Found (7 page)

So, that’s a funeral, is it? Here’s hoping I can avoid going to another one for a
very
long time. It made it painfully obvious that Felicity is truly gone.

Matt – Etta’s brother, and a very handsome brother at that – read out a wonderful eulogy to the fifty-odd of us gathered in the church in Highgate, but it wasn’t about the Felicity I knew. Not really. I guess that was the thing about Felicity: she enriched so many different lives in so many different ways. She was one-of-a-kind to whoever crossed her path.

Even as the coffin was lowered into the ground – a pretty final moment – I still expected Felicity to emerge from behind the trees like she’d been there all along. For her to announce in her wishy-washy way that this was a silly misunderstanding – that she was very much alive and kicking.
If only
.

Hearing the soft thump of the coffin hit the ground, I finally started sobbing. I never realised we’d see this; stupidly, I thought a funeral was just a church service. But, even in my distressed state as I was led away from the graveside, I clocked two things: the refined woman in a wheelchair, who I nearly bumped into, and the glare that Etta gave me.

Now, somehow, I’ve left the cemetery and I’m standing in the courtyard of a north London tearoom. I can’t remember how I got here. Mum and Dad are somewhere inside with Maude and Vera – they were brought to London by Vera’s son, thankfully – but I can’t face the post-funeral small talk, as fascinating as some of the snippets sound.

As for Etta, she sat there stonily throughout the entire service, her eyes staring anywhere but at the graves in front of her, then she stormed off immediately after the burial. Even in my dazed state as I was led away by Dad, I recall that no one stopped her. I wonder how she is.

‘Hi, Arielle.’ An American drawl interrupts my thoughts, which throws me for a second, and makes me think I’m back in New York.

I turn to find Sadie, Felicity’s carer, in front of me. I think I remember her saying she was from Kentucky, but I can’t recall why she moved to the UK.

‘Sadie, hi.’ I offer her a weak smile. She looks very tired, and very sad, but so does everyone else.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I know the two of you were very close. Felicity was always talking about you and your great fashion instinct.’

How trivial does that sound now in the grand scheme of things? Is that the summation of my life? I have great fashion instinct.
Please
. It makes me want to rethink a lot of things about my life.

‘She was quite the lady,’ Sadie continues fondly, a smile appearing on her face. ‘Anyone could tell that, even someone like me who’d known her–’ She falters, ‘–for only a few weeks.’

Is that all it was? I feel like I’ve been in New York forever, but it’s been less than two weeks since that phone call from Giles – which was also the same day I had my last call with Felicity, I recall with a pang of pain.

I remember now that Felicity was pushing to see me. I was going to visit her, but then Giles called. Not that it would have made any difference. If I hadn’t rushed to New York, Felicity would have been gone by the time I could have made it to Bransgore. I was never meant to see her again, I see that now.

‘You’re not taking it very well, are you?’ she asks when I don’t answer. I don’t mean to be rude, but I want to be left alone. It’s why I’m out here on my own, not mingling with other people. It’s kind of awful of me, but it’s how I feel.

I look up in surprise. I barely know this woman but, then again, she probably saw my sobbing fit at the funeral. It’s a fair assessment of how I am coping with everything – not very well.

I nod.

‘She thought you’d take it harder than Etta.’

‘Sorry?’ I gasp. I must have misheard her, misunderstood her.  

‘Can I be completely honest with you, Arielle?’ Sadie asks in her drawling, Southern belle accent, looking around furtively.

I study her carefully. She’s dressed elegantly in a knee-length, black wrap dress, which is pretty similar to mine, but whilst I’m wearing a pair of black ballet flats and my engagement ring, Sadie is in towering nude heels and is dripping in diamonds. Where did she get those from? Surely a carer can’t make
that
much money, and it was very sudden how Felicity died when Sadie entered her life...

‘Arielle?’ she presses as I push those thoughts from my head. I jumped to conclusions about Etta; now I’m jumping to conclusions about Sadie. I have to accept that Felicity is gone, and that’s how it is. No one did this to Felicity and Felicity didn’t do this to herself – it just happened.

