SURVIVORS

‘Good luck!’ the driver called, giving her a cheery wave as she alighted from the bus.

Jet-lagged and exhausted, she could do with some good luck – or at least with a more exact idea as to where she actually was. If she had only visited her father before it was too late, she would have got to know the area and not felt so disoriented in this unfamiliar county.

Having crossed the deserted road, she checked her watch, relieved to see that, far from being late, she had two whole hours in hand. In fact, much to her surprise, the entire journey had been hassle-free. The flight from New York had arrived precisely on time; both trains had been punctual and, having seen no sign of a taxi and expected to wait ages for an infrequent country bus, she had found one just about to leave, right outside the station. So, all in all, fate had been benign.

Except ‘benign’ seemed much too callous a word, with her father so recently dead. Rather than counting her blessings, she should be rending her garments, although, in truth, her emotions were so complex and unsettling, she had, as yet, hardly dared confront them.

As she walked along the narrow lane, she marvelled at the silence – all the more striking after the cacophony of Manhattan. No planes, no traffic; not even any people-noise or birdsong. Perhaps the birds were dozing, since everything else seemed somnolent, swathed in the oppressive August heat. Indeed, she, too, had been lulled into a state of semi-trance as the bus rumbled along the short distance from the station and she’d gazed out at the majestic sweep of hills and fields beneath a cloudless sky. Majestic maybe, but undoubtedly benighted. As a Londoner born and bred, her forays to the countryside were rare in the extreme and she still couldn’t wholly understand why her father should have insisted on moving to the wilds of Devon, when he had lived in Wandsworth for his eighty-eight years to date.

Probably just to be cussed, she suspected. The more she had suggested sheltered housing, or at least somewhere closer to her Camden flat, the more he had reiterated his need for solitude and seclusion. And, when she had pointed out that a man approaching ninety might need easy access to help and social services, rather than withdrawal to the back of beyond, he’d retorted peevishly that the last thing he required was interfering busybodies poking their noses into his intimate affairs. Of course, he might have intended the move partly as a test of her devotion: would his wayward daughter deign to make so long a journey to visit her elderly Dad? A test she had failed, although not through any neglect or lack of duty.

With a sigh of mingled frustration and regret, she turned off the road and slipped through the elaborate wrought-iron gates of the crematorium. She found herself in well-kept, spacious gardens, with close-cropped lawns and immaculately neat flowerbeds – a marked contrast to the wilder landscape beyond. Despite the heat, no shrub was wilting, or flower-head drooping, and the grass itself was lushly green, rather than parched and brown, as usual in a heatwave. Yet no gardener was in evidence; no sign of any funeral in progress, nor any casual visitors. In fact, she had the uncanny feeling that she had travelled to the limits of the populated world and would never see another living person. The plane had been jam-packed and the fast train also crowded when she’d boarded it at Paddington, but, having changed to the second, slower train, her carriage had been empty, save for a couple of old ladies. As for the bus, she’d been the one and only passenger, so, the further she travelled, the more isolated she seemed to become, with no fellow human beings left in existence. Even the friendly bus-driver would now be swallowed up in tree-cloistered country lanes.

Impulsively, she rummaged for her phone. As yet, she hadn’t spoken to a soul; too ashamed to admit that her father had died alone and – almost as reprehensible – that she hadn’t flown straight back the minute she heard the news. But, of all her circle, Kate was the most likely to sympathize, being a singleton, like her, with no strong family ties, and similarly single-minded when it came to her career.

‘Kate? Hi! How are you?… No, I’m not in New York…. Yes, the meetings went well, considering, and my job appears to be safe, thank God! But, listen, the very day I arrived, I received the most awful shock – my father had dropped down dead from a heart attack and I wasn’t even there.’

She registered her friend’s gasp of surprise. Although Kate had never met him, she was nonetheless aware that, despite his age, Robert was in robust health and even took a daily constitutional, trekking a mile or more over challenging terrain.

‘… No, a neighbour found him and rang the vicar – the Reverend Matthews, a marvellous man. He managed to reach me at my hotel and he’s been an absolute saint, Kate. Once he understood my predicament – you know, that I couldn’t just drop everything and catch the next plane home – he agreed to register the death for me, take care of the formalities and arrange the funeral. And he’s even going to officiate himself. So everything’s sorted out, without me having to do a thing except pay the various bills. I feel awful, really, leaving so much to him, but I didn’t have any choice.’

