They stand shivering against the windowless back wall of the surgery and Bridget takes a packet of cigarettes from her uniform pocket. “Snow at the end of April,” she says, shaking her head and lighting up. There had been girls at Jeanie’s school who stood outside the back gates smoking and talking about boys, but she had never been one of them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it out to the cottage before you walked all the way here to tell me,” Bridget says. “Well, anyway, the other receptionist told me.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you,” Jeanie says. “I came to get the death certificate.”
“Oh, okay,” Bridget says, her voice tight. She drops the match by her feet where it joins a few others and a number of scuffed cigarette butts mashed into the dirty snow. “Well, it’ll be the medical certificate you need from Dr. Holloway first, but he probably has to phone the coroner. Did he mention that? He has been, hasn’t he? Then you’ll have to take the certificate to the register office in Devizes.”
“Devizes?”
“To get the death certificate and the burial certificate—the green form.”
Jeanie puts her hand on the brick wall to steady herself. “Can’t the doctor give me those?”
Bridget stares at her, draws on her cigarette. “You have to register a death, Jeanie. At the register office.” She speaks as if Jeanie were a child. “That’s how these things work. You’ll need the certificates for the vicar, or the crematorium, and you’ll probably need the death certificate for other things too.”
“Other things like what?” Everything is beginning to jostle for space in Jeanie’s head.
“Like Dot’s bank account—”
“Oh, she never had a bank account. None of us ever had a bank account. We keep all our money in a tin in the scullery.” Jeanie laughs, a mad-sounding laugh, knowing she shouldn’t have said this, and wondering how it was only yesterday that she and her mother were out in the garden weeding the onion bed. The wall she is pressing against seems soft, as though if she leaned harder, she might be able to fold herself into it and be gone.
“I can take you to Devizes.”
“I’ll catch the bus.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly. I am capable of catching the bus.”
“Look.” Bridget scrapes the lit end of her cigarette against the wall and the falling sparks melt pinpricks into the snow. “You’re going to have to get through a lot in the next few days. I know—I buried my father last year, remember?” Jeanie has forgotten this and feels bad for it. “It’s not just the certificates, but there’s the funeral, the wake.”
“Wake? I don’t want a wake.” The thought of people milling about the kitchen, the babble of them, the way they would stare at her and Julius: pitying the weirdos who still lived with their mother at age fifty-one.
“Of course you want a wake.”
“Mum didn’t know many people. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to come.”
“Well, me and Stu, for a start.” Bridget sounds put out.
“Apart from you and Stu.”
“And anyway, your mum knew loads of people. What about Kate Gill from the B&B, and Max? I know Dr. Holloway will want to come. The Rawsons, or maybe just him.”
“Rawson? Why would he want to come? I’m not having either of them in the house. It’s not about trying to make up numbers, is it? It’s not like it’s a party.”
“Julius might want to invite Shelley Swift.”
“Shelley Swift?” Jeanie struggles to place the name.
“Aren’t they friends? I’m sure I saw them together.” She says it with a rise of her eyebrows.
The woman comes to mind: pretty with downy cheeks the colour and shape of apricots, thick limbs, a secretary at the brickworks. “For goodness’ sake, he’s doing a job for her. Something to do with a stuck window. He barely knows her.”
Bridget pops a Polo into her mouth and rolls it around. “All right. How about I drive you to the register office on Wednesday afternoon? I’ll see if Dr. Holloway has the medical certificate for you yet, and then we can phone and make you an appointment.”
“You don’t need to do everything,” Jeanie says crossly. She’s never liked the way Bridget bosses people around and gossips. Bridget has been Dot’s friend since Jeanie and Julius first went to school, when Bridget’s first job was in the infant school office. She’s been one of the surgery’s receptionists for years, partly, Jeanie thinks rather meanly, so that she’ll know what everyone in the village has wrong with them.
Bridget lets out a puff of exasperation. “You’re as stubborn as your mother. I’m trying to help. You just fill out a couple of forms and it’ll be done. Simple.”
Jeanie imagines it will be anything but simple.
5
In the afternoon, Jeanie stares out of the scullery window again but sees nothing; the radio is on but she doesn’t hear it. Her thoughts move from one thing to the next, unable to settle. She remembers sitting on the grass at the top of Ham Hill with her father, watching starlings turn in the autumn dusk, moving together like a black cloud. A murmuration, he called it. “I’ll write the word down for you when we get home,” he said, “and you can copy it out.” But when they got home he had the paper to read, and there were jobs to do and she didn’t remind him. She thinks about the bird scarers she and Julius made from old CDs they found beside a dustbin in the village. He read the labels and they laughed at The Best of Burt Bacharach keeping the crows away from the
