Читать книгу The Chapter of St Cloud - Marcus Attwater - Страница 3

The voices of the choir soared into the arched spaces of the cathedral.

Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine,

cum sanctis tuis in æternum,

quia pius es.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine;

et lux perpetua luceat eis;

cum sanctis tuis in æternum,

quia pius es.

DI Collins looked at the singers so he would not have to look at the mourning parents in the front pew, or the tearful schoolfriends sitting across the aisle from him. It was almost too beautiful, this music. It gave voice to things that weren't there yet, perhaps never would be. Acceptance, serenity, strength. The broken couple staring at the coffin knew nothing of all that. All they had was the gaping emptiness where their daughter had been. Collins wondered who had chosen the music, who had organised this sad and dignified ceremony. Certainly neither Mr or Mrs Miller would have been capable of it, he had seen what their grief did to them.

There had been no need for him to come. The girl's death had been only briefly suspicious, and the inquest ruled her overdose an accident without any questions asked. The police were no longer involved. But he had been the one to tell the parents, breaking their world apart in one shocked moment, and later he had been the one to bring them the useless reassurance that she had not died at someone else's hands. Somehow he felt responsible. So he had come to pay his respects, on his own, to listen to the choked-up tributes to a girl he had never known, and now never would.

Death by misadventure. What an odd phrase it was. It must have been an adventure for her, seventeen years old, out with her friends, something new - 'go on, try it, it'll be fun'. But she had been a wisp of a girl, and the pills in combination with the amount of alcohol she had already drunk stopped her young heart. Death by misadventure. She had been no more stupid or reckless than many of her contemporaries, just unlucky. But of course the neutral finding of the inquest did not stop people from apportioning blame. In newspapers, during coffee breaks, on web forums, people dealt in reasons and opinions. It was the drink, the drugs, the parents, the schools, young people today. It was all or none of these things. Sitting in his hard pew listening to the singing, Collins knew it was never so simple. The only way to prevent accidents like these was for parents to lock up their children until age twenty-five, and then they'd probably still break their necks trying to climb out of the window. The hardest thing of all was facing that there was no one to blame, nothing you could do. Naomi Miller died, the world went on without her, and the heavenly assurances of the choir could never change that.