Of course she’d had a choice. But her whole career had been at stake and if she had returned to the UK before all the vital business was concluded, it would have given the worst possible impression. So she had made a deliberate decision to stay on in New York for the entire series of important meetings, and then rushed headlong from the boardroom to the airport. Was that irredeemably selfish, or simply prudent in the circumstances?

She stopped wrestling with her conscience to answer Kate’s next question. ‘Yes, I suppose we could have postponed it, but….’ Her voice tailed off. In fact, the vicar’s original suggestion had been to leave the body in the morgue until she herself could take charge of the arrangements. But the thought of putting her father in cold storage for longer than was strictly necessary seemed not only grotesque but an affront to his lifelong hatred of delay and procrastination. Kate clearly considered it odd, though, allowing a stranger to carry out what was, frankly, a daughter’s duty. In fact, she was beginning to regret ever having phoned her friend; there were too many awkward questions.

‘No, I’m not staying at Dad’s cottage. The vicar said it was in no fit state for visitors, which, I have to say, made me worry, Kate. He was always incredibly neat and couldn’t abide living in a mess, so it means he must have gone downhill – and fast!’

She hoped Kate wouldn’t ask her next if she’d booked into a hotel, as she was loth to mention that she was actually going home tonight – however late she might get back and however tired she was of travelling – which she had been doing for the last thirteen hours. It seemed imperative to sleep in her own bed and be surrounded by her own familiar things. Besides, she needed a few days’ grace before she made this journey a second time, in order to ratchet up her energy for the series of grim tasks ahead: sorting out her father’s affairs; deciding what to do with his possessions; sprucing up his cottage and endeavouring to sell it, despite the vagaries of the housing market. And – a minor point, maybe – she hadn’t any overnight things, having deposited her case at Paddington Left Luggage.

‘… Oh, I’m sorry, Kate. I’m totally forgetting you’re at work … No, I’m all right, honestly – a bit whacked, of course, but coping…. OK, fine – I’ll ring you later.’

As she replaced her mobile in its pouch, she felt still more alone. She might have shared the news with Kate, but not her inner turmoil. Anyway, no friend could really understand that her predominant emotion wasn’t grief – or even guilt – but the deep sadness of knowing that it was now too late for her father ever to tell her he loved her. But then what had she expected? A sudden change of heart in his nineties; cosy little cuddles and avowals of affection from a father who had loved one person only, in the whole of his long life: his small, shy, retiring wife. Daughters didn’t count, and he never bothered himself with friends; had long since cut all ties with relations and, even in his younger years, preferred to live as a recluse. In fact, she doubted if there would be anyone at the funeral except maybe a few fellow-villagers who felt duty-bound to attend.

Wandering on along the path, she kept looking out for some sign of human activity. Admittedly, the service wasn’t scheduled until four, but surely there would be funerals before it? Perhaps the crematorium closed for lunch, which would explain the absence of hearses or mourners, but it still seemed strange that not a single soul appeared to be around. In fact, these extensive gardens, devoid of people and with no sign of any buildings, seemed peculiarly unreal, like the insubstantial landscape of a dream. All the crematoria she had visited before had been decidedly more compact, with the chapel and the offices immediately apparent, and clusters of friends and relatives providing an air of normality.

Much better if the whole thing were a dream, then she would wake up in New York, with the prospect of the two days’ respite she had planned originally, to sightsee in Manhattan and recover from the shock and stress of the takeover. A hundred questions and anxieties were still swarming through her mind. Would their own far smaller firm be bullied by the American giant who’d swallowed it? And what were her future prospects, with a recession in both countries and an increasing number of managers facing the chop?

But she was thinking of herself and not her father – a spur for yet more guilt – although, in fact, these well-groomed grounds brought to mind his obsessive need for neatness and regularity, in every aspect of existence. She imagined his satisfaction at the sight of the regimented flowerbeds, where the plants were arranged in concentric circles, each one perfectly gradated according to size and colour. He had always detested disorder; spent most of his life attempting to put things back in line and tame anything or anyone unruly – including her, of course. In point of fact, she had never been unruly, or wayward, or recalcitrant, or all the other things he used to called her. It was just that, in his eyes, all children, without exception, were undisciplined and messy creatures and, even when they grew to adulthood, most – including her – failed to reach his exacting standards.

