hoovering the floor with his tongue, which is the size of a rump steak.
‘How old is he, anyway?’
‘The guy said he’s a year old. And fully grown.’ Even as he says it, Edo sounds doubtful. He looks at me, then back to the dog. ‘I’m really grateful to you and Gloria for agreeing I can move in, you know. I’ve promised to help out around the house, with odd jobs and that. And I’m going to be paying rent, of course.’
Immediately, I feel guilty. Gloria insisted I should only pay half-rent until Happy Endings is on its feet – an offer I gratefully accepted. She’s probably delighted Edo needs a place to live, and can help make up the shortfall.
‘I’ll clean up the mess,’ I offer. ‘Then maybe, once we’ve had breakfast, we can take Chopper out for a walk.’
After breakfast, during which I observe Gloria sneaking morsels of still-warm croissant under the table to our new dog, the four of us – Edo, Gloria, Chopper and I – head for Highgate Ponds.
It’s beautiful late spring weather, and Gloria is excited to see the lilacs in full bloom. Edo keeps Chopper on a stout leash, offering him no further opportunities for misbehaviour.
‘So what sort of dog is he?’ Gloria asks. She’s spent the past ten minutes complaining she’s fed up with having her social life dictated by the schedule of Thrice-Wed Fred’s wife, whose latest crime is to surprise her cheating husband with a weekend jaunt to Berlin.
‘Half-Bernese half-poodle,’ Edo says.
I can see the poodle in Chopper. Woolly coat in shades of black, brown and white, with a head of hair that reminds me of those long wigs worn by the old codgers who populate the House of Lords. But Bernese? Isn’t that a type of sauce?
‘So that makes him a Bernedoodle!’ Gloria is amused by the thought.
‘Or a poodlenese,’ Edo suggests.
I take another look at Chopper. Edo let him off the lead when we got to the woods at the back of the ponds, and the dog is celebrating his freedom by enthusiastically turning a fallen branch into a pile of matchsticks. Chopper is about four times the size of any other dog out on a Saturday walk, so all I can say is that the Bernese must be a very big dog indeed.
‘That’s interesting,’ Edo says.
‘What?’ I enquire. ‘A dog chewing a stick?’
‘No. Taking one thing and transforming it into another.’
Before I can say something about dogs doing that every time they sink their teeth into something, Edo continues his thought. ‘Shapeshifting.’
‘Is that what they taught you at art school?’ Gloria’s tone is only faintly mocking.
‘As it happens, I’ve got a postgraduate tutorial with Joshua Kent next week,’ Edo retorts. ‘If I’m lucky, he’ll mentor me on my next project.’
Wow! Edo must be an even better artist than he is a sign writer. Joshua Kent is a real big shot. His art is on display in galleries and private collections all over the world. It’s not my kind of thing – call me a philistine, but I like a painting to look like a painting, with a nice frame and everything – but winning the Turner Prize three times has made Joshua Kent properly famous.
Edo is looking suitably modest. ‘I’ve got a couple of ideas,’ he says, ‘but I think they’re too ordinary. Can we talk about something else, please? I’m terrified. Nina, what do you think Gloria should do about Fred? Dump him, or what? What would you do?’
I’m about to reply to Edo’s penultimate question in the definite affirmative, but Gloria is faster. ‘I’ve told you,’ she says to Edo. ‘Nina doesn’t do relationships.’
The pair of them exchange a glance, and I realise Edo has been briefed about the reason for my lack of a love life. Gloria must have told him about Ryan – his funeral and all that – and my decision to prioritise my career over relationships.
An awkward pause, while we watch Chopper take a breather from his labours, then spit out the final shreds of wood and begin to paw furiously at the ground, digging a hole in which to bury his matchsticks.
‘If anyone needs advice,’ I finally say, ‘it’s me.’
‘The business?’ asks Gloria, and I suspect this is something she has also discussed with Edo.
‘It’s only been a week,’ Edo chimes in. ‘And besides, the weather’s too good for dying.’
Even though he is being facetious, Edo has a point. More people die during winter than summer. But that’s not the issue. Every time I think about my parents, I feel sick. Sticking all their pension money next to the matchsticks in Chopper’s freshly dug hole in the ground is beginning to seem like a far better idea than allowing them to keep their investment in Happy Endings.
I feel Gloria’s hand on my arm. ‘Remember your business plan, sweetie.’ She’s doing her best to reassure me. I’ve estimated thirty funerals in the first year, so with only one week gone, I’m not even behind schedule. But neither have I earned a single penny.
‘My business plan wasn’t much more than guesswork,’ I confess. Guesswork, moreover, that didn’t even include any budget for advertising and marketing. ‘I should have thought things through more thoroughly. Maybe there’s a good reason why the shop was empty for so long after Noggsie’s first stroke left him unable to carry on – and it wasn’t just because the council rejected change-of-use applications from a bunch of hipsters who wanted to turn it into yet another café.’
‘Rubbish!’ Edo jumps in. ‘Remember what Noggsie’s son said.’ The son who lives in Australia and gave me a good deal on the rent. ‘He wanted you to have the lease because he reckoned the high street needs some proper shops again. There’s only so many cupcakes a person can eat.’
Edo’s wrong about that. Especially when they incorporate marshmallow frosting. But his intentions are good.
Enough of this.
I’m behaving like a complete wimp.
All doom and gloom and Poor Little Me just because things aren’t happening as fast as I’d hoped. Yes, when I was an employee, we could more or less guarantee how many funerals we’d handle every week, but the business had been there for decades. My empty shop window has evidently led to misunderstandings about the nature of my business but it’s sorted now: my collection of ceramic urns are modern and tasteful, although from what I’ve seen of Primrose Hill so far, there’s a danger the locals will think I’m running an art gallery.
‘You know what?’ I confess. ‘I was hoping in my heart of hearts that business would just fall into my lap. But I need to make myself known.’ There have to be cheaper ways of advertising than buying space in the local paper, which every undertaker seems to do as a matter of routine. ‘I’ve made a start already.’
I’m telling my friends about the email I sent to Zoe Banks when my phone pings. I look at the screen.
‘Ha!’ I tell them. ‘Talk of the devil, and the devil appears!’
It’s a message from Zoe.
I’m going to meet her on Monday.
Can’t wait!
9 (#ulink_7042ce2c-e012-5f5c-bf12-9d11fe5d9c4a)
Truthfully, Zoe’s email reads more like a summons than an invitation. Yes, we need to discuss what you’re doing. Monday 7.15am. Home not spa.
My own email is repeated underneath. Taking another look, it does seem to ramble a bit. But never mind that Zoe hasn’t replied at length. The important thing is that she has replied at all. Promptly, too, which is good business etiquette. Zoe must be one of those scarily efficient women who has successfully tamed her email mountain by keeping responses – even to warm and friendly messages like mine – to the bare minimum.
That fits in with Gloria’s extended briefing about Zoe and her day spa. The Beauty Spot is part of a chain that also has a presence in other wealthy pockets of London, plus outposts in Zürich, Rome, Dubai and Los Angeles. Our local branch is hidden away inside a beautiful Regency townhouse, just off the high street. I’ve always been too scared to go inside, but I’ve given the website a good going-over in preparation for this meeting.
Turns out the rumours that Zoe sells nothing that costs less than £35 are true. Really? For a bottle of bubble bath that small? And do women honestly pay three figures to have their eyebrows tidied? Especially when the first figure’s not even a one! Back in my student days, I spent less than that on a weekend in Berlin, and my eyebrows always look just fine.
I know I ought to be grateful Zoe has prioritised our meeting, but instead I’m faintly resentful I needed to be up at half past five this morning to make sure I had enough time to dither about what to wear. And redo my eyebrows four times.
I arrive at Zoe’s home – a leafy turning on the far side of the park going towards Swiss Cottage – at ten past seven. Which is just as well, because I squander the next three minutes trying to make the intercom system work. In the end, I resort to punching random numbers on the keypad, and this finally does the trick. A disembodied male voice instructs me, ‘Step AWAY from the gates and state your name.’
‘Nina Sherwood,’ I announce, startled.
‘Correct.’
What is this, an intelligence test?
‘When the gates open, please make your way to the main entrance.’ The voice sounds like Carson out of Downton Abbey, scolding one of the servants for being ungrateful.
At first glance, the gates – sandwiched between high brick walls – could be mistaken for a piece of sculpture, all curves and swirls, with a hint of Art Deco. Then they glide soundlessly open, and I get my first glimpse of Zoe’s home.
So this is how the one per cent of the one per cent lives … As I read online last night – doing my Zoe Banks homework before explaining to Chopper that my bed is not his bed – I am now eyeballing a piece of prime central London real estate worth £14 million. Which buys you (I continued my online research via Zoopla, Google Earth and Vogue) seven bedrooms, a private cinema, a wine cave, staff quarters and one of the largest gardens in North London, complete with its own tropical pagoda. All that, plus a ten-metre infinity pool that incorporates both wave machine and rainforest shower.
‘This way please, Ms Sherwood.’ Carson’s disembodied voice again, sounding even less pleased than before. I’m obviously over-gawping, so I jog the final few metres to the front door, crunching a spray of gravel in my wake. The door opens immediately, even before I can work out where the bell might be located.
I’m almost surprised not to be greeted by Carson. Instead, a man about my own age, dressed in a perfect charcoal suit – I’m guessing it costs more than the average funeral – teamed with white shirt, blue silk tie and black-rimmed round glasses is looking me up and down. The expression on his face is exactly as I had anticipated: disdain underpinned by disapproval.
But maybe I’m just flustered, because his voice is considerably more warm when he tells me, ‘This way, please.’ I follow him across a vast expanse of highly polished wooden flooring. ‘Ms Banks is running late this morning,’ he says. Late? At seven fifteen? Is this code for ‘Ms Banks has overslept?’ Apparently not, because the man continues, ‘A meeting with her architect is taking longer than anticipated. If you wait here’ – I am ushered into a space that is bigger than every room of Happy Endings put together – ‘I’ll fetch you a coffee.’
Carson leaves the room before I have a chance to say, ‘White, please, with three sugars,’ and I’m about to make myself at home on a squishy black leather couch when I hear voices coming from the adjoining room. A man and a woman speaking softly yet distinctly. I find myself heading towards a not-quite-closed door and begin earnestly to study a huge canvas on the wall. Blue splodges placed at indeterminate intervals against a backdrop of what looks like green and yellow electricity pylons, encased in an ornate frame that could easily be proper gold, although I’d have to bite it to be sure.
‘So we should hear back from the planning department in the next four to eight weeks.’ The man’s voice.
‘Why does it take them so long?’ The woman – presumably Zoe Banks – is verging on shrill. I can almost hear her stamping her foot. ‘Can’t we fast-track it? Pay them extra? Anyway, it’s going to be a formality, so might as well get cracking straight away. Right?’ Before the man can reply, Zoe continues, ‘You realise I’m still unhappy with the north-east elevation. If we’re building a neo-classical palace we might as well get it right and have the columns properly hand-carved. Agreed?’ A pause. ‘I’m paying two hundred thousand for this, after all. Plus your fees.’
‘Of course. And you’re happy with the design of the frieze?’
‘Let’s have another look at the plans.’ A rustle of papers. ‘Yes, I like that. Lovely idea to call the extension a small temple in the trees. And our garden’s so big, no-one will ever spot it. You know, life’s too short to wait for the bloody planners, so let’s get the builders in next week and pay the fine for going ahead without permission if we get caught.’
Temple in the trees? I’d assumed the people on the other side of the door were discussing plans for a holiday home. Greece, perhaps. Or Croatia. Surely even someone like Zoe Banks wouldn’t spend two hundred grand on a tree house. Especially someone who, according to my research, doesn’t have children. I’m worried Carson’s going to come back and catch me eavesdropping but I’ve never heard a conversation like this before and I can’t tear myself away.
That’s weird. In one breath, the man is saying something about a multi-level dwelling with geometrically perfect proportions. But now he’s describing a wirelessly controlled fox-proof security system. Surely he means foolproof. And what’s this about an automatic sliding roof above the nesting box suite? Is that what rich people call a bedroom?
I’m wondering if I’m going deaf, and if I dare to push the door open just a tiny crack further, when Zoe says, ‘We’ve had our skirmishes with this project, Marcus, but I’ve always known you were the man to create the Taj Mahal of hen houses.’
‘That’s very kind, but by the time we’re done, I hope it will look more like Le Petit Trianon.’
Two smug laughs, followed by packing-up sounds. I retreat to the sofa, bewildered. What is this I’ve stumbled into? It feels like the set of The Good Life mashed with Grand Designs. Don’t get me wrong, I love chickens, especially when roasted to a golden crispness, accompanied by Mum’s silky gravy and fluffy potatoes, and I have no doubt the hens that are destined to roost legally or illegally in Zoe’s extension will truly appreciate the clean lines and the modern aesthetics. Come on, though. Admittedly two hundred thousand won’t buy you a garage in London. But a hen house? A hen house?
When I think how hard my dad worked, and how proud he was to be able to lend me the fifty thousand pounds I needed – more than half his life savings – to open Happy Endings … I wonder what it must be like to be able to buy whatever you want … anything you want … everything you want … without stopping to think how much it costs.
Zoe Banks enters the room with a face that suggests all the cash in the world can’t buy you happiness, and I feel a little bit better about my current credit card balance.
‘Marcus, I’ll expect your confirmation that the builders will be on site by Monday latest,’ she says before disappearing into the hallway. With that, the architect is dismissed. He fails to acknowledge me, and sidesteps Carson, who has arrived carrying a tray with my promised coffee and a plate of fancy biscuits. Silver icing! I follow him past the blue-splodged painting and into Zoe’s office, which turns out to be a surprisingly austere space, dominated by a metal and glass desk as big as a ping-pong table. Behind it, there’s a chair that reminds me of the Iron Throne, softened only by the addition of a scarlet cushion – Zoe’s presumably – and on the other side, a considerably less impressive ladder-back chair. Carson gestures towards it, then gathers a bunch of envelopes from the desk and leaves the room.
I’m still taking in my surroundings – half a dozen floor-to-ceiling free-standing metal shelves in a geometric pattern that would make them almost sculpture were it not for the dozens of aluminium box files they hold – when Zoe returns. Instinctively, I stand up and take a few steps towards her.
Zoe Banks towers over me. I’m five six and she’s at least three inches taller, even before you take into account her skyscraper heels. We exchange a firm handshake – I notice Zoe gives my home-manicured nails a beady once-over – then retreat to our respective sides of the giant desk.
‘So you’re Nina.’ She looks square at me, pronouncing my name as though she’s just captured something nasty on the tip of her tongue. ‘One moment.’
Zoe busies herself with some papers, which gives me a chance to get the measure of her. She’s actually rather beautiful. Model-slender and impeccably dressed in a grey linen dress that accentuates long legs, bronzed in a shade that didn’t come out of a spray can. She’s got one of those Julia Robert mouths – you know, the length of a pillar-box slit – and impeccable white teeth. But she’s overdone the Botox or the collagen or whatever it is she’s had someone squirt into her glistening lips. Unfortunately, they look like a pair of scarlet bananas. No, I’m just being mean. Zoe Banks is as high-end and glossy as everything else in this perfect house. Everything except me.
Before I can berate myself any further, the scarlet bananas begin to speak. ‘Thank you for popping by,’ they say. ‘So, tell me about your little shop.’
And I’m off! Explaining that although the undertaker I used to work for mostly organised traditional funerals – black clothes, white lilies, newspaper notices, Bible readings, etc. – the funeral industry is starting to change.
‘Relatives want something more personal,’ I say. ‘Services as individual as the person who has died.’ I recall a photo emailed to me last week by Anna Kovaks. Grigor’s family cycling through woods on the outskirts of Budapest, following one of his favourite off-road treks on their way to a river where they scattered the ashes Anna had repatriated. Zoe continues to stare at her papers, which is a bit rude, but undaunted, I persevere.
‘It definitely helps families to grieve when they’re able to do something that properly reflects the person they loved. Say, putting a favourite book inside the coffin. Or a cigar. Or notes from the grandchildren. I mean, you only have to think about the way weddings have changed in the past few years, with services on the beach, or at the top of the London Eye …’
Zoe has picked up a gold fountain pen and is writing something down, so I trail into silence. Once she’s finished, I’ll ask her to guess some of the most popular music tracks that are played at crematorium services. Start a dialogue instead of lecturing the poor woman.
I watch Zoe’s elbows move in, out and back in as she signs her name, cutting a Z into the paper. Then she leans forward on her throne thing and moves her perfectly made-up face closer to mine.
