Death Actually Read online

  Lizzie continued her circuits of the living room, bumping her walking frame into walls and the few pieces of furniture, cursing aloud if she knocked her twisted right foot. Ben Goodman visited most weeks, impressed with her progress

  Kate was blooming with the excitement of her work in the busy restaurant. Her burgeoning stomach was increasingly in the way in the narrow kitchen areas, but as pregnancies go, hers was uneventful. She was gaining a normal amount of weight, felt energised by the life growing inside her, and had none of the sickness or swelling other women complained of.

  No one at the restaurant had heard a word from Eric since his ignominious return to the Northern Hemisphere and the long-suffering Sandra. His television work had dried up as his cooking programmes were cancelled by the major networks, following the social media campaign from the #MeToo movement.

  Sylvia and Jenny had become firm friends in their crusade for the welfare of husband and sons. As promised, Sylvia moved into the vacant night-nanny’s flat and became a daily presence in the life of her son and grandson. She also converted to Judaism, something she had been meaning to do for twenty years.

  When his leg was fully healed, Tim accepted a role that took him to Ireland. Sylvia stayed with Isaac, and Jenny, reluctant to let her impulsive husband out of her sight, went with him. Their marriage and their family thrived.

  Jimmy, exhausted and stressed by his dealings with insurers and the police, nevertheless had no time for a break. With the insistent urgings of his producers ringing in his ears on a daily basis, he moved to Wellington to work on post-production, aiming for a tentative release date for the yet to be renamed film, in the New Year. Tim’s physiotherapist, Anna, went with him.

  Elka luxuriated in her slow convalescence, and a month after the dinner at the Lodge had still not returned to work full time. She and Maggie were walking each morning, perhaps not as far or as fast as they had walked in the past, but there was always so much to discuss that the slower speed suited them both. Maggie thought her friend looked happier than she’d ever seen her, and often commented to others how relaxed Elka was now that she wasn’t trying to do everything herself.

  Ben commissioned an interior designer from Christchurch to completely redecorate the house at Lake Hayes. Estelle called in unannounced several times in the early evening, bearing a bottle of good red on the pretence that she had a buyer for the house, just in case he was thinking of moving on. The first time this happened he made the mistake of opening the wine, but he soon learned Estelle was not a one-glass guest and didn’t repeat the hospitality the next time she happened by.

  Ben and Maggie saw each other now and then, in town or when someone had passed away. They had developed a casual easiness in their relationship, with no more awkward misunderstandings to blight their growing friendship. Elka, Nick and Kate watched them with amusement, often making less than subtle references to one about how good looking the other was, just to watch them feign disinterest. The three matchmakers weren’t above arranging coincidental meetings. Maggie was surprised at how often she would find Ben in front of her at the supermarket checkout, Kate having told her she urgently needed something. Ben in his turn was starting to notice how often Maggie dropped into the restaurant to see Kate, just after he had sat down to a quiet meal alone.

  Maggie mentioned the coincidences to all three conspirators, but there was no glimmer of response so she couldn’t take her suspicions further. Even Lizzie had been primed by Nick to arrange her meetings with Maggie for a time when she knew Ben would be at her flat. It was a great source of entertainment for Lizzie, watching the two of them as they exchanged polite greetings and carefully side-stepped their way around the top of the stairs to avoid physical contact.

  Unfortunately, the conspirators were rewarded with nothing more than polite small talk between their remarkably suited victims, who remained frustratingly and puzzlingly immune to developing a deeper relationship. Eventually they grew tired of matchmaking and got on with their own lives.

  One morning, when Maggie had returned from her walk and was still in trainers and track pants, there was a brisk knock at the door. A young woman in a business suit, coat and high heels, her hair pulled back into a tight bun, stood expectantly on the doorstep. It took a few moments for Maggie to identify her as the grown-up version of the laughing teenager featured in the photos on Jilly’s bedroom wall. A gloved hand was thrust towards her and the young woman introduced herself as Sarah, Jilly’s daughter, and politely but firmly requested five minutes of Maggie’s time.