As she continued to walk on, she was aware how hungry she was, having eaten nothing since her sandwich on the train. If only she’d bought a second sandwich, then she could have picnicked here in the grounds, rather than risk a rumbling stomach at the funeral. Except sprawling on the grass would have messed up her smart suit – the same suit she’d worn to yesterday’s meeting, conveniently black.

Her father had always hated picnics: part of his general antipathy to slovenliness and disarray. He liked meals with proper tablecloths and cutlery, and thus it was penance on a heroic scale for him to eat with his fingers and ward off wasps and flies; risking indigestion, sunburn and grass-stains on his clothes – a penance endured solely for his wife’s sake. She remembered one disastrous time in Worthing, when she had dropped her cheese roll on the beach, retrieved it, wet and gritty with sand, then wolfed it down before anyone could stop her. He had stalked off in disgust and eaten his food on the promenade, alone, but mercifully removed from his clumsy, uncouth daughter. Seaside picnics were, for him, the most intolerable: defiant breezes dishevelling his hair; other people’s unruly kids throwing up more sand as they shrieked and skittered past, and the raucous noise of funfairs assaulting his fastidious ears.

In fact, they never went on holiday again. By the following September, her mother was a corpse.

Her gloomy introspection was cut short by the sight of a large, free-standing notice-board, indicating the direction of the chapel, car-park and Garden of Remembrance and, fifty yards beyond, a group of buildings. Although it was a relief to get her bearings, she felt annoyed with the authorities for not erecting a similar notice at the entrance to the site.

It was still only ten past two and, since she had no desire to turn up at the chapel almost two hours early, she wandered into the Garden of Remembrance. It, too, was extremely well-maintained, with not a weed or speck of litter in sight, and thus eminently suitable for her father’s final resting-place. She began reading the inscriptions on the various memorials: Much loved and sorely  missed … Always in our thoughts … Beloved husband and father….

In her own father’s case, she had better restrict the wording to ‘beloved husband’ only, since he had never wanted children in the first place. Having married a woman of forty-six, the last thing he’d expected was the arrival of a baby on the scene and, although he’d bowed to the inevitable, he’d always harboured a certain resentment that his blissful coupledom with Ella had become an awkward threesome. Hence Ella’s early death was not just tragic for him but highly inconvenient. Father and child had somehow stuck it out together, until she solved the problem for him by leaving home the same week that she left school. Ever afterwards, her visits had been sporadic, yet, in honour of her much-missed mother, she had never failed to ensure that he was in reasonable health and coping on his own.

Until this very week.

At peace, said the adjoining plaque – a reproach to her patent lack of it. And, indeed, peace had been largely absent in her childhood, because of her father’s state of mind. He continually blamed himself for Ella’s death – when he wasn’t blaming her – or even blamed the perfectly competent oncologist for ‘dereliction of duty’. In fact, one of the phrases from the funeral – in the midst of life we are in death – had been all too true of him. He wore mourning clothes for the rest of his days, metaphorically, at least.

As she completed her tour of the garden, she wondered which type of memorial he’d prefer: a bench, a sundial, a plaque? Certainly not a tree, which would shed messy leaves all over him and harbour feckless birds. Nor anything that required a lot of maintenance, because she could hardly nurture a rosebush or a shrub, when she lived such miles away. It was her mother’s grave she tended, and with the utmost love and devotion; visiting once or twice each month and—

Oh my God, she thought, blundering to a halt. Shouldn’t her father be buried with her mother, or at least in the same graveyard? Had she made the wrong decisions, simply under pressure? In point of fact, her father had never left instructions about his funeral, refusing categorically to discuss his death at all, despite his advancing years. Yet all the other alternatives now began stampeding through her mind, in a stream of accusing ‘should-haves’: should she have transported his body to London and begged the local council to find room in her mother’s cemetery, or even in her grave; should she have investigated other London cemeteries; should she have gone through all his papers, in case he had, in fact, drawn up some final directive? But doing all those things long-distance would have been more or less impossible, especially when time was of the essence. Besides, if her father wished to be buried with his wife, surely he would have mentioned the fact in the thirty-three years since her death.

