Chapter Text
Jack was having a stressful day. But then again, when was a wedding not stressful? Mind you, this wasn’t his own wedding. Jack’s friend, Dave Shuck, an old friend from the war, was finally getting hitched, and Jack had been invited. The stress had come from all the travel. For a start, the wedding was up north in Bolton, which meant a 3 hour train from London to Manchester and a second half hour train to Bolton, followed by a bus to the B&B. And of course, every step had gone wrong, with them all being late, the bus getting stuck in traffic for an hour, and the train to Bolton not even arriving and leaving him to wait another half hour for another. And of course, the train to Manchester had broken down on the tracks leaving the passengers stranded in the middle of nowhere for seven hours. And after that the staff just took them off the train and told them how to get to the nearest train station 10 miles away. He knew the north was chronically underfunded, especially the public transport, but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad.
Thankfully, Jack had just enough money to pay for the new train ticket and the bus to the station that he had to get. But during the process, the constant fumbling between tickets meant he managed to lose his lamplighter’s route identification card. A small card with his name, route code and brigade phone number so if anything happened to him, he could be identified and a replacement to complete his route could be quickly arranged. Of course, he didn’t need it to work, but his boss was very dead set that every leerie carried it with them. So, he’d have to arrange getting a new one when he got back, and they were so expensive to have printed, for what was essentially a smaller and more cheaply made driver’s licence. And so, he’d been rather hoping that someone might find it and call the number on it to have it posted back to the brigade office.
The wedding itself, however, went off without a hitch, and a good time was had by all. The bride looked amazing, and, in his opinion, Dave was definitely punching above his weight. In fact, Jack was surprised to see how well he scrubbed up, given how Jack had only ever known him as the unshaven pale exhausted wreck of a soldier living in a half flooded muddy ditch. How the time had flown since then. And getting the chance to see him in a more laid back environment was certainly nice. And his family was pretty cool, too. Even if his sister tried more than once to drunkenly flirt with him. Jack was perfectly happy with Jane, thank you very much. All around, however, he still had a good time.
And after a great weekend break, he was finally on the way back home. He just didn’t know what was waiting for him when he got there.
“Good evening, you’re listening to BBC radio. Tonight’s news, a man has been killed after a crash involving a taxi leading the vehicle to catch fire and explode in Bolton town centre. The victim was burnt beyond recognition in the accident, but upon finding an ID card on the body, police have been able to identify the man as 35-year-old London lamplighter, Jack Hackney. A veteran of the great war, Mr Hackney was travelling to visit a former comrade who was getting married. He leaves behind many family and friends and will be sorely missed.”
The phone call came in at 7am to the brigade office. Worthing didn’t even know how to process what he was being told. The police asked for contact details to his family, and it was at that point that Worthing wasn’t really sure what to tell them. Jack wasn’t married and lived alone, so there was nobody at his flat waiting for news. He ended up giving them the contact details for Angus and told them that he would know how to contact his fiancé: Jane. From there, it wasn’t long before the news had spread to just about everyone in Jack’s social circle. And it was safe to say that nobody was taking it well.
“I can’t believe it.” Jane muttered, settled on the couch at her brother’s house. “He was just here.” And indeed, it was true. The lamplighters work week had been altered to allow them time off at the weekend, so Jack had taken the advantage of this to spend some time outside of the city. But not before stopping by after his last run. Jane still remembered the last thing she said to him.
“Have fun! Don’t do anything too crazy.”
She hoped he at least had fun while he was there. It just wasn’t fair. How could something like this happen? The police said that he had just been walking down the street, when the taxi lost control thanks to a mechanical failure, skidded off the road and hit him. The taxi driver got out unscathed, but Jack wasn’t so lucky. It was all just a huge accident, and Jack had simply been unlucky. It wasn’t right. Why him?! He was just supposed to be having a good time.
She couldn’t think what to do. Remembering back to when they got engaged, they planned to be together for the rest of their lives. They were looking to live together, too, and had been trying to figure out the best arrangement for that. But now that wasn’t ever going to happen. He was gone. And she wasn’t even there for him in his final moments.
She gave up crying a while ago. Her heart felt too heavy for that and if she shed another tear, she feared her heart would shatter.
“I don’t get it. How?”
“I guess these things just happen sometimes. Lord only knows why.” Michael had been doing his best to comfort her, but truthfully, he was just as heartbroken as Jane. For what felt like the longest time ago, Jack had just been Mary’s friend who helped save the house, then Jane’s friend, until he became Jane’s partner who also came around and did odd jobs. Michael had never expected to have much more than a casual relationship with Jack. To be acquaintances at best. And yet it wasn’t long before Michael also fell to Jack’s charm, and after discovering they both liked similar books and were both fans of art, it had been so quick and easy to get to a point where Michael could honestly regard him as a true friend.
