The Cruellest Game (13 page)

‘Yes, but there was no call for . . .’

I let the sentence trail off lamely.

We did not talk a lot at all. I told her, as I had my father, how we were waiting for Robbie’s body to be released by the police, and that I would let her know when we had set a date for
the funeral.

‘I would really like you to come, and I know Robbie would have done too,’ I said, trying not to break down as I spoke his name.

She said nothing. I glanced at her. In spite of my distress I realized that she didn’t look too keen.

‘But, I mean, I’d understand if you don’t wish—’

‘It’s not that,’ she interrupted. ‘I just hate funerals, that’s all, particularly when it’s someone so young. But of course I’ll come. Robbie was a fine
lad. I’d like to be there for him. And for you.’

I touched her arm, fleetingly. Had I been a different sort of person I would have given her a hug.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Just thank you, for everything.’

She shrugged.

‘It’s been nothing. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose your child so young. And in such an awful way. I mean, if there’s anything else I can do. You only have
to ask.’

I nodded and mumbled more thanks. My feet, although I’d worn extra thick socks over my bandages, were starting to pain me, and Bella noticed that I was limping a bit. We turned back
towards our cars and made our way up to the Esplanade where the walking was easier. I quickly attached Florrie’s lead to her collar, and when I saw Bella struggle to do the same with Flash
offered to help and, in fact, managed the snap clip quite easily.

‘Numb fingers,’ said Bella, by way of explanation, as we continued walking. ‘Really could have done with those gloves.’

I managed a small smile. I was not used to disclosing my innermost thoughts to anyone except Robert. But I suppose I just needed someone right then to share certain things with.

‘Bella, you know, you’ll probably think I’m mad, but I’m not sure about the way Robbie died,’ I blurted out suddenly. ‘I don’t entirely believe he
killed himself.’

She half stopped in her tracks and turned to me, asking me why not.

‘I mean, do the police have any doubts?’

I shook my head. Then I explained about the desk and the marks on the floor, and the conclusion they had led me to.

‘That was clever of you,’ she said, giving me what seemed to be an appraising sort of look. ‘Have you told the police?’

‘Yes. But they’re not really interested. I can’t believe it. They just seem to have made up their minds.’

‘Ummm.’ She looked and sounded thoughtful. ‘What about Robert? What does he think?’

‘I don’t know what he thinks.’ I realized I’d rather spat the words out and sounded quite bitter.

She shot me another appraising look.

‘Nothing wrong between you two, is there?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you’re going to really need each other to get through this.’

I paused before replying. A big part of me wanted to tell her all about the events of the last two days, to share with another human being the whole barrel load of shocks I had received. To tell
her that the man I so loved, the husband with whom I had shared everything, had in fact deceived me throughout our marriage.

I wanted to tell her that I no longer felt I could trust Robert, and how that had devastated me. I wanted to tell her how I did not know whether I could stay with him or not. But that I was
afraid to leave him.

I didn’t, though. I didn’t tell her any of that. I just couldn’t.

The rest of the weekend passed in a fog of unreality. Robert and I coexisted on tenterhooks. I couldn’t trust myself to have anything more to do with him than I had to,
in case I just exploded, and he seemed afraid even to speak to me.

I knew I could not face another night in Robbie’s room. I would drive myself quite mad with grief. But neither could I countenance sleeping with Robert. I moved into the guest room at the
back of the house. Robert accepted my decision regarding sleeping arrangements without question. He did offer to be the one who took the guest room, but I declined. I didn’t want to sleep in
the room we had so happily shared for so long, even if he wasn’t there.

On Monday morning the
Western Morning News
carried a front-page report of Robbie’s death. There were quotes from an anonymous school friend, and a photograph of him in his school
uniform which looked as if it might have been lifted from a group picture, possibly also obtained from the school friend. Certainly I had not supplied a photo to anyone, Robbie had been far too
private a boy to be on Facebook, and as far as I knew there were no pictures of him on the Net.

