Ghosts in the Morning - By Will Thurmann Page 0,58

had hardly come out of his bedroom for a week. That morning both Ian and Daniel had said they weren’t sure if they were going to come to the funeral, they didn’t think they could handle it. But I had heard Simon gently cajoling and encouraging them, telling them how important it was that they went to the funeral, they would regret it for the rest of their lives if they didn’t. In the church too, Simon had stood between his brothers, every now and again resting a reassuring hand on their shoulders.

We hadn’t discussed what happened yet, we hadn’t talked about the police investigation, and I hadn’t told them about the note. Daniel had tried, had pushed me with questions, and at times I had wondered if his questioning seemed a bit...well, searching, as if he’s unsure about something, but I’ve put that down to paranoia on my part. I’ve told him – I’ve told all of my boys – that the time for all of that talk is not now. Now, it’s the time for grieving, it’s the natural order of things.

The questions would come later, but I knew how to handle that.

Epilogue

2 YEARS LATER

‘I’ll probably be late back tonight, Andrea, I’ve got a load of papers to mark after school, I’ll see you later,’ Tony shouted as he dashed out of the front door.

I sighed. I didn’t think he had any papers to mark.

Tony was a teacher. We had been married for a year now. I had met him when I moved to the mainland, six months after Graham’s death. I had bought a lovely little cottage on the outskirts of Southampton; I had wanted to get away from Jersey, to start afresh. It’s strange, really, as I sometimes thought of Jersey as an island that had imprisoned me for too long, yet I hadn’t wanted to move too far away. It was nice to be able to go back now and again, just a short hop on the plane. The boys had made a fuss when I first decided to move away, they didn’t want me to leave. But they got over it soon enough; amazing what the receipt of a large endowment can do. I knew they missed their father, they all loved him so much, but they were gradually getting back on with their lives.

Ian had gone travelling again – he was in Asia at the moment - and in our last face-to-face call over the internet, he told me that he was thinking of buying a bar on one of the islands off the coast of Thailand.

Daniel had set up his own plumbing firm, but it seems work is getting harder to come by in Jersey, the recession has hit late and hard there, and Daniel says there’s not as much work around as he’d hoped. He said he is toying with the idea of relocating to Australia. He tells me he’s still single, though whenever I phone him it’s always a woman’s voice that picks up the phone. Most times, it doesn’t sound like the same woman.

Simon quit university. He met a kitchen-fitter – fell madly in lust by the sounds of it - and together they have set up a business, mixing the kitchen-fitting with Simon’s new-found love for interior design. I told him to be careful, it wasn’t wise to mix business with pleasure, but they do seem to be blissfully happy together. They’re talking about getting married soon.

I lost a lot of weight after Graham’s death, I managed to regain some of the youthful good looks I once had. I got myself a personal trainer, a lovely guy called Craig who helped me shed the pounds, encouraged me to change my diet and join a gym. That’s how I met Tony - at the gym. Tony spends a lot of time at the gym, he is a very fit, active guy ; he is always one of the first to volunteer when they’re looking for teachers to accompany the kids on ski-trips or mountaineering expeditions.

I’ve put a few of those lost pounds back on in recent months. It coincided with the end of our honeymoon period. It’s probably my own fault, we shouldn’t have got married so quickly, but neither of us seemed to think hard enough at the time, just rushed headlong into it. I think Tony was just looking for some stability at the time, perhaps I was a rebound thing, as he’d not long received his