Andrew watched the funeral director lay the simple wreath at the unmarked grave and wondered how long it would be before it wilted away to nothing. The council usually paid for the wreaths, but recently when he’d asked for funds to do so it had led to increasingly tedious and depressing exchanges of e-mails that got him nowhere. At least he was still able to pay for obituaries in the local paper, as long as the wording was kept to a minimum. In this particular case he’d only been able to achieve an acceptable length by omitting the deceased’s middle name, the sparsity of the notice barely leaving room for sentiment: “Derek Albrighton, died peacefully on July 14th, aged eighty-four.” He supposed one small advantage of the restricted word limit was that he couldn’t act on the temptation to add, “post-cake, mid-wank.”
He met Peggy in a café that overlooked some railway tracks.
“You know cranes, right?” she said, looking out of the window as Andrew sat down.
“The construction machine or the long-necked bird?” Andrew said.
“The former, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“When you see one of those massive ones by a skyscraper, do you ever wonder if they had to use another crane to build that crane? Or did it just get up there by itself? I suppose it’s all a metaphor for how the universe was created. Or something.”
A commuter train rattled past.
“I’m glad I’m sitting down,” Andrew said. “That’s quite a lot to take in.” Peggy stuck her tongue out at him.
“So how was it today—did anybody show up at the church?” she said.
“Sadly not.”
“You see, this is what I’m worried about,” Peggy said, taking a swig of ginger beer.
“What do you mean?” Andrew said, wondering if maybe he should start drinking ginger beer.
Peggy looked sheepish and reached into her bag, bringing out the photo of Alan Carter and “B.”
“I just can’t stop thinking about this,” she said.
It had been a week since they’d visited Alan’s house and Andrew had tried to convince Peggy that they’d done all they could, that she’d go mad if she kept thinking about it, but she clearly hadn’t let it go. Reluctantly, he took the photo from her. “And you’re sure it’s . . . where was it again?”
“Barter Books. It’s a secondhand bookshop in Northumberland. I Googled it just to make sure, and it’s definitely the right place. My sister moved to a village nearby a few years ago and we usually pop in on the way to visiting her.”
Andrew studied the now familiar sight of Alan and his grinning companion.
“I just can’t bear the thought of him being buried alone if there’s someone out there who loved him and should be there—or at least be given the opportunity to be there.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” Andrew said. “Unfortunately, the cold truth of it is that when we get in touch with these people there’s usually a reason they’re not in contact with the person who’s died.”
“Yeah, but that’s not always the case, is it?” Peggy said, her eyes wide, imploring Andrew to understand. “It’s hardly ever because there’s been some great dramatic falling-out. At worst it’s a stupid argument over money, and more often than not it’s just out of laziness that they’ve fallen out of touch.”
Andrew went to speak but Peggy jumped in again.
“What about that woman you called last week—the one whose brother died. She didn’t have a bad word to say about him—she was just embarrassed more than anything because she’d stopped bothering to call or visit him.”
Andrew immediately thought of Sally and felt his neck starting to prickle.
“I mean, what a sorry state of affairs society’s in,” Peggy continued, “and so utterly British, to be that stubborn and proud. I mean . . .” She stopped, seemingly aware from Andrew’s body language that he was uncomfortable with where this was going. She quickly changed the subject and offered to buy him an “overpriced, possibly stale” cookie.
“I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that,” Andrew said, putting his hands up in mock earnestness.
“Oh, but I insist,” Peggy said. As she went up to the counter, Andrew looked at the photograph again. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so dismissive. Maybe there was a way of pursuing this without getting too deeply invested. He looked over at Peggy, who was taking the cookie-selection process very seriously despite the obvious impatience of the waitress. As usual, Andrew had made his textbook packed lunch that morning, but he’d pretended he hadn’t when Peggy suggested they go out for lunch. He looked again at the photo. Maybe there wasn’t too much harm in hearing Peggy out.
“So, what do you want to do?” he said when she returned, proffering cookies.
“I want to go there,” she said, tapping the photo. “To Barter Books. And find this woman—find ‘B.’”
“Isn’t that a bit . . . I mean, isn’t it incredibly unlikely that she’s still working there?”
Peggy scratched at an imaginary stain on the tablecloth. Andrew narrowed his eyes.
“Have you already contacted them?”
“Maybe,” Peggy said, her mouth twitching as she tried to hide a burgeoning smile.
“And?” Andrew said, and Peggy leaned forward and began to speak with a rapidity unusual even for her: “I phoned a lass there and spoke to her about it and I explained about the photo and what I did for a living and that I was a regular visitor and I asked whether there was anyone working there whose name began with B with brown and gray frizzy hair that might now actually be a bit more gray than brown and if they used to know someone called Alan.”
She paused for breath.
“Right. And . . . ?” Andrew said.
“And, well, she said she couldn’t give out specific details about staff members, but there were some people who’d been working there for a good long while and I was very welcome to pop in the next time I was up visiting my sister.” Peggy opened her arms wide as if to say, See?
