Her hands were like old parchment: brown, mottled and thin; yet to my five-year-old eyes they were capable of anything, magic not least among them. Today, they were a domestic symphony rolling out the dough; the flour, like fairy dust, sprinkled on the long, flat marble. Her arms were strong and wiry, and as she kneaded she beguiled me with stories from far away. Stories that conjured wisps of sun-drenched olive groves, plum-coloured wine sipped out of short glasses on cobbled sea-front tavernas, honey drizzled over thick, creamy-white Greek yoghurt, and wild, pink-tinged peaches warm from the sun.
‘Yew kno’ the story of how yew got your name?’ asked Yaya in her heavy Cretan accent. Flour smudged on her soft, brown cheek as she peered down at me, a smile edging the corner of her mouth.
I grinned my gap-toothed grin, perched on the counter, legs swinging, and clutching my latest and most cherished possession, a collection of fairy tales.
‘You named me, Yaya,’ I said. My name was collateral damage from my Greek heritage: I was doomed to walk through life with the rather foreign-sounding name of Ariadne.
‘Yes-a, but do yew kno’ who I named yew after?’ asked Yaya, holding up the index finger on her left hand, which curved ever so slightly at the tip, as if she would lift each vowel along with it in her lyrical burr.
I shook my head, espresso-eyes wide.
‘I named yew after one of the most famous princesses of all-a time, eh… the one who suffered the most-e,’ she said, with a sense of pride about the latter. ‘Unlike these silly princesses from your fairy book.’
My mouth formed an ‘o’ of surprise, my feet paused mid-swing.
‘Why I do this, eh?’ she asked.
I shrugged. She was a bit mad. This wasn’t exactly news. I loved her anyway and maybe a little because of it.
‘Well meli mou, the goddess Ariadne suffered most terribly, and it was her bravery and courage, not her beauty, that made her a hero, which I think-e is what really makes a hero, a hero, no?’
I supposed so. I liked the idea of the girl being the hero, though.
Yaya continued. ‘She was the daughter of a king; a mad Cretan king ’ho ordered a young man named Theseus to enter a maze and kill a wild, monstrous beast that had killed many people before. Knowing that this young man was facing certain death, Ariadne helped ’im escape and they fell in love. Together they fled the kingdom, Ariadne believing that she ’ad found a love that would last-e forever. Only, it wasn’t to be.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘He left her. He left her sleeping in a cave one-a night, so they say, and he run away.’
I gasped. That was not how the story was supposed to go. ‘What happened to her?’
Yaya looked at me with her beetle-black eyes. ‘Well, there are many different stories, and everyone tells different ones. But for me, the story my own yaya told me is still the best-e. After Theseus left her, Ariadne sank-e into despair, barely able to keep going. Feeling sorry for the woman who had sacrificed everything for this man, Dionysus, a god ’ho knew all about suffering, rescued her, though there are many who would say that in the end, she rescued him too. You see, meli mou, life is never what we think it will be; it’s not always like these stories,’ she said, tapping the green cover, leaving behind a faint film of flour. ‘It can be filled with joy or misfortune, but mostly it’s a mixture like this dough. A real hero is like the bread – rising after it has been beaten.’
It’s not that I hate my job.
Hate is a strong word. I don’t hate it.
I mean there are parts of it that I don’t like, but that’s common with all jobs, isn’t it? No one loves every minute of their job. Except maybe Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. And, well, look how that turned out.
But the rest of us? Not so much love. Sometimes when I think about my job on a Sunday evening, I get this odd feeling where I lose all sensation along the left side of my body.
But that’s normal.
Completely normal… I’m sure. It’s the Sunday blues, right? And, anyway, it doesn’t last that long. By around midday on Monday, I’m fine. Mostly.
I’m an obituary writer for the somewhat insalubrious London paper The Mail & Ledger, which comes out on Monday morning, and part of my job involves dealing with irate phone calls, tear-soaked letters and the occasional little old lady queuing outside my cubicle.
Like yesterday morning when Rosa Greenberg called after The Mail & Ledger hit the stands. Rosa was phoning about her late husband George’s obituary. My hands shook as I took the call. I slouched down in my seat as low as I could, trying to avoid Kimberley’s gimlet gaze – Kimberley is my colleague, who sits in the cubicle next to mine. She was busy writing her ‘action list’ for the day with different coloured Biros to underline things like ‘priority item #1’ and ‘red flag – follow up before 12’.
I despise Kimberley Mondsworth-Greene.
