‘The alarm comes on every time you close the door.’
Edo retreats – I think he’s scared of Gloria – and a moment later, the beep-beeep-beeeeping resumes.
Gloria turns to me and says, ‘So what’s next?’
‘I need to get changed before Mum and Dad arrive.’
‘Before you do, I want to say how proud I am of you. The way you’ve pulled everything together so quickly. You’re going to be a huge success, sweets!’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help—’
I’m interrupted by Edo yelling, ‘Great! I can see what’s wrong. Don’t worry. It’s an easy fix.’
A moment later, Gloria and I flinch at the sharp thwack of a hammer against metal. Then silence. As if Edo has murdered the fridge with a single blow.
For some reason – nerves, most likely, because the destruction of a key piece of equipment really isn’t funny – I laugh. Then say to Gloria, ‘You know what? This is the best day of my life!’
‘Really?’ Gloria looks surprised. She knows I’m not the sentimental type.
‘Well, maybe apart from the day Mum and Dad finally weakened and let me have a kitten … or that time at uni with Lin, when we took an impulse trip to Dieppe and ended up in Brussels. And the day I passed my driving test. Sixth time lucky.’
‘Didn’t know that,’ she says. ‘But it explains a lot!’
Before she can tease me any further, Edo’s back. ‘Loose connection with the fan,’ he says. ‘Fixed. Shall I sort out these flowers?’ He notices my doubtful expression and adds reassuringly, ‘I used to arrange them at college when we did the still-life module.’
‘That would be great.’ We haven’t known Edo very long, but he’s a definite asset, and fast turning into a friend.
I go through to the back room and begin to change out of my paint-stained denims and into my working clothes. I’ve been dithering for days about what to wear. I finally settled on tapered black linen trousers, teamed with a turquoise top and my smartest black jacket. The one with turned-back cuffs lined with turquoise and pink patterned silk. And, of course, my lucky silver earrings. I’d feel naked without them. It’s an outfit that makes me look professional but still me. I give myself a final once-over in the mirror, quickly apply a fresh coat of lip gloss, then rejoin my friends.
Edo has worked magic with the flowers. Gloria has finished with the windows. The fridge is behaving itself.
In less than an hour, Happy Endings will be open for business. And any moment now Mum and Dad will arrive to inspect what they’ve taken to calling ‘The Investment’.
Dad stepped in after the bank took all of three minutes to turn down my application for a start-up loan. ‘You’re to take my pension pot and put it into your business.’ After he left the navy, Dad went into the construction business. Without his help, Happy Endings would never have got off the drawing board. He’s got so much faith in me it’s scary. Then again, as he says, I’ve got a great location on a busy high street, slap bang in the middle of London, how can I fail?
And I know I can do this. It’s what I want more than anything. From now on I’m devoting myself to business. Nothing else matters. Not that there is much else, to be honest. Other than Gloria and Edo, I don’t exactly have a red-hot social life. My choice, I know. Over the past five years, I’ve become a bit of a recluse.
But today, I can’t even begin to describe my sense of purpose. I’m nervous, yet exhilarated.
In short, I’ve never felt more alive.
Which is a bit odd perhaps. Because I see dead people. All the time.
It’s an occupational hazard.
Whenever I meet someone new and we get to the bit where they ask me, ‘So what do you do?’ and I say I’m an undertaker, I get one of three reactions:
1. ‘You’re kidding!’
2. ‘Eeuw.’ Usually accompanied by that two-fingers-down-the-throat gesture.
3. ‘So, okay, when you were small did you pull the wings off flies?’
I wish I could make people understand. It’s not torture. Quite the opposite. I love my job. And is it really so strange?
Think of it this way. I’m an organiser. An event planner. A good listener. A shoulder to cry on. A public speaker. A negotiator. A seamstress. An accomplished multi-tasker. A stylist. I can remove a stain from almost any fabric, I’m a dab hand with a make-up brush, and I’m full of good advice. For example: never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes.
When the unexpected happens, I am expected to rise to the occasion. And I do.
Do I touch dead people? Yes, of course.
What do they feel like? Mostly, they feel cold.
Am I weird? I don’t think so …
I’m just a typical millennial who enjoys shopping, movies, holidays and – mysteriously – housework. I probably keep myself to myself a bit too much but I’ve always enjoyed my own company and I’ve never been great in a crowd.
More than anything else, I’m proud to be an undertaker. Not to mention enormously proud to be opening my own shop. It’s the biggest leap of my life and it still seems unreal – particularly when you think that until recently, I was a semi-disgraced ex-employee.
My life started to go pear-shaped late last year when the business I worked for, a firm of undertakers run by the original owner’s great-great-great-grandson, was taken over by a huge funeral group with headquarters in New York and branches on every continent.
As soon as the deal was done we were summoned to meet our new manager, Jason Chung. ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ he promised us.
But everything did.
Being accountable to a manager who’d never even carried a coffin was a huge change in itself. And that was just the beginning.
My former boss, the great-great-great grandson, was gone in a matter of weeks. He quit the day our new owners announced that from now on we would only be offering headstones made from Chinese granite, a decision that was all about profit rather than the best interests of our clients.
Even while two sets of lawyers continued to argue about whether or not the name of the family firm could be removed – it’s there to this day, because the new owners know the public prefer to deal with supposedly genuine local firms – our professional vocabulary began to change. At staff training sessions, words like ‘care’, ‘service’, ‘respectful’ and ‘time of need’ were cast aside in favour of sentences that were strong on ‘sales’, ‘targets’, ‘commission’ and ‘underperforming’.
That sort of mindset makes me want to throw up. In fact, at a subsequent regional training day,
