Liverpool Love Song by Anne Baker Page A

comforted her.’
    He looked at Helen then. ‘It sounds as though she lost consciousness and slipped away peacefully in her sleep.’
    They followed the doctor down to the icy living room. Helen watched numbly as he wrote out a certificate and left it on the table.
    ‘She’s been failing for some time, as you know, and she’s had a very long life. Perhaps she’s glad to be at rest now.’
    As he saw himself out, Helen collapsed on a chair and made no effort to stem her tears.
     
    Rex had made himself tea and toast and gone to work as Helen had suggested, but he couldn’t settle. He knew this had come at a bad time for Helen; she was still smarting because of Chloe’s pregnancy, and at the best of times she had little emotional strength. He was worried about her.
    The morning was passing. He rang her home, but as he’d half expected, she wasn’t there. He knew where her family lived. They had a small garden and he regularly sent a man round to maintain it. He got in his van and drove round.
    It was Marigold who came to the door, with red eyes and a blotchy face. He found Helen still weeping at the living room table.
    ‘Life has to go on for you two,’ he told them. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
    It was he who lit the fire and made them a brunch of eggs and bacon. He rang the vicar of their church, who promised to call round. Then, as it seemed neither had any idea what to do next, he found them a local undertaker, who also said he’d call.
    Rex was preparing to leave when Helen lifted a stricken face. ‘Chloe,’ she said, ‘I haven’t let her know.’
    ‘Do it now.’
    ‘I can’t, I don’t know Adam’s number. She wrote it down for me but I’ll have to go home to get it.’
    Rex drove her home and promised Marigold he’d deliver her back again. She spent a very tearful ten minutes talking to Chloe on the phone, and there was no possibility of drying her eyes after that. She was full of guilt that she’d been out enjoying herself with Rex, instead of being available to help Marigold.
    ‘A hot bath will make you feel better,’ he told her. ‘You left without even cleaning your teeth this morning.’ He ran the bath for her and she got out some clean clothes. While she was in the bath, he collected her make-up for her to take with her. By the time she was ready to leave, she was much calmer.
    He drove her back to Marigold’s house and promised to return at six that evening to take them both out to the bistro for supper. When he did, it was Chloe who opened the front door to him. She looked pale and exhausted, and for the first time, he thought she looked heavily pregnant.
    ‘Thank you, Rex,’ she said. ‘Mum tells me you’ve been a cast-iron support to her and Aunt Goldie. You did what I should have been here to do.’
    He rested his hand on her arm for a moment. ‘I only did what anyone would do. How are you?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ she told him with a wry smile.
    ‘Would you like to come with us for a bite to eat?’
    ‘Yes, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Of course I don’t mind. We’re all glad to have you here,’ he said.
    Chloe’s presence made the simple meal the highlight of the day for Rex, though the women were quiet and had little to say. He was glad he’d encouraged Helen to keep in touch with her daughter. He’d feared a rift between them, because that would mean he’d never see Chloe.
    Afterwards, he took them back to Helen’s house. As it seemed they all intended to spend the night there, Rex knew he could not. He went back to his lonely flat to dream of Chloe.
     
    Chloe grieved for Gran. In her early teens, when she’d first come to Liverpool, she’d found her sympathetic and a comfort. But Aunt Goldie seemed to view her death as the end of everything and went to pieces. Her mother too seemed incapable of functioning normally. Chloe would have liked to go back to Adam’s house to escape from their grief, but felt she couldn’t leave her mother until the funeral was