She was so deep in speculation, she failed to look where she was going and almost tripped on a loose kerbstone. She was also perspiring in her formal suit and high-necked, long-sleeved blouse. The outfit was fine for New York’s air-conditioned offices, but felt uncomfortably sticky in a temperature of close on ninety degrees. And her tight, high-heeled shoes were totally unsuited to a long ramble through a garden. It was clearly time to go inside – cool down, calm down and stop torturing herself. She could always sit in the waiting-room until the service started and, if nothing else, escape the fierce stare of the sun.

As she approached the chapel complex, there was still no one to be seen and even the waiting-room was deserted, so she resigned herself to her own company again. Perching on one of the upright chairs, she glanced around at the pale-blue walls, squiggled, grey-blue carpet and skimpy rayon curtains. There were no pictures on the walls or magazines to read – both presumably too frivolous in this context of death and grief. Neatness reigned supreme once more: the chairs arranged in severely straight rows; the room scrupulously clean. Well, at least her father would approve, as he would of the plastic orchids on the otherwise bare table. Real flowers dropped their petals, or shed a dust of pollen on highly polished furniture, and their water turned green and smelly, especially in hot weather.

She cleared her throat, the noise intrusively loud in the empty room, and her sense of isolation prompting further memories of childhood. After her mother’s death, her father used to closet himself in his study, requiring to be alone with his grief, but that, of course, had left her on her own. Since he never welcomed visitors or allowed her friends to come, she often felt like a child in quarantine – infectious not from illness, but from her faults of character.

She fidgeted on her seat, wishing brain-transplants were available, so she could replace the jangling chaos in her mind with serenity and peace. Yet, in the absence of such procedures, her thoughts kept circling back to that same oppressive time, when she and her father had co-existed as separate, silent mourners, sharing nothing but their loss and the same house. Being motherless at the age of twelve had been a test of endurance; having to learn to sleep without her usual goodnight kiss; to live on tins and takeaways, instead of home-cooked food; to go through puberty alone, with no mother to explain things, or help her buy the Tampax.

Rudderless and terrified, she eventually stumbled on a way to survive. She would close her eyes and imagine the goodnight kisses; imagine her mother’s presence; paint vivid pictures in her mind: her mother standing in the kitchen, in her familiar blue-checked pinny, making apple pie, spiced with cloves and cinnamon and awash in velvety custard, or bread-and-butter pudding; its crusted, sugared top contrasting exquisitely with the eggy, creamy softness underneath, or the lemon sponge they always had on Sundays squidgy inside, with little shreds of lemon peel to provide an extra kick.

She was just savouring its taste again, when she was aware of sounds outside: cars pulling up, people talking, even a burst of laughter from a child – signs of life, at last. Opening the door a fraction, she saw a largish crowd, waiting outside the chapel – the three-o’clock booking, presumably – and felt ridiculously relieved to be not the only living person in the world.

Returning to her seat, she closed her eyes and did her best to relax. There was still an hour to wait and she would be ragged by tonight if she continued giving way to all these futile regrets and painful memories. The ponderous clock on the wall ticked out a soothing cadence, which, gradually, began to calm her mood. She was all but drifting off to sleep, when a door opened from the chapel side and an official popped his head round to enquire, ‘Are you for the three-o’clock service? If so, please come through immediately, as it’s just about to start.’

She stared at him, confused and, scarcely knowing what she was doing, rose from her seat and let him usher her into the chapel. As she slipped into the last pew at the back, she was astonished by the music – not a solemn organ, but some jaunty pop tune, blasting out full volume. And everyone was dressed in bright, eccentric clothes – the only severe black suit was hers. Some of the congregation even had flower-garlands looped around their necks, as if they were partying in Hawaii, rather than attending a funeral. And the coffin itself wasn’t the usual mahogany or oak, but a psychedelic affair, painted in flamboyant colours, and looking as out-of-place in this sombre chapel as a hippie in a community of hooded, black-robed monks.

‘Hi! I’m Tamsin,’ the woman beside her whispered, flashing her a friendly smile.

Debby glanced at the tie-dyed dress, the profusion of beads and bangles, the flowers twisted through the long untidy hair. If Tamsin was the hippie, she was the hooded, black-robed monk.

‘Here – you’ll need one of these,’ the woman mouthed, passing her an Order of Service.