In the afternoon PC Cox called to tell us that the post-mortem had been completed, and Robbie’s body would now be released for burial. She explained that a preliminary inquest, just a
paperwork formality at this stage, she said, had already been opened and adjourned. Rather to my surprise, it seemed we would have to wait five or six months for the inquest proper.

‘’Fraid the coroner has a bit of a backlog,’ said PC Cox.

Not that an inquest was likely to make much difference to anything whenever it was held, I thought, judging from the lack of interest shown by the police.

Over the next two or three days we received a number of cards and notes of condolence, some of them from local people whose names I barely recognized. Dad phoned every evening. The headmaster of
Kelly College also phoned, and so did Robbie’s swimming coach.

Tom Farley, the village’s capable jack of all trades, and the only man Robert had ever wanted to work with him on Highrise, called round to ask if there was anything he could do. He
brought with him a large steak and kidney pie, made by his wife Ellen, he told us, adding by way of explanation: ‘Missus says you won’t want to cook, but you’m to make sure you
keep your strength up.’

Our local weekly paper followed up the
Western Morning News
story about Robbie, publishing the same picture, and one of the nationals carried a thankfully quite small piece, focusing on
an alleged increase in the number of unexplained suicides among young people.

We organized the funeral for the following Friday. Or to be honest, as Robert barely seemed capable of doing anything, I organized it with the help of the local undertaker and the vicar’s
wife. I was glad to be busy. I didn’t want to think any more.

None of the three of us in our little family had ever had any religious beliefs at all. I certainly didn’t, Robert had always been an equally emphatic non-believer, and Robbie had seemed
to embrace our lack or faith effortlessly. Indeed, just like us, he had sometimes expressed wonderment at how, in the modern world, anyone with a modicum of intelligence could accept the mumbo
jumbo of any religion. I therefore did wonder if it was hypocritical to involve the church. But it meant that Robbie could be buried in Blackstone’s little churchyard at the foot of the
Dartmoor hills, a place I knew he so loved.

The secular options seemed so bleak by comparison. I’d been to a humanist funeral of a school friend’s mother when I was a teenager. It had been most unusual, and considered really
not quite the thing in those days. Even then I hadn’t cared about any of that, but I’d been aware, as I suspected my friend had been, of an added sense of emptiness about the occasion.
A feeling that all was not as it should be. Whatever one thought about religious institutions, funerals were probably what they did best.

Robert just nodded everything through. He seemed numb. Also, almost pathetically afraid to offend me in any way. He agreed with everything I said.

I first attempted to contact our local vicar, who gloried in the name of Gerald Ponsonby Smythe, straight after getting the go-ahead from PC Cox. My call was diverted to an answering service, so
I left a message.

Within the hour there was a knock on the front door. I was taken by surprise because I’d been at the back of the house and hadn’t heard a vehicle approach. Outside stood a woman I
immediately recognized as the vicar’s wife, Gladys Ponsonby Smythe.

She was pretty unmistakable – a big woman, both in longitude and latitude, with ferocious grey hair apparently quite determined to defy her attempts to tie it back from her face. She was
wearing no make-up except for a prominent and slightly askew streak of vermilion lipstick. Her clothes, which were more like robes, multicoloured and hippy-like, ebbed and flowed with every roll of
her ample curves.

I hadn’t met her before, but I’d seen her photograph many times in the press. I’d always somewhat dismissed her, both from her demeanour and the nature of her press presence,
as a somewhat flamboyant churchy do-gooder, intent on being a tower of strength, and probably rather bossy and pleased with herself.

She introduced herself and expressed her deepest sympathy over Robbie’s tragic death. The first surprise was the way she spoke. Gladys Ponsonby Smythe had a strong Liverpool accent.

‘We didn’t know anything about your awful news until you called,’ she said. ‘I just had to come straight away. I hope you don’t mind, Mrs Anderson.’

I did rather, but I could hardly turn her away. In any case I needed the woman.

The Reverend Gerald Ponsonby Smythe was old-school high church, and steeped in classical Latin. Again, something I’d learned from the local press. I’d also spotted him once or twice
walking round the village in a long black frock. All right, a cassock. But I didn’t think it was very usual for clergy to wear that kind of garb any more, certainly not outside their
churches.

