Free The Rembrandt Secret by Alex Connor Page A

know what he would have wanted. He didn’t leave a will either.’
    ‘He didn’t expect to die.’
    ‘Nicolai Kapinski said my father had never even thought about death. Well, in a way, why should he? He wasn’t that old a man, but still, you’d have thought it would have come into his mind now and then.’
    ‘I think people fall into two categories – half think about death too little, the other half too much.’
    He turned to look at her. ‘Which are you?’
    ‘I’m superficial, I only want to think about life.’
    ‘You were never superficial,’ he replied.
    Leaning forward, Marshall’s eyes fixed on the coffin. Varnished wood, with brass handles that looked pseudo-French. The undertaker had shown him numerous brochures of coffins and brass plaques and handles – so many bloody handles – as if the handles mattered. And Marshall, still deeply in shock, had studied the brochures and chosen everything carefully, with thought, as though he was planning a menu. And all the time he was remembering how he had found his father; reliving the same hot fear as details of the murder scene intermingled with the coffin handles. He saw again the rope which had bound Owen’s hands; recalled the hot, iron smell of blood, as the overhead light had dimmed and flickered, and the swollen insides sliding to the floor. He had wanted to pick them up, to push them back into the cavity of his father’s stomach, to hold them in, and somehow make him whole again …
    ‘Marshall?’
    Distracted from the memory, he became aware that he had been grasping Georgia’s hand so tightly her fingers were white. ‘Sorry,’ he said, letting go. ‘I was just thinking.’
    Nodding, she glanced through the small round glass window in the door. Someone was passing and paused, looking in and smiling a kind, professional smile. She responded, wondering how anyone could work in an undertakers’ office, where there was only one ending – death. As a teacher, Georgia was involved with children; little humans for whom life was beginning, not ending. With luck, none of them would die too young, and she hoped that, in twenty years time, they would seek her out and tell her what a difference she had made to their lives.
    It was a familiar daydream, which Georgia already had when she was married to Marshall. They had met at a private view at the Zeigler Gallery, Georgia invited there by friends and finding herself quickly bored. Rescued by Marshall, she had been amused at how little he was interested in his father’s illustrious business. He could so easily have slid into ready-made affluence but, as he told her later, his heart wasn’t in the art world. Georgia had liked that about Marshall Zeigler. Liked a man who didn’t take the easy way out.
    Their marriage had fallen apart after six years because they were both too young and too independent to settle into domesticity. Friends yes, lovers certainly. But a married couple? No. That hadn’t been written into either of their charts, so their decision to separate had been amicable, their divorce good natured. Georgia had quipped to her friends, ‘I was very good to my husband. I left him.’
    In time they both found other people. When Georgia had had her heart broken, she had turned to Marshall, and when the heady intoxication of his affairs fizzled into flat champagne, they had always commiserated. In fact, they had remained fixtures in each other’s lives, and their bond was such that they could talk every day for a week, and then have no contact for two months without it being a problem. When they spoke again, they picked up where they’d left off, and if one of them needed the other, they were always there.
    ‘You never think your parents will be frightened, do you?’
    Surprised, Georgia glanced at her ex-husband. ‘Was Owen afraid?’
    ‘Terrified, the last time I talked to him … He was supposed to be spending the weekend with me , not lying in a bloody coffin.’ He stared angrily