She recalled how Oliver’s temper had flared when she had hinted that Edward might have deliberately given her a plum with a wasp in it, aware of the very deep nerve she must have touched. Oliver’s reaction still bothered her, the way it bothered her that he had been quick to dismiss calling the police when Captain Kirk had been killed. Was he protecting Edward?
Even so it did not diminish the intensity of her feelings for Oliver; if anything, bizarrely, it made them deeper still. She thought back to past relationships and wondered if she had always felt disquieted by the people she had loved the most. But the comparison was hard; she had never before felt as deeply in love with anyone.
The taxi drove in through the gates of the crematorium, and along the smooth drive through the tended lawns to the squat, red brick chapel.
Frannie paid the driver, then stood for a moment rather awkwardly. There were two hearses outside the chapel, a row of black limousines and a large number of people split into small clusters, each a short distance from the next. It was like a cocktail party at which there were no drinks.
She scanned the faces, uncertain which people were gathered for Meredith’s funeral and which for an earlier one. She felt chilly in her black cotton two-piece and wished she had on something warmer; she always forgot how much colder Yorkshire was than London.
The men were in dark suits and several of the women wore hats and veils. A smell of mothballs and perfume mingled with the scent of freshly mown grass. She recognized a face from university, but it was not someone she had ever met. Then she saw Meredith’s husband, Paul, working his way through the clusters, shaking hands, his normally ruddy face clenched and drained of colour, and she found herself fighting to keep control of her own grief.
The same gutted feeling in response to the news over the phone, which had remained with her since, was now intensifying. The coffin was visible through
the rear window of the hearse, rising out of the sprays and wreaths that surrounded it. Two undertakers in black suits were busily unloading and taking the flowers around the side of the crematorium, where they were laying them out. Beyond, Frannie could see an ornamental fountain and a long wall with inscribed stone tablets, and rows of single rose bushes, each bearing a large perspex tag.
The other hearse was empty, its contents currently behind the closed oak doors of the chapel from which she could hear strains of organ music and the muffled singing of ‘Jerusalem’. Already, another hearse was nosing its way in through the gates. It hove to at a respectful distance, like a ship waiting for the tide.
Frannie walked into the garden of remembrance and joined several other mourners in looking at the flowers. She found the spray she had sent and read the tag:
Meredith. Love you and miss you always. Fondest love. Spags
.
Spags
had been her nickname at university; Meredith had still called her that, and sometimes Paul. A tear rolled down her cheek, and as she pulled her handkerchief out of her bag she saw someone making their way towards her. Her heart sank a little as she recognized Phoebe Hawkins, one of her fellow Archaeology students from university.
Phoebe Hawkins was a strange, rather lonely girl, who kept her own affairs strictly to herself but at the same time was a source of gossip about everyone else, as if she desperately wanted to belong with the crowd, and believed gossip was the currency with which she could buy her way in. She had an angular, somewhat masculine, face that was neither attractive nor ugly, and which was made more severe by her close-cropped hair and wire-framed granny glasses. She was wearing
a matt-black smock and leather sandals, and stood badly, her head stooped forwards, the way Frannie remembered. She looked like a tortoise peering from its shell.
Frannie had always felt a little sorry for Phoebe and had tried to include her in things at university, even though she had never really liked her very much. She had never heard Meredith speak of her since leaving and was surprised to see her here. Yet she remembered how Phoebe had always hated to miss out on bad news. The thought had often struck her when they were students that Phoebe appeared to get pleasure from the misfortunes of others.
She shook Frannie’s hand with a deadly seriousness that seemed genuine. ‘This is terrible, Frannie,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘So how are you?’
‘OK, thanks,’ Frannie said, looking around to see who else she recognized. ‘How about you?’ she asked, mechanically.
‘I’m fine, really well.’
‘Spags! You made it.’ Paul stood in front of her suddenly and kissed her on both cheeks, mustering a welcome. ‘Really good of you to come all this way. I thought you were going to phone and let me know what train you were on – I’d have picked you up.’
‘You had enough to worry about.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t know what to say about Meredith. I’m sorry, I’m just – wiped. How are the kids?’
