The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)

by Richard Osman

She spent her next few years too sad to live but too scared to die, reeling through a haze of grief and madness,

‘May you be granted health and wealth and wisdom, and may you see your beauty reflected in those around you,’

When the man you love with every fibre starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.

We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.’

Everyone who dies is alive. We call people “dead” because we need a word for it, but “dead” just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.’

‘Grief doesn’t need an answer, any more than love does,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It isn’t a question.’

‘I don’t know why we’re on this earth,’ says Stephen. ‘Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you. The answer will be in there somewhere, I’m sure. I’m sure.

I forget I love you sometimes, did you know that?’ ‘Of course,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I am glad I remember now,’ says Stephen. ‘And I’m glad that I shall never forget again.’

Days of death are days when we weigh our relationship with love in our bare hands. Days when we remember what has gone, and fear what is to come. The joy love brings, and the price we pay. When we give thanks but also pray for mercy.

Elizabeth almost burst into laughter, that life was daring to continue. Didn’t they know? Hadn’t they heard? Everything has changed, everything. And yet nothing has changed. Nothing. The day carries on as it would.

There comes a point when you look at your photograph albums more often than you watch the news. When you opt out of time, and let it carry on doing its thing while you get on with yours. You simply stop dancing to the beat of the drum.

We are all tiny insignificant blinks in history, in a world that couldn’t care a hoot if we live or die.

We complain about life so endlessly and so bitterly, and yet we cling to it so dearly? Surely that makes no sense?