The Bright Side of Life, Chapter One

Just to give you all a flavour of how The Bright Side of Life begins...

CHAPTER ONE: 2001, A CENSUS ODYSSEY

'Never begin a story with a funeral!'

The order rolled around Denny's mind, still fresh from his Creative Writing teacher's scolding "Do and Don't List". He personally disagreed but had found most tutors had little patience with outspoken undergrads.

He glanced around the hotel event suite given over to the wake and wondered briefly - though not for the first time - how he had come to be in such a situation.

The funeral cortege had included three limousines for important mourners and an antique horse-drawn hearse. The casket, already rotting in the ground, cost a small fortune but even that expense was dwarfed by the money thrown at the funeral itself.

A small and efficient army of wait-staff circulated with trays of chilled Moet and many an hors d'oeuvre. A string quartet played gentle classical melodies in one corner of the eventing suite at the generic but quality central London hotel.

Denny wanted to guess at the overall cost but didn't dare. His father tended to throw his sterling around on things that made no sense which would be fine but for the thrift he directed at his son.

It seemed to him to be a total waste of time, money and effort for a ninety-year-old spinster who'd never had more than a few quid to her name.

'Denny, that face doesn't become you.'

He turned to find, as he knew he would, his mother stood behind him. A pair of glittering emerald earrings he didn't recognise dangled from her ears but otherwise she was her usual wholly-elegant, expensively coiffed, moneyed self.

'What am I doing here?' he asked with a smidgen too much of the whiny toddler for his taste.

'You are here for Aunt Emmie.'

'Well I never met Aunt Emmie so I repeat: what am I doing here?'

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned with the unmistakable early warning signs of a stern maternal scolding, but nothing. 'I will speak to you later.'

Denny made his way to the buffet table to burn some time and regretted it almost immediately as his gin-toting Uncle hailed him. If every family had "one", in the O'Tooles it was Andrew.

'Hello, Uncle Andrew.'

'Dennis! How does the university life suit you, me boy?'

Andrew had been educated at the best schools in the country, but with enough drink in him sounded just like Tommy Steele. He gripped Denny's shoulder firmly, fingers digging into the muscle.

'Holidays at the moment. Summer.'

'Of course! Bet you're having the time of your life, eh? I know I did!'

Denny blanked out Andrew's stream of disjointed university life anecdotes, not only because he'd heard them before but because his experience was very different.

'I don't have much time for that,' Denny finally cut in when Andrew repeated his traffic cone theft story for the third time. 'Lots of work, you know?'

'But you're only young once.'

'Even the young need to pay the bills, Uncle Andrew.'

'Doesn't Rich-'

'He thinks I should earn my way, just like the O'Toole family "always has".' Denny was still too angry with his father to hide his bitterness.

It wasn't like Uncle Andrew was an outsider, yet a twinge of guilt pinged in his head. If Jiminy Cricket was real, he was taking the umbrella down to Denny's shoulder at that very moment.

'Well, that's certainly what we did!' Andrew hadn't actually held a real job in his entire long but he liked to think he did. He guffawed like an Edwardian gentleman gambler at the gaming tables, then decided he was bored with Denny and stumbled away.

Free at last to attack the buffet table, Denny hadn't even reached the celery sticks before another interruption. An elderly woman, reeking of Lily of the Valley, stood before him, dithering about whether to take a goats cheese and red onion tart or not.

She was ancient, withered and thin of hair, the human equivalent of a dying old willow tree, with sallow skin and fingers like twigs that didn't look like they could hold her plate fully loaded.

Perhaps it was Jiminy Cricket's arrival or Denny's inherent goodness but, despite his discontentment, he couldn't watch her struggle: 'May I help you?'

Her half-concealed relief proved his instincts correct. With the plate now safe in his steady hands, she directed him to the food she wanted - no onions in the end because they disagreed with her - and he then escorted her to a small table.

'What a good boy you are,' she said as he set the plate down for her and asked if she'd like a fresh cup of tea. 'Emmie said you were a good boy.'

'Emmie did?' Denny was confused: he hadn't ever met Emmie, had he?

'Oh yes,' she said. 'Very proud of all her youngsters. You look just like your photograph, Denny.'

He was officially freaked out. Since when did unknown nonagenarians have pictures of him and why did another trainee corpse know his name?

Her laugh was throaty and a little derisive. 'You don't half look scared, young man. Emmie didn't get out much, but she liked to know about you all.'

'You all?'

'You, your cousins. The Clan O'Toole, she called it. She was very protective of the lot of you. Always was... and she was the last of the Finsbury O'Tooles.'

Unconsciously, curiosity fired without truly understanding it, Denny sat down beside her and leaned in. 'What do you mean?'

'There were a lot of you once, but everyone drifted away I suppose. That happened a lot after the war. Communities were torn apart when we had to scatter to find somewhere to live. Only a few of us were able to stay.'

'You sound like a documentary-'

'It was true. I remember the day they tore your house down.'

'I don't own a house.'

She swatted him lightly on the arm. 'Don't be cheeky. The O'Toole house. 19 Lizard Court.'

The address stirred a partly-lost memory in the back of his mind, then he remembered that Emmie's flat was "1 Lizard House". The woman must be confused. She was older than Moses, so it was hardly surprising that her mind was gone.

He wasn't sure, but thought his face might reflect that thought, so schooled his lips into a pleasant, insincere smile.

If this ancient tree of a lady picked up any of Denny's impatient disbelief, she didn't show it. Her eyes were watery but clear. 'August 1961. The week the Berlin Wall went up, your grandpa tore down his own house.'


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