‘It all sounds very undignified,’ she says. ‘If you have to have a funeral, much better to get it over and done with as quickly as possible, then get back to normal life. But that’s hardly the point. The thing is.’ Zoe purses her banana lips and pauses for emphasis. ‘The thing is, Nina, we don’t do death in Primrose Hill. Michelin-starred restaurants, yes. Designer handbags, absolutely. Health and beauty … well of course, that’s my job. We have a huge local demand for ethical foie gras, even though those smelly protestors were out on the streets demonstrating against the butcher and the fur shop last weekend. Which reminds me, I need to speak to the police commissioner to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Look,’ Zoe tries – and fails – to smile, ‘we even sell chocolate and perfume. Everyday essentials the local community can’t manage without. We give people what they want. And there’s just no demand for death, I assure you. I can’t imagine what possessed my father to encourage you. A clear error of judgement if you ask me.’
Wow!
And without further ado, Zoe’s on her feet, her arm under my elbow, walking me to the door. I want to retort with a bold statement, explaining Happy Endings is here to do a job, to cater for a need, just like the chocolate shop. Or, indeed, the spa. But my cheeks are burning as if I’ve been slapped in the face and I know I’ll struggle to speak without crumpling. Which means Zoe has the last word.
‘If you like, I’ll do what I can to help you get out of the lease,’ she offers. ‘Otherwise, you’ll be gone by Christmas. I bet on it. In fact, I already have. We’re running a sweepstake to guess the date you’ll close. We all thought it was a great way to help fund the Christmas lights.’
10 (#ulink_92c974f8-cbb5-5363-8578-d99cd5e000d4)
Thank goodness for Chopper! If it weren’t for him, I’d find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. After my humiliating meeting with Zoe Banks, I just wanted to lock myself away and hide. But Chopper’s having none of it. He expects to be in the park at eight o’clock, wreaking havoc, so I’ve got into the habit of walking him before I open the shop, although walking is hardly the right word. Chopper is a force of nature – as soon as I slip his lead, he’s away! Eager and surprisingly elegant for such a huge creature. Paws pounding like hooves, at least until he comes across some delicious distraction, such as rearranging the flowerbeds with his paws, chasing a wheelchair, or joyfully demonstrating his superpowers by turning a flock of pigeons into fifty black specks in the sky merely by lumbering towards them.
I’m now on ‘Good-morning-how-are-you?’ terms with a whole bunch of other dog owners, which is something to cheer me up first thing. In fact, it’s often as much conversation as I get during the entire working day … because it’s still ‘No Business as Usual’ at Happy Endings, and I don’t know what to do, short of entering Zoe Bloody Banks’s sweepstake in the hope of winning back the fifty grand I owe my dad for foolishly investing in me and my stillborn business.
It’s been a month. Time enough to stop kidding myself that all I have to do is raise awareness.
I’ve put leaflets through every door in Primrose Hill announcing my arrival. Then, when I called the local paper to see if they’d run an article about Happy Endings, they put me through to someone who insisted I could transform the fortunes of my business simply by spending two hundred and fifty pounds a week on advertising until I foolishly surrendered my credit card details.
Response? Zero.
I’ve also introduced myself to most of the other shopkeepers – none of whom went out of their way to be friendly, not even the florist, who’s usually an undertaker’s closest business ally – and confirmed my worst fears by reading the latest edition of our trade paper, whose front page declared Britain now has an ‘over-supply’ of funeral directors. By which I strongly suspect they mean me.
Perhaps I should look for a part-time job. Evenings in a pub or restaurant. At least that would keep some cash trickling in. I was talking to Edo last night about the possibility of—
What the hell!
Someone on a scooter is racing down Primrose Hill. Far too fast. Directly towards Chopper.
‘Mind my dog!’ I yell, as I run towards the accident that’s about to happen.
Chopper, unaware of the danger, is on the main path at the bottom of the hill, head deep inside a carrier bag that’s been abandoned next to a rubbish bin. The idiot on the scooter, meanwhile, responds to my anguished cry by taking one hand off his handlebars and waving at me. What am I supposed to do? Move Chopper out of the way?
Much too late to do anything at all.
Chopper is lumbering up the hill, greeting the scooter as if it’s another dog out to play. I can hardly bear to look … a millisecond before impact, the idiot dodges Chopper with the insouciant panache of a slalom skier, only to careen head-first into a tree trunk on the other side of the path.
I sprint towards his body. ‘Are you okay?’ I yell.
Serves him right if he’s not.
The scooter has come to rest on the grass, wheels still spinning. Its owner is picking himself up off the ground, and brushing grass from his skinny jeans. He runs an index finger along one of his cheekbones to wipe away a trail of dirt, then rotates his shoulder blades, as if to check nothing’s broken. He looks vaguely familiar, although I can’t imagine why.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he says. ‘Just a bit winded. Sorry if I scared you.’
The idiot’s pleasantly deep voice and immediate contrition catches me off-guard. I’d been all set to tell him off for dangerous driving. But that was when I’d assumed he was a teenage boy, rather than the man of about my own age who is now stroking Chopper.
‘She’s right,’ he tells the dog. ‘I was going much too fast. But it’s such a wonderful feeling. Like flying.’ Then he looks up at me. ‘Buy you a quick coffee, by way of apology?’
I mean to say no. But the idiot is in possession of a mischievous smile, sparkling grey eyes, and a T-shirt that says, Honk if You’re About to Run Me Over.
It’s not as if I need to get to work on time to begin another soul-destroying day of no clients, so thirty minutes later we’re still sitting outside at one of the cafés on the high street, across the road from Happy Endings. Chopper is refuelling on ice-cold water from a bucket-sized bowl. I’m on my second latte, wishing I’d followed suit when the idiot ordered himself a breakfast butty that overflows with dripping butter, bacon and HP sauce. It smells delicious.
‘Okay if I give some to Chopper?’ The idiot breaks off a generous portion of his breakfast and lobs it in Chopper’s direction. The dog rises with gravity-defying grace, captures the snack before it hits the ground, and proceeds to chew daintily.
I sit and salivate, trying – and failing – to look elsewhere as the final sliver of buttery bacon disappears. He’s got nice hands, the idiot. It’s one of the things I always notice about a man. Assessing their suitability to carry a coffin. These are strong, capable hands. Well-manicured, too.
The idiot evidently cares about his appearance and if I’m not mistaken he’s even wearing a splash of cologne, fresh and spicy, with a hint of fir. Doesn’t smell as good as the bacon, but not a bad second.
‘So do you live around here?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘Professional dog walker?’
‘Still no.’ I’m not meaning to be unfriendly so I say it with a smile. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, my dad’s got a house up the road, and I was just popping in. I work for the family business. Property management mostly, and boring stuff involving corporate law. We’ve been doing a lot of insolvencies lately.’
He says this as though it’s a good thing and I can’t help but think of Gloria. If she were with us now, she’d say, ‘You’re the type of lawyer who makes rich people richer. The type of lawyer I never want to be.’
Disloyally, I realise the idiot would most likely scrub up pretty well if he swapped his jeans and T-shirt for a business suit.
‘Do you like it?’ he’s asking me.
‘Pardon?’
‘My T-shirt. You were staring at it.’ Before I can apologise he continues, ‘I got a brilliant one yesterday. Going paintballing next week, and I came across one in Camden Market that says, Why Should You Date a Paintballer?’
He leaves the question hanging.
‘Go on, then,’ I encourage him. ‘Tell me why I should date a paintballer?’
‘Because we’ve got a lot of balls. That’s what’s written on the back. Convincing, huh?’
There’s something about the guileless way he says it that makes me laugh. His company is an unexpected treat on what’s bound to turn out to be another lonely day.
‘I’m in desperate need of another bacon butty and more coffee. Say yes this time?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes please.’
Just as our refills arrive, something slots into place. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ I ask.
‘Is that the best you’ve got?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re flirting with me, right?’
‘Me? No! Of course not. I have seen you before. On rollerblades. Going past my shop.’
‘Which shop would that be?’
‘Over there.’ I point towards Happy Endings, sit back and wait for the inevitable response.
But the idiot proves the exception to the rule. ‘Noggsie’s old shop, right?’ he says pleasantly. ‘So how’s business?’
‘Okay.’ I’m not about to confess it’s non-existent. I pause for a strategic mouthful of bacon butty, while I attempt to swallow the accusation of flirting. He’s sort of right. I’m definitely enjoying his company. Since that night with Jason, I’ve started noticing men again. There’ve been one or two who I – admit it, Nina – actually fancied.
And the idiot makes three.
‘I’d better go to work,’ I say.
‘Why? Are there some dead people I don’t know about? Did I miss the news story about the avalanche in Tufnell Park last night?’
‘You’re a very bad man.’ It’s the sort of remark I’d expect from a colleague rather than a civilian, and the mock shock-horror way he says it is actually quite funny.
‘I try not to be. Stay a while.’ The idiot brushes my wrist with his fingers. ‘More coffee?’
Last time I drank four lattes for breakfast I was still awake at two o’clock the following morning.
‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘And why don’t you tell me about the paintballing?’
He needs no second invitation. ‘There’s this huge woodland site between Edinburgh and Glasgow,’ he begins. ‘All sorts of scenarios. The village hostage rescue looks the most fun. That’s where you get to use the paint thrower.’ He sees my puzzled expression and clarifies, ‘It’s basically a huge water cannon filled with paint. The ordinary paintballs are a mixture of oil, gelatine and dye, and we fire them through nitrogen-powered compressed air.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘I have no idea.’ The idiot looks puzzled. ‘No-one’s ever marked me. I always win.’
‘You do this a lot, then?’
‘Once before. When I was seven. If it works out I’m going to sign up for this place in Oklahoma where you spend a week recreating the D-Day battles. With paint. If you pay a bit extra, you can lead the French Resistance.’
By the time the idiot has finished telling me about battle packs, paint pods, flag capturing, defensive bunker play, ravine negotiation and a legendary character called The Paint Punk, I’m thinking I’d love to go paintballing. With him.
And then I realise what’s really going on.
All this military talk … well, for a few minutes, it was just like old times.
Old times with Ryan.
My husband.
Captain Ryan Sherwood.
That day I watched him being presented with his Afghanistan Operational Service Medal was one of the proudest of my life.
And now?
I’m ashamed to realise that instead of thinking about Ryan’s funeral, I’ve been imagining myself on a date with a man who knows absolutely nothing about the savage realities of military life.
The idiot has stopped talking and for the first time in more than an hour the silence between us feels awkward.
‘You’re not how I imagined a corporate lawyer,’ I blurt out.
‘Says the lady undertaker. Sorry … there’s nothing I’d rather do than sit and talk to you for the rest of the day. But it looks like you’ve got a customer.’
I turn to see a man peering through the window of Happy Endings, then rattling on the door.
Business at last!
And a timely reminder that my priority is work.
Not relationships.
‘I’d better dash. Come on, Chopper. Thanks for breakfast. Good luck with the paintballing, and drive that thing,’ I point at his scooter, ‘more safely in future.’
‘Bye for now.’ He hesitates. Then, ‘Look, let me give you my number. Perhaps we can have dinner.’
I punch his details into my phone. Rude not to. Not as if I’m ever going to call him. But as I walk briskly across the street, rubbing the finger that used to wear a wedding ring, I acknowledge the idiot is charismatic in a man-child kind of way. Far too old to be riding a child’s toy, but at least he has good manners.
And Barclay is a pretty cool name.
11 (#ulink_01fd2d06-50fb-5a0e-9dd8-69be0526e734)
‘Ah, there you are.’ The man who’s been looking into my shop hears me approaching and turns round at the sound of my footsteps.
I recognise him. Gareth Manning. Runs one of our neighbourhood’s abundance of estate agencies. I’ve overheard him several times in the street, braying with his colleagues about soaring house prices, boasting that if he learns a few phrases of Japanese he’ll be able to add a further thirty thousand to the price tag of a studio flat. He looks from me to his watch.
‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ he says.
‘So sorry I’m late.’ I quickly unlock and usher Gareth in through the door. Chopper and I follow. ‘Just give me a few moments,’ I say. I walk Chopper down to the basement and settle him onto his day bed, next to the fridges – which have been behaving themselves perfectly, although gobbling vast amounts of electricity since they have yet to accommodate anyone – and then retrace my steps.
‘Gareth, isn’t it?’ I say. We shake hands. ‘So how can I help you?’
‘I’ve come to measure up. And take pictures.’
‘For what?’ I’m bewildered because Gareth has the look of someone who’s made an appointment to see me.
‘The shop.’ Gareth flicks open the catches on his briefcase and produces a camera plus some gadget that shoots out a laser of light when he points it at the wall.
‘For what? Why?’ I’m baffled.
‘You know.’ Gareth sounds embarrassed, whereas before he was merely impatient to get on with his work. ‘The lease, and that.’
‘What about the lease?’
Now Gareth looks shifty. ‘Well, aren’t you surrendering it at the end of the month?’ He keeps his eyes studiously to the floor, then mutters, ‘Personally, I think you’ve made a good decision. No call for your kind of business around here, is there?’
If I weren’t so shocked, I’d tell Gareth that more people will die in our neighbourhood this year than will buy homes. And that we have only one undertaker, as opposed to half a dozen estate agents, all of whom seem to make a handsome living.
At least, that’s what I wish I’d said when I rerun this scene in my mind hours later. But for now, I’m dumbfounded. I can feel my face turning the colour of a pillar box. ‘Who told you that? About the lease?’
Before I can discover the source of Gareth’s misinformation, we are both startled by the sound of a ringing phone.
‘Excuse me,’ I mutter. Then, ‘Hello, Happy Endings. This is Nina speaking.’
Probably yet another cold caller trying to convince me I’m owed a fortune for payment protection insurance I know I never had in the first place.
But there’s nothing brash about the voice on the other end of the line. It’s female, shaky, and a bit muffled. ‘Is that … the undertaker?’
‘Yes, you’re through to Happy Endings,’ I repeat. ‘May I help you?’ My heart is racing. This is the call I have been waiting for. Gareth is fiddling with his laser pointy thing, and I’d like to order him to leave, but I don’t want to break off from this important phone call to speak to someone else, so I turn my back on him and listen.
‘I need to arrange a funeral.’
‘Of course. Might I have the name of the deceased, please?’
‘Kelli Shapiro.’
‘Kelli Shapiro?’ The Kelli Shapiro? The famous Kelli Shapiro? The woman who declared her two Oscars make splendid bookends, at least according to what I once read in Grazia. I’m relieved I’ve managed to keep the shock from my voice. ‘Let me just check the spelling on that,’ I say. ‘Kelli with a double l? And S-h-a-p-i-r-o.’
‘That’s right.’ A whisper.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you. If I give you the address, would you be able to come round to make the arrangements?’
‘Of course.’ I scribble it down. The big blue house facing the park. ‘What time would be convenient for you?’
‘Could you come now?’
‘Of course.’ I put down the phone.
Gavin has been packing up his briefcase. ‘Kelli Shapiro, eh?’ he says, trying and failing to quell his excitement. ‘Suicide? Drugs?’
Coldly, I escort him the few steps to the front door and seize the advantage. ‘Who told you to come here today?’
‘Can’t tell you that. Client confidentiality. You know how it is.’ Gareth hesitates, then adds, ‘Tell you what. Get me an introduction to sell Kelli’s house, and I’ll cut you in on my commission.’
I shut the door in his face.
12 (#ulink_ac899644-60d9-528f-9f17-b9a1c2c95e11)
Kelli Shapiro’s home is only a few minutes away. I force myself to walk slowly, although my mind is racing and my heart is hammering. Kelli’s next-of-kin must have seen my advert in the local paper, so it turns out I wasn’t squandering my start-up funds, after all.
Kelli Shapiro! Growing up, Mum was always teasing my dad about Kelli Shapiro. He had an enormous crush on her. ‘It’s just that she’s got magnificent comic timing,’ he’d protest. ‘Britain’s answer to Meg Ryan.’
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Karen Ross
Undertaker Nina Sherwood is full of good advice. For example, never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes. Nina is your average 30-year-old with a steady job, a nice home – and dead bodies in her basement. As an undertaker, she often prefers the company of the dead to the living – they’re obliging, good listeners and take secrets to the grave. Nina is on a one-woman mission to persuade her peers that passing on is just another part of life. But the residents of Primrose Hill are adamant that a funeral parlour is the last thing they need… and they will stop at nothing to close down her dearly beloved shop. When Nina’s ‘big break’ funeral turns out to be a prank, it seems like it’s the final nail in the coffin for her new business. That is, until a (tall, dark and) mysterious investor shows up out of the blue, and she decides to take a leap of faith. Because, after all, it’s her funeral… The perfect antidote to all those books about weddings, this book will make you laugh until you cry, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley’s Bridesmaids, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Good Place.
