Not Dead Enough

she asked, raising her voice.
    ‘Got a bloody rugger bugger in the house,’ he grumbled, then appeared to fall asleep again.
    ‘Milk and sugar?’ she asked Grace, setting the tray down. He eyed the plate of biscuits on the tray hungrily, realizing it was lunch time and he’d barely had any breakfast.
    ‘Milk, no sugar, please.’
    She handed the plate over to him. It was laden with digestives, Penguins and marshmallows. He took a Penguin gratefully and unwrapped it.
    She poured his tea and passed it to him, then pointed at the silver-framed photograph. ‘We didn’t like the name Frederick, did we, Derek?’
    A small, negative-sounding moan came from the man’s mouth.
    ‘So we renamed him Richard,’ she said.
    ‘Richard,’ the old man echoed, with a grunt.
    ‘After Richard Chamberlain, the actor. Dr Kildare . Did you ever see Dr Kildare?’
    ‘Before his bloody time,’ her husband mumbled.
    ‘I remember it vaguely,’ Grace confessed. ‘My mum was a fan.’ He stirred his tea, anxious to get to the point of this visit.
    ‘We adopted two children,’ Joan Tripwell said. ‘Then our own came along. Geoffrey. He’s doing well – he does research for a pharmaceutical company, Pfizer. Working on cancer drugs for them.’
    Grace smiled. ‘Good.’
    ‘Laura’s the problem one. That’s what I thought you had come about. She’s always been in trouble. Drugs. It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it, our Geoffrey doing so well with a drugs company and Laura in and out of homes, always in trouble with the police.’
    ‘And Richard – how is he doing?’ Grace asked.
    Her little mouth closed, her eyes all over the place again suddenly, and Grace realized he had touched a nerve. She poured her own tea and added two lumps of sugar, using silver tongs. ‘What exactly is your interest in talking about Richard?’ she asked, her voice suddenly full of suspicion.
    ‘I was hoping you could tell me where I can find him. I need to speak to him.’
    ‘To speak to him?’ She sounded astonished.
    ‘Plot 437, row 12,’ the old man said.
    ‘Derek!’ she admonished.
    ‘Well, that’s where he bloody well is. What’s the matter with you, woman?’
    ‘Excuse my husband,’ she said, picking her cup up daintily by the handle. ‘He’s never really got over it. I suppose neither of us has.’
    ‘Got over what?’ Grace probed, as gently as he could.
    ‘He was a premature baby, like his brother, poor little soul. He was born with a congenital weakness – malformed lungs. They never developed properly. He had a weak chest, you know? Always getting infections as a child. And really bad asthma.’
    ‘What do you know about his brother?’ Grace asked, too interested now to take a bite of his Penguin.
    ‘That he passed away in the incubator, poor little mite. That’s what they told us.’
    ‘What about their mother?’
    The woman shook her head. ‘The Social Services were terrible on giving out information.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ Grace said bitterly.
    ‘It took us a long time to find out that she was a single parent – of course that was a bad thing in those days. She was killed in a car crash, but we never really knew the details.’
    ‘Are you sure that Frederick – I’m sorry, Richard,’ he corrected himself, ‘that Richard’s brother died?’
    ‘You can’t be certain of anything the Social Services say. But that’s what they told us at the time.’
    Grace nodded sympathetically. There was another roar on the television. Grace glanced at it and saw a replay of a silly-mid-on fielder making a catch. ‘Can you tell me where I can find your son, Richard?’
    ‘Already bloody told yer,’ the old man grumbled. ‘Plot 437, row 12. She goes there every year.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘What my husband is trying to tell you is that you are twenty years too late,’ she said.
    ‘Too late?’ Grace was getting all kinds of bad, confused signals.
    ‘When he was twenty-one,’ Joan Tripwell said. ‘Richard went to a party and forgot to take his Ventolin inhaler – he always had to carry it with him. He had a particularly bad asthma attack.’ Her voice was faltering. She sniffed and dabbed her eyes. ‘His heart gave out.’
    Grace stared at her in astonishment.
    As if reading some uncertainty in his face, Joan Tripwell said emphatically, ‘Poor soul, he died. He never really had his life.’

112
    After an hour’s drive back, a very despondent Roy Grace