Karen Ross - Five Wakes and a Wedding

‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m Sybille Newman. Your neighbour.’

The shop next door to mine is The Primrose Poppadum – ‘Modern Organic Indian Classics, Free from Dairy, MSG, Wheat & Egg’ according to its sign – and Sybille Newman doesn’t fit my image of a restaurateur. Then again, I’m probably not her idea of an undertaker.

‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I say cautiously.

‘So you’re the owner, are you?’ Sybille Newman has a cut-glass accent and she sounds cross.

‘Yes, I’m Nina Sherwood. Today’s my first day and—’

‘Never mind that. I’ve come about the roof.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The roof. My husband and I live above the dreadful Indian restaurant.’ Sybille gestures towards The Primrose Poppadum with a flash of her Guantanamo orange fingernails. ‘Make sure you never go there – I’ve seen them arriving with carrier bags full of stuff from Asda. Organic my foot! We’re trying to get them shut down because of the dreadful smells. My husband has a respiratory disorder and they’re making it so much worse. But that’s not the point. The roof is leaking and we need a new one.’ She looks expectantly at me.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘But I don’t understand why your roof is any of my business.’

‘It’s a single structure that covers both properties.’ Sybille Newman frowns at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse. ‘Ned and I have lived here for twenty-three years, and even when the betting shop was downstairs, back in the nineties, there was trouble with the roof.’ She leans on my reception desk and adds, ‘We’ve had it replaced twice, but now there’s water leaking into our living room again every time it rains. We’ve got a good jobbing builder who’s been patching it up, but we shouldn’t have to be doing that at our own expense. Not when it’s supposed to be a shared cost. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the purlin’s rotted. And there’s a ticking noise coming from the rafters that keeps us awake every night. Woodworm probably. Or beetles.’ Sybille smiles slyly. She seems almost pleased at the prospect. ‘So I’ll get some roofers round to supply estimates and let you have copies.’

‘Okay.’ I presume she wants me to pass them on to my managing agent.

‘And you need to complain to the council about the restaurant smell. Not that they’ll do anything about it.’

There’s something about the way she says this that makes me think Sybille Newman enjoys being a victim, that she’s the sort of woman who is happy only when she’s got something to complain about. I’ve already got a feeling that no matter how hard I try to be a good neighbour, nothing I do will be ever good enough.

Our conversation seems to have run its course and I’m wondering if I should walk Sybille to the door when she says, ‘I take it your stock will be arriving soon?’

I’m not planning to carry a supply of coffins. The shop’s too small. But it’s a weird question.

Sybille continues, ‘Ned intends be your first customer.’

Ned? Didn’t she say her husband’s called Ned?

I’m still working on the implications of that sentence when she continues, ‘Ned’s always got his nose buried in a novel. I presume you’ll give him a discount. The old bookshop always did. So sad when they closed. Business rates went through the roof. But don’t let me put you off.’ Sybille has noticed my startled expression. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a huge success of Happy Endings.’ She says this with an almost-sneer that suggests precisely the opposite. ‘There’s plenty of children around here, and it’s so important to get them reading at an early age, stop them frying their brains with electronic gadgets.’

‘Yes, reading’s important,’ I agree. ‘But actually … Actually, Happy Endings isn’t a bookshop.’

‘Not a bookshop?’ Now it’s Sybille who is perplexed. ‘Everyone’s been saying that’s what’s opening. If it’s not a bookshop, then what is it?’

‘A funeral parlour.’

‘A WHAT? Really? That’s totally unsuitable. No-one asked Ned and me about this. I’m sure we were entitled to be consulted. My husband’s health is very fragile, and having an undertaker’s downstairs … Well, it’s hardly going to cheer him up, is it?’

With that, the woman turns abruptly on her orange heel. At the door, she shoots a baleful look in my direction.

‘Poor Noggsie.’ She says it as if she’s spitting a pair of marbles from her mouth. ‘He was always so helpful about the roof. He’d be spinning in his grave if he knew about this. About you .’

In Memoriam

PETER JAMES NOGGS

1933–2019

The vicar looked nervous, Gloria thought. And understandably so. Everyone present in the church had known Noggsie, whereas few of them, including Gloria herself, knew the vicar, who seemed to be an earnest young man, clearly overwhelmed by the many famous faces staring back at him.

A final rustle of his papers, and the vicar began. ‘Peter …’ he said. ‘How strange to call him Peter, when all of us here knew him as Noggsie. He was the beating heart of our community for as long as any of us can remember.’

Primrose Hill royalty had turned out in force to pay their respects, and were now sitting in clusters surrounded by many of their less recognisable neighbours. A tribute to the fact Noggsie always treated everyone exactly the same, celebrity or not. To him, the famous customers were just ordinary people who happened to be doing a bit of shopping on their local high street. And there was nothing celebrities liked more than being treated as ordinary people – at least when they were off-duty and on their home turf. As a result, a surprising number of high-profile diaries had been cleared, with filming schedules rearranged, recording sessions postponed and fashion shoots put on hold. Even Tottenham Hotspur had to manage at training that morning without their most famous striker.

Outside the church, private security, police and paparazzi hung around in their separate tribes. Passers-by stopped to see what was happening and any number of teenage truants – almost exclusively female – tried unsuccessfully to blag their way inside.

Jamie Oliver and James Corden were seated three pews in front of Gloria, suited and booted, heads close together, cook and comedian whispering for all the world like a pair of overgrown schoolboys. Probably, Gloria thought, discussing recipes for Cornish pasties. At the front of the church, Chris Evans and Nick Grimshaw were bookending a pair of elderly women both wearing black hats that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a state funeral.

Gloria felt a ripple of movement behind her and turned in time to see Mary Portas – her recognisable-at-two-hundred-paces auburn bob a little longer than usual – arriving in time to swap ‘Good mornings’ with Harry Styles.

But no sign of rock-god Jake Jay. The man who’d won more Grammys than anyone on the planet was said to be back in rehab, this time at a facility somewhere north of New Mexico, accessible only by helicopter. Maybe Robert Plant would show up instead, and treat everyone to a verse of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

Double Oscar winner Kelli Shapiro was also conspicuous by her absence. She had sent her regrets – accompanied by an arrangement of peonies the size of Kew Gardens – and the word was that she was in Geneva, waiting for the scars of a neck lift to heal, rather than suffering from the sudden and unfortunate bout of food poisoning that was her official reason for failing to attend.

Gloria was surprised to see Eddie Banks had been prepared to sacrifice the sunshine of Monte Carlo – along with one of his ninety tax-free days in the United Kingdom – to attend Noggsie’s funeral. Bit of a surprise that he dared show his face at all, given the havoc his double-decker, nine-thousand-square-feet basement dig-out was causing along Chalcot Square. Banks and his giant underground extension had been the talk of the Primrose Hill Easter Festival the weekend before. Everyone knew the man was richer than God, but could it possibly be true that he’d instructed the builders to line the walls of his new chill-out zone with solid gold sheeting? Rumour also had it he’d offered his neighbours a week on Richard Branson’s Necker Island by way of an apology for the noise, the dirt, the disruption and the damage caused by his building project, but they weren’t to be bought off so cheaply, and were holding out – politely but with vicious determination – for the title deeds to luxury lodges at a Banks development in the Lake District. Gloria knew that piece of gossip was well-founded. Her parents were among the neighbours.