Five Wakes and a Wedding
KAREN ROSS
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Karen Ross 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock
Bells © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Karen Ross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008354350
Version: 2019-06-18
For Francesca
Table of Contents
Cover (#u7a660c48-637c-5049-a543-ab4a98759f53)
Title Page (#ubf066b55-4bb7-5e8b-af54-e2a8a4ad02d2)
Copyright (#uc3827f0d-5b50-503e-b04e-cc45974edbad)
Dedication (#u7bc79154-7a37-5ba0-afe5-d187515ec290)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Funeral Number One
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Funeral Number Two
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Funeral Number Three
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Funeral Number Four
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Funeral Number Five
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Acknowledgements
Nine Book Club Questions and a Suggestion
About the Author
About the Publisher
1 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
‘Nina! One of the fridges is making a weird noise.’ Gloria’s voice is a welcome distraction from my latest attempt at flower arranging. At least, until I realise what I’ve just heard.
Shit.
I abandon the cornflowers, delphiniums and rust-coloured foliage, dash through to the back room, and hurtle down the stairs that lead to the basement storage area. With every step I take, a measured ‘beep, beeep, beeeep’ – like the sound of hospital machinery hooked up to someone in a coma – grows louder.
‘Something must have tripped the alarm! What did you do to the fridge?’ I ask as Gloria comes into sight.
‘Nothing.’
Gloria is unruffled by my accusatory tone. She’s my housemate.
‘I was looking for the cleaning spray,’ she says. ‘To take the whitewash off the window.’
The fridge’s mournful signal of distress continues.
‘Maybe buying my equipment on eBay wasn’t such a good idea,’ I manage. ‘But at least there’s nothing in it yet.’
As if to prove it, I open the door to the beeping fridge.
The noise stops and is immediately replaced by the sound of a wooden object being hit – repeatedly – by a hammer. ‘That must be Edo!’
Gloria hears the relief in my voice. She manoeuvres herself around the fridge, squeezes my shoulder and says, ‘C’mon. Let’s go see.’
My hand is still on the fridge door. Tentatively, I close it.
Beep
Beeep.
Beeeep.
The damn thing isn’t even cold enough to keep an ice lolly from melting.
Whereas I am shivering with anticipation.
This is going to be an amazing day and I’m not going to let a dodgy fridge spoil a single moment. I shrug, and reopen the door to silence the skull-piercing sound. I’ll deal with it later. For now, I follow Gloria back the way I’ve just come.
Presuming we’re not being burgled and it really is Edo, the rhythmic hammering means he’s been as good as his word. He’s made me a shop sign and it seems he’s fixing it in place. He’s been hugely secretive about the design – ‘Nina, I’m an artist! It’ll be awesome!’ – and I’m finally going to get to see what he’s done.
Except Gloria can’t get out of the door.
She’s inched it open, only to find herself nose to nose with a hulking white Transit van parked extremely illegally and mostly on the pavement.
It’s Edo’s van and I realise he’s standing on the roof of it to put up the sign above the door. A good idea because it’s a lot cheaper than scaffolding. And as it’s before eight o’clock, when the Primrose Hill traffic wardens begin their daily rounds of terror, he’ll get away with it.
Gloria steps back from the door. ‘Best to let Edo get on with it,’ she advises. ‘Anyway, how are you feeling, sweets? Ready for the off?’
Everything’s been such a rush, there’s been no time to arrange those delphiniums let alone smell the roses. But there’s no need to pause for thought.
‘I’m ridiculously excited!’ I declare. ‘It’s like being a five-year-old on Christmas Eve. I’m so impatient for everything to start happening.’
I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago. I must have thought about it a thousand times, but never dared.
‘What about the fridge?’
‘Let’s not talk about the fridge.’
Gloria begins to clean the display window she helped me whitewash when we started fitting out my shiny new shop. I watch the murky coating that’s kept the outside world from seeing how I’ve transformed the space disappear and think about my own transformation.
I still can’t believe it. Only a couple of months ago, I was snuggled deep inside my own little comfort hole. It wasn’t until change started happening all around me that I even began to realise I’d been snared. Then fate gave me a push – although at the time, it felt more like a mighty kick up the arse – and after that everything fell into place.
Now here I am. Captain of my own ship. In charge of my own destiny. Queen of my own little slice of heaven.
I am a shopkeeper. Owner of a small business.
It’s a tiny business in every sense and, although I have no idea where my first customer will be coming from, I’m determined to be properly prepared. Fortunately, I have more than one fridge.
I do a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn and survey my miniature kingdom. Everything looks right. Better than right. Perfect. Between us – that’s me, Gloria and especially Edo – we’ve done a great job.
The shop had been empty for ages and we’ve definitely breathed new life into it. Floorboards sanded, filled, and painted white. Walls in a soft shade of blue. Gentle, subtle lighting. A small reception desk to the right of the door to make the shop look friendly and approachable to passers-by. A pair of comfy couches on either side of a fashionable low table. The whole effect is warm and inviting, and today, even before any of the lights are turned on, it seems the place is brighter than I’d imagined.
Ah, that would be because Gloria has finished with the window, and Edo has shifted the van. Which means—
Before I can complete that thought, Edo appears. Dressed in his usual uniform of ripped jeans and tight black T-shirt, his shaggy black hair frames a baby face that makes him look more like a sixth-former than a recent art school graduate. Swinging a hammer from his left hand he throws his surprisingly muscled right arm around my shoulder. Cheeky!
‘Come and look,’ he says. ‘I know I’ll be in trouble if the sign’s not dead straight. And I’m worried you’re not going to like it.’
Him and me both.
Most of the work in Edo’s portfolio is what you might – politely – call ‘out there’. Installations that make Tracy Emin’s ‘Bed’ look more sedate than a watercolour by Degas.
And all I need is a shop sign.
But my doubts disappear the moment I take in Edo’s work. Wow! He’s done me proud.
‘I don’t like it,’ I say in my best Simon Cowell impersonation, complete with theatrical pause. ‘I absolutely love it!’
It feels … it feels official. There for all the world to see. Classic hand-painted lettering. A shop sign that manages to be cool, clean, chic and somehow rather sexy – at least I think so – and announces: ‘HAPPY ENDINGS’.
I’m still admiring the sign when I realise my feet are no longer on the pavement. Edo has scooped me into his arms and we’re crossing the high street, dodging a dustcart and – as I begin to struggle – almost bumping into a Boris bike.
‘Put me down!’ I insist. ‘I’m about to become a pillar of the community.’ Edo laughs and carries me, undaunted, over the threshold of Happy Endings.
Gloria watches with a smirk that says, Didn’t I tell you Edo’s got a giant crush on you? But I figure he’s just grateful I let him continue to live in the shop between the time I signed the lease (he was squatting there, called it one of his own installations) and today, when I open my brand-new business.
‘Put her down and go sort the fridge,’ Gloria orders. ‘The alarm comes on every time you close the door.’
Edo retreats – I think he’s scared of Gloria – and a moment later, the beep-beeep-beeeeping resumes.
Gloria turns to me and says, ‘So what’s next?’
‘I need to get changed before Mum and Dad arrive.’
‘Before you do, I want to say how proud I am of you. The way you’ve pulled everything together so quickly. You’re going to be a huge success, sweets!’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help—’
I’m interrupted by Edo yelling, ‘Great! I can see what’s wrong. Don’t worry. It’s an easy fix.’
A moment later, Gloria and I flinch at the sharp thwack of a hammer against metal. Then silence. As if Edo has murdered the fridge with a single blow.
For some reason – nerves, most likely, because the destruction of a key piece of equipment really isn’t funny – I laugh. Then say to Gloria, ‘You know what? This is the best day of my life!’
‘Really?’ Gloria looks surprised. She knows I’m not the sentimental type.
‘Well, maybe apart from the day Mum and Dad finally weakened and let me have a kitten … or that time at uni with Lin, when we took an impulse trip to Dieppe and ended up in Brussels. And the day I passed my driving test. Sixth time lucky.’
‘Didn’t know that,’ she says. ‘But it explains a lot!’
Before she can tease me any further, Edo’s back. ‘Loose connection with the fan,’ he says. ‘Fixed. Shall I sort out these flowers?’ He notices my doubtful expression and adds reassuringly, ‘I used to arrange them at college when we did the still-life module.’
‘That would be great.’ We haven’t known Edo very long, but he’s a definite asset, and fast turning into a friend.
I go through to the back room and begin to change out of my paint-stained denims and into my working clothes. I’ve been dithering for days about what to wear. I finally settled on tapered black linen trousers, teamed with a turquoise top and my smartest black jacket. The one with turned-back cuffs lined with turquoise and pink patterned silk. And, of course, my lucky silver earrings. I’d feel naked without them. It’s an outfit that makes me look professional but still me. I give myself a final once-over in the mirror, quickly apply a fresh coat of lip gloss, then rejoin my friends.
Edo has worked magic with the flowers. Gloria has finished with the windows. The fridge is behaving itself.
In less than an hour, Happy Endings will be open for business. And any moment now Mum and Dad will arrive to inspect what they’ve taken to calling ‘The Investment’.
Dad stepped in after the bank took all of three minutes to turn down my application for a start-up loan. ‘You’re to take my pension pot and put it into your business.’ After he left the navy, Dad went into the construction business. Without his help, Happy Endings would never have got off the drawing board. He’s got so much faith in me it’s scary. Then again, as he says, I’ve got a great location on a busy high street, slap bang in the middle of London, how can I fail?
And I know I can do this. It’s what I want more than anything. From now on I’m devoting myself to business. Nothing else matters. Not that there is much else, to be honest. Other than Gloria and Edo, I don’t exactly have a red-hot social life. My choice, I know. Over the past five years, I’ve become a bit of a recluse.
But today, I can’t even begin to describe my sense of purpose. I’m nervous, yet exhilarated.
In short, I’ve never felt more alive.
Which is a bit odd perhaps. Because I see dead people. All the time.
It’s an occupational hazard.
2 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Whenever I meet someone new and we get to the bit where they ask me, ‘So what do you do?’ and I say I’m an undertaker, I get one of three reactions:
1. ‘You’re kidding!’
2. ‘Eeuw.’ Usually accompanied by that two-fingers-down-the-throat gesture.
3. ‘So, okay, when you were small did you pull the wings off flies?’
I wish I could make people understand. It’s not torture. Quite the opposite. I love my job. And is it really so strange?
Think of it this way. I’m an organiser. An event planner. A good listener. A shoulder to cry on. A public speaker. A negotiator. A seamstress. An accomplished multi-tasker. A stylist. I can remove a stain from almost any fabric, I’m a dab hand with a make-up brush, and I’m full of good advice. For example: never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes.
When the unexpected happens, I am expected to rise to the occasion. And I do.
Do I touch dead people? Yes, of course.
What do they feel like? Mostly, they feel cold.
Am I weird? I don’t think so …
I’m just a typical millennial who enjoys shopping, movies, holidays and – mysteriously – housework. I probably keep myself to myself a bit too much but I’ve always enjoyed my own company and I’ve never been great in a crowd.
More than anything else, I’m proud to be an undertaker. Not to mention enormously proud to be opening my own shop. It’s the biggest leap of my life and it still seems unreal – particularly when you think that until recently, I was a semi-disgraced ex-employee.
My life started to go pear-shaped late last year when the business I worked for, a firm of undertakers run by the original owner’s great-great-great-grandson, was taken over by a huge funeral group with headquarters in New York and branches on every continent.
As soon as the deal was done we were summoned to meet our new manager, Jason Chung. ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ he promised us.
But everything did.
Being accountable to a manager who’d never even carried a coffin was a huge change in itself. And that was just the beginning.
My former boss, the great-great-great grandson, was gone in a matter of weeks. He quit the day our new owners announced that from now on we would only be offering headstones made from Chinese granite, a decision that was all about profit rather than the best interests of our clients.
Even while two sets of lawyers continued to argue about whether or not the name of the family firm could be removed – it’s there to this day, because the new owners know the public prefer to deal with supposedly genuine local firms – our professional vocabulary began to change. At staff training sessions, words like ‘care’, ‘service’, ‘respectful’ and ‘time of need’ were cast aside in favour of sentences that were strong on ‘sales’, ‘targets’, ‘commission’ and ‘underperforming’.
That sort of mindset makes me want to throw up. In fact, at a subsequent regional training day, I was overheard during the coffee break saying something to that effect – how was I supposed to know it was Jason Chung’s mother standing behind me? – and my comments resulted in me being sent to Siberia.
Not the place. Even though the new owners have business interests all over Europe, so far as I know, the people of Russia are not yet obliged to be commemorated with slabs of Chinese stone. No, Siberia was our name for the back office. To call it an office was actually an insult to offices.
Thanks to Jason’s mother’s need to overshare my private conversation, I spent ten days there, closeted in a small windowless space that used to be a store room, with only the low throb of the mortuary fridges on the other side of a thin partition for company.
Jason himself cloaked my punishment with a mirthless smile. ‘This is an excellent opportunity for Nina to focus on her administrative skills without any risk of distraction,’ he told everyone.
In practical terms that translated as one mountain of paperwork swiftly followed by another. A cross between school detention and prison. Gloria insisted my incarceration breached several employment laws, and since she’s almost a qualified lawyer she’s probably correct.
Then again, my solitary confinement wasn’t entirely bad. I enjoyed breaking the office-hours monotony by going through all the product catalogues and samples that got sent to us in the post. I didn’t usually get to see these – although I have stacks of them now – so it was interesting to discover you could pick up a third-hand hearse for under four grand. Which I seriously considered once I got into the preparations for Happy Endings, although in the end I splashed out on a simple pale blue van with my business name and contact details discreetly on the side and a properly equipped interior from a company that was offering a cheap finance deal. I think it looks uplifting yet still properly respectful.
Happy Endings may be a shoe-string start-up, but if it weren’t for what happened on my final day at work, it probably wouldn’t exist at all. So I shall always be grateful Jason Chung’s mother is a sneak.
Here’s what happened on that last day.
I’d spent most of the morning on the phone, unenthusiastically informing recent clients that by completing a customer satisfaction survey they could win a weekend in Devon. Then, having finished with the post, I moved on to the next batch of papers, and discovered a pile of burial applications in need of processing. They were going to take me at least forty-five minutes – always supposing the Wi-Fi in Siberia wasn’t playing up again – and I was so not in the mood.
It was a quarter to one, fifteen minutes before my lunchbreak was supposed to start, and I was feeling peckish. I’d been trying to stick to the 5:2 diet and this was one of the days when I was not required to starve myself.
I straightened the applications, grabbed my coat and umbrella – the April showers were in full flood – and prepared to make a dash for the deli next to Queen’s Park tube station.
I knew that if Jason saw me leave so early, he’d do that annoying looking-ostentatiously-at-his-Rolex-while-tapping-the-glass thing that was supposed to remind me he’s the boss. Happily, he was nowhere in sight and by the time I got safely beyond the reception desk I was weighing the relative merits of tuna and cucumber on sourdough versus a jumbo salt beef hot wrap. And a chocolate orange cupcake, of course. Or maybe the vegetarian choice: a trio of chocolate orange cupcakes.
There was only the door standing between me and seven hundred calories, and I flung it open, umbrella at the ready. This particular April shower had turned into a full-blown downpour and the raindrops were bouncing off the pavement so hard I could actually hear them.
It must have been the thought of my lunchtime cupcake that made me fail to look where I was going. I stepped onto the street and literally fell over a woman for whom the phrase ‘drowned rat’ could have been invented.
She was sitting – slumped was probably more accurate – in the doorway.
Before I could apologise and ask if she was okay, I realised she was anything but.
And before I could speak the woman grabbed my leg and looked up into my face. She was about my age, dressed in a jacket and skirt that looked as though they’d been left out to drip-dry. Her pretty face was framed by two bedraggled blonde tendrils and her mascara was in ruins.
The pressure on my leg increased. ‘Please,’ the woman sobbed. ‘You have to help me.’
3 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
‘So two years we are here. My husband Grigor and me. We are sad to leave home but things are better in England …’
Whenever I think about the drowned rat – her name is Anna – which is often, I am grateful I took an early lunchbreak that day. It’s as if fate decided our two paths needed to collide.
Sitting in the deli with her, I had remembered her story right away. ‘Grigor Kovaks,’ I said. ‘I read about it—’ I stopped myself from reciting the details of the horrific accident that had left Anna’s husband in hospital with life-threatening injuries.
