Dark Undertakings by Rebecca Tope

everything. She imagined a similar form waiting for herself, her name pencilled inalready. It happens to us all , she thought. High or low, young or old, we all have to fill in our particulars and get ourselves disposed of in one way or another .
    ‘I’d rather not think about my birthday,’ she said. ‘Jim would have been so upset to miss it. He loved organising celebrations. He was good at that sort of thing. We were all going to go to the King’s Head.’ I should cry now , she thought, objectively. It’s at moments like this that you’re supposed to be overcome . But she didn’t feel like crying.
    ‘Just for a change,’ joked Pauline, before she could stop herself. She turned pink, and tried to control her expression. ‘I mean,’ she explained, ‘Jim was there so much anyway, it wouldn’t have been that different from being at home.’ She forced a laugh, which Monica did not echo.
    Daphne waited dispassionately. Monica could feel the other woman’s creeping indifference beginning to intrude on her initial sympathy and patience. She must have seen all this so many times before; she must know by heart the whole range of irrational reactions to the death of a spouse.
    ‘Is that everything then?’ she asked.
    ‘Just about,’ Daphne confirmed. ‘Only one more form to fill in.’ She produced a second sheet of paper with a column of questions and spacesfor the replies. She asked Monica if everyone in the family knew there was to be a cremation, and whether anyone was likely to object. Then she asked whether Monica had any reason to suspect that the death was due directly or indirectly, to ‘violence, poison, privation or neglect’ – which she quickly diluted by tapping a finger on the green document supplied by the Registrar. ‘We assume everything’s above board, once we’ve got this,’ she reassured. ‘I’ll just put a “No” for that one.’
    Violence, poison, privation or neglect , Monica repeated to herself. The sinister mantra made her mouth go dry. Those, then, were the official ways in which a person could be unlawfully killed. Another neatness in this whole untidy business that was dying. ‘That’s right,’ she muttered. ‘The answer to that is no.’
    She signed the form, and after some repetition of the main details, the last ones on the threshold of the building, she and Pauline departed.
    ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it,’ Pauline said, on an exhalation of relief. ‘Could’ve been a lot worse, anyway. She’s a bit odd, but nice enough.’
    Violence, poison, privation or neglect: the words kept on running through Monica’s head.
     
    Jim Lapsford’s printworks was in a state of suppressed panic. In effect, Jim had run theplace. He organised the schedule; monitored the quality of the output; kept track of paper, ink, toner, film. Three people worked under him, and nominally there was a Chief Executive, owner of this business and several others, who put in occasional whirlwind appearances to which nobody paid much attention. Jim had been the driving force and without him, they floundered.
    ‘Perhaps we should close for the day, as a mark of respect,’ said Jodie, designer and clerical officer. She wrote all the letters; filed orders, invoices, catalogues, plates; and advised customers on the appearance of their business cards or menus. Jodie was sensible and competent. Thin, tall and beaky-nosed, she kept herself firmly detached from her all-male colleagues. Her favourite pursuit was walking, alone on the hills or along the riverbank. Jodie used her legs as her means of transport, which was enough in itself to mark her out as different. Her lofty self-sufficiency only added to people’s wariness of her.
    ‘We can do that on the day of the funeral,’ argued Jack, his eyes glittering behind his heavy spectacles. ‘No sense in closing today, when we’re in the middle of this big calendar job.’
    ‘Right,’ chimed in Ajash, the gnomish typesetter. ‘That’s