“Oh, I’m glad,” Arlene beamed from ear to ear.
They both jumped as a loud humming filled the room. It was Paige’s phone, vibrating loudly against the green leather of the desk as it rang with “Mum” showing on the screen. She slid it open and answered.
“Paige...” her mum’s voice was thin and full of held back tears, “it’s Tom, dear. He...” she broke down sobbing, the crying growing fainter for a moment as if she had moved the phone away from her face.
“Mum?” Paige said, her chest sinking with the weight of the news she hadn’t yet received.
“Tom...” her mum’s voice murmured down the phone again, “He’s gone, love.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EDDIE WEBB PASSED HIS final days on Earth in a hospice with terminal lung cancer surrounded by the people he cared about most in the world. His mother, stoic but attentive as always, had been by his side every day of his illness, bringing him her famous shepherd’s pie and cheese scones almost daily. Paige, of course, visited after work as often as she could. She was busy in her new job, having just graduated from her degree months before. Eddie was glad he’d lived to see that.
Sarah slept in the hospice with him, on the little airbed she’d brought from home so as not to disturb his sleep. His sister popped in from time to time, but they were never really close, and he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to see him like that.
And Tom, his best friend of so many years, dropped in with a beer or a car magazine every opportunity he could. They would talk about old times and share their opinions on the football scores, passionately putting the world to rights as if they were holding court at the bar of their favourite pub.
On his last day, all of these people gathered by his bedside, having been alerted by the hospice staff that he was weakening rapidly. They gave him distraction from his pain, telling him stories of the past, and offering him hope with updates of their lives. He took it all, gladly; he knew his family’s lives would go on after he was gone.
That may not have been the first day Paige had met Tom, but it was the only time she had really noticed him. That’s not to say that she hadn’t liked him before, but in her mind he had always been “dad’s friend”, but as Tom was further inducted into their lives, she began to see him as the kind, funny person he was. In the last few weeks of her dad’s life, Tom had grown closer to all of them, offering Paige and her mum emotional support, bringing supplies and even helping out with bills.
It wasn’t until that last day that she noticed him adopt her dad’s nickname for her. Her dad, weak and rarely speaking, had said, “Tell me a story, P.”
She retold a memory – with detailed embellishments to add humour and sparkle - of a trip the three of them had taken to the London Eye. Whilst at the time, her dad’s fear of heights had seemed to put a dampener on the day, with years of hindsight it was a treasured memory and brought instant laughter to the room. Paige described his wobbly knees and the way he snapped at her mum whenever she commented on how far away the ground looked as they reached the top of the giant Ferris wheel.
Paige loved that memory in particular because, now older and able to understand the day for what it was, she realised that her dad had only agreed to do something he truly hated to make her and her mum happy. She held his hand tightly as she finished the story, sharing a smile with him as the others continued their laughter, swapping impressions of Eddie wobbling at the top of the ride.
Paige could vividly remember the moment that Tom gently tapped her arm and added, “Lovely story, P.”
That memory now swam at the surface of her mind as she sat gripping her mum’s hand at Tom’s funeral.
It had been two weeks since Tom’s accident and Paige and her mum had mourned every moment since he had passed away. Paige hadn’t been able to bring herself to return to the Ecklands yet, forcing herself to forget her attack and Ella’s death. They felt weirdly distant now, like events in someone else’s life.
They had found a local guitarist to play an acoustic version of Tom’s favourite song Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” as the coffin disappeared behind the curtain. Paige’s mum broke down into uncontrollable sobs, swaying against Paige as the song came to an end and the guests stood up to leave.
Rufus had been arrested by the police for manslaughter. The police had reassured Paige’s mum that the “investigation was ongoing” but they had heard nothing further. Paige’s mum had stopped taking the detective’s calls – “It won’t bring Tom back,” she had said solemnly.
With Paige not returning to the Ecklands, the anonymous texts seemed to have stopped. Paige was glad – she couldn’t cope with anything else now.
The following few days, Paige threw herself into anything time-consuming around the house. She helped her mum tidy Tom’s things, deep-cleaned the kitchen, weeded in the garden, cooked the dinners.
Two days after the funeral, she met with a potential buyer for Tom’s car. As she waited in the driveway, she unlocked the car and got into the passenger side, as she had done so many times before. She ran a finger over the stereo, remembering Tom’s passion for rock and the many trips they had taken before her dad passed away, storming down the motorway to The Rolling Stones or The Who. They had gone through his collection of CDs and vinyls that morning, unable to consider getting rid of a single one. They felt like parts of Tom more so than any of his clothing.
A price
