The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

invested in a mausoleum in the abbey, and one day they’ll prise off the marble slab and shove me in. With your talents, my girl, you can dig your own grave.’ To Stella’s surprise Andrea smiled.

‘I’d like a woodland burial.’ Andrea shot a look at March. ‘Better than being in a tomb.’

‘Lovely.’ Stella hoped to goodness Andrea hadn’t seen his notes about her. Andrea mentioning tombs, it occurred to Stella that perhaps she’d heard March’s podcast on cadaver tombs. She had earbuds around her neck, she might listen to podcasts as she gardened. When cleaning Stella preferred to feel present with no distractions. Now she regretted that, after meeting March in the abbey yesterday morning, assuming she’d never see him again, and what with the van on the lane and the Death Café experience, she’d forgotten about his podcast. The trouble with small towns was people could come back to haunt you. Brushing the starved monk gently twice a week, Stella felt a responsibility to him, so March’s cadaver tombs podcast interested her. Keeping to the subject of disposal she felt bound to add, ‘In our family we’re cremated. With the Co-op.’

‘Cremation is horrible.’ Joy stroked one of the rabbits on her cardigan. ‘By the end you’re nothing but hip joints and fillings and don’t be thinking you can take your teddy or some cuddly toy with you into your coffin.’ Her stern expression took in Stella whose own teddy had come with her to Tewkesbury. ‘That’s illegal. Stuffed animals pollute the atmosphere and kill off the rest of us.’

‘Burial uses up space, but it is so much nicer than incineration.’ Felicity clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘Damnation, I’m not allowed to voice an opinion.’

‘Why not, Feli-ci-tee?’ Roddy March’s eyes twinkled. ‘There’s so much you could tell us, all those murderers you’ve chopped up, bottled, sliced and placed between glass slides. We’d love to hear your thoughts.’

‘That’s not why we’re here,’ Joy said. ‘We could all talk about our lives. It’s death that matters.’

‘Mea culpa, Joy, was it?’ Roddy clasped his hands in prayer. ‘Me, I don’t want to slide through the curtains into the flames as if into Hell. Although, with my past, maybe I’m headed there anyway.’ He guffawed.

‘That’s a myth,’ Joy said. ‘Your coffin comes off the turntable through a hatch into a room where it’s received onto a gurney. When it is your turn you are wheeled to a cremator that is affixed with your name tag. The door is flung wide and your coffin shoved into the oven with a huge metal poker. It takes an hour or so to be consumed by the intense heat. Your ashes are raked onto a tray and left to cool. Even in death we queue. That’s right, isn’t it, Felicity?’

‘Why should I know?’ Felicity was consulting her notes.

‘I expect Joy means because you’re a pathologist.’ Andrea’s lip curled.

‘What happened to the deceased’s remains after I was done was not my business. Unless a re-examination was required. One good reason why I’m not in favour of the fire,’ Felicity said. ‘Introduce yourself, Stella. In your email you claimed to be a cleaner.’

‘Stella Darnell, aged fifty-three, and I am a cleaner.’ With the discussion in full swing, Stella had dared be confident she’d get away without saying her piece. The Death Café website had stated it wasn’t mandatory to speak. ‘Offices, people’s homes, institutions.’

‘How interesting.’ Felicity was encouraging. Everyone else looked blank.

‘Not forgetting the abbey.’ Roddy March had written, Joy by name, horrible by nature!!! next to Joy’s name.

‘You know each other?’ Andrea asked.

‘No.’ Stella was worried that Felicity would think she had lied earlier. ‘I was cleaning. Roddy, Mr March, passed by.’

‘Passed, did he?’ Clive wheezed at his joke.

‘Dad died on Monday the eleventh of January 2011. Heart attack. Outside the Co-op. He was a detective in the Met CID—’ Thinking of Roddy March’s excoriating jottings on Andrea and Joy, Stella shifted to avoid seeing what he’d written about her.

‘Is this relevant?’ Andrea suddenly said. ‘I thought we couldn’t mention personal stuff. That’s what you said.’ She jabbed a finger towards Felicity.

‘Stella is setting the scene,’ Felicity said.

‘Did you want to tell us about your father, Andrea?’ Roddy March waited with apparent fascination. Andrea ignored him.

‘Yes, I am setting the scene.’ Stella’s own patience had worn thin. Since leaving London, she was easily overtaken by a volcanic rage that surged up from nowhere. Right now, she pictured pushing Andrea’s face into the remains of the cake. What right had the woman to be so rude and unpleasant? ‘This café is about death. My dad’s death is why I’m here. It was eight years ago so, like Gladys with Derek, I won’t cry.’ She wished Jack was there to hear her, he was always encouraging her to express emotions. ‘I inherited Dad’s house but even now, it’s like he’s just left the room.’ Stella didn’t say how when she and Jack solved one of Terry Darnell’s cases, a newspaper headline had read, Cleaner Follows Detective Dad’s Footsteps.

Or that two months ago her world turned upside down when her mum remarked that Terry was dead and gone. Stella had, on some level, been storing up her achievements to tell her dad when he came back and, in that moment, had understood deep in her heart that she had no footsteps to follow. He was never coming back.

‘Dad said when you’re gone, you’re gone…’ Stella lost her thread and ground to a stop.

‘Thank you, Stella,’ Felicity said after a pause. ‘We hold different views on death, there’s no right or wrong way to view it.’

‘Except murder,’ Roddy muttered, and Stella caught herself nodding.

‘…we die at our allotted time. It’s written on our graves, if not in the stars,’ Clive intoned.

She will never be stirred

In her loamy cell

By the waves long heard

And loved so well…

‘Not more Thomas Hardy.’ Joy groaned as if she was inundated with Hardy’s poetry.

‘My grave will be on a hillside overlooking the sea where I can bask in