‘Yes, Grigor. My lovely Grigor.’ Her smile was so full of love it pierced my heart. ‘We find a flat in Camberwell and Grigor works nights for a bank in Canary Wharf. Security guard. And I am a cleaner. Then three weeks ago, on the Tuesday, Grigor is offered an extra shift, and of course we say yes.’
I listened carefully. It’s so important not to interrupt. Being there for someone at the worst time in their life, letting them tell their own story in their own way, can make it just a tiny bit better.
‘He is so proud of his bicycle,’ Anna continued. ‘Cleans and polishes it like it is a sports car. He needs his bike. The fares on your underground, they are so expensive. Not like in Budapest … After the accident I am living more or less at the hospital. Grigor stays in the coma. He looks asleep and I keep waiting for him to wake up. But nothing. And … last night I agree with the doctors that the machines are turned off. Then later the nurses were so kind but I could not speak to them. I need a little time on my own. So I go to the hospital chapel to pray for my man and when I come back to the ward, Grigor is not there.’ Anna started to cry. Fortunately, the deli was filling up fast, and nobody took any notice of us.
She took a sip of her now cold espresso, composed herself, and continued. ‘And that is when they tell me he has been taken already to the funeral place. Your funeral place.’
Oh God.
Please.
No.
I think I know what’s coming next. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.
A phone call to a ‘friendly’ undertaker during the night.
Money changing hands.
And someone like Anna Kovaks, a woman who’s just lost someone she loves and who has not slept for thirty-six hours, delivered like a lamb to the slaughter into the grubby paws of a business that sees every new client as a cash machine.
If this were BC – Before Chung – it would have been unthinkable. Our standards were always so much higher.
Gently, I encouraged Anna to continue.
‘When I arrive, the man seems very nice. Very full of sympathy.’
Full of something else if you ask me, but I keep my professional face in place.
‘He takes me into his office, and asks me many questions about my Grigor.’ For a moment, Anna’s voice faltered, but then – as is so often the case – she summoned her inner strength. ‘I tell this man, this Mr Chung of yours, how Grigor and I meet when we are both twelve years old. That we grow up together. That we have so many big dreams. And how our life begins when we come to London. And now Grigor has been accepted to do teacher training in September. He is so good at mathematics. They put him on the fast track and he will work at a big school in Beckenham.’
Anna drained her coffee cup, then fumbled in her bag and produced a soggy linen handkerchief. I recognised it at once. Jason orders them by the dozen. ‘Quality handkerchiefs make a statement about our business,’ he informed us at a staff meeting. I happened to agree, but in this case Jason’s largesse meant we were putting up our prices. Again.
Anna continued, ‘Then Mr Chung tells me it is an honour and a privilege that your firm has been chosen to make the arrangements. That is how it works in England. The hospital decides on the funeral place, right?’
A million times wrong.
‘So first of all, he invites me to choose the … the coffin. I pick the one that costs the least. But Mr Chung tells me that as Grigor is going to be a professional man, a teacher, it is a bad choice. He wants me to pick the one made of ma … ma—’
‘Mahogany,’ I supplied.
Anna nodded. ‘And then he tells me about embalming. It needs to be done, right?’
Absolutely not.
‘Mr Chung says I will want Grigor to look his best when relatives come to visit him before the funeral. I tell him that everyone is in Hungary, and he seems very glad. Before I say anything, he picks up the phone and talks about re … re—’
‘Repatriating the body.’
‘Yes. But I can tell from the conversation that this will be much too expensive. I explain we have started saving for the deposit on a flat, but only recently. And that I must do what Grigor wanted for us most. Stay here in London and raise our child to have the best chance in life.’ Anna noticed my startled face and softly added, ‘Fourteen weeks. The two weeks before … before the accident … they were the happiest time we ever spent. Now I truly believe that the peanut – that was our name for the baby – is a gift from God. I have to think that. Or …’ Anna was unable to continue.
‘So what did Mr Chung suggest?’ I prompted.
‘He said he would find Grigor a nice home at a cemetery in a part of London called Kilburn. He says it is a very nice district, right?’
Anna has obviously never been there.
‘And there will be many flowers. And car for me to ride in alone. And a stone to remember Grigor that will come all the way from China. I want to ask questions, but your Mr Chung, he talks very fast. He tells me we shall need a double plot so we can be together always. And that it will be a good idea for me to take out a funeral plan for myself at the same time. He makes me very nervous, Mr Chung, because I can tell all this will be very expensive.’
I’m surprised only that Jason didn’t insist on a horse-drawn hearse accompanied by the skirl of bagpipes and a juvenile chimney sweep.
Anna resumed, ‘In the end I tell Mr Chung that I shall spend all our savings for the flat deposit. Every penny. We have eleven hundred pounds in the Santander account. And you know what?’
Sadly, yes.
Having snatched Grigor’s body from the hospital in order to hold it to ransom in the corporate fridge, Jason Chung had been deeply unimpressed with the size of Anna’s life savings.
‘I knew it was expensive to live in London. But I never imagined it will cost so much to die.’ Anna’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘But Mr Chung says he wants to help me give Grigor the ceremony he deserves, and that he has a solution. I am not to worry because there is a nice organisation that will help me. They are called Doshdotcom. You know them?’
Kill me now.
Jason Chung actually suggested this poor woman, deep in shock on the worst day of her life – someone who was expecting a baby and had no regular income – should take out a payday loan?
I had no idea what to say.
‘By now I am very worried.’ Anna looked me in the eyes. ‘Mr Chung says that in England a cheap funeral costs about eight thousand pounds. That is correct, yes?’
‘No.’ My single word came out as a whisper, because I could barely trust myself to talk at all.
A weak smile. ‘So I do the right thing. When Mr Chung says he will fetch an application form for me to pay for the funeral I run away. I need time to think. But then I fall over outside your shop. And then you come. Like you are running away also. And you fall over me.’
I reached across the table and squeezed Anna’s hand. ‘I’m so glad that happened,’ I said. ‘Mr Chung … Mr Chung hasn’t worked for our firm for very long. Please accept my apology for your … your experience with him. I hope you will allow me to put things right. Here’s what we’re going to do.’
I began by reassuring Anna that she didn’t need to get herself into debt to give Grigor a respectful funeral. She might even be entitled to a government grant to help cover the costs. But then I realised she was no longer listening.
She was staring at Jason Chung. Marching towards us, a trail of plump raindrops scattering in his wake. His suit looked as though it was midway through an intensive wash cycle, and he was angrier than I’d ever seen him.
‘Mrs Kovaks,’ he said. ‘Found you at last. So glad Nina’s been looking after you.’ A meaningful glare in my direction. ‘Let me escort you back to the office, so we can sign those forms and ensure your husband has the dignified funeral he would have wanted. I’ve settled the bill,’ he added. ‘Coffees on me.’
So Jason Chung shepherded us out of the deli as if we were two felons under arrest. We were waiting for a gap in the traffic so we could cross the road when a cab pulled over a few yards in front of us and its passenger got out.
‘Quick!’ I grabbed Anna by the hand and dragged her into the taxi. ‘Just drive straight ahead,’ I ordered the driver. The cab had stopped on double red lines, so he didn’t need to be told twice.
As our getaway vehicle sped away, I turned round in time to see my boss’s furious face. His clenched fists were high in the air and he looked almost as though he was doing a rain dance.
In other circumstances I might even have laughed.
4 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
That’s what I said that night, when I told Gloria the story of Anna Kovaks. ‘In other circumstances, I might even have laughed. Jason was bouncing up and down on the spot, waving his arms around as if he was putting a curse on me! Or a spell to make everyone believe that the more you love someone, the more you need to spend on their funeral.’
‘So the whole thing was what you might call an R-I-P off?’
Gloria said it as though it were a pun I hadn’t heard before. I scrubbed the cast-iron orange saucepan that went with my dad to the Falklands War (and came safely home again) even harder, removing the final traces of our bolognese supper.
Truth be told, I was a bit irritated. If Gloria hadn’t wanted to know what happened to me at work that day, she probably shouldn’t have asked. On the one hand, we both knew she was only making a rhetorical enquiry before launching into tonight’s instalment of her Disastrous Relationship with Thrice-Wed Fred. But just this once, Fred's latest crimes could surely wait until we’d resolved something more serious.
My entire life.
I’m the first to admit I haven’t exactly cracked the work–life balance thing. It’s almost all work – not least because whenever there’s the faintest whiff of romance in the air, I tend immediately to think about my husband’s funeral. The only place my life is properly rounded is at the hips.
Gloria, to her credit, realised from my tense posture at the sink that despite my light-hearted remark about Jason, his behaviour towards Anna was no laughing matter. The two of us had shared a home long enough for her to know what I was going to say next.
‘So you’re going to resign,’ she pre-empted me.
‘What else can I do?’
‘Let’s back up a moment,’ Gloria said. ‘You did absolutely the right thing, taking Anna to the no-frills funeral services in Putney. Eight hundred and fifty quid as opposed to thousands of pounds she simply didn’t have.’ Gloria rose from the kitchen table and headed for our emergency supplies cupboard.
This was definitely going to be a two-bottles-of-wine Wednesday.
‘I take it Jason will release the body?’ she asked.
An invisible hand grabbed my stomach and twisted. Until then, I’d completely overlooked – repressed, more likely – the fact that the bloke who started up his budget cremations business because he was scandalised by the cost of his own mother’s funeral would need to liaise with my employers if he was going to have Grigor’s body to cremate. I folded a damp tea towel into quarters, gave the glass hob a quick polish, then sat down at our kitchen table and reached gratefully for my fresh glass of wine.
‘Jason won’t have any choice,’ I said. ‘Which means I need to hand in my notice first thing tomorrow. Otherwise, I’m as bad as he is.’
‘What about the others? Surely when you tell them what happened, they’ll help you take Jason to task? Force him to behave properly from now on.’
As if.
Our staff turnover had been horrendous since the business was sold. Apart from a couple of the senior drivers, I’d been there longer than anyone else. Five years.
The newcomers seemed to have bought into Jason’s marketing-speak: monthly sales targets and promises of big bonuses. For all I knew—
No, surely it was impossible that everyone except me was up-selling in the worst possible way?
‘I’m not certain I can count on anyone for support,’ I said. ‘So the only question is, how much do you get on the dole these days?’ I managed to sound a lot less frightened than I felt, as I started to face up to the true cost of my good deed. Ah well, I’d experimented with just about every diet in the universe, so perhaps the Poverty Diet would succeed where the rest had failed.
‘I won’t be out of work for long.’ It was a promise to myself as much as to Gloria, although I was already wondering where my next job was coming from. Independent funeral companies were becoming an endangered species, and my battle charge towards the moral high ground, in flagrant defiance of corporate policy, was unlikely to impress any of the big chains – none of which I had ever wanted to work for anyway.
Gloria broke into my alarming thoughts. ‘Sweetie, I’ve been telling you for three years,’ she said. ‘You pay me too much rent.’
Gloria is – not to put too fine a point on it – rich. Which is to say, Gloria’s dad is an ex-banker whose name was never far from the headlines a few years ago, usually alongside words like ‘disgraced’ and ‘fat cat’. These days, he seems to spend most of his time playing golf and gently taking the piss out of his adored only child for choosing to work at a community law centre. ‘Sins of the fathers are one thing,’ he’d chided last time he visited, ‘but surely you could do good in a more lucrative way? There’s plenty of women eager to pay handsomely for good divorce lawyers.’
This house, the house we live in here in Kentish Town, was Gloria’s eighteenth birthday present. (Imagine that. I thought I was really privileged when Mum and Dad celebrated my coming of age with driving lessons.) And since the community law centre no longer has any budget for staff, my rent money is what Gloria lives off. Topped up by her trust fund, admittedly. Then again, for someone who needn’t work at all if she chose not to, Gloria is pretty damn dedicated to her various causes. It’s one of the things I love about her. However, I wasn’t about to become her latest charity case and I resolved that first thing in the morning I’d start putting out feelers for a new job.
I drained my wine glass. ‘I’m going to go and compose my resignation letter. I’ll send it by email.’
‘First of all,’ Gloria topped me up with a generous glug of Malbec before I could get my glass to the safety of the sink, ‘listen to me a moment.’ I knew what she was going to say, and sure enough … ‘It’s always easier to get a job when you’re already employed.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So why not go marching in there tomorrow and apologise for your momentary lapse in professionalism which interrupted his bereavement consultation, or whatever it is he’s calling it this week …’
‘Intake appointment,’ I muttered.
‘Whatevs. Anyway, my point is that you can stick to your principles without becoming a martyr. Take your salary for a few more weeks, while you get yourself sorted somewhere else. And leave with a good reference.’
I could see the logic in what Gloria was saying. And thinking about it, none of my erstwhile colleagues had gone to work for rival funeral directors. One took a job as a cosmetics consultant at the Westfield Centre, another went travelling, and the third member of what used to be our team said there were no decent jobs out there, just junior positions with zero hours contracts, so he went off to retrain as a hotel manager.
None of that was for me. I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do.
My job is part of who I am.
What was I going to do?
What was I going to do?
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and visualised. It’s a really useful technique I use whenever I need to adjust to change. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself going off to work as … as … all I could see was Siberia, the miserable little back office at work where, less than twelve hours ago, I had been – frankly – a lot happier than I was right then.
So maybe my brain was telling me change was unnecessary. But in my heart I already knew that if I kept drawing my salary, even for a little while, it would be a betrayal of my profession.
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll just go and type my resignation letter. See how it feels to put into words the fact that Jason is a blemish on our industry. Perhaps I’ll suggest he’s the person who should quit, rather than me.’
Before Gloria could say anything more, the doorbell rang.
So far as I knew, we weren’t expecting visitors. Not unless …
By the way Gloria leapt to answer, I wondered if Thrice-Wed Fred had decided to pay an unscheduled nocturnal visit.
But no, Gloria came back alone. An envelope in her hand. ‘Came by courier,’ she said, sliding it across the kitchen table to me.
Inside the big brown envelope with my name on it, there was a small white envelope with my name on it. And inside that, a single sheet of paper. Also with my name on it.
Dear Ms Sherwood,
Please accept this letter as formal notice of your dismissal for a wholly unacceptable act of gross misconduct committed today.
Our HR Department will calculate any outstanding salary and holiday pay and remit to your bank account in due course, and your personal belongings will be forwarded to you by courier tomorrow. I should add that you are no longer welcome on our premises.
On a personal note, I am extremely disappointed by your behaviour and respectfully suggest you are probably better suited to employment in a not-for-profit enterprise.
Jason Chung
There went my chances of a glowing reference. Wordlessly, I handed the letter to Gloria.
By unspoken mutual consent, we opened a third bottle of wine. And since there was no longer any need to debate whether or not I needed to resign, we soon moved on to discuss Gloria’s favourite topic of conversation. Fred Carpenter QC. Visiting Professor of Law at one of London’s most prestigious universities. Older than Gloria and me by at least ten years. George Clooney hair. The fathomless brown eyes of a Labrador puppy. A silver tongue that effortlessly charms juries, judges and almost every woman under the age of eighty. And an ego the size of Uranus.
Also answers to the name of Thrice-Wed Fred. Or rather he doesn’t. That’s what Gloria and I started to call him when he appeared on the scene late last year, before Gloria got embroiled with him. Foolishly embroiled, if you ask me, although whenever I’ve tried gently to remind Gloria that Fred’s a married man, she turns somewhere between defensive and downright shirty.
Then again, who am I to judge?
Two months ago, I had a one-night stand with Jason Chung.
5 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Jason and I happened because of a train strike. That and a serious, alcohol-fuelled misjudgement.
I was supposed to travel to Nottingham to collect a hearse from another business in our group. (We’d acquired a National Logistics Director who continually shuffled vehicles from one branch to the next, ‘To ensure maximum capacity at all times,’ as he so charmlessly put it.) The strike meant I couldn’t go, but rather than leave it an extra day, Jason announced the two of us would drive there together.
‘A great opportunity for me to brief you about the new commission opportunities from engraving,’ he threatened. ‘We’ve partnered with a firm that’s going to pay us by the letter.’
I’m afraid my immediate thought was that Jason’s Holy Grail of a client would be a recently deceased nanny whose compliant relatives could be persuaded to put ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ on her tombstone.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Okay is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary. It can cover a multitude of sins. On that occasion, it meant that since I had no choice in the matter, I’d do my best to behave like a good employee.