Meanwhile, Rosa Greenberg sobbed into the receiver, ‘I just wasn’t ready. I mean it’s not like Pauline, you know, Pauline from next door. I told you about her when we spoke after, after… it happened,’ she sniffed.
I closed my eyes, hoping that just this once my tear ducts would behave. Today I vowed, as I do every Monday, I would be strong.
Rosa continued, ‘Pauline had time; Roger had had two heart attacks already, and even then she says she had been preparing for it. But George was… just gone. I know he was seventy-eight, but he was fine. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old, not really. It was too soon.’
A loud foghorn sound announced that Rosa was blowing her nose. I took the time to surreptitiously reach for my ever-ready box of Kleenex and mop up my own eyes.
I’d have to be strong some other time.
Alerted to the sound like a vulture circling from above, Kimberley turned to raise an eyebrow at me. I ignored her, swivelling my chair as far away as I could to the wall opposite, while Rosa prepared to send my leaky tear ducts into overflow.
‘So beautiful, what you wrote… that’s why I’m calling, it’s like you knew him. I was worried about it… you know, worried that it wouldn’t be George, but it was. I know this probably sounds silly, but George would have loved to have read it. He would have been so pleased that you wrote about his time in India, dear,’ she said before ringing off.
Afterwards, I put the phone back in its cradle and stared at the horrid blue speckled carpet until I had regained control of my wobbling chin.
Kimberley would never cry at her desk.
‘Journalists’, she told me haughtily a few weeks ago, ‘are meant to be objective, to report the facts without emotion. Try to be more of a journalist, Ria,’ she rebuked, while I considered that the first action on my own ‘action list’ would be to staple her stupid list to her forehead. I suppose that wouldn’t be an objective act, though, would it?
The thing is, being objective is fine for Kimberley, who gets to report about current affairs and breaking news. In the entertainment world anyway. Like when Kim Kardashian insured her bum.
Oh yes.
They ran a whole piece asking if it was worth insuring body parts and what the point of it all really was.
People wrote in.
There were debates.
There were polls.
There were people with a bit too much free time on their hands, if you ask me.
But I digress. My point is that it’s hard to be impartial when you write about death every day.
I’ve been doing that now for close to three years. Three very long years. I never planned on being an obituary writer – it’s not something you study for at university. No one says, ‘I’d like to do a course on financial journalism and obituary writing.’ And, anyway, when I joined the paper the job wasn’t advertised as ‘obituary writer’.
The advert had read: writer required for popular London broadsheet (yes, they actually called themselves a broadsheet, not a tabloid – I remember that clearly), graduate level acceptable.
And when I started I wrote about other things too, like films, events, and just once, for a single glorious moment in my career, about travel. It was a little B&B just outside Sheffield, but still it was nice, er… ish. Or it would have been if there hadn’t been a dead body in the dining room. But that’s another story altogether.
Although in retrospect it may have been a sign, too. You know, of things to come?
Because two days following the death of ninety-seven-year-old Mr Wimple from Sheffield, John Marshland, who wrote the obituaries, retired, and I was asked to fill in for him until we could find a replacement. That was almost three years ago – I’m still waiting for that replacement. But it’s just a glitch. Even Janice says so. Or at least she used to.
My boss. Janice Farland. She hasn’t said much about it being a glitch lately, to be honest. Not that I haven’t broached the subject, I have – quite regularly, to tell you the truth. The last time, well, let’s just say it didn’t go so well.
There were words.
There were tears. (Mine.)
And threats. (Janice’s.)
Then there was wine. (Me again.)
And anyway, it’s fine, really. Most of the time I enjoy what I do; okay, not enjoy really, quite the opposite actually, if I’m honest. But I do feel a sense of purpose, of value in a way. Especially after what happened to Christopher. Maybe I was meant to do this. Like some really horrible calling? Which I realise is probably just a bit morbid. But I figured, for a long time anyway, maybe you don’t get to choose your calling? I mean we can’t all be called to be singers or doctors. Perhaps this was my calling, being a professional mourner?
Or, you know. Not.
The thing is, and what gets me through, is that somebody has to do it. And it may as well be someone like me who gets it. Though in hindsight maybe it would be nice if I didn’t get it quite so much. And the crying will stop eventually. Everyone said it would get easier. And it will. Someday. Still, you’d think after three years that I wouldn’t cry every time someone called to thank me, or, worse, to shout at me for getting it wrong. Or just crying because it’s a Monday and I have nothing else planned that day. Crying has become my thing. You know, like how some people are good at darts. I’ve become abnormally brilliant at crying.
