Dark Undertakings by Rebecca Tope

something prompted her to persist. She reached in, pulled the white plastic from around his head and craned her neck to look at him. His cheeks were full, mottling very slightly as the blood collected around his jawbone andears. The hair was strong, slightly wavy, giving him a look of vigour, even in death. He wore bright blue pyjamas, old-fashioned and rather endearing. Eyes half-closed, lips parted to show the inside of his mouth, he was exactly as she remembered him. Funny how these heart attack victims so often seemed to glow with health.
    In her early years in the job, Daphne had fantasised about Fate, and how there seemed sometimes to be some sort of cosmic mistake. She imagined the great loom of destiny, its fabric endlessly woven and patterned, with sudden breaking of thread from some accident or carelessness in the weaving. The person who was controlled by that thread would abruptly die, perhaps while crossing the street or making love. Heart failure, aneurism, stroke. In the old days, they’d called it a ‘seizure’. It always came out of the blue, leaving shockwaves that could last for years.
    The inside of Jim Lapsford’s gaping mouth looked an unusually bright pink, but Daphne did not inspect it any closer. Her job did not involve any medical investigation. A second doctor would have to come along in a day or so, and endorse Julian Lloyd’s findings. In the process, the only really important fact had already been established – that Lapsford was in fact dead, and could be safely cremated.
    And so she locked all the doors, turned out all the lights, went out to the back yard where her neat new Ford Fiesta waited for her, and finally went home, secure in the knowledge that another day had passed satisfactorily.
     
    In Primrose Close, lights were on behind closed curtains, and front driveways were filled with cars. Monica Lapsford had eaten a small supper of scrambled egg, and was sipping coffee in her front room. She had come a long way since waking that morning. She was now firmly in the realm of widowhood, her feet on a new path, the past and future all mixed up and merged together on this momentous day when everything had changed.
    The scrambled egg had been a mistake, though she had chosen it with a powerful instinct. It gave rise to a sweet recollection: twenty-eight years ago, when her contractions had begun, proclaiming the imminent birth of Philip, Jim had sat with her in the kitchen, making her eat scrambled eggs. He had been calm and wonderfully kind. They’d lived in a village, not too far away, with a now long-vanished maternity hospital only a mile distant. Together, they had walked and talked, laughed and groaned, anticipating the baby, but refusing to be rushed into the clatter andstress of hospital procedures. They even debated whether to stay at home and demand that a midwife come to them. The scrambled egg story had been told many times subsequently.
    How brave we were , marvelled Monica now. And what good parents we made to those boys when they were small . David had caused them sleepless nights and a lot of agonising, but they had stuck with it, supporting him faithfully, fighting his corner against teachers and doctors. They had been united in their determination to bring the boy through whatever tribulations might assault him. In that respect, they’d done a very fair job.
    Once started, the memories of Jim at his kindest and best were impossible to suppress. Jim it was who got up and made tea every morning, collecting the early post and bringing it up to Monica, dozing lazily. At the same time as he performed small, uxorious kindnesses, he had hinted that there was plenty of space in the marriage once the boys had moved out. They ought not to cling too tightly to each other. They would go out separately, as well as together, and not restrict each other’s movements. What Monica thought about this had not been relevant – Jim had increasingly followed his own prescription, to the