Page 2 of The Next Chapter

One Year Later

To Do:

Buy memorial plaque polish

Balloon arch order to chase

Pay Elton vet bill

Get on top of emails

Nobody wants to be forgotten. That’s what this job has taught me. Everyone wants to believe that they’ve done something, anything, which transcends the confines of their own existence.

And in the case of Mr Chuck Vandergilden, that something is his proficiency with an M2 man portable, backpack flame thrower.

‘And you’re sure, absolutely sure, Sir, that you’d like to include all that in the memoirs?’ I ask him.

‘Now why the hell wouldn’t I, missy?’ he drawls in a thick Texan accent. ‘What I did in ’Nam’s the proudest God damn thing of my life.’

I pull at my collar. It’s hot. I can feel a bead of sweat working its way down my spine. A combination of the heat and Mr Vandergilden’s war crimes is making my skin prickle.

I draw a steadying breath.

‘And make sure you get the death toll.’

‘Death toll?’ I ask faintly.

‘That’s right. There was no more effective killing machine than Company C 1st Battalion. Them there Viet Cong didn’t know what hit ’em.’

He beats his chest. Actually beats it.

I mumble the words, ‘Geneva Convention.’

Luckily, we’re doing the interview over Zoom, so Mr Vandergilden, already hard of hearing, doesn’t properly catch it. The Wi-Fi in the office really is pitiful and every now and then that works in our favour.

I try to force my face into a smile, but chances are I look like that crazed Joker from the Batman movies. ‘Right, I think I have everything I need,’ I say around my fake smile. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to add?’

‘Nah, that’s everything, I reckon. When do I get the book?’

‘I should have a draft of your memoirs for you in six weeks.’

‘That should do it. Alrighty, then, I’ll be seeing you, Louise.’

‘It’s Lily,’ I tell him.

‘What now?’ He leans towards the computer screen.

‘Lily, my name is Lily.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know what, never mind. Goodbye, Mr Vandergilden.’

I disconnect the meeting.

‘Prick,’ I mutter to myself.

‘Lily Brown, is that you disrespecting a paying customer? I never would have believed it.’

Seb, my best friend and boss at Your Life, appears at my shoulder, the smell of nicotine making it obvious it’s him. Must buy him some more Nicotinell gum on my lunch break.

Seb and I went to university together and when we left, he set up Your Life. In the last nine years it’s gone on to become a moderately successful personal memoirs company, a service for those who want their entire life memorialized into sixty thousand words or less.

Writing books designed for a readership that’s almost exclusively close friends and family isn’t exactly a business model that’s going to lead either of us to riches and/or glory.

But we normally do okay. Mostly because every now and then we get to ghost-write some celebrity memoirs.

They’re what keep us afloat. I love it here.

It puts my history degree to some use. Admittedly not much use. But some.

‘Mr Vandergilden’s a war criminal,’ I tell Seb. ‘We should send a copy of his memoirs to the Hague.’

Seb raises a single eyebrow at me. Whatever the weather, he wears all black and has his dark hair gelled back. He looks like a cartoon baddie. ‘Unfortunately, your wage doesn’t allow for questioning the clients,’ he says.

‘I think wage is a stretch, don’t you?’

‘Well, you won’t let me promote you,’ he says breezily. ‘Meeting starts in five.’

I don’t reply that I don’t want the promotion because I like working with the clients. I think of Mr Vandergilden. I like working with most of the regular clients. Seb already knows this; we’ve been over it plenty of times before.

Instead, I’m out of my chair. ‘Let me get the muffins.’

I hurry towards the tiny kitchen. The Your Life offices are above a fish and chip shop in the centre of Manchester, so everything always smells faintly of vinegar. Hopefully the muffins I baked last night for our team meeting are still good to go.

I grab them out of one of the top cupboards and rush back, keen not to be late.

Seb, Clementine and Phil are already sat around the ‘meeting desk’.

Seb got all of the office furniture off Facebook Marketplace and quite frankly it makes a mockery of the ergonomics training we get new staff to do.

Out meeting desk is basically a fake wood dining table that he paid twenty quid for eight years ago.

I take a seat facing Seb and open the Tupperware box, placing it in the middle of the table. ‘Cinnamon and walnut,’ I tell them. It’s an unofficial, yet key part of my role here that I bring the baked goods.

Clementine and Phil dive straight in but Seb, who mostly substitutes food for cigarettes, just looks at me. ‘Why the fuck are you making walnut muffins, you have a nut allergy!’

Seb has a unique approach to management. Even for him, though, he’s extra prickly at the minute.

‘Please.’ I roll my eyes. ‘It’s not a serious allergy. And anyway, they’re Phil’s favourites.’