“You know,” Michael started, “It still feels like he’s still away. Like he’s just running late and will be back later tonight. I can’t believe we won’t see him again.”
“I asked the police if we needed to identify the body,” Jane began, wiping her eyes at the mere mention of the body, like Jack was no longer even a person, “I guess I hoped it would help to see him once more. You know, they say people look like they’re when they’re like that. And you can only tell they’re de…” She paused, taking a moment to find a better word, “you can only tell they’re gone because they’re so cold. I thought I might even bring him a blanket.” She laughed incredulously, a smile briefly gracing her face at the absurd thought, only to fall once more as the next thought came to mind. “But they told me there’d be no point. That we wouldn’t even be able to recognise him.”
At that, her façade finally crumbled, and once again, she burst into tears, falling into Michael’s arms as soon as he had them around her. And now she’d started, she simply couldn’t stop herself, and the words simply tumbled past her lips before she could even process what she was actually saying.
“Oh Michael, it’s so awful. It must have been so painful! And he must have so scared and hurt in his last moments. He was all alone!”
“Jane, remember what the police said. It would’ve been quick. He’d have been gone before he noticed anything wrong.” It felt so wrong even saying it, but according to the police, that was the conclusion the doctors had come too. Poor Jack would have been killed on impact and would have never had to experience the horror of being so badly burnt while conscious.
“He’s at peace now, wherever he is.”
“Why couldn’t he be at peace with us?”
But what Jane didn’t know, was that he was. Unbeknownst to the chaos happening among his friends, Jack had returned home from Bolton, arriving home on Sunday night, in a trip that was far less eventful than it had been to get there in the first place. And while he wasn’t actually with them, he was at peace and he was near them, nearer than he had been in Bolton, and that was close enough.
In fact, Jack was having a lovely evening. He’d decided it was far too late to cook his own dinner, and so instead, decided to pick up a chippy for tea. By some unknown miracle, he managed to miss every newsagents in London, and by extension, missed seeing his own face on the front page and a headline about his apparent death. In fact, he was so oblivious, that when Dave the chippy man turned pale as a sheet and wide eyed at the mere sight of him, gasping that he didn’t think he’d see him again, Jack had merely shrugged and assumed he thought he’d be coming back at a later date, or had moved away entirely. It was just silly old Dave, being his usual old doddering self. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Afterall, Dave was known for coming out with all sorts of strange stuff and wording himself in a particularly odd manner.
Jack simply returned home and tucked into his tea, making himself comfortable in the tatty old wicker rocking chair in his living room and listening to the crackly broken radio he’d gotten cheap in a charity shop.
Had he known of the turmoil Jane, the Banks, and the leeries were going through, he would have been compelled to race all over London to assure everyone that he was, in fact, completely fine. But of course, he didn’t know. So, he had no idea about how the morgue called Jane and told her to arrange the funeral quick if she wanted to have the body actually buried with the coffin, as it was rapidly deteriorating thanks to the damage. And so, while most funerals happened quick after death (maybe two or three weeks), Jack’s funeral was already arranged that night for the end of the week, on Friday. And he wasn’t even invited.
“I’m sure everything will be alright, Jane.” Michael assured. Jane had calmed down somewhat since talking to Michael. And organising the funeral seemed to have helped a great deal. She was in her element and getting everything organised quickly was doing wonders for the stress.
“We’ll need to try contact Bert. I don’t know how we’re even going to tell him. And Mary will probably want to be there, too. How do you even contact someone like her?”
“I guess we could try a balloon,” Michael mused, “or perhaps a letter in the chimney? But I assume if she wants to be there, she’ll probably just show up whether we specifically invite her or not.” Jane smiled at that, a small laugh forcing its way from her lungs.
“You’re right, that does sound like her.”
“Exactly, so don’t go worrying about all that sort of thing. In fact, I think we’re done with organisation for tonight. You look exhausted. I think you should sleep, and we can sort everything else out tomorrow.” Jane sighed, looking to Michael somewhat frustrated that he was putting a stop to her work. But despite this, she knew he was right. Crying really tires you out, so she wasn’t in much of a good position to be pulling an all-nighter to organise a funeral. If she tried, chances are she’d end up regretting some of her decisions.
She was happy to let Michael send her up to the guest room, and it was only then that she realised how alone she felt. Sure, she and Jack hadn’t officially moved in together yet, but they spent so much time at each other’s flats that they may as well have been. They shared a bed so many times, that now, lying in a bed on her own just felt so wrong. The bed felt like it was way too big and empty.
She didn’t want to get used to this feeling.