Not that the day had started well either. I had tried to call Detective Sergeant Sharp to ask him about the CCTV from the London Hilton, only to be informed that he was away on leave for the week, and no one else seemed to have any knowledge of any recordings or, indeed, of anything else to do with Clare’s death. Call back next week, they told me most unhelpfully, and speak to DS Sharp.
Next I’d called the Injured Jockeys Fund to ask them about the guest list for their gala dinner. Mrs Green, the organizer of the event, was in Portugal, I was told, enjoying a well-earned break after all her hard work. She also would be back next week.
Then my father’s insistence on ‘immediate family only’ at the funeral further added to my frustration.
The arrival at the crematorium, ten minutes before the service, of my father’s younger brother, my uncle George, and his wife Catherine from Spain had not been a welcome addition to the ‘immediate family’ as my father had obviously defined it. When Cousin Brendan had then turned up, along with his wife, Gillian, and their two teenage children, closely followed by his brother Joshua plus second wife, I thought my father was about to postpone the whole thing, but the minister had then made a timely appearance, ushering us all into the chapel.
So there was a total of seventeen of us who sat in the first three rows of chairs as four pallbearers from the undertaker’s carried the simple oak coffin past us and placed it on the high dais at the front. Five other mourners stood at the back near the door, having been banished there by my father, who had loudly accused them of invading his grief.
Not that I was particularly pleased to see one of them, Toby Woodley, the diminutive racing correspondent from the Daily Gazette, a tabloid red-top newspaper best known for celebrity exposés and rumour-mongering.
As well as trying to comfort my mother, I spent time looking out for the mystery boyfriend but none of the five non-family attendees appeared to fit the bill. Apart from Woodley there was an elderly couple I vaguely recognized, and two young women who told my father that they had known Clare from school, not that he had made them any more welcome for that.
Just as the minister was starting the service, the back doors of the chapel creaked open and one further individual joined the congregation. Geoff Grubb came forward and sat down in an empty row behind Uncle George and Aunt Catherine. My father stared angrily at him from across the aisle but, if Geoff noticed, he didn’t react.
If it hadn’t been so sad, it might have been funny.
My father couldn’t see past his anger with Clare for bringing this on us all. He couldn’t grasp that the death of a much-loved daughter and sister transcended the method of her passing, and that her memory should be cherished for what her life had been, not vilified for how it had ended.
The service was embarrassingly short with just a single hymn, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’, sung badly by us over a recorded backing track, a few prayers and a concise Bible reading that was delivered, not by a member of the family but by the minister himself.
The whole thing lasted less than ten minutes. There had been no eulogy, no family recollection of childhood, no... love.
I sat there fuming. How could my siblings have allowed this to happen?
I started to get up. Surely someone had to speak.
‘Don’t,’ my brother-in-law Nicholas said while grasping the tail of my jacket to stop me. ‘Trust me. Don’t.’
I turned and looked at him and also at my cousin Brendan sitting next to him.
‘Leave it,’ Nicholas whispered. ‘This is not the time or place.’
‘And not with him here,’ Brendan added, nodding towards Toby Woodley at the back of the church.
‘But this is precisely the time and place, and it’s so wrong,’ I whispered back to them.
‘I know it’s wrong,’ Nicholas said. ‘We have all said so but your father won’t be moved.’
Well, I was moved.
As the minister was starting the committal to conclude the proceedings, rather to his surprise, and mine, I stood up and went forward to stand close to the coffin.
I turned to face the Shillingford family and looked straight at my father. As was so often the case, his face was puce with rage, but I didn’t care. This service was for Clare, not for him.
‘I wish I had prepared a few profound words to say about Clare but I hadn’t expected to be the one speaking here. But now that I am, I suppose I’d better say something.’
In all, I spoke for nearly ten minutes.
I talked at length about our childhood and the bonds of being twins, about our teenage years and us both wanting to be jockeys, about Clare’s success in her career, and how we had all thought she had so much to live for.
My mother sobbed.
Finally, I turned to face the wooden box that contained the broken mortal remains of my dear twin.
‘Clare, we loved you, and we failed you. We should have prevented this and we are so sorry. I hope you are somewhere in a better place and you can forgive us.’
I went back to my seat and sat down with a heavy heart.
Nicholas patted me on the back. He was crying. Brendan next to him was crying. In fact, there was crying going on all around me.
I noticed that even my father was now in tears. Maybe it hadn’t simply been anger but guilt that had made him behave so strangely.
The minister completed the committal and the electrically operated curtains closed around the coffin, masking it from our sight.
‘Well done,’ Nicholas said to me as we stood up. ‘You were right.’
‘But what is wrong with you all?’ I said to him in frustration. ‘Was that really the best the collective minds of the Shillingford family could come up with?’
‘There’s no such thing as collective minds in our family,’ he replied. ‘You should know that by now. The truth is that no one did anything because we were all terrified of upsetting someone else so, in the end, nothing got done at all. This funeral wasn’t planned, it simply drifted into existence.’
Geoff Grubb came over to me. ‘I thought there would have been more people here.’
‘It was for immediate family only,’ I said.
‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize that.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m pleased you came.’
‘She was a nice girl.’ He, too, seemed close to tears. ‘I’ll miss her.’ He turned away from me and wiped his eyes, clearly embarrassed by his crying. ‘She was like immediate family to me. Looked after me, she did, since my Gloria passed away last year. We had no kids of our own.’
I was quite surprised by his show of emotion, as well as by the thought of Clare in any way looking after him. Everyone thought of Geoff Grubb as a training machine, with a heart of stone. But I still didn’t think he could possibly have been the elusive secret boyfriend.
Geoff and I walked out of the crematorium chapel together into the watery sunshine. My father was standing there.
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘This is Geoff Grubb, who Clare rode for. He also owns Stable Cottage where Clare lived.’
My father shook Geoff’s offered hand, and thankfully resisted the urge to ask him why he was here.
‘Well spoken, Mark,’ he said instead, looking me in the eye.
‘Thank you, Dad,’ I said, looking straight back at him.
It was the first time I could remember, in my whole life, that my father had praised me for anything. He held out his hand to me and I shook it warmly.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice on my right, breaking the moment.
I turned to find the elderly couple who had been standing at the back. My father meanwhile faced the opposite direction, away from them, and walked off. I actually thought he was crying again.
‘Hello, Mark,’ said the man, holding out his hand.
‘Hello.’ I shook his hand. ‘And you are?’