‘Sure.’

‘It’s...’ Sadie hesitates, and I’m not sure what’s going on as she looks around again. We’re still the only two people in this sparse yard that’s behind the tearoom, though voices keep drifting out here. Every so often I hear the tinkling of a spoon being put down and the rattle of a cup and saucer. Everyone else is busy inside, sharing stories and sipping tea. We’re completely alone.

‘It all seemed too quick. Don’t get me wrong,’ she adds, ‘Felicity was deteriorating, but I thought the conversations we had about life after her death were Felicity musing far into the future.’

She hesitates again, but I keep staring at her coolly. Annoyed. It clicks in this moment that Felicity is really gone, that this is it, and whatever Sadie is saying – whatever big “secret” she feels she is revealing – it doesn’t matter. At the service earlier I dealt with Felicity’s death, accepted it, and now Sadie is making the pain come back, making me question things that have already been solved.

‘Look,’ she tries again. ‘There were some pills missing from Felicity’s prescription. Enough pills for her to slip away in her sleep like she did,’ she clarifies, before shooting another look around the empty yard. ‘We both know who was with her last... you’ve read the stories about her, right?’

My heart feels like it has stopped for the briefest of seconds, but then it starts hammering wildly in my chest.
Why is Sadie telling me this?
They did an autopsy. They ruled out suicide. I had accepted that; I am trying to move on.

As for her remark about Etta:
completely unacceptable
. Who does this woman think she is? Who does this woman think
I
am? Etta and I may have our differences, but if she’s suggesting what I think she is...

‘You think Etta gave her those pills?’ I ask. ‘That’s what you’re inferring, right?’

First she implies that Felicity was omniscient, that she knew this was coming, then she suggests that Etta was involved. This conversation is all wrong, and not just because I feel so exhausted. Why is she saying these things? Is it to ease
her
guilt? Sadie was the one who found Felicity dead in her bed, not Etta. What do any of us know about
her
?

I tug at the loose strands of my hair as I try and figure this out. Once upon a time I would have joined in with Sadie – aired
my
horror stories about Etta – but now I feel guilty that I thought Etta was capable of hurting Felicity. I wanted to blame someone,
anyone
, because I didn’t want to accept Felicity’s death. I will regret those thoughts, always.

I realise that this conversation is not about Felicity, and it’s not about Etta. It’s about Sadie’s guilt; her inaccurate suspicions. And I get it, I really do, because blaming Etta rather than accepting it was written in the stars makes it easier to stomach the idea that Felicity is gone. I just don’t understand why Sadie – someone who only knew her for a few weeks – thinks the stars are wrong.

‘Well?’ I demand, and she flinches.

‘No,’ she says carefully, her face flushed red, ‘but I think she might have known it was a possibility that Felicity might have taken them. I’d told her more than once to make sure Felicity only had access to that day’s medication if I wasn’t around.’

Two things click in my head, and I want to slap this woman. ‘Is this why the police questioned Etta?’ I demand. ‘And were you the close family friend,’ I spit out, ‘who spoke to the papers?’

She flinches again, but I don’t feel bad for Sadie. I feel bad for Etta. Here I was, thinking she might have done this to her godmother, when this whole mess was caused by the need for Sadie to ease her conscience and have her two minutes of weird convoluted fame in the papers.

Etta’s name was dragged through the papers –
Felicity’s
name was dragged through them – and it’s all because of this gossiping woman in front of me. And, OK, maybe there were a few pills missing, but it’s easily done. There have been a few times when I’ve accidentally swept a whole packet of pills down the side of the bed, only to find it a few months later.
It happens.

‘I didn’t tell them about the pills,’ Sadie mutters, ‘but I told them that Etta should have been with Felicity, that she left her and went back to London.’

She doesn’t directly answer my question about being the source, but I know she was.

I can’t imagine what Sadie went through as the one who found the body, but because of this woman the whole world gossiped about Felicity’s death. Considered untruths. I owe Etta an apology.

