Saturday 9th December 2023
Alice
Alice is suffocating, as if the church is filling up with water rather than people. She can see Marianne near the entrance and wants to push her way through to her, but she keeps getting stopped by people offering condolences that seem displaced in time. As soon as they move away, they’re back to whispering about Leo, passing around rumours in hushed tones.
Have the police spoken to you?
Do they think he’s done a runner?
What if he’s up to something?
I don’t trust him. And who knows what prison might’ve—
She keeps making her way towards her ex-sister-in-law, growing more and more desperate. Peter seems to have disappeared; it’s becoming his party trick, and it does nothing to help her anxiety when she can’t lay eyes on him. She spots Jack skulking at the edges of the room, looking as if he doesn’t know what he should be doing, either. He always seems happiest when painting or drilling or sawing, lost in his own world. Alice thinks about going over to talk to him about the initials on the wall of the pub. But she sees Georgie striding in through the main doors – she’s been coming and going since she arrived, a swirl of strange energy – and heading purposefully towards her.
‘Alice, are you okay?’ Georgie asks. ‘We’re nearly ready to start. What do you …’ She gestures around the church. ‘What do you … think?’
Alice is caught off guard. What does she think? The church has been swept and cleaned and filled with strong-smelling lilies. There is an enlarged photo of Robbie at the front that Georgie must’ve pulled off social media because Alice doesn’t remember giving it to her. It’s a picture he hated. Or is she mixing it up with another one, his prom photo after that bad haircut? She presses her temples, feeling suddenly drowned in pollen.
‘It all looks … nice.’ It’s all she can muster, but Georgie puts a hand to her own chest.
‘I’m so glad,’ she says. ‘I never knew Robbie, but I feel like I did – I’ve heard so much about him …’
Alice stares at her baldly. The light through the stained-glass windows shines in her expensively cut hair and turns her cream trench coat into a rainbow.
‘Why are you doing all this, Georgie?’ The question slips out before she can stop it. ‘All this, today …?’
Georgie’s cheeks redden and she looks briefly offended. Then Alice sees her demeanour change, like a swap to a different mask, and she smiles gently. ‘I care, Alice. I know you might not believe that, but I do. I care about you, about this village. It’s my home now. And I think … I might be being presumptuous … But I consider you a friend. A friend who’s going through something unimaginable. Who needs people on her side right now.’
The words are all the right ones but something about them rings hollow. Maybe it’s just the way she’s feeling. Nothing and nobody seems straightforward.
‘I’d better …’ Georgie gestures vaguely, and Alice nods, letting it go. Georgie gives her arm an encouraging squeeze and then bustles away, pulling a box of candles out of her enormous handbag.
Alice releases a long, long sigh. She wants to go home. Wants to lie on the sofa with Beech and smell his doggy breath and stroke his fur while he snores.
But she turns to her right and there, at last, is Marianne.
‘Alice,’ she says.
Peter’s ex-wife looks much the same – smartly dressed, tall in her heeled ankle boots – except there is something intangibly different, some sign or reminder that she is removed from Alice now, and from this place. A different perfume, her mascara smudged as if she’s been rubbing at her eyes.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Alice says, feeling wobbly.
Marianne hesitates – they both do – and then they hug, clumsily at first, easing into a firmer embrace. They haven’t seen each other since Alice scattered Robbie’s ashes in the most beautiful part of the Dales, at the top of the tall viaduct he had a fascination with as a kid. Peter drove her out there, but Marianne joined them unexpectedly, even though the two of them had separated by then. Alice was so surprised and moved to see Marianne that her tears erupted even before she’d flung Robbie’s ashes into the wind.
‘It’s … strange being back,’ Marianne says as they draw apart.
Alice nods. ‘Everything is strange.’
‘And Peter …’ Marianne looks around with a sigh. ‘Peter seems to be avoiding me.’
‘Where is he?’ Alice looks again, too. People are starting to take their seats, at Georgie’s instruction, and the church is becoming a map of the village cliques, more evident in their little groups than Alice has ever seen. An image shoots through her mind of Peter lying in a ditch, bottle in hand. She should’ve known he wouldn’t be able to handle today. He hates anything that turns his private sorrow public.
