I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,124

facial hair, standing tall and proud between a plump, smiling woman in a fur coat and an old lady with a stick, both of them ‘dripping in diamonds’, the façade of the London Palladium behind them.

‘His mum and his granny,’ said Mary, looking at the same photo. ‘That must have been a wonderful night for them.’

Bridge looked around in search of Luke or Jack, gave Mary a nudge.

‘There’s Luke,’ she said in a church whisper. She waved at him and he waved back, but he was being herded to the right side by ushers. He mouthed that he’d see them later. He was alone. She hadn’t expected Carmen to be there, but she thought he might have turned up with Jack, still bracketing them together as a pair.

More people started pouring in as if a bus unloading had tipped its passengers straight through the doors. For a moment Mary thought she saw Jack among them and her heart responded with a kick against her chest, like a racehorse trying to break down his stable door, but it wasn’t him. She thought she was over him with her wonderful new life just starting up, but she wasn’t, not by a long stretch. She suddenly wondered if he’d liked the Christmas present she’d bought him, if he’d thought of her when he opened it.

‘Will you all please stand,’ said a loud male voice at the back.

As they stood, from speakers positioned around the church came the familiar cash-register introduction to ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’. The woman on the row in front turned to her partner, wrinkled up her face in consternation at such a choice of tune. Bridge and Mary smiled, members of an exclusive club who knew why the song had been chosen. The Figgy Hollow Six.

Pall-bearers carried a basket coffin covered in holly, mistletoe, white roses and poinsettias. Behind them a vicar in robes, then a serious, thinner Robin, in a black suit, long black coat, a white Yorkshire rose in his buttonhole. He cut a desperately sad and lonely figure and both Mary and Bridge swallowed hard at the sight of him.

The vicar ascended the pulpit, asked the congregation to be seated.

‘Welcome, friends. I am Father Derek and we are gathered here together to say goodbye to our dear Charlie,’ he began, coughing a croak out of his throat. ‘Husband of Robin, uncle of Reuben and Rosa. He would be touched that so many of you have come today from as far afield as Australia, Spain, California, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Manchester and, of course, a huge crowd from London.’

Clearly the vicar knew him well. There was emotion born of familiarity in his voice.

‘Charlie was married in this very church to Robin three years ago. Our first gay wedding. A happy and historic event in Tuckwitt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many empty champagne bottles in my life.’

A gentle laugh rippled around the church.

‘Robin and Charlie were together as a couple for thirty-two years. There is no one more fitting, more proper, more capable, to deliver Charlie’s eulogy than him.’

The vicar moved aside, let Robin take his place. Robin breathed in, steadied himself, gripped on to the sides of the pulpit for strength.

‘It is a cliché but Charlie was my rock,’ he began, his voice wobbly. Bridge had the sudden desire to leap across the heads of everyone just to take his hand.

‘He was born into an intolerant age, a hard world, he became wise through times of great hardship and prejudice because he was gay, but he was lucky, because in the smaller world of his family, he was brought up with the love of two amazing women, his grandmother Jessie and his mother Elizabeth.

‘He was born in Yorkshire but when his father David died, Elizabeth went back home to live in the East End of London. When Charlie was twelve, his little sister Mim was born, and he was a loving brother to her all her life, before she sadly passed ten years ago. Charlie was only thirteen when he left school to work for a jeweller who had survived terrible things during the war and yet, Charlie said, this man was the kindest person he’d ever met. He became a substitute father to Charlie, taught him not only a craft but about life. Charlie always said that if someone could survive that sort of hell, then it was possible to survive anything.’

Robin went on to deliver a long, yet still not long enough,