‘I don’t think they’re old enough to really understand.’ He glanced inquisitively at Phoebe, but without recognition. ‘How do you do?’ he said.
‘I’m Phoebe Hawkins – I was at UCL with Meredith.’
‘Ah, right,’ he said politely, but rather formally. ‘Very kind of you to come.’ He looked back at Frannie. ‘Will you come back to the house afterwards?’ He glanced at Phoebe. ‘You’d be most welcome also. The undertakers have laid on a couple of limousines – just get straight into one when you come out.’ He moved on to a man and a woman who were hovering close by. ‘Aileen. Richard. Thanks for coming.’
‘Heard you are at the British Museum?’ Phoebe said to Frannie.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know someone there called Penrose Spode?’
‘We share an office,’ she said, surprised.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Phoebe’s smile showed a warmth and a vulnerability Frannie had never before noticed, and she was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had misjudged her.
‘How – how do you know him?’
‘We were on a four-month dig together in Iran the summer I graduated. Bit of a strange fellow.’
‘A little. He’s all right.’ Frannie studied her face for any information it might yield about Spode, hoping for something that she could tease him about, and she wondered suddenly whether anything had happened between them. She glanced at Phoebe’s hands, but she wasn’t wearing a ring. ‘How about you – what are you up to?’
‘I was working in Bath – at the Roman Baths Museum. But I’ve just moved up to London about a month ago to the Natural History Museum.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s really good, I’m enjoying it.’ She hesitated. ‘Dreadful way to die for poor Meredith.’
Above the subdued chatter of the crowd, Frannie
heard the clank of a handle, and the chapel doors opened. Mourners filed past a clergyman who stood in the entrance shaking their hands. She looked back at Phoebe. ‘Do you know what happened?’
Phoebe Hawkins hesitated, as if reluctant to part with a good secret, then she looked around as if to ensure she was not being overheard and leaned a little closer to Frannie. Frannie could smell her soap, it had a carbolic, institutional smell about it that was unattractive. Phoebe imparted the details proprietorially, as if she alone had been entrusted with them:
‘It was on Friday morning, apparently; she had dropped the boy, Charles, at nursery school, and she was driving to some bric-à-brac auction near Harrogate. She was at a traffic-light; when the lights changed, she pulled out and a car crossing on red hit her broadside.’ Phoebe stopped, but signalled with a widening of her eyes that there was more she could tell.
‘God, poor Meredith!’ Frannie said.
‘There’ll obviously be quite a lawsuit. And the police are going to prosecute him.’
Won’t do Meredith much good, Frannie thought but did not say. She noticed another friend she had not seen for a couple of years, but Phoebe did not want to release her.
‘At least she didn’t suffer for very long,’ Phoebe said, ‘but it was a pretty horrific scene, I gather.’
‘Suffer for long?’
‘The car went up in flames. She was conscious but they couldn’t get her out.’
Frannie closed her eyes, feeling sick. ‘Oh my God!’
‘A total fireball; she was burned beyond recognition.’
When Frannie opened her eyes again she saw the
pallbearers were unloading the coffin from the hearse. Meredith was in that. She stared up at the bland, red brick wall. The vapour trail of a jet lay across the sky.
Burned beyond recognition.
She tried to push the image from her mind but she could not. She saw Meredith driving: her hair a tangle, cigarette between her messily painted lips, leaning forward to turn up the volume on the radio, pop music blaring, then looking up and seeing the light go green, pushing the gear lever forward, accelerating. One moment of horror. Stabbing her foot on the brakes. Squeal of tyres. The bang. Then the flames. Trying to open the door that was stoved in, buckled. Other people pulling at the door, the way they had pulled at the door of the Volvo outside Meston, with the boy’s trapped fingers. The flames increasing. Burning alive. Meredith screaming, pulling the door handle, pounding on the window. Just like the driver in the motorway inferno she’d witnessed four years ago.
She prayed not.
She swayed on her legs and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, shivers raking her skin. ‘That’s awful,’ she said, weakly. ‘My God.’ She closed her eyes again for a moment, immediately opening them, frightened by the image that came into her mind.
‘Terrible.’ Phoebe nodded at the cluster of Meredith’s family filing in through the door behind the pallbearers. ‘Imagine having to go and identify her.’
