Quietly Nula came and stood in the open doorway, watching the pair of them. Over Charlie’s head, Terry’s eyes met hers. Ever since he knocked her back, she’d been trying to avoid being close to Terry. The memory of it still scalded her like a burn. She was Nula Stone. She was important. She was. But Terry had refused her and she found herself hating him for that now, hating him and his perfect little life with the lovely Jill and their gorgeous girl Belle. Now she’d lost one of her children, the best of her children, and what did she have left?

Milly.

And Harlan. Cold, detached little Harlan, who wasn’t really their child at all.

Nula drew back, away from the door, and left the two men alone. She knew that Terry could help Charlie with this, and she couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

Let the arsehole suffer.

50

The funeral was the worst thing Nula had ever lived through. Throughout the whole ceremony she tried not to look at the tiny white coffin on the dais in the church, tried not to take any of this in; it was too painful. She didn’t think she would ever wipe from her memory the sight of Charlie single-handedly carrying the coffin from the hearse and up the aisle to place it so carefully, so lovingly, on the dais.

Since that day with Terry when Charlie had cried his heart out, he seemed to have released his demons and regained some composure. Dry-eyed, he carried his dead son to be laid to rest. Dry-eyed, he listened to the prayers, the hymns, the solemn reassuring words of the vicar who said there was life beyond the grave. Charlie didn’t believe it. He clutched onto Milly’s hand while Nula, all in black, held on to Harlan. The Bartons sat beside them, Terry at Charlie’s right hand, then Belle, then Jill.

Soon it was over. They laid Charlie Stone’s son in the ground, and everyone went back to the big house.

Nula was dazed with grief. Her beloved boy. She wouldn’t see him off on his first day at school, wouldn’t fret over him learning to drive, would never see him become a man, get married, give her grandchildren. All of that, she was going to miss. All of it, she’d mourn forever.

‘It was fucking tragic,’ said Beezer to Nula as he happened to be standing beside her at the buffet table.

He had a paper plate of sausage rolls and Scotch eggs stacked high in one hand, a large Scotch in the other. Flashy, trendy Beezer. He was great with the kids, well with the girls, anyway, he didn’t seem to care for Harlan much. And as for women? He had all the gear and no idea. He never had a clue what to say to them, they were like an alien species to him.