As it happened, our journey up the M1 was a revelation. Jason’s A–Z lecture about payment-by-the-letter – all I remember now is that capitals were apparently more valuable to the firm than words in lower case, so make that ‘SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS’ – drew thankfully to a close just before we reached Dunstable. Then, to my surprise, the further we got from London, the more he started to relax.
I’m a good listener – another part of the job – and Jason is a great talker. Most of what he says is total bollocks of course, but on this occasion, he chose a topic that aroused my curiosity. He started talking about himself.
‘I know you think I’ve got it easy, Nina.’ Jason shrugged his shoulders and gave me a sidelong glance that also incorporated the interior of his ridiculous, show-off Porsche. ‘But at least you’re doing this job because you choose to.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s either this or my parents threatened to banish me to bloody Beijing.’ That was the first time I’d heard Jason swear. ‘It’s not as if I’ve ever set foot in China in the first place,’ he continued. ‘We’re the American side of the family.’
My wet-behind-the-ears boss was a nephew of the ultimate owners of our business and beneficiary of unimaginable wealth, luxury and jobs for the boys. Or so the office grapevine had it. But once Jason started talking, a different picture emerged.
Boarding school in New Hampshire. Business school in Pennsylvania. ‘And then they told me – told me – I’d have to do this job for the next three years. And that unless my sales figures were fifteen per cent higher than every other manager in the group, I wouldn’t have any say in my next assignment.’
‘Okay.’
‘Not okay, at all. I wish you’d stop saying that. It really pisses me off.’
Blimey. Jason Chung was suddenly turning into a human being, right before my eyes.
‘Okay.’ But this time, I giggled as I said it, and Jason laughed, too. ‘So what is it you’d rather be doing?’
‘What I really want is to be a landscape gardener. When I told my parents, you’d have thought I wanted to run away and join the circus. Or the Democrats.’
By the time we arrived in Nottingham, Jason was babbling on about the joy he gets from growing flowers and vegetables in containers on his balcony. I’d learned about the correct time of year to set out poppies, plant onion sets, and seed sweet peas. Also about a bumper crop of strawberries, fit to grace Wimbledon. And then there was Jason’s relentless fight against super-slugs the size of a prizefighter’s fist. It was almost like having a conversation with Gloria, whose latest project involved making a wildflower meadow in a dustbin lid.
Once we’d arrived at our destination, the paperwork for transferring the hearse to our branch took about twenty minutes.
Back in the car park, Jason watched me get into the hearse and adjust the vehicle’s seat and mirrors. I wound down the window and said, ‘I’ll race you back to London!’
Jason produced the keys to his Porsche. ‘Okay.’ A grin. Then, ‘Tell you what. We’re almost into the rush hour so the M1’s going to be really busy. I know a nice little place just off the motorway. Follow me there and we’ll grab a bite to eat.’
‘Okay,’ I said. Driving in the slow lane surrounded by packs of impatient lorries and white van fleets isn’t my idea of fun, so I was super happy to agree to divert myself with food until the traffic thinned out.
Twenty-five minutes later, I was beginning to wonder if Jason had changed his mind. I had no idea where we were – maybe he’d decided to take the scenic route back to London – but just as I heard my stomach rumble, he pulled over into a little red brick development that boasted both a Little Chef and a Travelodge.
I got out of the hearse and said, ‘You certainly know how to spoil a girl.’
‘Sorry.’ Jason was flustered. ‘The place I was looking for seems to have disappeared.’
He obviously wasn’t about to tell me he couldn’t find it.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’m starving. Let’s see what the Little Chef has to offer.’
It turned out the Little Chef was able to come up with a decent glass of wine, which washed down quite well alongside our meal. I’d meant to have mushroom soup, but when the waitress arrived to take our order, the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘I’ll have the foot-long hot dog with a side of beef chilli and as many chips as you can fit on the plate.’ Jason opted for a more sedate plate of ham, eggs and chips.
By the time we’d finished eating, it was dark outside. Jason excused himself from the table and I thought he was settling the bill, but then our waitress arrived with another glass of wine. Five minutes passed … ten. Had Jason done a runner? No, there he was outside, talking intently on his phone. Ah well. I had nothing on that evening, so I might as well relax.
I sat there thinking about my plans for the weekend – a trip to the cinema and Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad in Southampton – until Jason returned, accompanied by a pancake stack fighting for space on the plate with a giant dollop of vanilla ice cream.
‘Really sorry,’ he said. ‘Office stuff. I thought you’d be able to manage dessert, though. What’s that you were singing to yourself?’ he added. ‘Ah, got it! Mary Poppins! My mum loves that movie!’
After we’d finished, we made our way back to the car park. ‘I’ve had a good day,’ Jason said. ‘Much better than being stuck in the office. See you tomorrow.’ He stood and watched me get into the hearse.
But when I turned the ignition, nothing happened.
‘Must be the battery,’ Jason said. ‘Let’s take a look.’ A minute or so later he confessed, ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. We’re going to need a garage.’
And that was how – once we’d discovered the hearse needed a new alternator that couldn’t be located until the morning – we came to spend the night at the Travelodge.
One thing I liked about Jason was that he seemed unruffled by the fact our simple errand was not turning out as planned. He took charge of the situation, booked us a couple of rooms and invited me to join him in the bar.
Three drinks later, I was bold enough to say, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t tell me to sleep in the hearse while you drove back to London. Maybe I’ve misjudged you.’
‘Oh, I’m probably as bad as you think. Although not entirely without manners.’ Jason topped up our glasses. ‘But Nottingham can pay for the repair bill and the cost of our accommodation. And our dinner. I’m damned if it’s coming off my bottom line.’ This sounded much more like the Jason Chung I knew and was obliged to tolerate for forty hours a week. ‘But let’s not talk about work. Tell me about you, Nina. I know nothing about you.’
As someone who’s much more comfortable operating a spotlight than basking in its glow, I hate it when I’m invited to talk about myself. But more than that … if I’m honest, my personal life has been a wilderness for longer than I care to confess.
I’m an only child. I gave up line-dancing when it became evident I have two left feet. Apart from Gloria, I have a few close friends I met at uni – people I can call at four in the morning and know they’ll be there for me – but unfortunately none live in London. The pancakes I rustle up on a Sunday morning are infinitely superior to those of Little Chef. And the nearest thing I do have to a personal life, by which I mean a romantic life, is listening to Gloria’s ill-advised adventures with Thrice-Wed Fred.
My continuing silence was becoming uncomfortable for us both.
‘Okaaaay,’ I finally began. ‘I live in Kentish Town …’ And within five minutes, I was telling a story about Gloria’s plan to infiltrate the Regent’s Park Garden Festival with a pop-up edible hedge that involves bareroot blackberries, cherry plums, crab apples and wild pears, all the while hoping Jason had forgotten he asked about me.
Sure enough, it worked. Soon, he was jabbering about the ins and outs of sweetcorn, and I was beginning to think he might even shape up into a suitable replacement for Thrice-Wed Fred.
But Jason had other ideas.
And I had no inkling, until he walked me to the door of my room, took me in his arms and kissed me. Rather well.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that for hours,’ he murmured. ‘Mysterious Nina. Beautiful Nina.’ Then he kissed me again.
It wasn’t the right time to tell my boss I hadn’t had sex for five years.
Ever since …
An image of my husband’s funeral. Ryan. His coffin, draped in the regimental colours, danced in front of my eyes. Was I really going to spend the rest of my life as a born-again virgin?
Apparently not.
Work 101: Never sleep with the boss.
Never.
Ever.
(Not that we got much sleep.)
When I woke the next morning, I felt …
More than anything else, I felt reassured to know my body hadn’t seized up through lack of use. But I was under no illusion. The night before had been about opportunity and circumstance rather than any genuine emotional connection.
And that suited me just fine.
I know Gloria thinks it’s time I moved on with my life, even though she’s never put it quite that way. Mum and Dad, for their part, would be thrilled if I turned up with a new man, although they know better than to say so. We had that particular discussion the Christmas before last and it ended with me sobbing that unless I could be sure of a relationship as strong and long-lasting as theirs, I’d far rather spend the rest of my life alone.
After all the pain I’ve been through – not to mention the guilt, however misplaced, that I was in some way to blame – why take any more risks? I only have to think how often Thrice-Wed Fred fails to deliver on his empty promises to Gloria. At least if I’m alone, the only person with the power to disappoint me is myself.
I was having this conversation with myself because, thankfully, I had woken up alone. Jason was long gone. His Porsche, too. An hour or so later, while I was still waiting for the alternator and the mechanic to show up, I discovered a note in my jacket pocket. That was wonderful. You look beautiful when you’re asleep and I can’t wait to see you again. J xxx
No!
There was only one thing to do.
I sent Jason a text. LAST NIGHT DIDN’T HAPPEN, it said. PLEASE DELETE.
6 (#u72c9106b-a016-5231-93c5-2f50ea8165e8)
Jason was never the same after that. He was worse. Never missing a chance to criticise my work, berating me for missing sales targets, and even giving me a verbal warning for being five minutes late.
And yet …
It’s Jason I have to thank for this huge makeover in my life. If he hadn’t fired me, Happy Endings wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be standing here in my new shop today.
Actually, I’m sitting at my reception desk. It’s been two hours since Gloria and Edo left to take Mum and Dad out to breakfast, and I flipped the sign on the door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’. I’ve passed the time by making sure I understand the various software packages that came with my new computer, dusting the display shelves (twice) and making sure the fridge in the basement continues to behave itself.
I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, which means I need to run to the loo again, but before I can leave my desk, the door opens and a woman comes in.
She’s five foot nothing, dressed head to toe in a bright orange ensemble of blouse, skirt, tights and clumpy boots. Her outfit clashes magnificently with her thick, shoulder-length hair, dyed in that unfortunate yet ubiquitous shade Gloria and I always refer to as menopause red, topped by a purple fedora that adds several inches to her height.
‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m Sybille Newman. Your neighbour.’
The shop next door to mine is The Primrose Poppadum – ‘Modern Organic Indian Classics, Free from Dairy, MSG, Wheat & Egg’ according to its sign – and Sybille Newman doesn’t fit my image of a restaurateur. Then again, I’m probably not her idea of an undertaker.
‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I say cautiously.
‘So you’re the owner, are you?’ Sybille Newman has a cut-glass accent and she sounds cross.
‘Yes, I’m Nina Sherwood. Today’s my first day and—’
‘Never mind that. I’ve come about the roof.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The roof. My husband and I live above the dreadful Indian restaurant.’ Sybille gestures towards The Primrose Poppadum with a flash of her Guantanamo orange fingernails. ‘Make sure you never go there – I’ve seen them arriving with carrier bags full of stuff from Asda. Organic my foot! We’re trying to get them shut down because of the dreadful smells. My husband has a respiratory disorder and they’re making it so much worse. But that’s not the point. The roof is leaking and we need a new one.’ She looks expectantly at me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘But I don’t understand why your roof is any of my business.’
‘It’s a single structure that covers both properties.’ Sybille Newman frowns at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse. ‘Ned and I have lived here for twenty-three years, and even when the betting shop was downstairs, back in the nineties, there was trouble with the roof.’ She leans on my reception desk and adds, ‘We’ve had it replaced twice, but now there’s water leaking into our living room again every time it rains. We’ve got a good jobbing builder who’s been patching it up, but we shouldn’t have to be doing that at our own expense. Not when it’s supposed to be a shared cost. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the purlin’s rotted. And there’s a ticking noise coming from the rafters that keeps us awake every night. Woodworm probably. Or beetles.’ Sybille smiles slyly. She seems almost pleased at the prospect. ‘So I’ll get some roofers round to supply estimates and let you have copies.’
‘Okay.’ I presume she wants me to pass them on to my managing agent.
‘And you need to complain to the council about the restaurant smell. Not that they’ll do anything about it.’
There’s something about the way she says this that makes me think Sybille Newman enjoys being a victim, that she’s the sort of woman who is happy only when she’s got something to complain about. I’ve already got a feeling that no matter how hard I try to be a good neighbour, nothing I do will be ever good enough.
Our conversation seems to have run its course and I’m wondering if I should walk Sybille to the door when she says, ‘I take it your stock will be arriving soon?’
I’m not planning to carry a supply of coffins. The shop’s too small. But it’s a weird question.
Sybille continues, ‘Ned intends be your first customer.’
Ned? Didn’t she say her husband’s called Ned?
I’m still working on the implications of that sentence when she continues, ‘Ned’s always got his nose buried in a novel. I presume you’ll give him a discount. The old bookshop always did. So sad when they closed. Business rates went through the roof. But don’t let me put you off.’ Sybille has noticed my startled expression. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a huge success of Happy Endings.’ She says this with an almost-sneer that suggests precisely the opposite. ‘There’s plenty of children around here, and it’s so important to get them reading at an early age, stop them frying their brains with electronic gadgets.’
‘Yes, reading’s important,’ I agree. ‘But actually … Actually, Happy Endings isn’t a bookshop.’
‘Not a bookshop?’ Now it’s Sybille who is perplexed. ‘Everyone’s been saying that’s what’s opening. If it’s not a bookshop, then what is it?’
‘A funeral parlour.’
‘A WHAT? Really? That’s totally unsuitable. No-one asked Ned and me about this. I’m sure we were entitled to be consulted. My husband’s health is very fragile, and having an undertaker’s downstairs … Well, it’s hardly going to cheer him up, is it?’
With that, the woman turns abruptly on her orange heel. At the door, she shoots a baleful look in my direction.
‘Poor Noggsie.’ She says it as if she’s spitting a pair of marbles from her mouth. ‘He was always so helpful about the roof. He’d be spinning in his grave if he knew about this. About you.’
Funeral Number One (#ulink_39519335-e327-5fd7-ae61-f4acb49b8d19)
††††
In Memoriam
PETER JAMES NOGGS
1933–2019
††††
The vicar looked nervous, Gloria thought. And understandably so. Everyone present in the church had known Noggsie, whereas few of them, including Gloria herself, knew the vicar, who seemed to be an earnest young man, clearly overwhelmed by the many famous faces staring back at him.
A final rustle of his papers, and the vicar began. ‘Peter …’ he said. ‘How strange to call him Peter, when all of us here knew him as Noggsie. He was the beating heart of our community for as long as any of us can remember.’
Primrose Hill royalty had turned out in force to pay their respects, and were now sitting in clusters surrounded by many of their less recognisable neighbours. A tribute to the fact Noggsie always treated everyone exactly the same, celebrity or not. To him, the famous customers were just ordinary people who happened to be doing a bit of shopping on their local high street. And there was nothing celebrities liked more than being treated as ordinary people – at least when they were off-duty and on their home turf. As a result, a surprising number of high-profile diaries had been cleared, with filming schedules rearranged, recording sessions postponed and fashion shoots put on hold. Even Tottenham Hotspur had to manage at training that morning without their most famous striker.
Outside the church, private security, police and paparazzi hung around in their separate tribes. Passers-by stopped to see what was happening and any number of teenage truants – almost exclusively female – tried unsuccessfully to blag their way inside.
Jamie Oliver and James Corden were seated three pews in front of Gloria, suited and booted, heads close together, cook and comedian whispering for all the world like a pair of overgrown schoolboys. Probably, Gloria thought, discussing recipes for Cornish pasties. At the front of the church, Chris Evans and Nick Grimshaw were bookending a pair of elderly women both wearing black hats that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a state funeral.
Gloria felt a ripple of movement behind her and turned in time to see Mary Portas – her recognisable-at-two-hundred-paces auburn bob a little longer than usual – arriving in time to swap ‘Good mornings’ with Harry Styles.
But no sign of rock-god Jake Jay. The man who’d won more Grammys than anyone on the planet was said to be back in rehab, this time at a facility somewhere north of New Mexico, accessible only by helicopter. Maybe Robert Plant would show up instead, and treat everyone to a verse of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
Double Oscar winner Kelli Shapiro was also conspicuous by her absence. She had sent her regrets – accompanied by an arrangement of peonies the size of Kew Gardens – and the word was that she was in Geneva, waiting for the scars of a neck lift to heal, rather than suffering from the sudden and unfortunate bout of food poisoning that was her official reason for failing to attend.
Gloria was surprised to see Eddie Banks had been prepared to sacrifice the sunshine of Monte Carlo – along with one of his ninety tax-free days in the United Kingdom – to attend Noggsie’s funeral. Bit of a surprise that he dared show his face at all, given the havoc his double-decker, nine-thousand-square-feet basement dig-out was causing along Chalcot Square. Banks and his giant underground extension had been the talk of the Primrose Hill Easter Festival the weekend before. Everyone knew the man was richer than God, but could it possibly be true that he’d instructed the builders to line the walls of his new chill-out zone with solid gold sheeting? Rumour also had it he’d offered his neighbours a week on Richard Branson’s Necker Island by way of an apology for the noise, the dirt, the disruption and the damage caused by his building project, but they weren’t to be bought off so cheaply, and were holding out – politely but with vicious determination – for the title deeds to luxury lodges at a Banks development in the Lake District. Gloria knew that piece of gossip was well-founded. Her parents were among the neighbours.