Phil, who is eating his muffin in a trough-like manner, holding it up to his face and munching straight through the centre, looks up and nods. He’s the Your Life accountant. He has an open bottle of Gaviscon by his computer for a persistent stomach ulcer. It gets irritated by stress.

Clementine, our marketing officer and would-be TikTok star, launches into a story about an account she follows that shares medical advice, like CPR. I think she’s trying to tell me that if I go into anaphylactic shock, she’s got me covered.

I reassure them all that my allergy is nothing some latex gloves didn’t protect me from. Mostly.

Clementine reaches over and brushes some muffin crumbs from Phil’s shirt. They have an office alliance that nobody saw coming.

‘Right.’ Seb starts the meeting, ‘Where’s that agenda?’

I’m alert. I’m focused during the team meeting. You have to be. Clementine’s minutes leave a lot to be desired. I refuse to be distracted by my phone vibrating constantly on my knee. It’ll be WhatsApp. It’s always WhatsApp.

I can’t help but notice, though, that when we get to the bit about new clients, Seb goes all muttery and won’t look any of us in the eye. Plus, Phil has retrieved the Gaviscon from his desk and is swigging straight from the bottle.

Things have been rocky this quarter. Financially, I mean. There’s no denying that. But stuff always picks up. And I know that Seb had a meeting with Kitty, the literary agent who sends some ghost-writing work our way, earlier in the week. It’ll be fine. It has to be fine.

After some more muttering, the meeting is done. I shake off the niggle of worry. Like I say, it’ll be fine. Fine! I gnaw at the end of my pen.

‘Thank god it’s almost the weekend.’ Clementine stretches in her chair. Her arms and legs are long and tanned. I’m only mildly absorbed with jealousy about this fact.

I won’t lie, I’m rarely thrilled about weekends. And yes, I’m aware that this makes me all sorts of tragic. But personally, I just prefer the working day. The more overwhelming and unachievable the better.

The thing is, to the unsuspecting eye, I probably look like I’m living my best life each weekend.

Any descendants I manage to produce will look at my Instagram and think, wow, there is a woman who knew how to have a good time.

I have a colour-coded social calendar and I’m in eighteen WhatsApp groups (cue aptly timed phone buzz) and really, my weekends couldn’t be fuller.

It’s just… yeah, I feel aimless. Or maybe it’s not aimlessness, but more that I feel lost somehow.

Drained. As if I’m one WhatsApp ‘what date can you make’ poll away from a breakdown.

And I’m not sure how healthy or normal it is to feel lost or drained like, all of the time.

Maybe I’m just feeling all aimless and drained because this weekend is especially bad.

It’s been a year since Dad died.

But it’s fine. I’m fine. Totally and absolutely fine.

‘You’re crying again.’

I’ve made it back to my computer.

My emails swim before my eyes.

‘I’m fine.’ I sniff.

‘I did tell you to take the day off. Why don’t you go home?’

‘No!’ Another sniff. ‘I have to get through these emails. It’s on my list. Plus, you’re coming to mine tonight, right? Right?’

There’s a definite air of desperation about my request. But Seb won’t care. He gets it.

‘Yep.’ He pops the ‘p’, but he won’t look me in the eye. ‘Finish your emails and we’ll head off in half an hour. Early finish, everyone,’ he calls to the rest of the office. So just Phil and Clementine, who cheers like she isn’t currently tweezing her eyebrows at her desk.

A new email appears in the corner of my inbox and even though I know that I should tackle the oldest ones first, that that’s the most efficient method, I click on it.

‘Oh,’ I say, scanning through the text quickly.

‘What is it?’ Seb asks, peering over my shoulder.

‘Daisy Flanaghan has died,’ I tell him. Jesus. I’m going to cry again.

‘No, how sad. What was she, ninety-eight?’

I hardly hear him. ‘She was a hundred,’ I say. And yep, here come the tears.

Tears over a little old lady who worked in the WAAF during the war and then went on to have seventeen grandchildren. Just feels as if it’s everywhere these days. Death. Like people are dropping down dead left, right and centre.

‘Her daughter has emailed. Apparently, she died in her sleep.’ It’s me talking, but it doesn’t sound like my voice.

‘Do they say anything about her memoirs? Surely, they’ll still want it, won’t they?’

Seb squeezes my shoulder, reading the email from behind me.

‘They’re cancelling. Fuck’s sake.’

Seb stomps off while, through bleary eyes, I reply to Daisy’s daughter.

It’s not a particularly unusual thing to happen, a client dying mid-memoirs. It’s basically a hazard of the job, since the people most likely to want their lives memorialized are those far closer to the end than the beginning of it.