Unspecified

'A six-month vacancy has arisen for a Funeral Administrator, working as part of a team to carry out funeral arrangements for clients within the funeral home or at the client's premises. A flexible approach to working hours is required.'

Skills required were unspecified. Since I had none, according to my last employer, this seemed an ideal opportunity to earn my fare to New York.

Interview questions were, 'Can you drive?' and 'Are you willing to work evenings?' – thankfully, no nonsense about religion or afterlife. I was the only applicant.

Rattle and Croak Funeral Directors were often called out at odd hours to collect a body, but that was better than listening to Ma complaining – mostly about my father, who was never named, and about my failure to improve our lot. I didn't socialise. Morgan had been the love of my life; I wouldn't risk love again.

I worked with Croak more than Rattle, who preferred to deal with the customers who still breathed. Colin Croak was an artist whose medium was post-mortem make-up and embalming. He'd been training his daughter to take over, but she was now on maternity leave.

It was like dressing dolls. My fingers were fine-boned and more flexible than Colin's to camouflage the ravages of time and illness. I learned to fill cracks, brighten complexions and disguise fatal wounds. When his daughter wanted to extend her absence for an unspecified period, he was happy to keep me on. And, by then, I no longer had other plans.

He was proud of his pupil's progress. We were preparing a body one evening for an early morning wake when he said, 'You don't need me watching over you now,' and from then on, worked from nine to five.

The money wasn't great, but I didn't need much, and there were perks. If the coffin was to be sealed I might, unobserved, rescue an item of jewellery from interment. I carried a selection of gold-coloured rings in my pocket to exchange when the opportunity arose. I took my finds to a second-hand dealer in another town who didn't ask questions.

It was around Halloween when I first saw the neat, midsize Rolex in his display case. It was there on my next visit, and the next. Waiting for me.

One week in December, it was out on the counter. I turned it over, trying to look as if I knew what I was checking for.

'Try it on,' he said.

I didn't want to take it off. Watching my face, he named a price.

I stared. 'Are you serious?'

He smiled. ' 'Tain't genuine,' he said, 'but 's worth more than I'm letting you 'ave it for. Think of it as a Christmas present. Have to be cash though.'

It took a couple of days to withdraw it from the cashpoint on my credit card, but with my Japanese Rolex on my wrist I felt… significant. Worth something.

The first I knew of my former employer's death was when he turned up in our embalming room: cause of death, drowning. He'd skidded into a dyke after losing control of his BMW on an icy bend.

The body on the slab was Morgan's father. Now I'd never get back at him for having me fired from his company's staff restaurant. Morgan had been sent to work in the New York office and subsequently married a Yank.

A gold ring winked up at me. I lifted the hand and its fingers curled around mine.

I was accustomed to corpses that would slowly start to sit up as muscles tightened in rigor mortis, but this spooked me.

My hand jerked, and his sleeve fell back, revealing a Rolex watch, the same design as my fake. His was somehow sharper-looking as its second hand swept around the dial, but I wouldn't have known without seeing them together.

Morgan came from America to take charge of funeral arrangements. I donned my professionalism like a shroud concealing my wounds.

'I'm sorry for your loss.'

'Err… thank you. You're looking good – as always. How have you been?'

'Well. Thank you. Did your father express a preference for burial or cremation, do you know?'

'Mother wants him buried so she can be buried with him when her time comes.' Morgan scowled. 'It sounds creepy to me. What do you think?'

Brown eyes searched mine. I don't think they were looking for my funeral preferences.

'I hope I'll be past caring.'

Morgan raised an eyebrow and I returned to the script.

'Can you bring in the clothes you'd like him buried in and would you like to take his ring and watch?'

'Oh, no; Mother will want him buried in his wedding ring. I expect the watch is waterlogged anyway.'

We went to view coffins.

I had not known Morgan's father was an identical twin until his brother greeted the hearse. My shocked heartbeat reverberated throughout my body and the Rolex weighed heavy on my wrist.

I got rid of his ring at the first opportunity. As the dealer handed over my cash, he noticed the Rolex.

'That ain't the watch I sold you, is it.'

I admitted it wasn't. He took my hand with more warmth than felt comfortable.

' 'S a better fake than the one you bought off me,' he said. 'Where d'you get it?'

Shaken by his valuation and with no story prepared, I retrieved my hand and blundered out of the shop, failing to notice a four-by-four passing the stationary bus that I stepped out from.

Back in the funeral parlour, I'm the one on the slab, cause of death unspecified. (Since I clearly was dead, there had been no point establishing which of my injuries was responsible.)

But should I be here at all?

And, since I am, shouldn't I be hovering somewhere overhead? Not trapped in this corpse, waiting to roast or rot.

Colin greets Ma in the adjoining room. They're here to plan my final journey.

Destination unspecified.

Cathy Cade

www.cathy-cade.com

www.facebook.com/cathycade.wordsmith

https://www.goodreads.com/cathycade

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