The Primrose Hill of her childhood had been a different place. Back then it was just another anonymous London backwater, albeit one with a bohemian edge, and the family had moved there only because her father’s fast-track junior banker’s salary wouldn’t stretch to a house in Hampstead.
Just look at it now. Home to so many of the best-known people in Britain. And, increasingly, overseas owners who boasted to their friends about their charming home-from-one-of-their-other-homes in a neighbourhood that had grown stealthily into Britain’s answer to Beverly Hills. Gloria, however, retained her affection for the Primrose Hill she had once known, and especially for Noggsie, whose General Hardware Store had been a local landmark for longer than she could remember.
As the years passed, Noggsie’s business had survived and thrived. Car showrooms, coal merchants, computer shops, curry houses, coffee shops … butchers, bakers, bookshops, betting shops, builders’ merchants … dry cleaners and drapers … fish-and-chip shops, furniture shops, florists … laundromats and lending libraries … glaziers, greengrocers, Apple Stores … Their custodians came and went, but the General Hardware Store was a permanent fixture, a family business that continued undaunted by the changes happening around it, rather like Ian Beale in EastEnders, which was one of Gloria’s many guilty pleasures.
This time last year, Noggsie’s shop was still a much-loved anachronism, its green-tiled façade a shabby yet proud island in the present sea of Michelin-starred restaurants, cupcake shops, art galleries, pampering places, frock shops, interior designers, more cupcake shops (mostly gluten-free; some of them also vegan), wine bars and – briefly – a pop-up shop that specialised in miniature replicas of fairground attractions whose price tags might reasonably have been thought sufficient for the full-size originals.
Noggsie himself had remained in excellent health for eighty-five of his eighty-six years. ‘It’s the work and the customers that keep me going,’ he insisted whenever Gloria or anyone else asked whether it wasn’t time he relaxed and took it easy. ‘Besides, if I weren’t here, who else would sell you a couple of curtain hooks or half a dozen nails?’ In Noggsie’s opinion, blister packs were the work of the devil. No matter what you needed, from a kettle to a casserole dish, from a single tap washer to a wooden toilet seat, the chances were high that Noggsie had it in stock.
He had been a kind man, too. ‘Hear you’re involved in some urban gardening project,’ he’d said to Gloria when she popped in on an errand to collect dishwasher salt for her mother. ‘Take these.’ And Noggsie had produced half-a-dozen planting troughs along with three bags of compost, refusing all offers of payment.
Now Noggsie was gone and the General Hardware Store along with him. It had been shut for several months, ever since the day its proprietor collapsed across the counter with the first in a series of strokes, and was one of several shops in the high street that continued to stand empty. It had come an unwelcome surprise to many of the locals – Gloria included – to discover that even Primrose Hill was not immune from the toxic effects of hard times, greedy freeholders, ridiculous business rates, and the residents’ own growing tendency to go shopping without ever leaving home.
Whoops!
Gloria realised she had been lost in her trip down memory lane and stood up hastily, a second or two later than the rest of the congregation. She fumbled for the order of service and stood in respectful silence as the three members of a boy band whose strategic failure to win Britain’s Got Talent a couple of years earlier had launched them on the path to international stardom (and adjoining mansions in Regent’s Park) began their acapella arrangement of ‘Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven’.
The hymn’s final notes died away and everyone sat down again. All except for Eddie Banks. He inched out of the pew, negotiating around his two grown-up children, Zoe and Barclay, then walked purposefully towards the lectern.
‘Noggsie was my neighbour, my friend, and my inspiration.’ Eddie Banks paused as if he expected to be challenged about what he had just said. ‘He watched me grow up, and I watched him grow old.’ Unexpectedly eloquent for Banks, Gloria thought. He was a man who tended to call a spade a bloody shovel. Or worse. She wondered how many of his PR people had been working on the eulogy.
Everybody present knew the story of Eddie Banks. Local boy made billionaire. Born in a council house along Chalcot Road, and now reminding his captive audience about the car cleaning business he’d started aged nine, equipped only with a bucket-load of ambition, a green sponge and a jumbo bottle of Fairy Liquid, purchased with his Christmas money from Noggsie at the General Hardware Store.
‘Noggsie taught me so many things,’ Eddie Banks continued. ‘But most important of all, he taught me to dream big. When I told him I had no time to clean more cars, he told me to recruit my friends to help out. And that wasn’t just so he could sell more Fairy Liquid.’
A pause for gentle laughter. ‘When I told him my first business was about to go bust and my best bet was to go work for someone else, he told me to get over myself. And fail better the next time round. Then later, once I’d stopped failing,’ a modest shrug, ‘and could afford to buy Noggsie a decent dinner or two, I asked him … “Noggsie,” I said, “you’ve told me I’m capable of conquering the world, and I believe you. But what about you? What is it that you dream of? What is that you want? And how can I help you have it?” You know what he replied? He told me, “I’m blessed to have found a way to earn a living doing something that contributes to others, yet doesn’t rob my soul. I’m lucky enough to have found my calling, which allows me to continue the tradition of helping my community and to know that in my own small way, I’m making a difference.”’
Banks’s excellent eulogy made Gloria think of Nina. She imagined her friend casting a professional eye over the proceedings. What was it Nina had said the day before? About the way funerals were changing, with more people drawing up plans for their own farewell appearance while they were still alive and well. A question of matching the occasion to the person, she had explained.
Gloria made a mental note to tell Nina the Traders Association had organised a wreath in the shape of a giant hammer.
Then she realised she could do so much better.
At the champagne reception that followed Noggsie’s funeral, Gloria cornered Eddie Banks and told him about Nina and her ideas about dragging funerals into the modern era.
Banks immediately offered to do what he could to help, and Gloria had been impressed that someone so successful was prepared to go out of his way to help a woman he’d never even met achieve her dream.
Noggsie would definitely have approved.
And later, listening to the way Nina talked – enthusiastically yet respectfully – about the people she intended to help once she had refurbished Noggsie’s shop, Gloria was convinced Happy Endings would have had his blessing.
7 (#ulink_ce8a1eda-d187-5d38-b9f1-aa13011d85d5)
Here I am in Primrose Hill, one of the most fashionable parts of London, and it ought to be wonderful.
But it’s not.
I’ve spent all morning watching the world stroll past my shop window oblivious to my presence.
All morning, feeling I don’t fit in.
All morning, every morning.
Monday to Friday.
Afternoons, too.
It’s been an entire week and I almost wish I was back in Siberia. When Jason banished me to the back office, at least I had a sense of belonging.
I keep reminding myself it’s like being the new girl at school. Too soon to have made any friends, too shy to approach anyone, but knowing that before too long, someone will be kind.
Maybe Eddie Banks lulled me into a false sense of security. I’ve never actually met him because he’s almost always in Monte Carlo. But I spoke to him on the phone after Gloria’s brilliant idea about me taking over Noggsie’s shop.
The moment their conversation ended, Eddie Banks had apparently marched right up to Noggsie’s son and told him, ‘I’ve got the perfect tenant for your father’s shop. Young entrepreneur by the name of Nina Sherwood. I know you’re back off home to Australia tomorrow, so shall I have my people sort out the lease and the terms on your behalf? Save you the hassle, and get that shop open again.’
The two men shook hands and Eddie Banks’s team proceeded to process the paperwork in record time, which was just as well, because apparently another retailer was showing serious interest in opening a business. I felt especially fortunate that Noggsie’s son had even been talked into letting me have an initial discount on the rent. All I’d had to do was sign the agreement.
It had felt like destiny. But now I’m not so certain. Still, it was foolish of me to imagine customers would fall into my lap. That only happens once a business has proved itself and the recommendations roll in. For now, it’s important to get a proper feel for the neighbourhood. Which makes the people-watching important rather than just a time-filler or an activity to stop myself fretting about the future.
I’ve certainly seen one or two strange sights, including a family of four dressed all in matching tweeds riding along the road on a double tandem the length of a hearse. Then there’s Sybille Newman, my neighbour with the roof issue. Always dressed in orange. She’s just spent five minutes telling off a road sweeper for doing a sloppy job. (I’ve privately taken to calling her Mrs Happy, because she treats me to a scowl every time she marches past the shop, pretending not to look inside.) There’s also a man on rollerblades who seems to be circling our block of shops … I’ve seen him go past at least five times, and here he is again.
In between studying the locals, I try to knuckle down and practise my daily exercises in creative visualisation. I imagine myself busy and productive, doing a good job for satisfied customers, opening bank statements that demonstrate increasing prosperity, then the look on my parents’ faces when I present them with tickets for a luxury weekend in Sardinia to say thank you for their backing.
And the rest of the time? I’m scared I’ve made a dreadful mistake.
Marry in haste and repent at leisure, isn’t that what people say? I begin to think I’ve achieved the retail equivalent, and that I should have looked a lot more carefully before I leapt into self-employment.
My watch tells me it’s still far too early for lunch, although talking of food, word must have got out that Happy Endings has nothing to do with coffee or cupcakes. No-one’s asked me if I’m selling either since Wednesday.
But I’m still being mistaken for a bookshop and every time I explain I’m an undertaker, the outcome is more or less the same. I get an, ‘Oh, what a shame, dear!’ as though I’ve missed out on tickets for Glastonbury or the Latitude Festival. And that’s on a good day. There have been two or three others who, like Mrs Happy, have made no secret of the fact they believe my business has no business being here.
‘How dare you give your shop such a misleading name?’ The woman who berated me for that didn’t hang around long enough to let me explain my conviction that the best funerals are those that honour someone’s life and give a true sense of who that person really was – and are far from morbid or mysterious affairs – which is why I think ‘Happy Endings’ is such a great choice.
Not, of course, that anyone’s showing any signs of choosing me. I still have no idea when I’ll be called to action. I firmly remind myself this is par for the course. In my line of work, there’s mostly no lead time.
Obviously, I feel sorry in advance for the person who’s going to be my first customer, because organising a funeral is a distress purchase. But at least when it happens, I’ll know how to help them and the people they leave behind. It’s what I’m best at.
In the meantime, there’s no point drooping around an empty shop like one of my wilting delphiniums. I’ve got plenty to do. The cremation urns are still down in the basement. I’m incorporating them into my inaugural window display – the empty window has turned out to be a mistake rather than the minimalist statement I had been aiming for – to eliminate any further misunderstandings about the nature of my business.
Edo promised to help me haul everything out front this afternoon, but there’s still no sign of him, so I might as well get on with the admin instead of wallowing in procrastination.
In particular, I need to compose an email to Zoe Banks.
Zoe is not only Eddie Banks’s daughter but also a fellow retailer – her shop is called The Beauty Spot – and she’s the driving force behind the Primrose Hill Traders Association. I really want to get to know my fellow shopkeepers, and I need to get cracking. I activate my computer with a flick of the mouse and begin.
Dear Zoe Banks,
My name is Nina Sherwood and I am the new kid on the block. As you may know, my shop is called Happy Endings, and in many ways, it is thanks to your father that it is here at all. My friend Gloria was present at Noggsie’s funeral, and afterwards, when she was talking to Mr Banks, my name came into the conversation.
There goes that man on the rollerblades again, whizzing past the shop. On the pavement this time. Close enough to flash me a smile. And for me to grin at his T-shirt, which declares, Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. I’m probably imagining his smile, but he’s certainly around a lot. Training for some sporting event, perhaps. Anyway, back to my message …
Mr Banks generously used his powers of persuasion to ensure I could get the lease, and without this initial help, my business would never have got beyond the dreaming stage. In case you’re wondering, I previously worked for an established funeral director in Queen’s Park but this is my first solo venture and I am hugely excited about it all.
Gloria says The Beauty Spot is one of Primrose Hill’s most successful shops, so Zoe must have inherited her father’s business acumen along with an appetite for hard work and the ability to be both popular and profitable. I hope that as we get to know one another, she might teach me some of the secrets of maximising income without ripping anyone off.
I hope you will wish me well and I look forward to meeting you in the near future. I am also very keen to participate in the activities of the Primrose Hill Traders Association. Could you please advise me of the procedure for joining? Is there a meeting coming up some time soon that I could attend? Finally, I am sure you are very busy, but if you fancy a break, then I would love to have a chat with you. Shall we meet in the wine bar? Drinks on me!
Best wishes,
Nina Sherwood, Happy Endings
I send the email and try to convince myself I’m having a good day at work. Now for those cremation urns …
8 (#ulink_8e71ee0b-7044-58b5-b040-602b4d6d36db)
The next morning, I wake to discover two significant additions to our household.
First off, I hear footsteps crashing up and down a flight of stairs so I get out of bed, shrug into my dressing gown, nudge my bedroom door and realise Edo is here. On his way to the little room at the top of the house. He’s juggling an assortment of bin bags and holdalls plus a red and white ‘NO ENTRY’ sign that is still attached to the mid-section of a lamp-post.
By the time I am decently dressed he’s on another trek, this time laden with a bunch of canvases. I observe that Edo’s favourite colour is purple. And that he has at some stage persuaded at least four different women to pose for him while naked. One of them – a curvy redhead with spectacular breasts – has her cellulite-free thighs teasingly splayed around the ‘NO ENTRY’ sign.
‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Are you storing your stuff in the attic?’
Edo looks puzzled. ‘Didn’t Gloria tell you I was moving in? That’s why I didn’t get to the shop in time to help you yesterday. Sorry about that.’
Um, no. Gloria’s said nothing. ‘Want some coffee?’
‘Awesome!’
I get my head around Edo’s news as I make my way to the kitchen. He did say the place he found after he moved out of Happy Endings was a bit too dirty and a touch too noisy for his liking. Typical Gloria to say he could stay – she’s both generous and impulsive, and it’s her house, of course – but I’m surprised she didn’t at least discuss it with me first.
An even bigger surprise awaits me in the kitchen.
A dog.
Eating breakfast.
Actually, he appears to be on his third breakfast.
The creature is almost the size of a Shetland pony. It looks as if it’s been dreamed up by Disney, but is acting out a script from Tarantino – working title The Andrex Puppy on Drugs.
The pristine kitchen I remember from last night is a wreck. Two chairs have been overturned. The floor is covered in a collage of broken breakfast bowls, with several million breadcrumbs and a gooey patch of what looks like blood but is hopefully nothing more sinister than strawberry jam added for texture. A steady trickle of milk is dripping onto the floor from an overturned carton on the table. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, the roll of paper towel we keep on the kitchen table in lieu of napkins has three Shetland-pony-sized chunks bitten out of it.
The dog gives me a cursory glance then shamelessly returns to the plate of ham, cheese and salami that’s occupying his attention. In fairness, his table manners seem to be improving with every chomp. He’s figured out he’s the perfect height so that his head – and jaws – can get to the food without the need even to flex his paws, let alone knock food to the floor. Perhaps he’s cleverer than he looks.
A split second later, just as the dog’s inhaling the final scrap of meat, Edo arrives in the kitchen. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘Maybe this was a mistake.’
I give him a look.
‘There was this bloke in the pub last night.’ Edo has got himself a part-time job pulling pints. ‘Said he and his partner had come to the conclusion their place was too small for Chopper. That’s his name, Chopper. They took him to Battersea, but the people there admitted that if they couldn’t rehome him, he’d be put down. The guy was literally sobbing into his beer, so I called Gloria and she said it would be okay. Then today, I wanted to get off to a good start and be a good housemate, so I put breakfast together before I moved my stuff in. Which turned out to be a mistake. Do you know anything about dogs?’
‘Only that they appear to enjoy granola and salami. But I guess I’ll learn.’ The truth is, I’ve always wanted a dog.
‘He’ll be my responsibility. I promise this will never happen again. I’ll clear up all the mess. And he’ll sleep in my room. I’m going to make him a bed out of wooden crates. And then I thought I might paint him.’
‘Purple?’ I enquire.
Edo’s enthusiasm is somehow infectious. Even though Chopper has wrecked our kitchen, he is trying earnestly to make amends by hoovering the floor with his tongue, which is the size of a rump steak.
‘How old is he, anyway?’