Again, it was a shock. On the cover was an elderly man – not far off her father’s age – but dressed in leathers and sitting astride a ferocious looking motorbike; his safety-helmet rivalling the coffin in its riot of crazy colours. BOBBIE DUGGAN was printed below the photograph, A CELEBRATION OF LIFE.

Although her father’s name was also Robert, no one ever presumed to call him Bobbie. He had abhorred abbreviations and, despite her dislike of her own full and formal name, insisted on calling her Deborah. She was about to study the service-sheet, when a plump and tousled female in a gypsy blouse and full-length crimson skirt got up from the front pew and positioned herself behind the lectern on the altar. Some sort of hippie priest, maybe.

‘His daughter,’ Tamsin hissed. ‘But I expect you know her, don’t you?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Meg – she’s fab! And she and Bobbie were always really close. His wife died young, you see, so he brought her up on his own.’

Surprised by the coincidence, she studied the woman with new interest. ‘Fab’ she might be, but also distinctly unconventional, at least in her appearance. Despite looking about sixtyish, her long, grey hair hung loose and straggly to her waist and on her feet were incongruous pink flip-flops.

‘Welcome to you all!’ she said, reaching out her arms in an expansive gesture, to include everybody present. ‘I know Dad would be thrilled to see you here, at this, his final party. As you know, he loved any sort of celebration, so we’re gathered here together to give him a rousing send-off.’

Debby was startled by the burst of applause; the congregation clapping and cheering, as if they were at a gig. Except ‘congregation’ was hardly the word, with its churchy connotations – these were party guests.

Once the noise subsided, Meg continued. ‘We’ve chosen all his favourite songs and we’re going to kick off with his namesake, Bob – Bob Dylan.’

As ‘Hey, Mr Tambourine Man’ boomed out on the sound-system, two girls in their late teens joined Meg by the altar; clad in pelmet-short skirts and each shaking a tambourine.

‘His great-granddaughters,’ Tamsin informed her in a whisper, ‘Poppy and Isadora.’

Listening to the offbeat words – ‘jingle-jangle mornings’, ‘magic swirlin’ ships’, ‘dancin’ spells’, ‘ragged clowns’ – Debby couldn’t help comparing the stern, black-bordered hymns that she and the Reverend Matthews had chosen for her father’s funeral: ‘Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning’; ‘Abide With Me’; ‘Fast Sinks the Sun to Rest’ – all themes of dust and ashes, darkness, gloom, decline. Admittedly, Dylan had his dark side, too, but she still found it near-incredible that those two sexy-looking girls should be leaping around only inches from the coffin, shaking not just their tambourines but their hips, their hair, their boobs.

‘And now,’ said Meg, returning to her seat as the girls give a final flounce and twirl, ‘a tribute from Bobbie’s best mate, Rex.’

A big, bluff man took her place at the lectern. Although eighty, at least, and completely, shiny bald, he was attired in drain-pipe jeans and a lurid purple T-shirt printed with BOBBIE DUGGAN’S FAN CLUB.

Waving an age-spotted hand towards the coffin, he addressed its occupant. ‘Bobbie, old pal, I’m going to miss you terribly. I’ve no one to go to the pub with now, or share a vindaloo.’

Debby found herself gradually warming to this bizarre but upbeat service. Most funeral tributes focused on the virtues of the deceased, not their penchant for beer and curry.

‘Bobbie was a one-off,’ Rex declared, now turning to his audience. ‘Everyone adored him, so I’m sure you’re all as gutted as me to lose such a special guy. I’m proud to be his oldest friend. He and I go back more than seventy years. We met at primary school and he was a right little devil even then!’

Everybody laughed, including Debby. Who wanted all those tears and lamentations? As a child of twelve, she had found her mother’s funeral unbearably oppressive, with its stress on loss and decay, and the gruesome spiel about people turning into dust or withering like dried-up grass. She had wept for days, imagining her lovely, pretty mother, with her rosy cheeks and curly hair, rotting into a black sludge on the compost heap.