“So you’re saying you want to go to this bookshop on the off chance that the person in the photograph with Alan is still working there?” Andrew said.
Peggy nodded emphatically, as if there had been a language barrier and she had finally broken through to him.
“Okay,” Andrew said, “to play devil’s advocate—”
“Oh, you bloody love playing bloody devil’s bloody advocate,” Peggy said, flicking a crumb in his direction.
“Say it is her—the woman in the photo—what will you say?” Andrew flicked the crumb back to signify the ball was in her court again.
Peggy thought for a moment. “I think I’ll just have to do that on the day. Improvise, you know?”
Andrew went to speak but Peggy jumped in first. “Oh, come on, where’s the harm?” she said, reaching over and taking his hand, which was halfway to delivering a cookie to his face. “Look, I’ve got it all worked out, right. I hadn’t even thought about a holiday this summer, but god knows I need one—the kids, too, and”—she released Andrew’s hand and a bit of cookie fell onto the table—“Steve’s been staying at a friend’s, recently . . . Anyway, my plan is to go up and see my sister the week after next and drop in on Barter Books while I’m there.”
Andrew tilted his head from side to side, weighing this up. “Okay, well in fairness, if you’re going up to see your sister, it’s not quite as . . . mad.”
Peggy put the photo back in her bag.
“I’d invite you to come up too, but I assume you’ll be busy with the family.”
“Ermm, well . . .” Andrew floundered, trying to think on his feet. It had seemed like a genuine invitation from Peggy, not simply out of politeness. “I’ll have to check,” he said, “but, actually . . . Diane was planning to take the kids down to visit her mum that week. In Eastbourne.”
“And you’re not going too?” Peggy said.
“No, probably not,” Andrew said, willing his brain into gear. “I, um, don’t really get on with Diane’s parents. Bit of a long story.”
“Oh?” Peggy said. She wasn’t going to let him finish there, clearly, but this wasn’t something that had ever made it to Andrew’s master spreadsheet.
“It’s a bit complicated, but basically her mum never approved of us getting together in the first place, because I was always seen as a bit unsuitable. So we’ve never really been able to see eye to eye and it just causes tension whenever we meet.”
Peggy went to say something, then stopped.
“What?” Andrew said, a little too defensively, panicking at the thought that she wasn’t convinced by this story.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just, I can’t imagine you being deemed unsuitable,” she said. “You’re far too . . . nice . . . and . . . you know . . .”
Andrew really didn’t know. He took advantage of Peggy’s being flustered for once and thought about what he should do. The simplest option would be to stay at home and avoid further questions about his family life. But there was just something about the idea of getting to spend a whole week with Peggy—on what felt like an adventure, too—that was too exciting and scary a prospect to miss. If this wasn’t going out of his comfort zone, then what was? He had to go for it.
“Anyway,” he said, as casually as possible, “I’ll have a think about Northumberland. There’s a good chance I can come and it, er, wouldn’t be weird or anything, for me to do that, would it.”
He hadn’t quite thought this last bit through, and it came out halfway between a normal question and a rhetorical one. Peggy seemed like she might be about to answer but luckily someone at a neighboring table knocked an entire pot of tea onto the floor, whereupon five members of staff appeared from nowhere and cleared up the mess with the efficiency of Formula 1 mechanics in the pit lane, and the moment passed. Peggy seemed to use the distraction to do some weighing up of her own. “If you’re free then you should definitely come,” she said, once the pit lane crew had done their cleanup. Andrew recognized that tone. It was the way someone spoke when they were trying to convince themselves as much as the person they were talking to that what they were suggesting was a good idea.
They left the café and walked most of the way back to the office without speaking. Andrew glanced at Peggy, saw her furrowed brow and knew that like him she was replaying the conversation from the café over in her mind. They crossed at some lights and stepped around either side of a woman with a pram. When they came back together their arms bumped and they both apologized at the same time, then laughed at their politeness, the tension of the silence broken. Peggy raised an eyebrow at him. It seemed like such a daring gesture, to Andrew. As if she was on the verge of acknowledging what they were both thinking about the trip, that it was much more important to both of them than they were letting on. Furthermore, Andrew had the sudden realization that it was, in fact, one of the most spectacularly perfect eyebrows he’d ever seen, and that his heart was starting to beat uncomfortably fast.
“So what’s Barter Books like, then?” he said, trying to restore normality to the conversation.
“Oh, it’s amazing,” Peggy said. She was attempting to put her coat on but was having a hard time finding one of the armholes. “It’s a huge old place, rows and rows of books, comfy sofas dotted around.”
“Sounds lovely,” Andrew said. For some reason, putting one foot in front of the other had become an impossible task. Was this really how he walked? It seemed so unnatural.
“It really is,” Peggy said, finally getting her arm through the coat sleeve. “It used to be a station and they’ve kept the waiting room and turned it into a café. The best part is there’s a model train that runs all the way round the shop above the bookshelves.”
Andrew stopped dead in his tracks before hurrying to catch Peggy up.
“Say that again?”