A newspaper clatters through the front door. She gets to her feet, makes her way into the hall. The front page covers the same news. Her father’s dark collar-length hair with just a sprinkling of grey, his sharp nose that reminded Alice of a ski slope, his chiselled jawline, his unusual eyes all now belong to the world. There are photos of her too. Recent ones of her walking through Whitby yesterday, her blonde hair poking out of the bottom of her woolly hat, her blue eyes bloodshot, cheeks blotchy. Everything her father hid for so long is on display – including her.

Alice returns to the kitchen, throws the newspaper on the worktop, buries her head in her hands and sobs.

So this is grief.

Chapter 3

February 2019

Alice

Alice has done little since her father died; even her shop remains closed. But she’s read that the funeral will help the healing process – that she might be able to start moving forward after today.

She sits in the lounge at Butterfly Cottage waiting for the cars to arrive. Tears are there, unsteady behind her eyes, but she can’t afford to cry. If she starts, she will never stop.

Her speech is folded next to her tissues in her black bag. She took ages preparing it – trying to find the right words to describe her father – her relationship with him. She hadn’t realised, until she tried to form those words, how dependent on him she’d been over the years. How desperately lonely she is now.

He would have hated all this fuss. Her getting up in front of strangers and talking about him would have been his worst nightmare. In fact he once said, ‘Alice, if you ever find me slumped over my desk – dead – tell no one. Just bury me in the back garden, then carry on with whatever you were doing when you entered the room.’

‘Are you planning on dying any time soon?’ she said, matching his teasing smile. ‘Because if you are I’ll need to buy a black dress, and a decent spade from B&Q to clear away the weeds and nettles and dig a hole.’

That was six months ago. At the time, Adam Hadley was a healthy man in his early fifties, considering his only exercise was walking Henry, and the fact he drank far too much red wine. His writing fuel, he called it. So, with recent events, it crosses Alice’s imaginative mind that perhaps he sensed, even knew, he wasn’t long for this world.

The doorbell chimes. Henry barks, startling Alice from her thoughts. She isn’t expecting anyone. Wants to arrive at the funeral alone.