‘The guy said he’s a year old. And fully grown.’ Even as he says it, Edo sounds doubtful. He looks at me, then back to the dog. ‘I’m really grateful to you and Gloria for agreeing I can move in, you know. I’ve promised to help out around the house, with odd jobs and that. And I’m going to be paying rent, of course.’
Immediately, I feel guilty. Gloria insisted I should only pay half-rent until Happy Endings is on its feet – an offer I gratefully accepted. She’s probably delighted Edo needs a place to live, and can help make up the shortfall.
‘I’ll clean up the mess,’ I offer. ‘Then maybe, once we’ve had breakfast, we can take Chopper out for a walk.’
After breakfast, during which I observe Gloria sneaking morsels of still-warm croissant under the table to our new dog, the four of us – Edo, Gloria, Chopper and I – head for Highgate Ponds.
It’s beautiful late spring weather, and Gloria is excited to see the lilacs in full bloom. Edo keeps Chopper on a stout leash, offering him no further opportunities for misbehaviour.
‘So what sort of dog is he?’ Gloria asks. She’s spent the past ten minutes complaining she’s fed up with having her social life dictated by the schedule of Thrice-Wed Fred’s wife, whose latest crime is to surprise her cheating husband with a weekend jaunt to Berlin.
‘Half-Bernese half-poodle,’ Edo says.
I can see the poodle in Chopper. Woolly coat in shades of black, brown and white, with a head of hair that reminds me of those long wigs worn by the old codgers who populate the House of Lords. But Bernese? Isn’t that a type of sauce?
‘So that makes him a Bernedoodle!’ Gloria is amused by the thought.
‘Or a poodlenese,’ Edo suggests.
I take another look at Chopper. Edo let him off the lead when we got to the woods at the back of the ponds, and the dog is celebrating his freedom by enthusiastically turning a fallen branch into a pile of matchsticks. Chopper is about four times the size of any other dog out on a Saturday walk, so all I can say is that the Bernese must be a very big dog indeed.
‘That’s interesting,’ Edo says.
‘What?’ I enquire. ‘A dog chewing a stick?’
‘No. Taking one thing and transforming it into another.’
Before I can say something about dogs doing that every time they sink their teeth into something, Edo continues his thought. ‘Shapeshifting.’
‘Is that what they taught you at art school?’ Gloria’s tone is only faintly mocking.
‘As it happens, I’ve got a postgraduate tutorial with Joshua Kent next week,’ Edo retorts. ‘If I’m lucky, he’ll mentor me on my next project.’
Wow! Edo must be an even better artist than he is a sign writer. Joshua Kent is a real big shot. His art is on display in galleries and private collections all over the world. It’s not my kind of thing – call me a philistine, but I like a painting to look like a painting, with a nice frame and everything – but winning the Turner Prize three times has made Joshua Kent properly famous.
Edo is looking suitably modest. ‘I’ve got a couple of ideas,’ he says, ‘but I think they’re too ordinary. Can we talk about something else, please? I’m terrified. Nina, what do you think Gloria should do about Fred? Dump him, or what? What would you do?’
I’m about to reply to Edo’s penultimate question in the definite affirmative, but Gloria is faster. ‘I’ve told you,’ she says to Edo. ‘Nina doesn’t do relationships.’
The pair of them exchange a glance, and I realise Edo has been briefed about the reason for my lack of a love life. Gloria must have told him about Ryan – his funeral and all that – and my decision to prioritise my career over relationships.
An awkward pause, while we watch Chopper take a breather from his labours, then spit out the final shreds of wood and begin to paw furiously at the ground, digging a hole in which to bury his matchsticks.
‘If anyone needs advice,’ I finally say, ‘it’s me.’
‘The business?’ asks Gloria, and I suspect this is something she has also discussed with Edo.
‘It’s only been a week,’ Edo chimes in. ‘And besides, the weather’s too good for dying.’
Even though he is being facetious, Edo has a point. More people die during winter than summer. But that’s not the issue. Every time I think about my parents, I feel sick. Sticking all their pension money next to the matchsticks in Chopper’s freshly dug hole in the ground is beginning to seem like a far better idea than allowing them to keep their investment in Happy Endings.
I feel Gloria’s hand on my arm. ‘Remember your business plan, sweetie.’ She’s doing her best to reassure me. I’ve estimated thirty funerals in the first year, so with only one week gone, I’m not even behind schedule. But neither have I earned a single penny.
‘My business plan wasn’t much more than guesswork,’ I confess. Guesswork, moreover, that didn’t even include any budget for advertising and marketing. ‘I should have thought things through more thoroughly. Maybe there’s a good reason why the shop was empty for so long after Noggsie’s first stroke left him unable to carry on – and it wasn’t just because the council rejected change-of-use applications from a bunch of hipsters who wanted to turn it into yet another café.’
‘Rubbish!’ Edo jumps in. ‘Remember what Noggsie’s son said.’ The son who lives in Australia and gave me a good deal on the rent. ‘He wanted you to have the lease because he reckoned the high street needs some proper shops again. There’s only so many cupcakes a person can eat.’
Edo’s wrong about that. Especially when they incorporate marshmallow frosting. But his intentions are good.
Enough of this.
I’m behaving like a complete wimp.
All doom and gloom and Poor Little Me just because things aren’t happening as fast as I’d hoped. Yes, when I was an employee, we could more or less guarantee how many funerals we’d handle every week, but the business had been there for decades. My empty shop window has evidently led to misunderstandings about the nature of my business but it’s sorted now: my collection of ceramic urns are modern and tasteful, although from what I’ve seen of Primrose Hill so far, there’s a danger the locals will think I’m running an art gallery.
‘You know what?’ I confess. ‘I was hoping in my heart of hearts that business would just fall into my lap. But I need to make myself known.’ There have to be cheaper ways of advertising than buying space in the local paper, which every undertaker seems to do as a matter of routine. ‘I’ve made a start already.’
I’m telling my friends about the email I sent to Zoe Banks when my phone pings. I look at the screen.
‘Ha!’ I tell them. ‘Talk of the devil, and the devil appears!’
It’s a message from Zoe.
I’m going to meet her on Monday.
Can’t wait!
9 (#ulink_7042ce2c-e012-5f5c-bf12-9d11fe5d9c4a)
Truthfully, Zoe’s email reads more like a summons than an invitation. Yes, we need to discuss what you’re doing. Monday 7.15am. Home not spa.
My own email is repeated underneath. Taking another look, it does seem to ramble a bit. But never mind that Zoe hasn’t replied at length. The important thing is that she has replied at all. Promptly, too, which is good business etiquette. Zoe must be one of those scarily efficient women who has successfully tamed her email mountain by keeping responses – even to warm and friendly messages like mine – to the bare minimum.
That fits in with Gloria’s extended briefing about Zoe and her day spa. The Beauty Spot is part of a chain that also has a presence in other wealthy pockets of London, plus outposts in Zürich, Rome, Dubai and Los Angeles. Our local branch is hidden away inside a beautiful Regency townhouse, just off the high street. I’ve always been too scared to go inside, but I’ve given the website a good going-over in preparation for this meeting.
Turns out the rumours that Zoe sells nothing that costs less than £35 are true. Really? For a bottle of bubble bath that small? And do women honestly pay three figures to have their eyebrows tidied? Especially when the first figure’s not even a one! Back in my student days, I spent less than that on a weekend in Berlin, and my eyebrows always look just fine.
I know I ought to be grateful Zoe has prioritised our meeting, but instead I’m faintly resentful I needed to be up at half past five this morning to make sure I had enough time to dither about what to wear. And redo my eyebrows four times.
I arrive at Zoe’s home – a leafy turning on the far side of the park going towards Swiss Cottage – at ten past seven. Which is just as well, because I squander the next three minutes trying to make the intercom system work. In the end, I resort to punching random numbers on the keypad, and this finally does the trick. A disembodied male voice instructs me, ‘Step AWAY from the gates and state your name.’
‘Nina Sherwood,’ I announce, startled.
‘Correct.’
What is this, an intelligence test?
‘When the gates open, please make your way to the main entrance.’ The voice sounds like Carson out of Downton Abbey, scolding one of the servants for being ungrateful.
At first glance, the gates – sandwiched between high brick walls – could be mistaken for a piece of sculpture, all curves and swirls, with a hint of Art Deco. Then they glide soundlessly open, and I get my first glimpse of Zoe’s home.
So this is how the one per cent of the one per cent lives … As I read online last night – doing my Zoe Banks homework before explaining to Chopper that my bed is not his bed – I am now eyeballing a piece of prime central London real estate worth £14 million. Which buys you (I continued my online research via Zoopla, Google Earth and Vogue) seven bedrooms, a private cinema, a wine cave, staff quarters and one of the largest gardens in North London, complete with its own tropical pagoda. All that, plus a ten-metre infinity pool that incorporates both wave machine and rainforest shower.
‘This way please, Ms Sherwood.’ Carson’s disembodied voice again, sounding even less pleased than before. I’m obviously over-gawping, so I jog the final few metres to the front door, crunching a spray of gravel in my wake. The door opens immediately, even before I can work out where the bell might be located.
I’m almost surprised not to be greeted by Carson. Instead, a man about my own age, dressed in a perfect charcoal suit – I’m guessing it costs more than the average funeral – teamed with white shirt, blue silk tie and black-rimmed round glasses is looking me up and down. The expression on his face is exactly as I had anticipated: disdain underpinned by disapproval.
But maybe I’m just flustered, because his voice is considerably more warm when he tells me, ‘This way, please.’ I follow him across a vast expanse of highly polished wooden flooring. ‘Ms Banks is running late this morning,’ he says. Late? At seven fifteen? Is this code for ‘Ms Banks has overslept?’ Apparently not, because the man continues, ‘A meeting with her architect is taking longer than anticipated. If you wait here’ – I am ushered into a space that is bigger than every room of Happy Endings put together – ‘I’ll fetch you a coffee.’
Carson leaves the room before I have a chance to say, ‘White, please, with three sugars,’ and I’m about to make myself at home on a squishy black leather couch when I hear voices coming from the adjoining room. A man and a woman speaking softly yet distinctly. I find myself heading towards a not-quite-closed door and begin earnestly to study a huge canvas on the wall. Blue splodges placed at indeterminate intervals against a backdrop of what looks like green and yellow electricity pylons, encased in an ornate frame that could easily be proper gold, although I’d have to bite it to be sure.
‘So we should hear back from the planning department in the next four to eight weeks.’ The man’s voice.
‘Why does it take them so long?’ The woman – presumably Zoe Banks – is verging on shrill. I can almost hear her stamping her foot. ‘Can’t we fast-track it? Pay them extra? Anyway, it’s going to be a formality, so might as well get cracking straight away. Right?’ Before the man can reply, Zoe continues, ‘You realise I’m still unhappy with the north-east elevation. If we’re building a neo-classical palace we might as well get it right and have the columns properly hand-carved. Agreed?’ A pause. ‘I’m paying two hundred thousand for this, after all. Plus your fees.’
‘Of course. And you’re happy with the design of the frieze?’
‘Let’s have another look at the plans.’ A rustle of papers. ‘Yes, I like that. Lovely idea to call the extension a small temple in the trees. And our garden’s so big, no-one will ever spot it. You know, life’s too short to wait for the bloody planners, so let’s get the builders in next week and pay the fine for going ahead without permission if we get caught.’
Temple in the trees? I’d assumed the people on the other side of the door were discussing plans for a holiday home. Greece, perhaps. Or Croatia. Surely even someone like Zoe Banks wouldn’t spend two hundred grand on a tree house. Especially someone who, according to my research, doesn’t have children. I’m worried Carson’s going to come back and catch me eavesdropping but I’ve never heard a conversation like this before and I can’t tear myself away.
That’s weird. In one breath, the man is saying something about a multi-level dwelling with geometrically perfect proportions. But now he’s describing a wirelessly controlled fox-proof security system. Surely he means foolproof. And what’s this about an automatic sliding roof above the nesting box suite? Is that what rich people call a bedroom?
I’m wondering if I’m going deaf, and if I dare to push the door open just a tiny crack further, when Zoe says, ‘We’ve had our skirmishes with this project, Marcus, but I’ve always known you were the man to create the Taj Mahal of hen houses.’
‘That’s very kind, but by the time we’re done, I hope it will look more like Le Petit Trianon.’
Two smug laughs, followed by packing-up sounds. I retreat to the sofa, bewildered. What is this I’ve stumbled into? It feels like the set of The Good Life mashed with Grand Designs. Don’t get me wrong, I love chickens, especially when roasted to a golden crispness, accompanied by Mum’s silky gravy and fluffy potatoes, and I have no doubt the hens that are destined to roost legally or illegally in Zoe’s extension will truly appreciate the clean lines and the modern aesthetics. Come on, though. Admittedly two hundred thousand won’t buy you a garage in London. But a hen house? A hen house?
When I think how hard my dad worked, and how proud he was to be able to lend me the fifty thousand pounds I needed – more than half his life savings – to open Happy Endings … I wonder what it must be like to be able to buy whatever you want … anything you want … everything you want … without stopping to think how much it costs.
Zoe Banks enters the room with a face that suggests all the cash in the world can’t buy you happiness, and I feel a little bit better about my current credit card balance.
‘Marcus, I’ll expect your confirmation that the builders will be on site by Monday latest,’ she says before disappearing into the hallway. With that, the architect is dismissed. He fails to acknowledge me, and sidesteps Carson, who has arrived carrying a tray with my promised coffee and a plate of fancy biscuits. Silver icing! I follow him past the blue-splodged painting and into Zoe’s office, which turns out to be a surprisingly austere space, dominated by a metal and glass desk as big as a ping-pong table. Behind it, there’s a chair that reminds me of the Iron Throne, softened only by the addition of a scarlet cushion – Zoe’s presumably – and on the other side, a considerably less impressive ladder-back chair. Carson gestures towards it, then gathers a bunch of envelopes from the desk and leaves the room.
I’m still taking in my surroundings – half a dozen floor-to-ceiling free-standing metal shelves in a geometric pattern that would make them almost sculpture were it not for the dozens of aluminium box files they hold – when Zoe returns. Instinctively, I stand up and take a few steps towards her.
Zoe Banks towers over me. I’m five six and she’s at least three inches taller, even before you take into account her skyscraper heels. We exchange a firm handshake – I notice Zoe gives my home-manicured nails a beady once-over – then retreat to our respective sides of the giant desk.
‘So you’re Nina.’ She looks square at me, pronouncing my name as though she’s just captured something nasty on the tip of her tongue. ‘One moment.’
Zoe busies herself with some papers, which gives me a chance to get the measure of her. She’s actually rather beautiful. Model-slender and impeccably dressed in a grey linen dress that accentuates long legs, bronzed in a shade that didn’t come out of a spray can. She’s got one of those Julia Robert mouths – you know, the length of a pillar-box slit – and impeccable white teeth. But she’s overdone the Botox or the collagen or whatever it is she’s had someone squirt into her glistening lips. Unfortunately, they look like a pair of scarlet bananas. No, I’m just being mean. Zoe Banks is as high-end and glossy as everything else in this perfect house. Everything except me.
Before I can berate myself any further, the scarlet bananas begin to speak. ‘Thank you for popping by,’ they say. ‘So, tell me about your little shop.’
And I’m off! Explaining that although the undertaker I used to work for mostly organised traditional funerals – black clothes, white lilies, newspaper notices, Bible readings, etc. – the funeral industry is starting to change.
‘Relatives want something more personal,’ I say. ‘Services as individual as the person who has died.’ I recall a photo emailed to me last week by Anna Kovaks. Grigor’s family cycling through woods on the outskirts of Budapest, following one of his favourite off-road treks on their way to a river where they scattered the ashes Anna had repatriated. Zoe continues to stare at her papers, which is a bit rude, but undaunted, I persevere.
‘It definitely helps families to grieve when they’re able to do something that properly reflects the person they loved. Say, putting a favourite book inside the coffin. Or a cigar. Or notes from the grandchildren. I mean, you only have to think about the way weddings have changed in the past few years, with services on the beach, or at the top of the London Eye …’
Zoe has picked up a gold fountain pen and is writing something down, so I trail into silence. Once she’s finished, I’ll ask her to guess some of the most popular music tracks that are played at crematorium services. Start a dialogue instead of lecturing the poor woman.
I watch Zoe’s elbows move in, out and back in as she signs her name, cutting a Z into the paper. Then she leans forward on her throne thing and moves her perfectly made-up face closer to mine.