‘And when we were young and both out of work,’ Rex continued, with a grin, ‘we just said “What the hell?” and took ourselves off on his bike, in the hope of something turning up. And it always did, you know. Bobbie was a born survivor! He even survived his widowhood with amazing guts, determined to put his daughter first and—’

Debby found her thoughts returning to her own rather different experience and was roused only by a Jethro Tull song resounding through the chapel: ‘Nothing is Easy’ – a sentiment her father would most definitely endorse. For him, difficulty and hardship were basic facts of life. Yet the words she was actually hearing seemed to stress the total opposite: relax and take things easy; stop rushing, tearing, agonizing. The lyric was like a private message, directed to her personally, since she had never taken things easy; spent her entire life under pressure. And this last week especially had been stressful in the extreme.

As the last chords died away, another elderly man went up to the lectern, armed with a guitar. ‘Hi, folks!’ he grinned. ‘I’m Ricky and this here is Bobbie’s guitar. A few years ago, a good friend of his made him a new one, to his own specifications, so he gave me his old trusted Gibson. But what I want to talk about today is not his skill in music, or his sheer generosity, but the way he coped so brilliantly with being a lone dad. To take up Rex’s theme, I know Meg would agree that he managed to be a mother to her, as well as a fantastic father….’

Debby barely heard what followed. All at once, she had plunged back into childhood – twelve again and bringing much-missed people back to life. All she had to do was close her eyes and her dead mother would appear; conjured up in such vivid, detailed pictures they were very nearly real. But now it was Bobbie she was resurrecting – Bobbie not as Meg’s dad but her own. She shut her eyes and, instantly, everything transformed: no more silent solitude; no more need to creep around like a timid little mouse, for fear of disturbing his grief. Instead, the house was full of people – fun, friends, music, laughter, constant cheerful company. But, however many friends might come, he always put her first; spent patient hours teaching her to read, and swim, and how to play the guitar. Yes, she was playing his trusted Gibson and making a quite glorious din and he wasn’t complaining about the racket, but praising her new skill. And now she was on his motorbike, riding pillion, as they roared off together to Glastonbury or Brighton or any place she fancied. She was no longer ‘clumsy’, ‘greedy’, ‘silly’, but the best little girl in the world.

Their house had changed completely. The dark green walls had vanished and it was painted from top to bottom in psychedelic colours. And there were flowers in vases everywhere, shedding pollen and petals on all the polished surfaces, but no one cared a fig. And she didn’t have to keep her room as tidy as a nun’s cell, but could leave her clothes in great, messy piles, and put up posters on the walls, and go to bed whenever she liked, instead of ridiculously early, and even miss whole days at school, if her Dad decided it was time for another motorcycle jaunt.

And then a few years frolicked on, and he was taking her out for a pint in the pub and on to the local tandoori, for a vindaloo and chips. And they were forever throwing impromptu parties, and redecorating the house in new crazy colour-schemes, and she could bring whole groups of friends home from university and play music, really loud, all night.

And now it was her graduation and he was so thrilled by her success he was applauding harder than anyone, and then ordering champagne when she landed her first job; drinking to her future in some trendy little restaurant – and, of course, telling her he loved her: again, again, again. And every birthday he was there, laying on some fantastic celebration; assuring her continually that she was the most important person in his world.

‘Beloved’, ‘precious’, ‘special’ – the words were so bewitching, she rolled them round her tongue, like sweets. But, all at once, she was blasted back to the present by an explosion of sound erupting in the chapel. Opening her eyes, she was utterly astounded to see party-poppers being let off all around her; their scarlet streamers flying everywhere. And the guests were blowing red tin-whistles, making a rumbustious din, whilst a tide of rainbow-hued balloons floated exuberantly up to the ceiling. And then she noticed the curtains slowly closing around the coffin, which meant they must have reached the committal. Normally, she loathed that moment, when the mourners stood silent and the vicar intoned appropriately sepulchral words. But here all was jubilant uproar, as more party-poppers exploded, more tin-whistles were blown, and a roistering swarm of kids skedaddled about the chapel, in pursuit of coloured streamers and balloons. She could hardly believe that any crematorium would allow such pandemonium. Certainly, things had changed dramatically since her mother’s joyless funeral.

Suddenly, she gripped the side of the pew, struck not just by the startling sight but by an extraordinary revelation. Having spent her life blaming herself for her mother’s death (so clumsy, greedy and idle a child must have been the cause), only now did it dawn on her, with a profound sense of consolation, that it had been nothing to do with her and her deficiencies. It was simply a matter of chance – a cruel twist of fate, for which no one was to blame. And, if her widowed dad had been different, she would have grown up to be more serene; not become a workaholic, terrified of marriage and too frightened to have children, in case some tragedy occurred and her offspring were as miserable as she had been in childhood.

