I’m a connoisseur of crematoriums now. This one at Warriston is my fourth since January. Mrs Sloan was first, in the small service room at Mortonhall, with only seven of us there. Robert Waugh came through with a eulogy and an address I couldn’t have landed on if I’d had five years to get ready. I’ve felt different about him since that day. He can golf all he wants as long as he’s there to pick up the reins anytime we’re cremating a six-year-old corpse with her husband watching, a police officer on either side of him in the front row.
He didn’t do time for it, poor old Mr Sloan. He got probation and counselling. Which didn’t work. He’s feeble now, stays inside. He’s let the garden go to pot.
Then there was Tuft and Lovatt, after the inquiry. They were done together at Dumfries. ‘A beautiful crem,’ Sonsie Webb told me. And so it was, all blond wood and abstract stained-glass windows. That was packed, of course. All of Simmerton was there. All of the old St Angela’s staff and a good lot of Edinburgh solicitors too. And press, naturally. Oh, the press. Valley of Death! they settled on, as the story got going. And they found the worst, darkest, dreariest winter pictures, the gate lodge looking like a mausoleum and the drive so sinister as it slunk away.
The cameras were right up in our faces as we arrived. They called us by name. Called me by name.
‘Finnie!’
‘Over here, Finn!’
I put my head down and scuttled in with my dad on one side and Robert Waugh on the other. My mum wasn’t well enough that day.
It had started to die down by then, until Tuft and Lovatt’s funeral kicked it up again. Because, of course, no one believed I knew nothing. Well, no one ever does. I didn’t believe the wives of all those monsters knew nothing either, when it was just a gruesome story in the tabloids: Sonia Sutcliffe, Primrose Shipman. Only the combination of me coming clean about that Monday night and both Paddy and Shannon telling the cops – taking such delight in telling the cops – how they’d fooled me put me in the clear.
I assumed I’d lose my job anyway, but I was wrong there. The Church stood by me. It took some time for me to work out why and it hurt a bit, for a while.
But I was getting harder to hurt by then, to be honest. When Paddy killed himself, on remand in his cell, I thought my heart would stop. It didn’t feel like something breaking. It felt like something freezing. Calcifying. As if I could go and stand on a headland with my arms up and be a landmark, but I’d never laugh or sing or hug again. The only thing that bucked me out of my petrified grief was the thought of Elayne. I went to the house. Robert drove; I wasn’t safe behind the wheel just then. But she refused to see me. And in six months she’s kept refusing. But I’ll get her in the end. No one could resist the gift I’m going to give her. She just needs time, because she loved him so. He really was loved. He was loved by all three of us.
They were worried about Shannon after she found out he’d gone. She was on suicide watch for eight weeks. She was in hospital. She’s back in her cell now. There’s only one women’s prison in Scotland so I know exactly what she’s going through every day. I can picture it clearly. Sometimes I wonder if she’s in the same cell I was in. Except it wouldn’t really be the same cell, would it? Not if you’re looking at it as your home for life. I’ll ask her, when I go to visit. Which I will. Which I’ll have to.
Because Shannon wants me to be the guardian of her baby, when it’s born, come September. Elayne fought it and Shannon’s mum, that poor woman, fought it too, but it’s Shannon’s choice as long as I agree. And I agreed. I talked to Robert, got his permission to refuse – ‘Good God in Heaven, Finnie, you’re only human!’ he’d said – then found myself agreeing anyway. At least this way the poor wee thing gets all of us. Shannon’s mum would never have let Elayne within a mile. And vice versa. But I want both grannies on Team Baby. It’s going to need all the help it can get, with that start in life. And no matter what Robert says I reckon it’s my duty. There’s a reason they call a new baby ‘the little stranger’.
I keep calling it ‘poor’ but it’s not. It’s the rightful heir. I get nothing. Paddy didn’t use his real name when he ‘married’ me so we were never really married. That was supposed to make it easier for him to walk away with Shannon.
But the baby’s a different story. Jerusalem, Widdershins, the Bairnspairt, the gate lodge, the cottages. And all those trees. It was Lovatt’s so now it belongs to his grandchild, with me as trustee till it’s twenty-one. An heir in utero was a nice big mess for the lawyers but, thanks to the ‘yet to be born’ clause in Lovatt’s will, and the fact that there were no Dudgeon cousins after all, no one’s arguing.
And since there’s no way I could stay in any of those places, not one single night, I’m happy to let the Church do whatever it wants with them. A halfway house, a children’s retreat, a camp-ground for Scouts and Guides down from Glasgow. It’ll take some fundraising but the sites are free. In a few years, I’ll have a better think about it. Not yet, not now.
The Manns have left. They couldn’t get away quick enough. But I’m letting Mr Sloan stay on. Simmerton’s the only place he’ll ever feel at home. Still close to Myna. Julie pops in on him. Abby’s gone back to Edinburgh to finish her training but Julie started at the health club, which suits her down to the ground, except she’s had to pretend she’s stopped smoking. She nags me to join whenever I see her.
I’ll have plenty to keep me busy without a treadmill. Parttime deacon-work and a new baby and looking after Sonsie, who was so good, looking after me. I lean forward to see if I can glimpse her face, in the front row, but her head’s down and her hat brim hides it. Poor Sonsie. Adam Webb was sitting at the breakfast table, reading out the headlines to her, when a thunderclap of a heart attack came. Sometimes it’s hard to see God’s plan. Sometimes I’m sure there’s no plan at all. But I’ll keep checking.