I’m not saying that my job is always hard. It isn’t always. Some days are actually sort of all right. It’s just that a lot of the time it’s a bit, well, brutal.
I mean, you’re dealing with the very worst day of a family’s life, and you’re taking notes about the person they’ve lost, which is kind of horrible when you think of it that way, which I try not to. And if you get it wrong, well, let’s just say you know you haven’t actually ruined anyone’s life, but it sure does feel that way. Which is why sometimes, on a Sunday, when I think about work I get a bit panicky because that’s when the obituaries race through my head, and I know if I’ve made a mistake it’s too late. It will be there in print for the entire world to see, or London, or the people that read The Mail & Ledger anyway, or the obituaries at least, and they’re a tough crowd, let’s be honest: retired school teachers, grammarians, my mum.
She doesn’t read it to be gloomy or anything, she just likes to read what I write and put it in a big scrapbook; it’s nice in its own macabre way. I mean imagine bringing that out to guests.
Although since Christopher, Mum doesn’t read them any more. I can’t blame her. If I didn’t have to, if I didn’t feel that I was needed, that perhaps what happened to me made me understand the pain of people who had also lost someone close to them, neither would I.
Later in the day my mind was in a comfortably numb state after having spent the morning worrying over everything that could possibly go wrong yet hadn’t, when quite suddenly my body developed a will of its own and gave in, having decided that it had had its fill of anxiety for the day, thank you very much. Or maybe the meds had kicked in. The ones Mum insists on force-feeding me every morning, despite Dr Rushma telling her that perhaps it’s time for me to just go off them and see what happens. I can never really tell. It’s a comfortable sort of hum, like white noise for the nerves. I had just sat down to a cup of tea when Kimberley appeared: short and rather square in shape, with square glasses framing her square, sharp-eyed face.
Her breathy little girl voice, so out of place with all her boxy, square angles, caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end before I could process what she was saying. I was good at tuning her out. At some point, though, she raised her square-shaped hand in front of my face and asked, ‘So, what do you think? We need about four people for the feature.’
I frowned. ‘Sorry, what feature?’
She gave me a look. It actually looked a little like sympathy. She even seemed a little nervous, or what constituted nervousness for Kimberley. It looked like she needed to pee, actually.
‘We’re doing a feature about surviving unimaginable tragedies – you heard about the guy who won the lottery, only to have his money stolen out of his bank account, and now he’s completely destitute, and his wife left him, right?’
I shrugged. She cleared her throat, not meeting my eye. ‘Janice is thinking of calling the feature “When the best day of your life becomes your worst”, and she wants to know if you’d share your story?’
My throat went suddenly dry.
Share my story.
I stared at her in horror. Janice’s awful, pithy title tearing through my brain: ‘When the best day of your life becomes your worst’.
Who were these people?
Then she said it. As if I could have had any doubt as to what she’d been referring to. She cleared her throat, and said, ‘About what happened to Christopher.’
As if she knew him. As if she had any right to say his name.
The room started to whirl. I pushed back my chair, not bothering to look at her as I rushed to the bathroom, my heel breaking on the tiled floor as I fled to the nearest stall and vomited my shattered heart into the cold porcelain bowl.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, you see. Or behind myself, as it were, because my life changed on the Tuesday, really. As usual I was on the M4 on my way to work in my wheezy, gobbled-up-and-spat-out Renault, a relic that had been lovingly passed down to me from my grandmother. I reached down for a slug of the filter coffee that I had prepared bleary-eyed at six in the morning, my hand groping while I kept my eye on the road in front. Instead, my finger brushed the radio knob and tuned into Sam Cooke’s ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’. I blinked in the grey light, my throat constricting and thought, simply: Yaya. The word itself was a balm. Unbidden, the memory swam in front of my eyes and I saw us: my feet in their new sparkly red ballet flats. The ones that Mum said I couldn’t have. The ones Yaya went and bought me anyway. And us, together in the kitchen with the radio turned to her favourite station, the soundtrack of my childhood: Aretha, The Temptations, The Supremes.
I remember watching the cake rise through the glass door of the oven, her smile as I tried to help, while we both twisted the day away, our hips in time, on a sunny afternoon.
I bit my lip and couldn’t help the watery smile on my face as my hands tapped along on the steering wheel. I barely noticed as the tears slid down my cheeks.
I swallowed and tried to push the image from my mind. Please, just not yet. Not today.
