Ruby is at the centre of my universe. I’d die for her, immediately, and without quibble – but that makes no difference, I realise, in the context of where I’ve been this evening. Of the papers hidden deep in the expanse of my grandmother’s haphazard archives.
He’s still there. He will always be there, and there will never be any resolution, for me, because he is the love of my life.
The love of my other life, I remind myself, tiredly, but that refrain is losing power now, and my heart knows it.
Chapter Ten
LEO
Emma was sitting across the aisle at her grandmother’s funeral in Falmouth, the first time I saw her. I remember her voice hitting all the wrong notes during the congregational hymns and her not seeming to care; her laughter as she recounted her grandmother’s predilection for handsome young men. She had short, curly hair that she tucked behind her ears, and a yellow felt coat, and in that church full of winter black she was like a bright torch.
After they buried Gloria, Emma broke off to watch the gig boats racing across the Fal estuary. There was a strong north-easterly wind, scrambling in over the hills behind St Mawes, and she looked straight into it as it caught her hair and gusted it up and away from her face. I thought about the yellow coat that Jess, my ex-girlfriend, had bought once, wanting to spice up her wardrobe, and how it had never really worked. I remembered the night she asked me if I still loved her and I said yes and then woke her up at 1 a.m. to say, actually, I’m so sorry, but I don’t.
I watched this woman, on whom a yellow coat looked perfect, and hoped she wasn’t smiling about a lover.
Then I felt bad, because this was her grandmother’s funeral.
*
The problem was, I’d fallen for Emma before even seeing her in the flesh.
I can cover any kind of obituary, but my specialty is politicians. This is largely because I spent a while on the politics desk before moving to obits, so it was assumed that my Westminster knowledge was heavy-duty. （It’s adequate.）
It was actually an undertaker who alerted us to Gloria Bigelow’s death, which tends only to happen when the deceased doesn’t have much by way of a family. I’d heard of her, a rare female MP in 1950s London, fond of backbench tirades, but she’d been absent from political life so long that nobody had thought to write an advance obit.
I’d called Gloria’s granddaughter, Emma, to ask for a few details. We spoke for more than two hours. By the end of the phone call, I was intoxicated.
She invited me to the funeral, which, again, is not something that happens often – and something we invariably decline when it does, especially if the funeral in question is all the way down in bloody Cornwall – but I said yes, because I had to meet her. I even went to Soho at 9 p.m. to get a haircut at one of those cheap late-night barbers.
I was late to the funeral service – I barely made it through the door in front of her grandmother’s casket – so I didn’t get to talk to Emma until the reception at the Greenbank Hotel, where I engineered a meeting by the sandwich buffet.
‘Hello. I’m Emma Bigelow,’ Emma said, sticking out her hand. Somehow, I managed to introduce myself as Gloria.
‘Really?’ Her hand had paused above the egg mayonnaises. ‘I felt you must be Leo.’
‘Oh fuck. Yes. Leo.’
She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past my grandmother to fake her own death and then turn up in disguise at the funeral.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. It would be just her cup of tea.’
I picked up a bottle of red and topped up her glass, determined to make her stay.
She did, but a lot of other people wanted to talk to her. For a long time I stood next to her by the sandwiches, watching her talk to politicians, friends, even, to my surprise, an ex-prime minister.