The painting

A short story by Jane Johnson

- Jane Johnson

Ellie had been steeling herself, but in the end the funeral was beautiful, with the sun streaming through the old chapel’s stained-glass windows.

Half the village came to belt out Eternal Father, Strong To Save, raising their voices on “for those in peril on the sea”. Her father had chosen the hymns years before.

Jack Pascoe had thought he was immortal. The worst thing was the intimacy of sorting through the remnants of his life: the paucity of it broke her heart. Drawers of dead batteries and chewed pen tops, Sellotape and bent nails, an unopened carton of ancient cigarettes. No one had thought he'd outlive Angela, let alone by decades.

Ellie bit back tears as she sorted through his old Guernsey sweaters. They still smelled faintly of the aromas she remembered from childhood: tobacco, diesel and fish, though it was 20 years since he’d set foot on a boat. That way of life was gone now, like most of his generation.

She bagged things for the charity shop; the rest for the dump. The place had been bare enough already — men weren't good at making a house homely after losing their wives — but now it looked unloved.

She couldn't face sleeping in his bed, so she made up the cabin bed where she’d slept as a child. Some of her things were still there: storybooks and drawings, a model treasure ship she and Dad had constructed when she was eight.

Taking it down from the shelf, Ellie remembered her clumsy attempts to paint the decorations around its gunwales. She could still see her errors!

When she turned it over, something inside rattled. Had she broken it?

She levered open the hatch in the deck for the little plastic treasure chest, shook the ship... and out tumbled a gold ring.

Ellie picked it up. On the inside was engraved: Jack and Alicia forever.

But her mother’s name was Angela. She squinted.

Who the hell was Alicia?