Charlie looked reassured then cast her eyes to the table, toying with the salad. ‘Respect to you, Mum. Proud of you. But I’m really sorry, I do need to go back to uni. Tonight. If that’s OK? I won’t be able to come with you.’
Famie shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t expect you to. They weren’t your colleagues.’ She ate the last of the pizza slice. ‘Anyway, I didn’t sleep with any of the others. I’ll be fine.’
11
A HUNDRED MILES away, north and west from Famie’s café, the student sat hunched and sweaty over a portable typewriter. It was a 1966 Brother De Luxe with a pale blue cover, a threaded red and black ribbon and black on white keys. Functional, efficient, reliable. The O and I looked worn, and the S had almost disappeared, but the rest of the letters looked, if not exactly pristine, then certainly fit for purpose. His fingers were sweaty and he wiped them – again – on his shorts.
The attic was tiny, airless and overpoweringly hot. The fragile floor made movement of any kind extremely hazardous; one misstep and it would cave in, causing him to fall four metres to his bedroom floor below. It was, however, impressively soundproofed.
He shouldn’t be there of course, there was no reason for anyone to be in the attic, but it was the only place in the house that was lagged and muffled enough to obscure his work.
The student held his breath, fingers poised above the keys, and listened. The water tank hissed the way it always did and the joist he was sitting on creaked when he moved but, apart from that, the house was silent.
The attic door was shut. His bedroom door below was shut.
He began to type.
12
Wednesday, 6 June
ONCE THE OFFICIAL post-mortems and secondary, independent examinations had been concluded, Famie attended funerals in Brighton, Keswick, Penarth, Croydon and Hammersmith. They had been, she thought, Methodist, humanist, Catholic, Anglican, and one she wasn’t sure about. She was aware of the continuing media outrage, had seen headlines and caught the occasional news bulletin, but as far as possible she kept her music playing. The endless speculation that followed an atrocity had always seemed to her one of the most demoralizing features of modern news reporting. In the absence of anything new to focus on, the screens and airwaves overflowed with a dizzying array of fools and liars. Famie resolved to avoid them all. Her ‘Classical Chill’ playlist, all forty-three hours of it, had become her panic room. She visited often.
The police had called once. Two detectives from the Met had asked her the most cursory of questions about the Investigations team and what they might have been working on. Famie found herself apologizing for being of so little help. One of them had left his card.
The final service, just over two weeks on from the attacks, was Mary Lawson’s, and it was the one she was dreading the most. With the others, the grieving families were unknown to her, but Mary’s was different. Famie had met her children, Freddie and Ella, at their house, bought them presents for their last birthdays. After writing them both letters about their mother, she had briefly considered asking Charlie back before calling Tommi and Sam instead.
Famie hauled on her ‘uniform’ one more time. Knee-length black shift dress, black beret. They travelled together to the Northamptonshire village of Ashby St Ledgers, ‘population one hundred and seventy-three’, declared Tommi, reading from his phone.
‘Not today,’ said Sam, eyes on the traffic jam they’d just joined. ‘If we make it in time, it’ll be many times that.’
‘And all of them journalists,’ said Famie. ‘Lucky Ashby St Ledgers.’
They crawled through the village, along a twisty, narrow road lined with coach houses, thatched cottages and Land Rovers. One-way traffic all the way to the church. They were directed along a grassy track to an adjoining bone-dry and virtually grassless field. Billows of dust enveloped the queues of cars, directed into lines by a teenage boy in an orange beanie hat. Famie edged her Volvo X40 saloon up against a hedge.
‘Apart from this god-awful knot in my stomach,’ she said, ‘for all the world this feels like we’re going to Latitude.’
‘Just without the designer beer tents,’ said Tommi, opening his door.
Famie checked the dashboard thermometer. ‘Thirty-four degrees. Christ, this is going to be tough.’
They joined the stream of mourners who were making their way to the church, shuffling back along the track. Low, ancient walls revealed a small graveyard. A few headstones were adorned with flowers. Most were bare.
The TV trucks had been lined up in a tight formation in front of the church’s simple wooden gate. ‘Open daily’ said a sign. A short path cut through the graveyard to the porch, its ironstone walls glowing in the sunshine. Famie hesitated, the knot tightening. She took a deep breath and stepped inside. The cool air was a relief and carried with it the omnipresent church smells of damp wood and dusty books.
A solemn woman nodded at them. ‘Out of service sheets, I’m afraid,’ she stage-whispered. ‘Last seats on the back pew.’
Tommi stood, Sam and Famie sat. No one spoke. The only sounds came from the fifteenth-century pews which creaked as their occupants tried and failed to find a comfortable position. Famie forced herself to face the front. Mary’s coffin rested on trestles and was topped with a rose, lily and ivy wreath spelling ‘MUM’. Freddie and Ella sat either side of their father, his arms draped around them both.
The vicar arrived. Another salesman. They sang, they prayed, they sang again. Mary’s widower managed a few words of a eulogy which had to be completed by a friend.
So much crying, thought Famie. I’ve heard so much crying.
The committal was an old-fashioned burial at the back of