‘I don’t know,’ Marianne says. ‘I don’t think he’s quite forgiven me.’
‘For what?’ Alice frowns, turning back to her. ‘I thought …’ She pauses. ‘I didn’t think any of it was your fault? I mean … he hasn’t told me much about why you split up. But I got the impression he just … stopped trying? After …’ She glances towards the photo of her son at the front of the church, painfully huge, and then she is choked again, knowing she could easily be describing herself. She remembers how close Peter and Marianne once were – never showy about it, rarely soppy, but always in harmony, it seemed, always considerate of each other. Peter used to slip out to the pub when Marianne’s favourite TV shows were on, but Marianne would join him afterwards and he’d look so happy to see her – every time – that Alice’s unsentimental heart would melt.
‘I don’t mean the break-up,’ Marianne says. ‘We … argued a couple of days ago. I think maybe he’s still upset.’
Alice is thrown. ‘I didn’t know you were still in touch.’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘No …’
‘We’ve been trying to talk things through. Not very successfully.’ Marianne presses her hands on either side of her neck. She’s wearing two chunky silver rings but not her wedding one. ‘He’s a confusing man, your brother. I’m still trying to understand him, even after all these years.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Alice says faintly. Her mind is wheeling back over the last few days, trying to remember if Peter mentioned anything. ‘He’s been … We’ve both been under a lot of strain. Since Leo got out.’
Marianne’s face visibly tenses. ‘Yes.’ She drags a finger across her left eyelid, smudging her mascara even further. ‘That’s obviously been … difficult.’
‘When was it you argued?’ Alice asks.
‘Um … Thursday, I think?’
The day Peter fell off the wagon. Did they argue while he was drunk, or did he get drunk because they argued? Before Alice can ask, Marianne grabs her hand.
‘Alice, Chrissy was here,’ she says, almost crushing her fingers.
‘What? When?’
‘Just now. She was trying to get in here. Shouting about Leo.’
Alice feels a white-hot surge of rage. ‘That bitch,’ she breathes, shocking herself with the force of her tone. ‘Today? How dare she …’
‘She was out of order.’ Now it’s Marianne’s tone – normally so mild – that startles her. Each word is a precise cut. It makes Alice feel better, less alone, yet a chill goes through her that she doesn’t quite understand.
She looks towards the door, rolling her shoulders in agitation. Will Chrissy try again? What if she does? Her eyes pan the church and she sees Georgie going from person to person, collecting pieces of paper and slipping them into a black leather folder. Now what is she doing? Alice is momentarily distracted, then her eye is caught by something else: Kiri and Ben in the back row, staring straight at her. Ben averts his gaze more quickly than Kiri, looking down at his hands.
‘I sometimes think we never really knew Chrissy,’ Marianne says, tugging Alice’s attention back. ‘She was always …’ Her eyes have hardened. ‘There was always something. Like she was hiding stuff, not being honest, even back when we were all friends.’
Alice wants to agree, to vent some more, but her throat narrows and she can’t seem to say a thing.
A crackle of microphone feedback interrupts them, and Georgie’s voice booms through speakers in the high ceiling of the church.
‘Take your seats please, everyone! Our tributes to darling Robbie are about to begin.’
Alice’s heart starts to pound. Darling Robbie. Georgie didn’t even know him. But she is beckoning her, pointing to a pew right at the front. Everybody gawps as Alice begins to make her way, slowly, towards it. She’s walking down the aisle, but there’s no music this time, no coffin, just silence and suspense and the extra weight of knowing that Chrissy could burst in, or even Leo, choosing this moment to reappear from wherever he might be.
A few people stand up as she passes them, as if it’s a wedding and she’s the unsmiling bride. Kiri’s head turns, watching her all the way. And now she’s even more self-
conscious about the flat thud of her footsteps, the expression on her face, the people she makes eye contact with as she tries to reach the end of an apparently endless aisle.
What if, when it comes to her moment to say a few words about Robbie, other things pour unstoppably out of her mouth? All the secrets, the history, the lies that even the village gossips would never suspect.
What if she chose this day – this strange, skewed day – to blow all their minds?