Finding Milly Read online

  Finding Milly

  Nathan Burrows

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Author's Note

  Also by Nathan Burrows

  Chapter 1

  Jimmy Tucker shrugged his shoulders against the cold September air and pulled up the zipper on the front of his coat as far as it would go. He regarded the small, single storey building on the other side of the road and the black Transit van with tinted windows that was inching its way down the narrow alley to the side of the building. He shivered against the wind, remembering the young woman on the television earlier promising more of the same over the next few days. Even though the North Sea was over twenty miles away, when the wind came in from the east it was biting. The best thing that could be said about the icy breeze was that it would stop the fog forming over the top of the Norfolk Broads and rolling across Norwich.

  He looked left and right and, after waiting for a few seconds for a gap in the traffic, set off across the road towards the squat building. It was a bizarre rectangular shape, standing on its own with the alley that the van was pulling out of separating it from an equally squat Indian restaurant next door. The front of the building Jimmy was heading toward was painted cream, divided in half by a frosted glass door with an opaque window that were both designed to hide whoever was inside from curious stares from the outside. The only real clue to the building’s purpose was the painted sign over the top of the window.

  Ignoring the passive-aggressive sign that implored visitors to the restaurant next door not to park in either of the parking spaces in front of the cream building, Jimmy stepped up to the door and pushed it open, leaving the busy road he had just crossed behind him. Above the door, a small bell tinkled, and a blast of warm air hit Jimmy in the face as it rushed past him and out into the cold. Jimmy shivered with relief as the door eased itself shut behind him, and he pulled the zipper of his coat down a few inches as he looked around the inside of the building which he remembered well.

  The room he was in didn’t extend to the back of the building—the back wall was much further forward than it should have been, and an internal door leading to another room was painted in the same cream colour as the front of the building. The interior was sparsely occupied but well appointed. In front of the opaque window were two expensive looking sofas with an ornate coffee table between them. On top of the table was a glossy brochure advertising the occupier’s services. The only other furniture in the office was a small mahogany desk tucked away in the room's corner, with a receptionist sitting behind it.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman behind the desk said in a throaty voice. Jimmy turned to look at her. She was quite a few years younger than he was, mid-thirties if Jimmy had to guess, and she was wearing a simple dark purple business suit. On the desk in front of her was an Apple computer, the sleek aluminium of the rear of the screen reminding Jimmy of the one he had at home. The woman’s hands sat poised over the keyboard—she had stopped typing when Jimmy had opened the door. ‘Please, have a seat.’ Her head inclined towards the sofa. ‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, perhaps? Or some water?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you,’ Jimmy replied as he unzipped his coat. ‘It’s getting cold out there.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ the woman replied, getting to her feet. ‘And it’s only September.’ Jimmy watched her make her way to a table in the corner of the room with a small kettle and a selection of sachets, just like in a hotel room. He eased himself out of his coat and placed it on the sofa before sitting down as the woman waited for the kettle to boil, neither of them saying anything. ‘Milk and sugar?’ she asked a moment later as the kettle started bubbling.

  ‘Please,’ he replied.

  As the receptionist brought the tea over to him, expertly nestling the china cup in its saucer, Jimmy saw her close up for the first time. She was a little older than he’d first thought, thin but not too thin, with fine lines around her eyes. Blonde hair peppered with small flashes of grey framed her face, and when she smiled, the lines deepened as the smile reached her eyes.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said as she placed the cup and saucer on the table. ‘Take your time. I’ll be just over there if you need anything.’ She retreated to the desk that she’d been sitting behind when Jimmy had walked in and resumed typing.

  He leaned forward and picked up the cup with a trembling hand, leaving the saucer behind on the coffee table. He wasn’t the sort of man who usually drank tea from a cup and saucer, and he struggled to get his thick finger through the small hoop of the cup. Managing to take a sip from the cup without spilling any of the tea, Jimmy put the cup back onto the saucer. He stared at the brochure on the coffee table for a moment before leaning back. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and allowed the tears to stream down his face.

  When he opened his eyes again, there was a small box of tissues on the table next to his cup of tea, and a thin man in a dark suit sitting opposite him. Jimmy hadn’t heard a thing—the tissues and the man had materialised in silence. As the white-haired man in the suit regarded him through hooded but kind eyes, Jimmy leaned forwards and plucked a tissue from the box, resisting the urge to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve.

  ‘May I say,’ the man said, crossing his legs and plucking at an imaginary thread on his pin-striped trousers, ‘how sorry I am that you find yourself here today.’ Jimmy knew that it wasn’t a question, not really. It was a statement of fact. He wouldn’t be sitting in this building if there wasn’t something to be very sorry about. It wasn’t that sort of business.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jimmy replied before clearing his throat and repeating himself. ‘Thank you.’ He looked at the cup on the table, wondering for a few seconds whether to pick it up and have another sip of tea. Not trusting his shaking hand, he decided against it.