A car passed and honked its hooter as I’d been holding up traffic without realising it. With a fright I changed lanes and found myself taking the airport lane by mistake.
The driver who passed shot me an odd look, mouthing the word ‘lunatic’ at me.
I shrugged. Despite popular belief, lunacy isn’t exactly a choice. But I’m not sure if he got my mental message. He just continued to gawk. It’s not like I could exactly blame him.
It was then that I gave a thought to my hair.
I’m not someone who usually concerns herself with hair. Well, beyond it being clean and neat, anyway. There was a time when I did, sort of. There were hairdresser appointments, and highlights, and the obligatory consultations with Christopher before I lopped any of it off – he was such a typical bloke that way. He’d actually frowned for most of a day when I came home with a bob once, but that had been a long time ago. From the look I received from the driver, I had to wonder… had I brushed it?
I glanced in the rear-view mirror at myself and looked away just as quickly. They were still there, the dead things in my face where my eyes should have been, and above them, the nest that was my hair shoved into an all-purpose, ratty topknot.
I really must brush it properly, instead of just giving it a quick wash and combing my fingers through it before I shove it up and out of sight. But then I’ve been promising myself that for a long time now.
Okay. Focus.
At the closest exit I’ll turn around, and with any luck I won’t need to explain my latest insanity to my boss. But the thought of Janice – or The Devil-Who-Wears-Birkenstocks, as I sometimes like to call her – and our weekly ‘catch-up’ meeting makes me put my foot down flat on the accelerator. My breathing turns sharp, and my hands tighten on the steering wheel. Basically, what happens in these meetings is that Janice goes through my copy, line by line, and she lets me know what she likes. And what she doesn’t. To the point where I begin doubting my own name. Like last week.
‘Why do you mention this?’ she snapped, tapping the obituary of Sarah Gilbert, and the bit about her tennis career; she was one of the first pro women tennis players after World War II. ‘Honestly, Ariadne,’ she said, using my full name, which she pronounced wrong. Granted, no one can pronounce it. But still, her gall for even using my stupid bloody name made me want to stab her in the eye with my pen. ‘That was so long ago, who would care?’ she said, eyes narrowing at me as if I were an imbecile. I didn’t take the look seriously: she looked at everyone that way. I clamped my teeth in frustration, and stared at her in disbelief – was she serious?
Sarah Gilbert would bloody care, which is precisely what I told Janice, which only made her hawk-like nostrils flare. Sarah Gilbert had been a housewife for most of her life, but before that she was a nurse in France who had seen the horrors of World War II and had done what she could to help. She’d raised three children and had been a doting grandmother. And once, a long time ago, she’d won at Wimbledon. It was an important part of her, a part of her legacy. I’d fought to keep it in, and almost won, but when the copy ran over, Janice cut it anyway. I was beside myself with anger. And rage. And, when I got home, with wine. I was beside myself with lots of wine. This was when, for an unreasonable half a day, I considered taking up drinking professionally. God knows I need a hobby.
I’d taken two hours to open the email that came from the Gilberts the next day, dreading what it said. When I had finally opened it, I found that they had thanked me. It was polite, kind even.
Which just made it worse.
The signs for Heathrow get closer.
I try to signal to get into the far-right lane, but a car is flying past me and cuts me off. My heart starts to race.
Three exits.
Crap! How do I get out of here?
Two.
No one wants to let me out! Why are people so rude?
One.
Oh God… I’m stuck! Okay, keep calm, Ria, I tell myself as I take the entry lane for Heathrow International, hoping to do some kind of drive-through while I press for a ticket, only to join a mad throng of cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Seriously? It’s barely 7 a.m.! What a mess. We’re inching forwards. What is going on? I lower my car window and stick my head out, trying to see where the drop-off lane is so I can drive through; instead, I see that one of the cars in front has broken down.
Are you kidding me? It’s taking forever and only one car seems able to get through at a time. I’m miles behind. How long is it going to take me to just drive through the drop-off area? I quickly wind the window back up again. It’s freezing. What the hell am I going to tell Janice? Finally, after twenty minutes of slow inching forwards, my temper inching upwards accordingly till I’m in a slow, steady burn of rage, there’s a little gap in the traffic in front of me, only it’s to take me in the opposite direction of where I want to be, to the parking bay. Several airport security guards have come to see what the problem is and to help some of the frantic drivers who look as impressed as I am. It looks like it will take at least another half-hour to get out. I head towards the nearest open parking bay, pull my car in, turn the ignition off and head inside, deciding I’d rather pass the time with a cappuccino than wait . . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