‘Right,’ I say slowly, the disbelief pretty obvious in my voice. I have nothing more to say to Sadie, and I think that she senses this because she laughs quite quickly. Tries to backtrack.

‘I have no idea why I’m sharing this. It doesn’t matter now, does it? We know what happened, but I needed to tell someone. See if anyone else shared my suspicions or whether I’m going mad!’

She looks at me hopefully, but I’m not going to ease her guilt. What she did was despicable and I need to get away from this toxic woman. I turn away from her, and I start to walk towards the back gate.

‘Where are you going?’

I ignore her.

‘Arielle!’ Sadie calls after me again as I open the gate. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To have a word with the woman herself,’ I mutter to myself.

Of course when I get back to the cemetery I know full well that Felicity can’t answer me, but maybe talking to her grave will help me forget the poison Sadie has just shared.
Maybe
.

I sit down next to her grave, which doesn’t have a gravestone at the moment. I only found it because I remembered the names on the gravestones next to hers – one for Jean Millhouse, the other for Rosie Millhouse – and I felt like shit realising that those are the graves of Etta’s mum and sister. Poor Etta. I never thought I’d feel sorry for her, but that’s twice in the past hour that I have.

Her life can’t have been easy, even with Flick in it, and I understand now why she might have resented me, might have thought I was trying to take Felicity away from her. I know Etta wants nothing to do with me and we’ll never be best friends, but if I do see her again, I will treat her with kindness.

‘I don’t know how to say this,’ I start awkwardly, ‘but–’ I tuck my legs to the side, trying to get comfortable as I think about whether I want to finish that sentence.

I find the freshly dug soil a little creepy knowing that Felicity is lying practically underneath where I’m sitting, but the grass is quite dry. The sun is shining and there’s a bright blue sky above me, which makes me feel a little calmer and a little less spooked about being in a cemetery. Ridiculous – only the living hurt people.

‘I’d like to thank you,’ I finally say after weighing up my thoughts. ‘Thank you for all of your help, for believing in me, and for hiring me to work in your shop. Oh, and for trusting me with the pop-up, even after I messed up with the shop in Camden,’ I laugh. ‘I don’t know where I’d be without you, if I’m honest, and I’ll never forget what you did for me. I hope you knew that. I know I probably never thanked you enough.’

I fidget and now I’m sitting cross-legged, like I’m back at school waiting for assembly to begin.

This is probably the first conversation I’ve ever had with Felicity where she can’t interrupt in that maddening way of hers. Ha! I don’t even feel totally wretched at the thought of her never infuriating me again with her marvellous knack of thinking that she’d clued me in on something when, in fact, it was the first I’d heard about it.

I can’t help but smile – the first time today – at these memories of Felicity. I don’t know what I’m expecting, whether I’m silly enough to think that the universe is going to send me a grand gesture – a sudden gust of wind or a random firework – but I feel calmer now. I feel that wherever Felicity is now, she’s in a better place.

‘Bloody perfect.’

I jump at the voice and look up to see Etta standing to the right of her sister’s grave, and I vividly recall the time that Felicity called me Rosie in front of Etta – how Etta’s face crumpled for a second before she rearranged it into a defiant sneer. It must have been heart-breaking for Etta to have had Felicity regress to a time when her mum and sister were both alive. Now Felicity is gone, too.

This is not really the sign I was hoping for, but how fitting it is. If Felicity was going to send me a sign from beyond the grave,
of course
she’d send me Etta.

Her eyes are all bloodshot, like she’s only recently stopped crying, and her red curls have been tamed into a sleek up-do. The thick black eyeliner around her cold blue eyes is acting like her only defence against the world; amazingly it isn’t smudged. I’d ask her which one she uses, but I fear her response.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demands as she pushes up the sleeves of her tailored black suit jacket, her tattoos emerging with each roll upwards. I cringe, not at the tattoos like Etta probably assumes I am, but because she’s ruining the jacket by doing that.