How could she have reached middle age without perceiving such an obvious truth before? But at least she had grasped it now and the relief was so overpowering, she grabbed the tin-whistle Tamsin was holding out to her and blew it in raucous tribute. She must give Bobbie a rousing send-off, but, after that, another, more important task awaited and this incongruous elation must give place to due solemnity. While the revellers were swarming out of the chapel, to congregate in the courtyard just beyond, she turned the other way, slipped out through the main chapel doors and back into the waiting-room. The staff would need some time to clear the debris from the chapel; make it neat and tidy for the funeral to follow.

And she needed time, as well, to compose herself and banish the last traces of those disconcerting, but captivating, fantasies of being Bobbie’s daughter. That little girl – safe, secure, protected, but also lively, rowdy, boisterous – was still cavorting in some region of her mind; troublingly at variance with the tense, temperate, adult businesswoman. In just the last half-hour, she seemed to have been storm-tossed by emotion, but now it was required of her to be calm and in control. Leaning back in her chair, she focused on the carpet; its drab grey-blue gradually replacing Bobbie’s rainbow brilliance; its timid squiggles taming his exuberance; its very ordinariness slowly returning her to the task in hand.

‘Ah!’ said a deep, kindly voice, breaking into the silence, ‘you must be Debby. I’m Gavin Matthews, the vicar. How good to meet you, my dear – although I feel I know you already after all our conversations on the phone.’

She rose to greet him, immediately reassured by his appearance: the immaculate white surplice, worn above a long black cassock; the well-polished shoes and freshly starched clerical collar; the neatly cut grey hair. He was male, mature and eminently presentable – all the things her father would expect. And an obviously warm-hearted person, who could give her moral support.

Having ushered her outside, they stood together, waiting for the hearse. No one else had turned up, but that was how it should be. Her father had always valued privacy and seclusion, so it was only fitting that at this, his final stage, there were no villagers to tittle-tattle, or nosy neighbours to pry.

She heard the noise of wheels and bowed her head respectfully as the hearse drew up and the coffin was unloaded – a traditional model in darkest oak, with the expensive wreath she’d ordered positioned sombrely on top. No riotous, unreliable flowers to fling their petals over him or droop in disarray. And the funeral director was a model of decorum, in his sleek black morning-coat, pinstriped trousers and matching waistcoat, and even an elegant top hat and silver-topped black cane.

With a suitably grave expression, he supervised the bearers as they hoisted the coffin on their shoulders and began their solemn procession into the chapel. Deliberately, she walked alongside, her hand also on the coffin; needing to be part of this last rite. Indeed, if she had only possessed the strength, she would gladly have carried his full weight – without any bearers helping – to make some tiny recompense for the long disharmony between them. The fact that her father was so entirely different from a genial, easy-going type like Bobbie was a question of genes and temperament and therefore simply due to chance again. And, having lost the one great treasure of his life, was it any wonder that he had become distant and detached, and unable to be close to anybody else? At least, now he was beyond distress; released by death from death.

Once the coffin was placed on the catafalque, the vicar stood at the lectern; his neat, dark, slender figure a total contrast to Meg’s tousled, bright voluptuousness. He began reciting the same words as at her mother’s funeral, yet, strangely, they had changed their tenor: consoling and serene now, instead of cruel and harsh.

After the opening prayers and readings, he gave a brief address. There was no one but her to listen; no one but her to join in the responses, but her father would undoubtedly be gratified that all the due formalities were being so punctiliously observed. Indeed, when it came to the hymns, both she and the vicar sang with power and resonance, to compensate for the lack of other voices. And, once again she noticed that, instead of sounding wrathful and morose, they seemed solemn and majestic and thus appropriate.

‘May our brother rest in peace,’ the vicar concluded and, as he bowed towards the coffin, she realized, with a jolt of mingled solace and surprise, that guilt and grief, uncertainty and worry, had all disappeared entirely. Now there was only peace – peace soothing like a balm; peace unforeseen, unprecedented; peace restorative and rare – peace not simply for her dear departed father, but for her, as well – at last.