‘Do you keep in touch with any of our lot?’ Frannie said, trying to change the subject.
‘Sarah Hobday’s down in Bath doing a six-month project at the museum. And I bumped into Keith Stanley at a seminar at the Middlesex Poly last year. And of course I’ve been down to see Susie Verbeeten a couple of times.’ She hesitated, then added the rider: ‘Poor thing.’
Frannie saw a faint trace of the spiked smile of the old Phoebe; it was like the probe of a mosquito drawing something out of everyone she met, exchanging blood for poison. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, you didn’t hear?’
Shadows rose inside Frannie. ‘Hear what?’ She remembered Susie Verbeeten clearly: The organizer, always the organizer, but fun too at times, although she tended to know everything.
‘She went blind.’
‘Went blind?’ Frannie echoed in horror. ‘Susie?’
‘Yes, I thought you knew?’
‘I haven’t seen her since I left.’ Frannie’s brain fogged as a new and undefined fear seeped through her. ‘How – do – you – I mean tell me – what happened? Permanently blind?’
‘Oh yes, there’s no chance, her retinas have been destroyed.’
The clusters were thinning around them as the mourners filed into the chapel. ‘But how?’ Frannie was aware of the desperation in her voice.
‘From a virus she picked up in Malaysia. The pollution in the South China Sea – there’s some bacteria the locals are immune to but Westerners aren’t. It attacks the retinas.’
‘But that’s – why isn’t – I mean – there’s nothing they can do?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Phoebe glanced around. ‘We ought to go in.’
Something stirred deep in Frannie’s mind. Faint, only faint; like a hibernating monster not quite roused from its slumber. She followed Phoebe lamely into the chapel and sat beside her on the hard, shiny pew, staring silently at the oak veneer coffin on the catafalque. At the single wreath of white lilies.
Death was a lonely place; and a silent place. In a short while Meredith would be wheeled alone into the furnace. Was that necessary when she was already charred beyond recognition? Frannie pondered. And the door would be shut on her for ever.
And maybe God would take her spirit. Maybe she was already with God. Frannie was not sure. Her faith was at a low ebb. She closed her eyes, unhooked her kneeler and slipped down on to her knees, cupping her face in her hands.
She cried softly throughout the service, whilst Phoebe sat stonily beside her. She barely heard the words of the chaplain; Meredith had never been much of a believer and it did not sound, from the way he spoke, as if the chaplain had ever met her.
Odd thoughts came in and out of her mind. Appearance and reality, suddenly remembered from a school essay. Shakespeare wrote about that. About nothing being what it seemed. Susie Verbeeten had seemed strong, indestructible. Leader of the pack.
Blind.
Meredith had been full of life. Charmed. Always cheery, always lucky. Frannie knelt and prayed again, but as she did so she felt a stiffening sensation spreading through her body and a cold sweat broke out on her skin. She was very frightened now. She had to work it out.
Back outside in the drizzle Paul directed them to one of the undertaker’s Daimler limousines. Frannie turned to Phoebe. ‘Remember Jonathan Mountjoy?’
‘Yes. Have you seen him lately?’
‘He was murdered in Washington by a mugger, a few weeks ago.’
Phoebe paled slightly. She seemed reluctant to look at Frannie. The driver held the door and they stepped
into the rich leathery smell of the interior and sat down. ‘Seriously, Frannie?’
‘Yes.’
‘A few weeks ago?’
‘Early August.’ Frannie clasped her hands together for warmth and comfort. ‘There seem to be a lot of things happening to our year, don’t there, Phoebe? Meredith dead. Jonathan dead. Susie blind. Three things. It’s a rather horrible coincidence, isn’t it?’
Phoebe shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think it is coincidence.’
‘What do you mean?’
She was quiet for a moment, then she asked the driver if he could drop her at the station as she had to get back to London. ‘I’ll call you, Frannie.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can get you at the British Museum?’
‘Yes.’
Phoebe changed the subject, chatting as they drove through York with false jollity about old acquaintances, watching the passing scenery with bird-like wariness rather than meeting Frannie’s eyes.
She climbed out of the limousine at the station. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said. Then she went inside without looking back.