Who wants to live forever

 They say the worst thing for a parent to do is bury their children.  I think they meant while they were still children, not when they are 82 and died of old age in a care home, and yet here I am.  The warm oak interior of the crematorium is supposed to make you feel relaxed, it doesn't.  As I looked around at the sea of faces who were here to see Peter off, I hardly recognised anyone.  Emma and Vicky were there, obviously, looking suitably upset at losing their father.  If they only knew their grandfather was stood at the back of the room, I’m not sure what they would think.

We filed out passed the curtains where Peters body lay awaiting the inevitable to the little garden at the back, passed an array of flowers and wreaths from people I had no way of knowing.  Peter had been a popular chap.  It made me smile.

‘Did you know him well?’  a voice behind me broke through my thoughts.  I turned to see an elderly man with a walking stick.  His back bent over so he looked like he was forever searching for a lost penny.  His eyes were vaguely familiar.

‘Oh, well not really.  I worked at the care home.  Seemed to be a nice old chap though, I felt I should come along.’

‘Well, that was nice of you.  I went to school with him.  I think I’m the only one left now’ he had a far off look in his eyes, he was clearly not with us, but miles away in a different time.  Good thing really because as soon as he said that I recognised him.  Although the last time I saw him he was in his early 20s.  I remember picking him and Peter up from the airport after one of those stag dos abroad. What was his name?  David? Derek? Daniel, yes Daniel that’s it.  I shuffled along hoping he wouldn't recognise me.  

At the head of the line Emma, and Vicky were greeting everyone with tears in their eyes, shaking hands and hugging random strangers.  I stretched out my hand and Emma shook it.  Please don't ask where I’m from, please don't ask where I’m from.

‘Good of you to come.’  Emma said

‘It was a lovely service; he would have approved.’  I mumbled and moved on to Vicky who seemed a lot more upset than her sister.  

‘Thanks for coming.  Did you know my Dad well?’

‘Not really, but I couldn't not come along and pay my respects, he was a lovely man.’

‘He really was, we’ll both miss him.’  She looked into my eyes then and I thought for a horrible moment she was going to ask how I knew him.  How would I explain myself to granddaughters I should never have met?

Moving away with a smile I blended into the ocean of black suits and sombre attire and made my way to the garden of remembrance. I needed a little time on my own, it had been a difficult day, and no one would understand entirely why it was so difficult.  The rose trees and shrubs all neatly lined up in rows looked like soldiers guarding the dead, or at least their ashes, interspersed with benches for the grieving to sit and ponder.  I picked a bench far away from the crematorium for my pondering, the last thing I needed was a stray mourner asking awkward questions.  The large chimney at the rear of the building gave it a factory look, although the smoke was a little different.  It took me back.  Sixty years back.  To my own funeral. Well not entirely.

It had been one of the worst days of my life, seeing Peter and Isabel so upset.  I almost lost it that day and confided in them.  Almost gave everything away, but how could I?  Who would really understand?  After all this time I’m not even sure I understand myself.  

It all started in amongst the pandemic.  The first vaccine hadn’t really worked so everyone, and his wife was trying to find a new solution.  Something that would actually work.  The problem was the virus was mutating faster than we could change the vaccine. But we had to try.  James and I spent hours in the lab working on one serum after another.  Ironically, it was our nineteenth version that worked, or at least sort of worked.  We tried it on a mouse first, and after injecting it with the virus it lived.  And boy did it live.  It’s currently in my apartment in a cage. The little fella is my only real companion.  At first, we celebrated.  James wanted to take it to the university, show them what we had achieved.  But I needed to be sure, so I tested it on myself.  Then I gave myself the virus.  I was fine.  No ill effects.  The virus couldn’t get a hold on my system before my own cells destroyed it.  If only I hadn’t waited.  I would have been rich by now.  Dead, obviously, but rich.  Instead by the time we were ready to present our findings, a lab in Geneva had come up with a vaccine that mutated as quick as the virus.  It wasn’t the solution we had discovered, but it worked.  They had the funding already in place.  Production went ahead and everyone was saved. Hurrah!  Well not everyone.

