Mabel barked to let him know that she needed help getting on to the sofa.
Margaret had never allowed Mabel on the sofa, but once she was gone Felix had thought, Why not? He creaked to his feet to lift the dog on to the neighbouring cushion, but before he could even bend down, she jumped up, scurried behind him and plopped herself down on his warm patch.
‘Off there, Mabel,’ he said sternly, but she ignored him.
‘Oi,’ he said, and poked her. ‘On your own seat.’
Mabel feigned death in every respect but a rolling eye, and Felix sighed. This was why not. Just one more thing Margaret had been right about. Mabel was a very determined dog and never gave up this particular battle. The only thing that prevented her winning it every time was his physical ability to pick her up and move her. Felix suspected that if Mabel had possessed the same power, he would at this very moment be watching Countdown from the garden, with his nose pressed against the living-room window.
He left her where she was and instead went into the kitchen and sat down to finish the jigsaw.
He’d always fancied himself a solver of puzzles, so had plumped for a very challenging two-thousand-piece snowscape featuring reindeer, called Frozen Waste. And what a waste it had become . . . The reindeer were not a problem. They were virtually complete. The snow, however, was a problem. Felix had four corners and most of the edges, and several random patches of white snow or blue sky that had fallen into place more by luck than by judgement, but most of the snow and tufty yellow grass remained in the box in a tantalizing tundra. Felix had been building the jigsaw for coming up to six months now, and rarely found homes for more than a couple of pieces a day. He had completely overreached himself, but he hated to give up.
He picked up a tuft. It looked like a hundred other tufts but he knew it was the same tuft that had haunted him for weeks. He had examined every possible option for it minutely, leaning over the picture on the box with a magnifying glass so that he might match every tiny detail – the scrappy brown grass, the smooth white snow at the base – and yet this tuft seemed to belong to another puzzle altogether. Nonetheless Felix spent fifteen minutes brooding over it before putting it aside for tomorrow and picking up some sky from the sky pile. Pale blue, featureless, with three ins and an out. He didn’t know what the proper names for the ins and outs were, or even if they had proper names, but that’s what he called them. Ins and outs. Not that it mattered: they were all in the wrong place, or were the wrong subtle shade of blue.
The box said AGE 8+. Felix snorted.
The phone rang and he tutted and frowned at the clock. It was after nine, so it could only be Geoffrey. Even before nine he rarely got calls from anyone except telemarketers, and they were mostly robots now. Felix almost missed the good old days of hanging up on real people.
‘Rob?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Chris is giving up!’
‘So he told me,’ said Felix.
‘It’s too bad,’ said Geoffrey. ‘We can’t afford to lose people. We’ve got so much work to do.’
‘Have we?’ said Felix, rather surprised.
‘Of course. We’re inundated.’
‘Inundated?’
‘Indeed,’ said Geoffrey. ‘We get twenty calls a week.’
Felix was surprised by the low number that Geoffrey considered inundation – especially as he knew not all of those would be deemed suitable clients. The Exiteers existed to support people with terminal illnesses and for whom pain meant their lives were no longer bearable. Geoffrey had told him long ago that they were not in the business of enabling anyone who was ‘just a bit fed up’.
Felix was disappointed that there was so little demand for their services, but then they were hardly advertising in the Yellow Pages. Theirs was a hush-hush operation accessed only by cautious word of mouth. It ran on instinct, trust and secrecy, and the fact that there were only twenty calls a week must mean there was a far wider need.
So he tempered his disappointment and asked, ‘And how many Exiteers are there?’
‘Seven,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Six now.’
Now Felix was truly surprised. He’d had no idea there were so few of them. He’d never dwelt on a number, but if he’d been pressed he’d have guessed at a hundred like-minded people dotted all around the country. But obviously he’d have been very wrong. Somehow he had always imagined himself to be a small part of a much bigger network. A cog in a reasonably sized machine. Not a battleship or a jet fighter, of course, but a steam traction engine, perhaps, or a church clock. It was rather disappointing to realize that he was more of a spring in a pop-up toaster.
Plus he felt a little miffed at being called Rob, if Geoffrey had the names of only seven precious front-liners to remember.
Six now.
But then he realized that even if Geoffrey did remember his name, it would be John, which wasn’t even the right name, so he took offence and forgave it all in the same moment. Felix was good at that. He’d had such big things to be upset by in life that it had become much easier to forgive the little ones.
Geoffrey sighed. ‘You’d be surprised how hard it is to find new volunteers. Many, many people support what we do, but very few actually want to do it. And many of those who do want to do it are just not . . . suitable.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Felix.
‘Indeed,’ said Geoffrey. ‘You just can’t be too careful with this sort of thing.’
‘Of course,’ said Felix. ‘So with whom will I work now?’
Exiteers always worked in pairs. Geoffrey said it was for emotional support, but Felix – ever the accountant – imagined it was so that nobody stole anything. Nearly all of his work had been done with Chris. Only on his first case had he been paired with a sprightly middle-aged woman called Wendy, who’d apparently died herself shortly thereafter. Geoffrey had told him she’d choked on a sweet during a yoga class, which Felix felt was so bizarre that it must be true.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and let you know.’
‘Thank you, Geoffrey.’
‘Night, John.’
Felix put the phone down and then called through to the lounge, ‘Garden, Mabel!’
The Loving Wife and Mother
Felix always wore his best suit to visit his wife and son. The navy pinstripe, with a white shirt and the blue-and-green Argyll tie Margaret had bought for him the last time she’d remembered Christmas.
Best bib and tucker. That’s what she’d call it. You didn’t hear that any more – or any of the old sayings. And the new ones were just f-words.
It was a perfect April morning. Sunny, but not too hot, and with a gentle breeze. Felix had bought flowers from the corner shop. They were yellow tulips and nice enough, but wrapped in layers of plastic and brown paper when all they really needed was a good old bit of garden twine to hold them together.
He opened the boot, took out his thermos flask and the fold-up camping chair
