‘There’s a story,’ Jack said when Kay talked us through the sequence and Tony asked about Denise being involved too. ‘You keep the story simple.’ Denise wants to pay her respects, so Tony has agreed to visit with her after we have all been. She is a complicating factor.
I’m taken aback to see so many reporters and film crews crowded at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Jack places his flowers down beside all the other bunches there. Florence puts her picture next to it. Then we are told it’s our turn. It is hard to concentrate; my mind keeps jumping back to that night, to Jack and Florence at this spot, the front door ajar. To my Lizzie, so still on the floor.
Getting my glasses out, I make an effort to read the cards that have been left, but time and again my mind slides away. Florence raises her arms and Jack picks her up. She lays her head on his shoulder.
Across the road the waiting journalists do their stuff, a buzz of activity and attention, a continual rippling, click and chime of cameras. Cigarette smoke on the air.
‘Can we get Bert now?’ Florence says.
‘No,’ Jack says, ‘not yet.’
The house is still off limits.
There is a giddy sensation inside me. I feel close to the edge, as if I might suddenly do something grossly inappropriate, fart or vomit or burst out laughing. I clench my teeth until my head aches.
We walk back to the car, a sad little procession, then Florence kicks off, wrenching round in Jack’s arms, pointing back to the house and crying.
‘What is it?’ he asks her. ‘What do you want?’
She is screaming and it’s hard to make out the words.
Jack glances at me to see if I have any idea what’s going on. I shake my head.
‘We have to go to Nana’s,’ Jack tells her. ‘We can’t go home yet.’
‘I know!’ she bawls.
‘Show me,’ Jack says, and lowers her to the ground. Florence runs back and we follow. She snatches up her picture. The crying softens to small sobs.
‘You want to bring it?’ I say.
She nods her head.
‘That’s fine. You keep it.’ Then I do laugh, half laugh, half cry. My throat painful.
We leave again.
We look peculiar on the television, Tony and I. If I didn’t know us, had to guess what we did, who we were, I’d say he was a stevedore. Hah! Not much call for stevedores in Manchester in the twenty-first century. A forklift truck driver then, or a brickie. His weathered complexion, solid build, those peasant’s hands. And me? I don’t know. With white hair to my shoulders, the specs and the middle-aged spread, I look older than I feel, older than I really am.
