Grief Tier

Shelley Mountford is the best saver on the floor.Six years on the Continuity Team at a contact centre in Stoke-on-Trent. A save rate of sixty-one per cent. A voice that could talk a widow out of cancelling her husband.Because that is the job. Keepsake builds companions from the messages and voice notes of the dead, and sells them by the month. When the payments stop, the dead are placed in escrow. Shelley rings the people who have stopped paying, asks them what they and their loved one talk about, and finds them a plan.Then her own mother's name comes up on the list.Her brother Dean has been dead for three years, and for most of them he has rung their mother every Sunday. Now he is resting, a little crescent moon on the screen, with ninety days to go before he is released for good.There is one person in Stoke who knows exactly how to save him. It is going to cost her.A funny, tender, devastating story about grief, money, work, and the words we use when we can't find our own.