James and I continued our research, trying to establish exactly what our serum was doing, how it was working.  It wasn’t until a year later that I realised quite what was going on.  I’d been out for a jog and on my way back, tripped and took a tumble.  I cut my knee and with a trickle of blood running down my leg, limped back to the lab in search of a dressing. I found some cotton wool, and carefully cleaned the wound of the dried blood and dirt from the road when it hit me.  There was no wound.  I had definitely cut myself, the blood was testament to that, but in the time, it took to limp home, the wound had healed.  My cells had totally regenerated and left no trace.  Even the pain had gone. I shouted for James.  I was so excited.  We had done it.  I knew there was a way to tap into our cells ability to regenerate, we had done just that.  

We spend the next few days meticulously recreating the serum ready to test it on James.  We needed to be sure it wasn’t just a fluke.  After James injected himself, he was keen to get a knife and try to cut himself, but I held him off.  In the end we agreed a small cut to his finger would work, just to see what would happen.  I made the incision, and the blood began to flow.  Then nothing.  I mopped up his bloody hand and the wound was still there.  I could see the pain in his face not just from the wound. Maybe it took more time to work?  Afterall it was almost a year before I noticed the regeneration of my own cells.  So, we waited.  We tested and researched.  Over the next ten years we worked on the serum.  Cutting James, mopping up the blood and inevitably dressing the wound that didn’t heal any quicker than anyone else.  

I suppose I should have noticed it sooner.  But I was engrossed in the research.  On the tenth anniversary of our breakthrough, I noticed James looking a little tired.  The wrinkles in his face seemed deeper somehow.  His hair a little greyer.  When I looked at my own face in the mirror, I hadn’t aged at all.  In ten years, I looked exactly the same.

‘The trees look a bit regimented here, don’t you think? Like a little army protecting the dead.’  a voice brought me back to the present.  I turned and looked into the eyes of my youngest grandchild.  Vicky smiled.  ‘I know you, don’t I?  I mean not just from the funeral.  I’ve met you before.’

‘I really don’t think you have.’ I said.  She sat down beside me.

‘How did you know Dad?’

I knew it was coming, I shouldn’t have lingered.  In all the cemeteries in all the world she had to walk into mine.  Well not mine, my grave was miles away.  Except it wasn’t, obviously.  ‘I worked at the care home.’  

‘Oh, well that’s why I recognise you then I suppose.  Although you look a lot like him.  When he was younger obviously.’

‘Obviously.’  I tried a smile.  ‘Shouldn’t you be getting along to the wake?  Wont your sister miss you?’

‘She wouldn’t notice if I were there or not.  She’ll be lapping up the attention from all Dads cronies.  She’s hoping to follow in his footsteps.  He worked for the government; he was quite high up.’

My heart filled with pride at that.  My boy was a leading figure in a government agency.  ‘I know.’ I said, and immediately regretted it.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I read it in his file.’  I was out of my depth now.

‘Do they keep files?  I thought you were a carer?  Surely they don’t just let anyone access government files?’

‘Your Dad was important, couldn’t let just anyone care for him.  He knew secrets and things.’  what was I doing, I was floundering?

‘You work for the government don’t you, you’re one of those spooks or whatever.’

‘I couldn’t possibly say’ that’s it Stephen, play the spooks card.  I winked at her.  She laughed.  I nearly came clean and told her right then.  Sitting there in amongst the ashes of the dearly departed, I nearly blurted it out.  Seeing her laugh through her tears, I wanted to hug her, to bring her close to me and tell her that I was her grandfather and I wanted to be there for her now her father was gone.  Even to me that sounds weird, even after all this time.

‘Are you sure we aren’t related?  You look so much like my Dad.  You aren’t a secret cousin I don’t know about, are you?’

It was my turn to laugh.  ‘Actually, I’m your granddad.’  Hearing those words set my heart fluttering, I thought I was going to faint.

‘Ha, funny.  I didn’t know my granddad.  He supposedly died in a fire before I was born.  Mum was pregnant with Emma.  Dad took it hard I think.’  My heart sank.  I wish I hadn’t hurt him all those years ago, but what could I do? 

