Such a shame

Did you know old Miss Willerby died the other week? Her with the funny eye at number 46?

She was only 62. Such a shame.

She collapsed in the top Co-op, waiting at the till with two tins of cat food.

John and I went to her funeral last week, on Tuesday, up at St Patrick’s.

It was a nice day but there weren’t that many there.

The vicar – the one from All Souls – he said a few words.

Turns out she worked at Bletchley during the war, all hush-hush and that. Lost her fiancé on the beach at Normandy, poor love.

She lived somewhere in London before she came up here. Used to teach at the Primary on Leeds Road. She never did marry, but her daughter was at the funeral though: nice lady; lovely long hair and one of them Marks & Spencer’s suede jackets.

They found her birth certificate in the old lady’s back room writing desk and the police tracked her down. Such a shame she never knew her mother.

It took them an eternity to clear the house out. A young bloke from the RSPCA came and took the cats away, and they burned the piles of newspapers on a bonfire out the back.

I know our Peter will miss her. He liked Miss Willerby a lot; she taught him how to do number puzzles and sometimes gave him pop and Nice biscuits. Such a shame about the daughter though.

(First published in The Ronin Express, Volume 10; available on Amazon )