She said one more thing before sleep finally overcame her, words spoken so softly Julie barely heard them.
‘I miss him, Julie,’ she said.
Then all she heard was her sister’s low breathing.
She slept.
Julie stopped stroking her hair and rolled over onto her back again, glancing across at the photo on the bedside table of Chris and Donna, peering at it through the gloom.
It was a long time before she fell asleep.
Martin Connelly took the suit from the wardrobe and hung it on one of the handles.
He brushed fluff from a sleeve and inspected the garment carefully. He hadn’t worn it for over two years, not since the last funeral. The agent noticed a couple of creases in one arm of the jacket and wished now that he’d left it out for his housekeeper to press. He shook his head. The creases would drop out once he had it on. What the hell. He selected a white shirt and then rummaged through his wardrobe for his black tie, hanging it neatly over the shoulder of the jacket. Satisfied that everything was ready for the following day, he wandered back into the sitting- room of the flat and poured himself a drink.
He sat down in front of the television and reached for the remote control, flicking through channels, unable to find anything suitable. He wondered about watching a video but decided against it.
There were cassette cases underneath the television, both tapes leant to him by Christopher Ward. He made a note to return them. It would give him an excuse to return to the house.
He wouldn’t phone first, he’d just turn up, surprise Donna one day. He doubted whether she’d be too happy to see him after their lunch that day. He regretted his suggestion to travel with her to Dublin.
And yet what better time to speak to her than now? She was emotionally vulnerable, looking for kindness, wanting to be needed. As time went on and her emotional strength returned, his task would be more difficult.
Connelly finished his drink and poured himself another, rolling the glass between his palms.
It was one of a set Kathy had bought.
The thought of her brought the memories flooding back into his mind.
They had lived together for ten months and, whilst it had scarcely been idyllic, both had been happy. She was beginning to make a go of her career in modelling; she’d been signed up by an agency and the work had begun to flood in. At first he’d been overjoyed, proud of her and more than a little smug to think that his girlfriend was a fashion model.
When the nude work started to take over he began to change his mind. Kathy had never been ashamed of her body and when she was approached by a top men’s magazine to do a spread she jumped at the chance. The pay was good and it opened up even more opportunities. Modelling assignments took her abroad. It got to the stage where they hardly saw each other and, all the time, Connelly was plagued by doubts. By thoughts of his girlfriend and a photographer he’d never met cavorting about on some sun-kissed beach in the Caribbean. He’d challenged her several times about it. Had she ever slept with a photographer while she was away? The usual thing. Blind to the fact that the only thing that interested her was furthering her career, Connelly had finally made life unbearable for both of them with his jealousy. As she reminded him, during rows over her assignments, he was always having lunch or dinner with female clients, editors or journalists. Connelly insisted it was different. Besides, the women
It took less than a year before she left him. He simply returned home one night to find that she was gone, all her clothes and belongings gone with her.
That had been almost two years ago. He hadn’t heard from her since. He’d seen photos of her in some of the tabloids, looking decorative on the arms of rock stars or others of that ilk. Apart from that, he hadn’t seen her or heard from her since the split. He’d lived alone ever since.
A housekeeper came in twice a week to clean the place and do his laundry, but apart from that he lived a more or less solitary existence outside working hours.
Connelly finished his drink, set the glass down and headed for the bedroom, glancing at the black suit hanging on the wardrobe door.
He wondered what Donna was doing now.
It was 12.36 a.m. She was probably in bed.
Connelly tried to picture her lying between the sheets. It was a pleasing image.
He smiled crookedly.
He had failed that lunchtime, a trifle impetuous perhaps.
There would be other opportunities.
He had time.
There was a bird singing in the tree close to the grave. It chirped happily throughout the service, bouncing from branch to branch, rejoicing in the blue skies and the warmth of the day.
Donna heard its shrill song but the priest’s words were lost to her. The words of the service were meaningless; it was as if he’d been speaking a foreign language. All she was aware of was that solitary bird in the tree. And the sound of a woman crying.
The crying woman was her.
Supported by Julie, she stood at the graveside surrounded by crowds of other mourners. Dressed in black, those paying their final respects to Christopher Ward looked like a menacing horde against the green of the cemetery grass. Splashes of brilliant colour afforded by the flowers at the graveside made the dark mass of mourners look incongruous in the peaceful setting.
A light breeze stirred the cellophane wrappers on some of the flowers, causing them to rattle.
Donna, looking down into the grave and seeing the coffin, was aware even more now of the appalling finality of the occasion. When they shovelled six feet of earth on top of that casket her husband would be well and truly gone. Nothing remaining except a marble marker which bore his name and an inscription:
CHRISTOPHER WARD, BELOVED HUSBAND
SLEEP UNTIL WE ARE TOGETHER ONCE MORE
Not much to signify the sum total of thirty-five years, Donna thought.
All around the grave others were standing in orderly lines, some with heads bowed, others gazing around as the priest spoke.
Beyond them stood the line of cars that had ferried the mourners from the church.
Again, Donna found it difficult to remember what had happened in the church or, indeed, since she had got up that morning. She had seemed to be moving like an automaton, not really aware of anything she did or said, or of anything which was said to her.
Julie had tried her best to coax her along but she too had found the solemnity of the occasion sometimes too much to bear. As she stood beside Donna now there were tears rolling down her cheeks. Inside the church she had stared at the coffin, raised up on a plinth and surrounded by flowers, her own mind struggling with the thought that inside that box lay her brother-in-law.
She had ridden in the leading car with Donna, neither of them speaking as the driver guided the vehicle towards the cemetery, never more than a few yards behind the hearse.
