The funeral was sad, depressing, and horrible. Just like a funeral is supposed to be. With white flowers, lilies, roses and other ones that the alive Blenkinsop would've thought was a waste of money, but as a dead man he didn't get a say. Woman crying, men discreetly coughing to hide their sorrow. Colleagues from the army was there, sighed and told anyone who would listen what a great man he had been, that old bean.
The obituary was short. All to short for such a man, but then, one couldn't fit a life on a piece of paper. It read:

Funeral services was held for war hero General Albert Blenkinsop May 24 1971, 02.00 pm.
General Blenkinsop served in both World War I and World War II and died of old age in his home the 19th of May. He was married to Helen Blenkinsop, June 17 1922. He had one daughter and four grandchildren. Pallbearers were: Robert Barton, William Johnson, Joseph Black and John Woodham.

Helen found his letters. And his diaries. And then she knew. She finally knew. And then she cried. The man who was now gone had lived a whole pretending to be someone else. Pretending to love her, to love his life, his clothes, his home, his job, his situation. She wasn't hurt, she was just angry. Angry at him for not telling her. Not that she could have made anything better, but she had thought they could share every secret with each other. She read the letters, and she cried. And she cried.
She had thought that her Bertie loved her. But now she wondered if that was really the case. At least he had stayed, he had not shamed her and the family by running away with Maltravers. She comforted herself with that fact. He had stayed when his letters so passionately spoke of going away, leaving all behind.
If she had known that he loved someone else, what would she have done? If she had known that he was a homosexual, what would she have done? She thought about how happy he had always been in the lieutenants company, and she blamed herself for not seeing that it was love that her husband had felt for the man. But then, she had not known that such love existed.
Susan, who was only 17 at the time started writing a book about her dear grandfather, but it would last ages before she published it, with fake names and a rather vicious authors word.
Either way Helen grieved. She was just 74 and she would live well into her 90's. Not that she knew that then. ”Mom, we should write to his old friends.” Anne said. ”Tell them that he has passed.”
”They would know if they cared.” Helen said.
”All of them doesn't live in London. How would they know?” Anne looked at her mother, and the pile of letters, the letters from before, the ill disguised love-letters.
”If you so desperately want to inform another old man that his... his dear friend has died... then please, be my guest Anne.”
So Anne sat down, and with a careful hand, she wrote a short letter and included the obituary. It didn't sound quite right. And she wasn't sure, that this was the way that she would like to be informed if her husband... or, loved one... dear friend had died. She wasn't sure, why her father had kept that secret, she was devastated, she felt... she felt like she had been fooled. And it would take many years before she cleaned out the house after her mother and found out that her father had not been her father at all.
She sent the letter on the first of June. And it reached Newcastle only a short while after that.
George remembered the address, he slit the letter open. He smiled as he did so. Thinking that maybe his Albert was a grandfather again, or maybe he was just writing to tell George about his day. Or maybe he had left a cypher or... maybe, and now George was just hoping, dreaming, maybe he wanted to see him again.