‘I love the pictures,’ said Yvonne. ‘If I’d known, I’d have gone with you.’
‘Next time then, Yvonne,’ said Maurice.
‘You’re on. I mean it.’
Yvonne and Maurice were such very different people but Molly and Mr Singh had remarked how well they had connected. Yvonne came from a rough background and had struggled all her life, Maurice came from an aspiring middle-class mother who had plenty of money and pretensions but both were united in just wanting some gentle company, some affection. Molly suspected they’d both given out a lot of love and received little in return.
‘Have you gone back to work, Laurie?’ asked Sharon. Laurie was impressed that people here had taken care to remember her name as she was more often than not called Laura.
‘Yes, I went back a few weeks after the funeral. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.’
‘Me too,’ put in Pete. ‘Exactly that.’ He wagged an emphatic finger and when Laurie turned to him, she noticed the dimple in his chin. Alex had once told her that when he was a young boy, he used to sit there poking his chin hoping to get a dimple in it like his father had. And Kirk Douglas. She switched off that thought, continued with her story. She could find connections with everything and everyone and Alex and her brain felt duty-bound to hunt for them.
‘I do a lot of work with the Daily Trumpet. I’m their retained solicitor. Going to their offices every week is the best cheer-up. They should bottle it and dispense it as medicine.’ But, like an over-prescribed antibiotic, even that was failing to work enough these days. ‘It was the editor who recommended I come here.’
‘Dear Alan,’ said Molly. ‘I know him well.’
‘I love the Daily Trumpet,’ said Mr Singh, chuckling in the background and clapping his hands together with glee.
‘I imagine you need to have a lot of humour in your job too, Peter,’ said Maurice. ‘The same sort of humour that policemen have, to offset the darkness you must encounter.’
‘There’s a lot, yes, Maurice. And brilliant camaraderie. I’m lucky to work with a great set of people.’
‘Not a lot of humour in bookkeeping, alas,’ said Maurice. ‘It’s terribly boring, but it suits me well. I was never the most dynamic of people and I could work from home when Mother was particularly bad. Good pension. I could avail myself of it and take an early retirement but I see no reason to yet. I don’t know what I’d do if I was ever made redundant.’
‘What would you like to do, if you could do anything?’ Laurie asked him and Molly marvelled at how well this group of people were all interacting. It wasn’t always like this when new people joined. Sometimes it was like a pastry mix with too little water, the crumbs would not adhere together without a great deal of effort.
Maurice considered the question before delivering his answer. ‘I suppose, I’d like to buy a house in France and run it as a gîte. Not a hotel, I’m not one for cooking more than I have to, but I’d give people who stayed there a basket of warm breads and spreads for their breakfast. I fell in love with France when I took Mother to Paris.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ said Yvonne. ‘I’ve never been abroad.’
‘What, never?’ said Sharon.
‘No. Des wasn’t one for holidays. I used to take my daughter away for the day on the bus, you know, but Des didn’t want to go with us ever. And so that was that.’
‘You should book a holiday in Spain. Or a cruise,’ said Sharon. ‘I’ve always wanted to go on one of them big ships and dress up.’
‘Me abroad, ha.’ Yvonne laughed at the idea. ‘I’d be like a duck out of water. I’ve never even been to London.’
That disclosure landed like a stone on still water sending ripples out to them all. It seemed to speak volumes about what Yvonne’s life must have been like. A little life.
Mr Singh made more coffees and Pete, Maurice and Yvonne had a second piece of cake each. And when the session came to a natural close – over an hour and a half after it had started – Laurie couldn’t believe where the time had gone.
Did she feel any better for Molly’s Club, Laurie asked herself on the way back to her car. She couldn’t tell. She certainly didn’t feel any worse, considering the edgy matters they’d discussed like that meek bookkeeper contemplating murder. People hid so many secrets behind their innocuous façades.
She was just hunting in her bag for her car keys when she heard the firefighter call her from behind. He was holding something up in the air. Keys. How the hell did they slide out of her bag? She had never lost a bunch of keys in her whole life.
‘I don’t think you’ll get far without these,’ he said, striding quickly to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how they fell out.’
‘That your goldfish?’ he asked, handing over the keyring with the padded goldfish on it.
‘No, but it looks exactly like him,’ said Laurie. She’d bought the keyring for Alex at Christmas. Now she used it, a stupid human thing to try and keep him close. ‘Thank you.’
‘What did you think about it? The meeting?’
Laurie pondered for a moment. ‘It was . . .’ What words could she use: nice, odd? Both fitted. She plumped for ‘. . . better than I expected. I thought I’d give it a go.’
‘Me too,’ said Pete.
‘I wasn’t expecting miracles,’ said Laurie with a soft smile. ‘But I didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I thought I might.’
‘Me too. Again,’ said Pete with a small chuckle. ‘There’s a comfort to be had in being with people who are going through the same thing. And the cake was moreish. I didn’t want any and I ended up having two big slabs.’
‘See you again. Have a nice week,’ said Laurie, not sure if she’d be back. Not sure if this really was for her.
‘Have a good one yourself,’ Pete replied. He didn’t think he’d be back. Nice as it was sitting eating cake, he couldn’t see it working enough to chase the blackness away.
Laurie got into her car and Pete got into his. On the way home Pete thought about calling in to a shop to buy Pong some more cat food and Laurie thought about what she should buy for her boss’s upcoming birthday. They did not think about each other at all.
Chapter 9
29 August
Laurie had nearly always arrived home before Alex, so she’d become used to walking into an empty house after work. Usually she’d change out of her suit, tidy anything that needed tidying, although not much ever did because both she and Alex were neat by nature. Then she’d feed Keith Richards the goldfish, who was still going strong after five years. Alex had won him at a fair on one of their first dates. They’d expected him to have died by the morning, but he was still there, in the pan they’d transferred him to from the small plastic bag. The week after, Keith was residing in a luxury BiOrb tank complete with plants, reef, lighting and furniture of interest to hide in and swim around. He’d overcome fin rot and white spot disease and – like his namesake – seemed indestructible. Alex had joked once, ‘That bloody fish will outlive me.’ Joked.