‘It all sounds very undignified,’ she says. ‘If you have to have a funeral, much better to get it over and done with as quickly as possible, then get back to normal life. But that’s hardly the point. The thing is.’ Zoe purses her banana lips and pauses for emphasis. ‘The thing is, Nina, we don’t do death in Primrose Hill. Michelin-starred restaurants, yes. Designer handbags, absolutely. Health and beauty … well of course, that’s my job. We have a huge local demand for ethical foie gras, even though those smelly protestors were out on the streets demonstrating against the butcher and the fur shop last weekend. Which reminds me, I need to speak to the police commissioner to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Look,’ Zoe tries – and fails – to smile, ‘we even sell chocolate and perfume. Everyday essentials the local community can’t manage without. We give people what they want. And there’s just no demand for death, I assure you. I can’t imagine what possessed my father to encourage you. A clear error of judgement if you ask me.’
Wow!
And without further ado, Zoe’s on her feet, her arm under my elbow, walking me to the door. I want to retort with a bold statement, explaining Happy Endings is here to do a job, to cater for a need, just like the chocolate shop. Or, indeed, the spa. But my cheeks are burning as if I’ve been slapped in the face and I know I’ll struggle to speak without crumpling. Which means Zoe has the last word.
‘If you like, I’ll do what I can to help you get out of the lease,’ she offers. ‘Otherwise, you’ll be gone by Christmas. I bet on it. In fact, I already have. We’re running a sweepstake to guess the date you’ll close. We all thought it was a great way to help fund the Christmas lights.’
10 (#ulink_92c974f8-cbb5-5363-8578-d99cd5e000d4)
Thank goodness for Chopper! If it weren’t for him, I’d find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. After my humiliating meeting with Zoe Banks, I just wanted to lock myself away and hide. But Chopper’s having none of it. He expects to be in the park at eight o’clock, wreaking havoc, so I’ve got into the habit of walking him before I open the shop, although walking is hardly the right word. Chopper is a force of nature – as soon as I slip his lead, he’s away! Eager and surprisingly elegant for such a huge creature. Paws pounding like hooves, at least until he comes across some delicious distraction, such as rearranging the flowerbeds with his paws, chasing a wheelchair, or joyfully demonstrating his superpowers by turning a flock of pigeons into fifty black specks in the sky merely by lumbering towards them.
I’m now on ‘Good-morning-how-are-you?’ terms with a whole bunch of other dog owners, which is something to cheer me up first thing. In fact, it’s often as much conversation as I get during the entire working day … because it’s still ‘No Business as Usual’ at Happy Endings, and I don’t know what to do, short of entering Zoe Bloody Banks’s sweepstake in the hope of winning back the fifty grand I owe my dad for foolishly investing in me and my stillborn business.
It’s been a month. Time enough to stop kidding myself that all I have to do is raise awareness.
I’ve put leaflets through every door in Primrose Hill announcing my arrival. Then, when I called the local paper to see if they’d run an article about Happy Endings, they put me through to someone who insisted I could transform the fortunes of my business simply by spending two hundred and fifty pounds a week on advertising until I foolishly surrendered my credit card details.
Response? Zero.
I’ve also introduced myself to most of the other shopkeepers – none of whom went out of their way to be friendly, not even the florist, who’s usually an undertaker’s closest business ally – and confirmed my worst fears by reading the latest edition of our trade paper, whose front page declared Britain now has an ‘over-supply’ of funeral directors. By which I strongly suspect they mean me.
Perhaps I should look for a part-time job. Evenings in a pub or restaurant. At least that would keep some cash trickling in. I was talking to Edo last night about the possibility of—
What the hell!
Someone on a scooter is racing down Primrose Hill. Far too fast. Directly towards Chopper.
‘Mind my dog!’ I yell, as I run towards the accident that’s about to happen.
Chopper, unaware of the danger, is on the main path at the bottom of the hill, head deep inside a carrier bag that’s been abandoned next to a rubbish bin. The idiot on the scooter, meanwhile, responds to my anguished cry by taking one hand off his handlebars and waving at me. What am I supposed to do? Move Chopper out of the way?
Much too late to do anything at all.
Chopper is lumbering up the hill, greeting the scooter as if it’s another dog out to play. I can hardly bear to look … a millisecond before impact, the idiot dodges Chopper with the insouciant panache of a slalom skier, only to careen head-first into a tree trunk on the other side of the path.
I sprint towards his body. ‘Are you okay?’ I yell.
Serves him right if he’s not.
The scooter has come to rest on the grass, wheels still spinning. Its owner is picking himself up off the ground, and brushing grass from his skinny jeans. He runs an index finger along one of his cheekbones to wipe away a trail of dirt, then rotates his shoulder blades, as if to check nothing’s broken. He looks vaguely familiar, although I can’t imagine why.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he says. ‘Just a bit winded. Sorry if I scared you.’
The idiot’s pleasantly deep voice and immediate contrition catches me off-guard. I’d been all set to tell him off for dangerous driving. But that was when I’d assumed he was a teenage boy, rather than the man of about my own age who is now stroking Chopper.
‘She’s right,’ he tells the dog. ‘I was going much too fast. But it’s such a wonderful feeling. Like flying.’ Then he looks up at me. ‘Buy you a quick coffee, by way of apology?’
I mean to say no. But the idiot is in possession of a mischievous smile, sparkling grey eyes, and a T-shirt that says, Honk if You’re About to Run Me Over.
It’s not as if I need to get to work on time to begin another soul-destroying day of no clients, so thirty minutes later we’re still sitting outside at one of the cafés on the high street, across the road from Happy Endings. Chopper is refuelling on ice-cold water from a bucket-sized bowl. I’m on my second latte, wishing I’d followed suit when the idiot ordered himself a breakfast butty that overflows with dripping butter, bacon and HP sauce. It smells delicious.
‘Okay if I give some to Chopper?’ The idiot breaks off a generous portion of his breakfast and lobs it in Chopper’s direction. The dog rises with gravity-defying grace, captures the snack before it hits the ground, and proceeds to chew daintily.
I sit and salivate, trying – and failing – to look elsewhere as the final sliver of buttery bacon disappears. He’s got nice hands, the idiot. It’s one of the things I always notice about a man. Assessing their suitability to carry a coffin. These are strong, capable hands. Well-manicured, too.
The idiot evidently cares about his appearance and if I’m not mistaken he’s even wearing a splash of cologne, fresh and spicy, with a hint of fir. Doesn’t smell as good as the bacon, but not a bad second.
‘So do you live around here?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘Professional dog walker?’
‘Still no.’ I’m not meaning to be unfriendly so I say it with a smile. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, my dad’s got a house up the road, and I was just popping in. I work for the family business. Property management mostly, and boring stuff involving corporate law. We’ve been doing a lot of insolvencies lately.’
He says this as though it’s a good thing and I can’t help but think of Gloria. If she were with us now, she’d say, ‘You’re the type of lawyer who makes rich people richer. The type of lawyer I never want to be.’
Disloyally, I realise the idiot would most likely scrub up pretty well if he swapped his jeans and T-shirt for a business suit.
‘Do you like it?’ he’s asking me.
‘Pardon?’
‘My T-shirt. You were staring at it.’ Before I can apologise he continues, ‘I got a brilliant one yesterday. Going paintballing next week, and I came across one in Camden Market that says, Why Should You Date a Paintballer?’
He leaves the question hanging.
‘Go on, then,’ I encourage him. ‘Tell me why I should date a paintballer?’
‘Because we’ve got a lot of balls. That’s what’s written on the back. Convincing, huh?’
There’s something about the guileless way he says it that makes me laugh. His company is an unexpected treat on what’s bound to turn out to be another lonely day.
‘I’m in desperate need of another bacon butty and more coffee. Say yes this time?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes please.’
Just as our refills arrive, something slots into place. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ I ask.
‘Is that the best you’ve got?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re flirting with me, right?’
‘Me? No! Of course not. I have seen you before. On rollerblades. Going past my shop.’
‘Which shop would that be?’
‘Over there.’ I point towards Happy Endings, sit back and wait for the inevitable response.
But the idiot proves the exception to the rule. ‘Noggsie’s old shop, right?’ he says pleasantly. ‘So how’s business?’
‘Okay.’ I’m not about to confess it’s non-existent. I pause for a strategic mouthful of bacon butty, while I attempt to swallow the accusation of flirting. He’s sort of right. I’m definitely enjoying his company. Since that night with Jason, I’ve started noticing men again. There’ve been one or two who I – admit it, Nina – actually fancied.
And the idiot makes three.
‘I’d better go to work,’ I say.
‘Why? Are there some dead people I don’t know about? Did I miss the news story about the avalanche in Tufnell Park last night?’
‘You’re a very bad man.’ It’s the sort of remark I’d expect from a colleague rather than a civilian, and the mock shock-horror way he says it is actually quite funny.
‘I try not to be. Stay a while.’ The idiot brushes my wrist with his fingers. ‘More coffee?’
Last time I drank four lattes for breakfast I was still awake at two o’clock the following morning.
‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘And why don’t you tell me about the paintballing?’
He needs no second invitation. ‘There’s this huge woodland site between Edinburgh and Glasgow,’ he begins. ‘All sorts of scenarios. The village hostage rescue looks the most fun. That’s where you get to use the paint thrower.’ He sees my puzzled expression and clarifies, ‘It’s basically a huge water cannon filled with paint. The ordinary paintballs are a mixture of oil, gelatine and dye, and we fire them through nitrogen-powered compressed air.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘I have no idea.’ The idiot looks puzzled. ‘No-one’s ever marked me. I always win.’
‘You do this a lot, then?’
‘Once before. When I was seven. If it works out I’m going to sign up for this place in Oklahoma where you spend a week recreating the D-Day battles. With paint. If you pay a bit extra, you can lead the French Resistance.’
By the time the idiot has finished telling me about battle packs, paint pods, flag capturing, defensive bunker play, ravine negotiation and a legendary character called The Paint Punk, I’m thinking I’d love to go paintballing. With him.
And then I realise what’s really going on.
All this military talk … well, for a few minutes, it was just like old times.
Old times with Ryan.
My husband.
Captain Ryan Sherwood.
That day I watched him being presented with his Afghanistan Operational Service Medal was one of the proudest of my life.
And now?
I’m ashamed to realise that instead of thinking about Ryan’s funeral, I’ve been imagining myself on a date with a man who knows absolutely nothing about the savage realities of military life.
The idiot has stopped talking and for the first time in more than an hour the silence between us feels awkward.
‘You’re not how I imagined a corporate lawyer,’ I blurt out.
‘Says the lady undertaker. Sorry … there’s nothing I’d rather do than sit and talk to you for the rest of the day. But it looks like you’ve got a customer.’
I turn to see a man peering through the window of Happy Endings, then rattling on the door.
Business at last!
And a timely reminder that my priority is work.
Not relationships.
‘I’d better dash. Come on, Chopper. Thanks for breakfast. Good luck with the paintballing, and drive that thing,’ I point at his scooter, ‘more safely in future.’
‘Bye for now.’ He hesitates. Then, ‘Look, let me give you my number. Perhaps we can have dinner.’
I punch his details into my phone. Rude not to. Not as if I’m ever going to call him. But as I walk briskly across the street, rubbing the finger that used to wear a wedding ring, I acknowledge the idiot is charismatic in a man-child kind of way. Far too old to be riding a child’s toy, but at least he has good manners.
And Barclay is a pretty cool name.
11 (#ulink_01fd2d06-50fb-5a0e-9dd8-69be0526e734)
‘Ah, there you are.’ The man who’s been looking into my shop hears me approaching and turns round at the sound of my footsteps.
I recognise him. Gareth Manning. Runs one of our neighbourhood’s abundance of estate agencies. I’ve overheard him several times in the street, braying with his colleagues about soaring house prices, boasting that if he learns a few phrases of Japanese he’ll be able to add a further thirty thousand to the price tag of a studio flat. He looks from me to his watch.
‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ he says.
‘So sorry I’m late.’ I quickly unlock and usher Gareth in through the door. Chopper and I follow. ‘Just give me a few moments,’ I say. I walk Chopper down to the basement and settle him onto his day bed, next to the fridges – which have been behaving themselves perfectly, although gobbling vast amounts of electricity since they have yet to accommodate anyone – and then retrace my steps.
‘Gareth, isn’t it?’ I say. We shake hands. ‘So how can I help you?’
‘I’ve come to measure up. And take pictures.’
‘For what?’ I’m bewildered because Gareth has the look of someone who’s made an appointment to see me.
‘The shop.’ Gareth flicks open the catches on his briefcase and produces a camera plus some gadget that shoots out a laser of light when he points it at the wall.
‘For what? Why?’ I’m baffled.
‘You know.’ Gareth sounds embarrassed, whereas before he was merely impatient to get on with his work. ‘The lease, and that.’
‘What about the lease?’
Now Gareth looks shifty. ‘Well, aren’t you surrendering it at the end of the month?’ He keeps his eyes studiously to the floor, then mutters, ‘Personally, I think you’ve made a good decision. No call for your kind of business around here, is there?’
If I weren’t so shocked, I’d tell Gareth that more people will die in our neighbourhood this year than will buy homes. And that we have only one undertaker, as opposed to half a dozen estate agents, all of whom seem to make a handsome living.
At least, that’s what I wish I’d said when I rerun this scene in my mind hours later. But for now, I’m dumbfounded. I can feel my face turning the colour of a pillar box. ‘Who told you that? About the lease?’
Before I can discover the source of Gareth’s misinformation, we are both startled by the sound of a ringing phone.
‘Excuse me,’ I mutter. Then, ‘Hello, Happy Endings. This is Nina speaking.’
Probably yet another cold caller trying to convince me I’m owed a fortune for payment protection insurance I know I never had in the first place.
But there’s nothing brash about the voice on the other end of the line. It’s female, shaky, and a bit muffled. ‘Is that … the undertaker?’
‘Yes, you’re through to Happy Endings,’ I repeat. ‘May I help you?’ My heart is racing. This is the call I have been waiting for. Gareth is fiddling with his laser pointy thing, and I’d like to order him to leave, but I don’t want to break off from this important phone call to speak to someone else, so I turn my back on him and listen.
‘I need to arrange a funeral.’
‘Of course. Might I have the name of the deceased, please?’
‘Kelli Shapiro.’
‘Kelli Shapiro?’ The Kelli Shapiro? The famous Kelli Shapiro? The woman who declared her two Oscars make splendid bookends, at least according to what I once read in Grazia. I’m relieved I’ve managed to keep the shock from my voice. ‘Let me just check the spelling on that,’ I say. ‘Kelli with a double l? And S-h-a-p-i-r-o.’
‘That’s right.’ A whisper.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you. If I give you the address, would you be able to come round to make the arrangements?’
‘Of course.’ I scribble it down. The big blue house facing the park. ‘What time would be convenient for you?’
‘Could you come now?’
‘Of course.’ I put down the phone.
Gavin has been packing up his briefcase. ‘Kelli Shapiro, eh?’ he says, trying and failing to quell his excitement. ‘Suicide? Drugs?’
Coldly, I escort him the few steps to the front door and seize the advantage. ‘Who told you to come here today?’
‘Can’t tell you that. Client confidentiality. You know how it is.’ Gareth hesitates, then adds, ‘Tell you what. Get me an introduction to sell Kelli’s house, and I’ll cut you in on my commission.’
I shut the door in his face.
12 (#ulink_ac899644-60d9-528f-9f17-b9a1c2c95e11)
Kelli Shapiro’s home is only a few minutes away. I force myself to walk slowly, although my mind is racing and my heart is hammering. Kelli’s next-of-kin must have seen my advert in the local paper, so it turns out I wasn’t squandering my start-up funds, after all.
Kelli Shapiro! Growing up, Mum was always teasing my dad about Kelli Shapiro. He had an enormous crush on her. ‘It’s just that she’s got magnificent comic timing,’ he’d protest. ‘Britain’s answer to Meg Ryan.’
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Karen Ross
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Undertaker Nina Sherwood is full of good advice. For example, never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes. Nina is your average 30-year-old with a steady job, a nice home – and dead bodies in her basement. As an undertaker, she often prefers the company of the dead to the living – they’re obliging, good listeners and take secrets to the grave. Nina is on a one-woman mission to persuade her peers that passing on is just another part of life. But the residents of Primrose Hill are adamant that a funeral parlour is the last thing they need… and they will stop at nothing to close down her dearly beloved shop. When Nina’s ‘big break’ funeral turns out to be a prank, it seems like it’s the final nail in the coffin for her new business. That is, until a (tall, dark and) mysterious investor shows up out of the blue, and she decides to take a leap of faith. Because, after all, it’s her funeral… The perfect antidote to all those books about weddings, this book will make you laugh until you cry, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley’s Bridesmaids, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Good Place.