The fire had been an accident.  James was working on something in the lab, and I’d nipped out for coffee of all things.  I think I just needed a break, some time to clear my head but once James got his teeth into something he was like a dog with a bone, he wouldn’t leave it alone.  Maybe if I had stayed it wouldn’t have happened, but then who knows where I’d be now.  I walked back into the lab with two coffees and laid them on the bench.  James was poking around some contraption he had cobbled together.  His last words before the boom were ‘Hmm, that doesn’t seem right.’  The blast threw me backwards and the heat singed my eyebrows, but poor James caught it right in the face.  I knew he was a goner as soon as I reached his body.  There was hardly anything left of his face.  Even now, after all this time I can still see him when I close my eyes.  The flames licked around the lab, even the air felt like fire.  In that split second, I saw an opportunity opening up.  The movies would have you believe that people make rational decisions all the time, it’s what sets us aside from the animal kingdom.  But it’s not true.  In that second, I made a decision that would change my life.

Seeing James’ ravaged and deformed body I had an idea.  I slipped his wallet from his pocket and replaced it with my own.  Taking off my signet ring I pushed it down on James’ finger, then I fled.  No one else knew James was there, everyone would assume I was working alone, and something had gone wrong.  James was single and had no siblings.  Since his parents died, he didn’t really have anyone else.  His work was his life.  He would often spend weeks away from home on some project or other then just turn up out of the blue.  I remember once he was gone for a year.  No one even missed him.  Poor James.  I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do.  Stephen Wilson tragically lost his life that day in a fire at his lab, and James Davis disappeared into the night.

‘Must have been tough for Peter to lose his Dad so young.’

‘Yes, although I don’t think they were close.  He and my grandmother split up when Dad was still at school, I think.  Dad used to say granddad only really cared about his work.’  That wasn’t true.  The toughest part of leaving Jennifer was losing touch with Peter.  But he was right about one thing, I was wrapped up in the work.  I’ve tried to make up for it over the years by staying close to Peter, watching over him.  I stood outside the church when Emma got married and saw the pride in his face.  I wished I had been able to be there with them, but I couldn’t risk being recognised.  If I had come clean and just told someone what I had discovered maybe I could have been a bigger part of all their lives.  But I couldn’t reproduce the serum.  I would have spent my life in a lab being tested and experimented on.  I didn’t want that. I was too selfish.  

‘I noticed you were here alone; don’t you have a husband?’  God, I sound so old, who asks anyone if they have a husband these days?

‘No, I’m single and proud of it’ Vicky said. ‘Emma and Tony put me off marriage, I think.  They just argued all the time.  Best day of my life when he ran off with the air hostess.  How about you?  Are you married?’

‘My wife died, I’m a widower now.’  

‘Oh, I am sorry, that must have been hard.’  Vicky looked at me with real concern in her eyes.

‘It was a long time ago; we weren’t together at the time anyway.’  That was stupid, I was down a rabbit hole now and not sure how to get out.  Vicky looked at me oddly.  Of course, I look about 52, I should have just said I was single.  

‘How did she die?  Sorry I shouldn’t ask, that was rude of me.’

‘No, its fine, she had a heart attack.’  Should have said car crash or something, this isn’t going well.

‘That’s terrible, how old was she?’  Vicky said.

Eighty-five, she was eighty-five it was twenty years ago. ‘Oh, she was thirty something.’

‘Oh my God, in her thirties!  I can’t imagine how tough that must have been.  Had she been ill before? Was it just out of the blue?’

Stop it, don’t ask anymore, I’m stuck in a rabbit hole and I can’t get out, stupid.  I kept quiet.  Silence is the liar’s best friend.  Then something in the back of my mind triggered a light bulb.

‘You said your Granddad supposedly died in a fire, was there some doubt?’  This could be bad.

‘Dad never believed it.  But he said his Dad obviously knew what he was doing.’

‘What made him so uncertain?’

‘Granddads signet ring was on the wrong hand apparently.  Dad thought he had succeeded in doing something he was working on.  He always said Grandads still out there somewhere.  How can he be?  He’d be over a hundred by now.’

A hundred and twenty actually.  I felt sick.  My heart was racing.  Peter knew.  Who else knew?  Could I come clean?  How could I make such a stupid error?  The wrong hand?  

‘Anyway, it was lovely chatting to you, but I really should be going.  Will you come to the house?  I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.’  Vicky stood up and offered her hand.

Stephen, its Stephen, I’m your Granddad.  I took her hand and shook it.  ‘It’s James, and no I won’t come back, I should probably get back to work.’

‘Well, if you’re sure, but if you want to talk give me a call.’  Vicky handed me a card.  She smiled oddly as she walked away.  Did she know? I wasn’t sure if I could keep this up anymore.  Maybe I could just give her a call and explain everything.  Maybe.