  Maggie had no choice but to invite her in, and when Sarah had taken up position in front of the empty fireplace, offered her coffee. She was only a few years older than Kate, and while she was evidently used to the deference of others, Maggie detected vulnerability beneath her steely exterior.

  Without waiting for the coffee, Sarah proceeded to tell Maggie she understood from her father’s PA that she’d been entrusted with the disposal of the Lakes Hayes house and contents after her mother’s death. Sarah had also been told Maggie had arranged the funeral and had seen to her mother’s burial.

  Maggie nodded, and waited.

  Sarah then started on a list of questions, such as how her mother had died, who’d found her, and where she was buried. Without waiting for replies she explained she didn’t have long, because she was booked on the afternoon flight back to Auckland to connect with a flight to New York.

  Maggie waited purposely before replying, “Perhaps you’d like to have that coffee. And take your coat off. These are difficult questions for a daughter to ask about her mother. I promise to answer them and I won’t hold you up, but you have rather caught me and I need a coffee, even if you don’t.”

  She walked into the kitchen. Sarah followed, and they stood waiting for the pot to boil. Sarah tapped her foot.

  “You must have a busy life, and I would imagine a very demanding job,” said Maggie, trying to make conversation. “It would have been awful for you being so far away and unable to do anything by the time you found out about your mother. Your father’s PA told me you were skiing. In South America. No way to contact you in time.”

  Sarah stopped tapping and looked at Maggie properly for the first time. She seemed to relax when she understood she wasn’t being judged, and that Maggie’s concern was genuine. “Argentina. I was skiing in Argentina. The coffee smells good, doesn’t it.”

  Maggie poured two mugs and motioned for Sarah to sit at the kitchen table.

  “How did she die?” Sarah asked again.

  “She died of a heart attack. Her cleaning lady found her,” said Maggie, seeing no need to burden this young woman’s memory with visions of empty bottles, the last drunken binge and Jilly’s poor dead body not being found for days.

  “And now? Where is she now?”

  “I can take you to her grave after we’ve finished our coffee. I’m pleased you’re here, because I need instructions about your mother’s headstone, and I didn’t know who to ask.”

  Sarah looked at Maggie and smiled weakly. “I feel bad, you know. Not coming to the funeral. You must think I’m the worst daughter. I am, I guess.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. It’s what you think, and more importantly feel, that’s important.”

  “I’m not sure what I feel, but I know I’d like to see where she is.”

  “I’m very happy to take you. It’s good you’ve come, truly.”

  In the car on the way to the cemetery, they passed several shops in front of which cheerful bunches of spring flowers were arrayed in colourful displays. Initially Maggie slowed the car, anticipating Sarah would want her to stop so she could buy something to put on her mother’s grave, but no such request was made and they arrived at the cemetery empty handed.

  The mound of earth marking Jilly’s grave had been flattened by the winter weather. A small white cross with a brass plaque engraved with her name was the only marker.

  “As you can see,” said Maggie, pointing at the cros
s, “this isn’t going to last long. I’ve been waiting for instructions about the headstone, but despite my calls, no one has told me what to do.” It was as if, with the sale of the house, Jilly had all but ceased to exist until now.

  It was a cold day and a biting southerly wind was coming off the lake straight onto the graves, making for a gloomy, coat-hugging atmosphere. Maggie looked at Sarah’s shoes doubtfully. They were suited to the pavements of big cities, not to boggy lawns around the graves. After several steps Sarah gave up walking on tiptoes and ploughed on, water staining the fine Italian leather. Maggie was still in her walking clothes, and soon froze in the damp chill of the cemetery, dark under the pine trees on the side of the hill.

  Sarah’s business-like demeanour dissolved as she contemplated the dark rectangle of mud marking her mother’s grave. Maggie, standing beside her, passed her a tissue and moved a few steps away to give the girl space. Sarah had come prepared to deal with the finality of her mother’s leaving on her own terms – much as, Maggie suspected, she had had to deal with most things in her life.