‘I needed to clear the air with Felicity.’ I stand up and eye Etta coolly. She’s not the only one who can narrow her eyes and act like a diva, and then I remember I’m supposed to be kind. Etta is not my enemy. I’ve misunderstood her, just as she has misunderstood me.

She snorts at that.

‘What?’ I say tersely

‘Like she can hear you.’

‘If there was anyone who could figure out how to hear me from the afterlife it would be Felicity Farrell,’ I flippantly remark.

‘True,’ Etta admits with a wry smile, and then there’s a split moment when we’re both smiling at one another, which is all Flick ever wanted – for the two of us to get on.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask softly. Her grief runs deeper than mine ever can. Glancing at the dates on the graves, Etta was only a teenager when her mum and sister died. They share the same date of death, I realise with a start.

‘What do you think?’ She doesn’t say it nastily, which comes as a surprise as I’m not used to hearing reasonable tones from Etta Millhouse. She follows my gaze to the graves.

‘I made them change the inscriptions,’ she says with a tight laugh. ‘Matt thought I was mad.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Made them both Millhouse on the stone. Technically they were Parker since Mum was married to
Gary, but I wanted them to be Millhouse. Like me and Matt. Like Mum used to be,’ Etta says fiercely. ‘Gary didn’t care.’

I have no idea how to respond.

‘I see.’ I rack my brains for something else to say. ‘You look like you’ve been keeping yourself busy,’ I finally settle on.

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ she snarls angrily. There we go. There’s the Etta I know and love.

I see her clench her fists angrily. Even though I’m fearful she’s going to get aggressive, I feel bad that she automatically assumed I was trying to provoke her. I wasn’t; I just wanted to remind Etta of happier things.

‘I meant your record deal,’ I clarify as Etta bristles. ‘It must be nice to take your mind off things, and you’re able to take your mind off things by doing something that you love.’

She scowls at me, which is a shame as she is quite pretty when she lets her face show any emotion other than anger or irritation.

‘Read about that in the paper, did you?’ she asks through gritted teeth, but doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Well as you know with your friend Tabitha, the papers talk
shit
.’

She has a point.

‘I’m sorry. For your loss,’ I clarify when she looks at me like I’ve just declared that I love her, ‘and also for the bullshit. It can’t be easy, and it must have been awful when they printed those lies about you and about how Felicity died.’

She regards me with her narrowed blue eyes and I wonder whether I should tell her about Sadie.

‘Why do you care?’

‘I care because Felicity cares about you,’ I say honestly, and I actually do. In a different set of circumstances, I think we could have been friends.

‘Cared,’ she screams at me suddenly and I take a step back, nearly sinking into the freshly dug soil. ‘Felicity’s gone!’ she wails, and I think that she’s going to punch me as she steps towards me, but instead she reaches out to hug me and bursts into hot, angry tears. ‘She’s gone,’ she sobs, as we morbidly stand on Felicity’s grave, tears now rolling down both our faces.

‘Did you believe the papers?’ she asks through hiccups a few minutes later when she has calmed down. She has stepped away from me like we were never touching, her arms folded across her body. She looks like she could break in two. I hope she has someone to take care of her now that Felicity can’t.

I shake my head as a gust of wind sweeps through the cemetery. I shiver slightly. I’d forgotten how May is in London, what a typical British “summer” is like. It’s mostly breezes, grey skies and fine rain that leaves you feeling damp in the most unpleasant way. The blue skies and sunshine from earlier have vanished.

Etta stares at me.

‘OK, maybe a little bit at first,’ I admit, ‘but I know Felicity wouldn’t have–’

I stop as Etta hollowly laughs.

‘What?’

‘She was lucky.’

I think about this, and the penny drops. ‘Wait, she
did
want to end things...’

Tears well up in Etta’s eyes, and I don’t want to finish that sentence, make it real.
Crap.
So Sadie was right in a way. If Felicity hadn’t died when she did, she would have taken matters into her own hands
and
Etta
knew this
. She didn’t smother her with a pillow, but she stood by, unmoving, knowing that Felicity could have ended her own life.