I remembered when I’d first seen both their names in a local paper how I’d thought that nobody could really be called Ponsonby Smythe, and that at the very least they had to be
clichés on legs. I still didn’t know about him. But she certainly wasn’t that. Gladys, as I was instructed to address her, swiftly proved to be not at all what I had expected.
Except, of course, in the tower of strength department! More than anything else, Gladys Ponsonby Smythe was a Scouser with attitude.

I found myself apologizing for not having met her or her husband before, and for asking to arrange a funeral in their church when I’d previously never been inside it. The Church of England
was surely well accustomed to that sort of behaviour, as for so many people churches were only for weddings, christenings and funerals. But it was somehow as if I needed to clear the territory
ahead before burying my beloved son.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m a hypocrite,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to worry about that, chuck,’ Gladys responded swiftly. ‘Not half as hypocritical as a considerable number of our regular congregation at St Andrews, I can
tell you. Only I never said that.’

She had me smiling in spite of myself. For a start I didn’t think anyone, from Liverpool or anywhere else, actually said ‘chuck’, except Cilla Black.

I invited her in, trying not to let my reluctance show. After all, I really did need her.

She stepped into the hall but made no attempt to move further into the house.

‘Look, I’m not staying, not this time,’ she said. ‘I just wanted you to know that I’m here to give you all the help I can with the funeral and anything else.
I’ll come back to sort out the details.’

I thanked her and said I appreciated having a bit more time.

‘If you’d rather pop out for a bit and come to the vicarage or go to the pub or something, just let me know,’ she said as she left.

I didn’t believe in anything that she stood for, but I did feel very slightly less bereft after her visit.

Ultimately I called her the next day to say I was ready to talk about the details of the funeral, or as ready as I’d ever be, and I would like to meet at the vicarage. I just wanted a
break from the sheer bloody misery of Highrise.

Blackstone Vicarage, built right next to the church, was an ugly Victorian pile in dire need of a major facelift outside and in. It boasted few of the comforts of life which I took for granted.
The Reverend Gerald, a distracted man several years older than his wife, I thought, who wore wire-framed spectacles balanced crookedly on a large pointed nose, greeted me in the hall before
retreating to his study, saying he would ‘leave Gladys to it, then’, which I somehow thought was his habit.

Gladys made instant coffee in an orange Formica kitchen dating back to the 1970s, I guessed. She sat me at the Formica-topped table, plonked half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits before
me, then got down to business. First she asked what hymns I would like. I didn’t think I knew any appropriate hymns, except ‘Abide with Me’, which I definitely didn’t want
because it would be sure to cause me to totally break down. Other than that I had only a distant memory of hymns I used to sing at school and I couldn’t even remember what they were.

‘Would you like me to choose, luv?’ she asked.

I nodded my agreement. She suggested ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, which, of course, even I had heard of, and ‘Be Not Afraid’, originally an American Catholic hymn,
which I hadn’t.

That hymn began with the verse:
You shall cross the barren desert, But you shall not die of thirst, You shall wander far in safety, Though you do not know the way.
It’s chorus
was:
Be not afraid, I go before you always, Come follow me, And I shall give you rest.

I was moved by the words. It made me think of Robbie not knowing the way and seeking rest, and it reminded me of how I had almost always been moved by the Bible whenever I encountered quotations
or readings. Even though I didn’t actually believe a word that was in it.

‘But can you have a Catholic hymn at a C of E funeral?’ I asked.

‘Oh, Gerry doesn’t worry about stuff like that, chuck,’ responded the vicar’s wife cheerily. ‘In any case he’s so high church there’s some round here
think he secretly is RC!’

I smiled and told Gladys those two hymns would be fine.

She then asked if either Robert or I would like to speak about Robbie at the service. I shook my head vehemently. I knew I would not be able to do so, and I really didn’t feel I could sit
and listen to the husband I now knew had deceived me for so long eulogizing about the son he had also grievously deceived.