  ‘I think, perhaps, that you’ve been here before,’ the man on the opposite sofa said, almost in a whisper. Jimmy looked at him, in equal parts uncomfortable and reassured by the man’s appraising look. ‘Indulge me for a moment, if you would?’ Jimmy didn’t reply, but waited for his companion to finish his assessment. The hooded eyes closed for a few seconds before they reopened, and Jimmy looked into the man’s watery blue eyes. ‘Hannah Tucker,’ he said. ‘Which means you must be Jimmy.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jimmy replied, surprised enough to forget for a moment why he was there. ‘Bloody hell, that’s impressive.’

  ‘It’s been a while,’ the man said, allowing himself a brief sm
ile that revealed smoker’s teeth. ’Ten years?’

  ‘Almost,’ Jimmy replied. ‘It’ll be ten years in March.’

  ‘My goodness,’ the man said. ‘Isn’t time…’ he thought for a second, ‘ephemeral?’ Jimmy didn’t reply, not knowing what the word meant. ‘Fleeting, perhaps?’ the man continued, as if he sensed Jimmy’s confusion.

  ‘Yes,’ Jimmy said, finally trusting his hand to pick up the cup. ‘I’m ever so sorry, but I don’t remember your name?’

  ‘I’m Gordon,’ the man replied, ‘Gordon Baker.’ He extended a bony hand across the coffee table for Jimmy to shake. As they shook hands, Jimmy remembered too late the sign on the front of the building with the man’s name in large brown letters.

  ‘Of course,’ Jimmy said. Gordon shook his head ever so slightly from side to side, as if to dismiss Jimmy’s discomfort. ‘I can’t believe you remembered Hannah.’

  ‘I remember them all, Mr Tucker,’ Gordon replied. ‘Every single one, and those who come with them.’

  ‘Even so,’ Jimmy said, ‘after ten years?’

  ’Time is, as I said, fleeting.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel that way sometimes.’

  ‘No,’ Gordon replied, ‘I would imagine not.’ He smiled, and Jimmy saw true compassion in his eyes. An underlying sadness accompanied it that Jimmy couldn’t begin to imagine living with. ‘Do you still feel her?’

  ‘Every day,’ Jimmy said. ‘Every single bloody day. I feel her, I sense her, I even hear her sometimes.’

  ‘There are some who say people live on in the hearts of others.’

  At Gordon’s words, Jimmy felt the tears flow again. He didn’t bother with the tissues, but just raked his sleeve across his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry, perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words,’ Gordon said in a quiet voice. ‘Melissa?’ The receptionist behind the desk looked up as he called her name. ‘Could we perhaps have two glasses and some Talisker? I think the time for tea has passed us by.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jimmy said a few moments later, putting the crystal tumbler back on the coffee table as he enjoyed the burn of the dark liquid in his throat.

  ‘Not at all,’ Gordon replied with a wry smile. ‘To be honest, it was a gift from a client. I save it for when it’s really needed.’

  ‘Not for the whisky. For remembering Hannah.’

  ‘Jimmy,’ Gordon said, ‘it’s okay if I call you Jimmy, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘The business I am in is all about people. If they aren’t at the heart of how I deliver my services, then it would be time to hang up my hat. Does that make sense, Jimmy?’

  ‘It does,’ Jimmy replied. ‘You were so good back then, when it happened.’

  ‘You can say her name,’ Gordon whispered. Jimmy took a deep breath.

  ‘When Hannah happened.’ He’d not said her name out loud outside his own house for a long time.

  ‘How is your daughter?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Milly?’ Jimmy replied, surprised. ‘She’s good.’

  ‘Such a pretty little thing, if I remember right. So lost at the time, bless her. But children are so resilient, I find.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘No,’ Gordon said, taking a sip from his tumbler. ‘Sadly not. I never met the right person. How old is Milly now?’

  ’Twenty-four a couple of months ago,’ Jimmy replied, noticing Gordon’s change of subject.

  ‘Is she like Hannah?’

  ‘In so many ways, yes. But in so many other ways, no. She took it hard.’

  ‘I would imagine she did,’ Gordon replied. ‘Losing your mother at that age is unimaginable, I would think.’

  ‘But she turned out okay.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that for an instant, Jimmy.’ They sat in a companionable silence for a moment before Gordon continued, shifting the conversation again as if he knew that was what Jimmy wanted him to do. ’Forgive me, but what is it you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a bin man,’ Jimmy replied, ready for the usual look of disdain when he told anyone that. Gordon’s face didn’t so much as flicker in response.