For a second I feel pure rage at Etta – until I remember that when Felicity set her mind on something, she was stubborn enough to see it through. Etta had no chance. These aren’t the tears of someone who was out to get rid of her godmother; these are the tears of someone who is genuinely distraught. Etta didn’t want Felicity to die, even if that’s what Felicity wanted.

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I say. ‘And I’m sorry about before, but I was never going to take her away from you, if that’s what you thought.’

Etta regards me for a moment, then nods, and it’s like an unspoken truce has been declared. ‘Felicity would probably have preferred us to realise this whilst she was still alive,’ she dryly remarks, rummaging in her bag. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Go for it.’

She lights up and takes a drag. ‘I shouldn’t because of my voice,’ she confesses, ‘but it’s the only vice I have left.’

‘But–’ I stop myself, but it’s not quick enough.

‘The papers talk shit,’ she flatly repeats. ‘When I realised Felicity was really ill, really intent on leaving me, I stopped. I can’t afford to ruin things with the blow. Not now.’ Etta takes a furious drag on her cigarette, then exhales. ‘I need to look after myself.’ She nods at the graves next to Felicity’s, and I follow her gaze. Her sister was barely a teenager when she died. Tragic.

I look from the graves to her. She seems fully in control, weeping aside, on a day I would have expected her to indulge to cope. I believe her when she says she hasn’t taken anything recently, that she’s clean.

‘You’re going to be OK though,’ she points out, then takes another drag. She nods at my engagement ring. ‘Have you spoken to him today?’

I shake my head.

‘Call him,’ she says rather forcefully. ‘Call him now and tell him you love him.’

‘Do you have–’ I begin, and then stop myself. What I was about to ask sounds idiotic.

She smiles ruefully at me as she finishes her cigarette and puts it out on the ground. Then, thinking better of it as she glances guiltily at the three graves lined up in a row – her family – she picks up the stub and flicks it across to the graves opposite.

‘Do I have what?’

‘A Piers?’ I dare to ask, then instantly regret it as I see the flicker of hurt in her eyes.

‘I thought I did, but... look... I’ll see you at the will reading.’

She’s already disappeared into the trees before anything that doesn’t sound too lame pops into my head. I stand there for a moment, thinking how lucky I am to have Piers and my parents – even if they do bring up silly things at silly times. I get the impression that Etta doesn’t have many people left to stand in her corner.

I start walking back towards the tearoom, passing people who I assume are mourners, until I realise that they are posing for photos in front of a tall tomb. A head sits at the top of it, peering across the cemetery. Karl Marx’s grave, I read. I shake my head at the group who are throwing peace signs and making stupid faces, then pull out my phone. Suddenly I don’t feel bad about making a call in here since these people are treating the place like a tourist attraction.

‘How was it, Pony?’ Piers asks immediately when he answers after two rings. ‘How are you?’

‘I wish you could have been here with me,’ I admit, which is a silly wish – who would want to force a funeral on someone?

‘I wish I could have been there, too. You’re OK though? It helped, right?’

I ignore his questions. ‘Look,’ I gulp, before I can change my mind, but I have to say this to him. What Etta said really struck a chord with me. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

Instantly the mood changes over the phone and I can hear Piers shuffle as he prepares himself for what he thinks is coming next.

‘You’re not coming back, are you?’ he asks nervously.

‘What, of course I am!’

Why would he have thought that of all things? Sometimes I wonder if he suffered a knock to the head, rather than water on his lungs.

‘I’m coming back when I said I was,’ I continue, ‘and I thought I’d bring my wedding dress with me. The funeral put everything into perspective. Life’s short and, OK, I know that Felicity didn’t exactly die young, but I don’t want to waste any more time.’

Silence.

Crap, he hasn’t changed his mind, has he? I mean, this was
his
idea.

‘Look, what I’m trying to say is...’ I cross my fingers as I remember the joyful expression on Felicity’s face when I told her Piers and I were engaged, when I remember the beautiful flowers she sent us.

‘Piers Bramley,’ I stutter as I choke back more tears. ‘Will you marry me?’