It was 8.19 on Thursday morning, and Alice was taking her usual three minutes to pat next door’s cat. Little black and orange Maya was always punctual for their school-morning appointments. She would appear from beneath the camellia bush when Alice stepped out the door and paused beside the old brass plaque that read ‘England’s Funeral Parlour’.
Alice had worked hard to build Maya’s trust over the past year and they now enjoyed an agreeable exchange of strokes, purrs and mrrps. Alice rarely glimpsed Maya’s owners – a young couple who seemed to work long hours.
At 8.22, she wished Maya a good day and went out the wrought-iron gate, across the road and along the footpath towards school. The morning air was fresh on her cheeks, bringing a faint salty scent from the cove. Wrens flitted in and out of the bushes and played in the sprinklers on someone’s front lawn. This was Alice’s favourite time of year – late summer, when the harshest of the heat had faded but the days were still long and warm. And she had double science with Ms Littlejohn to look forward to.
Every morning for the past few weeks, Alice had used the walk to school to think up questions about her mother. In the summer holidays just gone, she’d been watched – not once, but three times – by a woman dressed in dark clothing. When Alice had told her father about it, he thought it was most likely her mother, Persephone England.
Alice had no memory of her mother. Persephone had left soon after her twins were born – red-haired Alice and dark-haired Victoria, who never took her first breath.
The umbilical cords had been wrapped up tight around Victoria’s neck and Alice’s leg. Alice was still troubled by her weak leg. It meant she couldn’t run as fast or balance as well as able-bodied kids, and she needed to rest her leg regularly because it ached.
Alice and her father, Thaddeus, had lived contentedly together in their home, now called Tranquillity Funerals, for thirteen years – just the two of them. People always expected undertakers to be solemn and rather invisible, which was how Thaddeus behaved at work. He was sympathetic to his customers and worked hard to make funerals as lovely and inexpensive as they could be.
But when it was just him and Alice, he was actually a cheerful, joking sort of dad who wore brightly coloured novelty shirts and made an excruciating number of puns.
Nevertheless, Alice was proud of her father and looked forward to the day when she would work full time in the funeral home herself. She had big plans for the business…
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