Perfectly Ordinary People(73)

‘Tone says just do whatever you want with them,’ Glen said when he returned. ‘He says there’s no one left to care. Though his language was a little more fruity.’

On that note, we said our goodbyes and then I laid down my phone and lined it up perfectly with the six little cassettes before allowing myself a few tears.

I hadn’t known Ethel well, but I’d known her as long as I’d known my own parents, plus I’d seen her recently and had liked her.

Once I’d dried my eyes, I tried phoning Dan to ask him if he had, or could borrow, a Dictaphone. When he didn’t call me back immediately I decided I was too intrigued to wait, so I nipped out to Dixons and handed over ￡9.99 instead.

Back home, I inserted a cassette, only to discover it was all in French. My little trip out had been for nothing.

I texted a few friends to see if any of them spoke French, but they either didn’t reply or replied in the negative. I thought briefly about just taking them to Dad, who I suspected still spoke enough French to understand, but I feared he’d take them from me and I’d never hear of them again.

So though I felt bad not telling him about Ethel’s death immediately, I waited. I felt I needed to know what was on them before having that conversation.

On the Friday I took them in to Impressionable so that Freida could have a listen.

After about thirty seconds, she pressed stop. ‘They’re some sort of interview,’ she said in her sing-song Swedish accent. ‘Something about the war, maybe?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

She rewound the tape to the beginning and listened to the start. ‘Yes, an interview,’ she said. ‘With someone called Genevieve Schmitt. Ring any bells?’

‘Genevieve, yes,’ I said. ‘Schmitt not so much.’

‘Well, they’re one and the same person,’ she said, thinking that I had misunderstood. ‘Genevieve Schmitt. First name last name.’ She even made chopping gestures with both hands, placing the words in the visual space between us, just in case I still wasn’t getting it.

‘Yes. Gimme a minute,’ I said, stepping out into the hallway and dialling my parents’ number.

‘Mum!’ I said, when she answered. ‘Quick question. Do you know Grandma Genny’s maiden name?’

‘Um, Le-something,’ she said. ‘Why?’

I lied and told her I was filling in a visa form and it required my grandparents’ maiden names.

‘Oh, gosh,’ she said. ‘That’s a tricky one. I wouldn’t even know those for myself.’

I heard her open the lounge window and shout out to Dad. ‘It’s Lecomte,’ she said, when she returned. ‘See? I said it was Le-something.’

‘Not Schmitt, then,’ I said.

‘Schmitt?’ Mum laughed. ‘No, why would it be Schmitt? She was French, dear, not German. Where did you get that from?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d heard that name somewhere.’

Once the call was over, I ducked back into Freida’s office to ask if she could recommend a translator. She said she was happy to do it herself, though not, obviously, during work hours.

So we agreed a cash price of 4p per word, and she promised she’d get on it as soon as she had a free evening.

As I couldn’t reasonably hold off telling Dad the bad news any longer, I schlepped out to Walthamstow straight after work.

If I’m honest, Dad had been so uncommunicative about them all that I half expected him to say he knew about Ethel and had decided not to tell me. As the Tube train trundled along, I found myself hoping that would be the case. After all, who wants to be the bearer of that kind of news?

They were watching a hysterical documentary about all the money Tony Blair was intending to spend on the Millennium Dome when I arrived, and when I turned it off so that I could talk to them, Dad seemed annoyed.

‘I’ve got some sad news,’ I said. ‘And maybe you already know it and maybe you don’t.’

‘I don’t,’ Dad said.

‘How do you know until she tells you what it is, you old fool?’ Mum said, at which Dad just rolled his eyes.

‘Aunt Ethel died,’ I announced, studying his reaction closely just in case he might try to dissimulate some kind of lie.

But Dad didn’t know – that much was clear. He stared at me, frowned, and then blinked repeatedly. ‘What?’ he finally said.

‘She died, Dad,’ I said. ‘A friend of hers from Brighton phoned me.’

‘Nah,’ Dad said, paling before my eyes. ‘That can’t be right.’

‘I’m sorry, but she actually killed herself, Dad.’

My mother’s mouth dropped open in a way that would have been comical under other circumstances.

‘Suicide?’ Dad said, frowning deeply.

I nodded. ‘She was in a lot of pain, apparently. Osteoporosis and something else . . . Arthritis, I think it was. She kept breaking bones. And she couldn’t see the point in carrying on. Especially once Grandma Genny was gone. They were in business together, so . . .’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Mum said, crossing her heart quickly.

‘But how can I not know this?’ Dad asked. ‘And how come you do? When’s the funeral? When did she die?’