  The wind stirred up the trees on the hill behind them, branches creaking in resistance. This cemetery was not a silent place, sited as it was on a busy tourist thoroughfare that had sprung up around it over time. Cars and buses formed a constant procession to the entrance to the gondolas, which whisked sightseers up to a magnificent view of the lake and mountains, and a popular café and restaurant. A parachute swung giddily to ground in a nearby park, its screaming, thrill-soaked passenger wrapped securely in the arms of the instructor. Nearby, a family playing mini golf could be heard arguing over the accuracy of the younger brother’s score card.

  “I heard you organised a minister to say a few words,” said Sarah. “That was good of you. She believed in God so would’ve liked that. There was no one was there, was there? No one she knew, I mean.”

  “A few people,” said Maggie. “Her cleaning lady, the minister, the doctor and I think Estelle the estate agent was there as well.”

  Sarah walked awkwardly around the edge of the dirt in her ruined wet shoes, heels sinking into the turf, apparently oblivious to her surroundings.

  “At one time, Jilly – Mum – would have had a huge funeral. She had so many friends then. When I was growing up she was the life and soul of Auckland. Everyone loved her. She was so much fun. The house was always full of people laughing and enjoying themselves. I remember seeing Dad come home, exhausted, only to find Mum and her friends out by the pool having yet another party. He was OK with it for a while. He liked that side of her. But he would still go off to his study and work, and that used to drive her nuts.

  “She trained me to pour the drinks as soon as I was old enough to hold a bottle. When you’re a kid you don’t realise, do you? But she was happy, which meant I was happy too.”

  “Things changed, when I got to high school, didn’t they, Mum? It was just you and me then. Dad worked too hard, you said, and was never home, and everyone else stopped coming. I had my own friends. You never liked being alone. So you made Dad buy the land at Lake Hayes and for a while everything was all right again. You had architects and builders to be your friends. I heard Dad talking to you, begging you to come home, but you wouldn’t.”

  “I bored her, she told me later, and Dad bored her too. We’d stopped her living the life she’d really wanted. Taken her potential, she said. By then I was old enough to know it was the wine talking, and not her. Of course when the house was finished, and the workmen went away, she got worse. No one wanted anything to do with her. She used to rave at me on the phone about how much she loved me and why wasn’t I with her. In the end, I stopped taking her calls because I knew she was always drunk and she never remembered talking to me anyway. Sometimes she’d call ten times in a row, by hitting redial. You know the rest. I bet you thought we were awful, Dad and me, not coming to the funeral.”

  Maggie shivered and hugged her jacket tightly around her, hands thrust deep in her pockets.

  “I don’t think that, now I know what it was like for you,” she said. “And it’s not my business, but I do understand and I’m sorry. She was sick. She didn’t mean to be that way to you.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “Look at you,” said Maggie. “Your shoes are ruined and your feet must be blocks of ice. Do you need more time, or do you want to come back to the car and warm up?”

  “No. I’m done,” Sarah said, looking up to the mountain framed in the distance by the craggy cliffs to the north. “She would have liked the view.”

  “I forgot to say,” said Maggie. “I found a photo of you in her bedroom. I put it in her casket to keep her company.”

  Tears welled up in Sarah’s eyes and she turned away. She didn’t look back as she walked to the car.

  Seated in the warmth, out of the wind, Maggie waited. When she thought Sarah was ready she took an envelope out of her handbag. “I’m not sure whether you would like these, and please don’t feel you have to look at them. I took photographs of your mother, when she was–”

  “Dead,” said Sarah.

  “Yes.”

  Sarah didn’t hesitate. She flicked through them for a few seconds before putting them in her own handbag.

  “I don’t know how you can do this,” she said, looking out over the rows of graves. “Isn’t it difficult?”

