Page 5 of The Next Chapter

It’s been a year since Dad died.

But it’s fine. I’m fine. Totally and absolutely fine.

‘You’re crying again.’

I’ve made it back to my computer.

My emails swim before my eyes.

‘I’m fine.’ I sniff.

‘I did tell you to take the day off. Why don’t you go home?’

‘No!’ Another sniff. ‘I have to get through these emails. It’s on my list. Plus, you’re coming to mine tonight, right? Right?’

There’s a definite air of desperation about my request. But Seb won’t care. He gets it.

‘Yep.’ He pops the ‘p’, but he won’t look me in the eye. ‘Finish your emails and we’ll head off in half an hour. Early finish, everyone,’ he calls to the rest of the office. So just Phil and Clementine, who cheers like she isn’t currently tweezing her eyebrows at her desk.

A new email appears in the corner of my inbox and even though I know that I should tackle the oldest ones first, that that’s the most efficient method, I click on it.

‘Oh,’ I say, scanning through the text quickly.

‘What is it?’ Seb asks, peering over my shoulder.

‘Daisy Flanaghan has died,’ I tell him. Jesus. I’m going to cry again.

‘No, how sad. What was she, ninety-eight?’

I hardly hear him. ‘She was a hundred,’ I say. And yep, here come the tears.

Tears over a little old lady who worked in the WAAF during the war and then went on to have seventeen grandchildren. Just feels as if it’s everywhere these days. Death. Like people are dropping down dead left, right and centre.

‘Her daughter has emailed. Apparently, she died in her sleep.’ It’s me talking, but it doesn’t sound like my voice.

‘Do they say anything about her memoirs? Surely, they’ll still want it, won’t they?’

Seb squeezes my shoulder, reading the email from behind me.

‘They’re cancelling. Fuck’s sake.’

Seb stomps off while, through bleary eyes, I reply to Daisy’s daughter.

It’s not a particularly unusual thing to happen, a client dying mid-memoirs. It’s basically a hazard of the job, since the people most likely to want their lives memorialized are those far closer to the end than the beginning of it.

So, I try to lock it away. I try not to wonder whether Daisy had done everything she wanted to do, achieved everything she wanted to achieve. Or whether she had things left unsaid or undone.

Obsessing about things like that, well, therein lay the path to madness.

* * *

‘God, we need a drink tonight. Red, white or rosé?’ Seb asks an hour later. I’m acting on autopilot and pulling on my raincoat while he waits by the door. It’s July and it’s particularly hot, but it’s also Manchester, so it’s fifty-fifty whether we’ll get sunburnt or soaked.

‘Rosé,’ I say, aiming to sound like someone who hasn’t been obsessing about the death of a centenarian she met twice. He flicks off the lights and follows me down the stairs through to the chip shop below. We pass Angus battering his fish behind the counter. A line of customers weaves their way out of the door.

‘Night, Angus,’ I call over the counter. See, I am breezy, cheerful. Unencumbered by thoughts of death and dying.

‘Night, Seb, night, Lily love.’ He pulls a long piece of fish out of some wet batter and sets it aside. ‘Our Jenny loved that blanket you made for the baby.’ Angus has to shout to me over the crowd. ‘You didn’t need to go to so much trouble.’