  ‘A vital public service,’ Gordon replied. ‘And looking at you, I would imagine that you take it very seriously indeed?’ Jimmy thought for a few seconds before replying.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said.

  ‘Because if you didn’t, then you wouldn’t do it anymore.’ Another statement, as opposed to a question.

  ‘I don’t know if I’d go that far, Gordon,’ Jimmy replied, smiling for the first time in days. ‘There’s not much else I can do, not at my age.’

  ‘What are you, early fifties?’

  ‘Fifty-eight.’

  ‘Plenty of life in the old dog yet, then?’ Gordon said with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Perhaps.’ There was another silence as the two men looked at each other.

  ’Shall we get down to business, Jimmy?’ Gordon asked, blinking his watery blue eyes a couple of times as his smile faded. Jimmy swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so just nodded his head in response. ‘Whose funeral is it that you need my assistance to plan for?’ Jimmy closed his eyes and took a deep breath before replying.

  ‘Mine.’

  Chapter 2

  One Week Earlier

  ‘Mr Tucker?’

  Jimmy looked up from his newspaper as he heard his name being called. When the nurse called his name again, he folded the paper and made eye contact with her. Stretching, he got to his feet, relieved to be leaving the chair he’d been sitting in for the last forty-five minutes, and made his way across the starkly decorated waiting room. ‘Sorry, we’re running a little late this morning,’ the nurse said with a faint smile as he approached her. She was mid-forties, overweight, and looked exhausted despite the early hour. ‘Would you follow me?’

  This was Jimmy’s third visit to the hospital in as many months, and each time he’d attended for his appointment, they’d been running late. His first appointment was at nine fifteen in the morning, by which time they were already running half an hour late. Not for the first time, Jimmy wondered why they’d not worked out a better way to schedule their appointments by now. He apologised as he brushed against an elderly woman’s shoulder as he walked across the waiting room, but she didn’t respond. Jimmy wondered if she had even registered it.

  The nurse Jimmy was following was, he presumed, one of the senior nurses in the outpatients department. She was wearing a navy blue uniform that wasn’t particularly flattering to her curves, and Jimmy grinned as he imagined her having to give weight loss advice to a patient.

  ‘How have you been?’ the nurse asked over her shoulder as she walked into one of the treatment rooms that branched off the sterile corridor. It was the same room that they had seen Jimmy in on his first visit, unless they had the same patient information leaflets in every room.

  ‘Not too bad, thank you,’ Jimmy replied, stopping himself from asking her how she had been. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

  ‘Good stuff. Have a seat, just there.’ The nurse pointed at an uncomfortable looking plastic chair with a suspicious stain on the seat. She turned to look at him and he glanced at her name badge. Sister Lisa Sutton, Senior Nurse, Outpatients. ‘So, nothing unusual today. I’ll take some bloods, weigh you, do a quick heart tracing, and then it’ll be back to the waiting room to wait for your appointment with Dr Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘I had some bloods taken the other week, before the scan,’ Jimmy replied. He didn’t like needles at the best of times, and if it was possible not to be stuck again, he would take it. Sister Sutton smiled at him.

  ‘Nice try, Mr Tucker,’ she said, crossing to a counter where she started collecting some equipment together. ‘Different bloods, I’m afraid.’

  With a resigned sigh, Jimmy rolled his sleeve up. Sister Sutton bustled around him, snapping her hands into a pair of bright purple surgical gloves.

  ‘Are you on your own to
day?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy replied. ‘My daughter was still in bed when I left home.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘You don’t look old enough,’ Sister Sutton said with a forced smile as she approached Jimmy with a needle and syringe. ‘Perhaps I should call her? I’m sure she’d want to be here with you.’ Jimmy felt a prickle of fear at the back of his mind. It was nothing to do with the needle, but he couldn’t help but wonder why the nurse thought Milly should be with him.

  Less than five minutes later, he was back in the waiting room with a plaster in the crook of his arm and strict instructions to keep pressing it with a finger for another couple of minutes.

  The next time he heard his name being called, almost an hour had passed. Jimmy had long since given up on his newspaper and was staring at a year-old copy of Top Gear magazine as he tried to stay awake. He looked up with a start to see Sister Sutton standing in exactly the same place as before, looking at him from the other side of the waiting room. She gave him the same tired smile as he walked over to her.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, again,’ she said, turning round and walking away from Jimmy, ‘but Dr Fitzpatrick is ready to see you now.’ This time, she walked past the treatment room and all the way to the end of the corridor. Jimmy dutifully followed, ignoring the buzzing from the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. He wondered how the staff put up with the constant hum.