  “I was brought up with the dead, so no, I don’t find it difficult.” Maggie paused. “I used to hate it when I was your age. Now, though, I like cemeteries. Maybe it’s the peace. No one can stay angry when they visit the dead. It’s pointless.”

  “There are so many stories under these stones, all with the same ending and all reminding us that this is our ending too.”

  Sarah eased off her sodden shoes and wriggled her toes in the warmth of the heater. She was starting to look better, more like the professional woman she had become.

  Maggie couldn’t help herself. “Your mother loved you, and she would have been so proud of you, Sarah.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Sarah, the hope of a little girl shining in her eyes.

  “She was surrounded by photos of you when she died. Does that answer your question?”

  Sarah nodded then sighed. She was spent. It wasn’t time to leave just yet, so Maggie filled in the silence. “A cemetery is where history is buried. Over there in the best spot are the gold miners. There, that’s where the Chinese miners are buried. The names on the stones mean nothing to us, which is very sad, knowing they were so far from home when they died. Over there are the merchants, the farmers and their wives, the story of each person carved in stone for all to read. How long this one lived, where they died, who loved them or not, who their children were – the really important things in a life. Some of the older stones are just beautiful, works of art or sometimes beautiful slabs of the local rock. Each memorial chosen by the people left behind, who want to remember.” Maggie stopped. “Sorry to go on.”

  “No, it’s good. You’re lucky to be doing work that means something. I don’t suppose you could do me two last favours? I need to get new shoes …” she looked down at the mud-soaked pumps lying beside her feet, “and I need lunch. So, a shoe shop and a good restaurant in that order would be a huge help. I hear there’s a new chef at Elka’s who’s supposed to be very talented. I can order a taxi to take me to the airport from there.”

  Maggie drove the short blocks into town, double parking in the narrow street near her favourite shoe shop.

  “You’ve been wonderful,” said Sarah. “I was listening, and I will email you about Jilly’s stone. I’ll give you my card, just in case I get caught up when I get back and forget.”

  Maggie watched the young woman squelch down the pavement, head held high, in search of shoes.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Lizzie was walking well. Only around her flat, but it was progress. She was still big, but not as big as she had been at the beginning of winter. It wouldn’t be long, the nurse told her, b
efore the scales registered an actual weight rather than just hitting the maximum recordable before stopping, defeated.

  And to her surprise, the more she moved each day, the more the pain in her foot retreated, little by little, slowly but surely improving. Now she could look out of her window onto the life in the street below, focusing on something outside herself, outside this room. She still played computer games at all hours of the day and night, but now she had a new interest, spending a lot of her day sitting behind the tattered curtains, watching people, curious about how they lived. Occasionally someone would look up, unsure if they’d caught a shadow of a face in the window, and she would pull quickly back, then watch them shake their head before passing by.

  Hunger still gripped her when she’d had a bad day, or when cold seeped into the metal screws in her ankle and gnawed into the misshapen bone, whittling back her resistance. But instead of gorging the terrible ache away, she would move, walk, hobble, stamp – anything but submit to the immobility of her victimhood. Sure enough the pain would recede, never leaving entirely, always lurking annoyingly in the background, waiting for her resolve to weaken, tiring and draining, but manageable. Just.

  Under the guidance of her nurse and Ben, Lizzie had restricted herself to three meals a day, no longer prepared by Ronald, or the Colonel, or even by Elka, but by Jenny Craig. And she was surprised at how much she enjoyed food eaten at regular times, rather than all-day grazing.

  Today was a sore day, and she was using her walker again. She figured any movement was better than no movement, and so allowed herself the extra support.

  “Small steps. No need to rush, Lizzie,” she wheezed.

  Taking a deep breath she heaved the walker round and started on another circuit of the living area and kitchen. Stopping to peer down into the street below, she was constantly amazed by the changes that had taken place during her exile on the sofa. When she’d first moved into her flat, the street had been quiet, made up of plain windowed concrete block offices accommodating the lesser local accounting firms, real estate and letting agencies.