Too Close For Comfort (7 page)

It was hard to look away from him. It wasn’t that I was attracted to him; it was that his attention was oddly transfixing.

‘I am, I’m Mia. Lovely to meet you.’

‘It’s wonderful you’re here,’ he said, so sincerely that it was almost as if it was his wife that was being buried. He stepped backwards, but didn’t yet look away.
‘Thank you for coming. And nice to see you too, Ged.’

I looked after his retreating back, not quite sure what to make of him.

‘Thank God they released the body,’ said Ged, his voice low.

‘Was it ever really in doubt?’ I asked.

‘They had to do a postmortem. They haven’t even got a death certificate yet.’

I gulped in a mouthful of warm air. ‘Why not?’

‘They can’t give a cause of death.’

‘She killed herself,’ I said, too sharply. Why was I so desperate for the facts to stay in straight lines? ‘She died because she fell.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ged, ‘but with suicides they don’t just say it’s a suicide. There’s still got to be an inquest. They just give you some scrappy thing – an
interim death certificate – so you can . . .’ He looked over at Lysette. She was holding on to Helena, Kimberley hovering close by, her glossy blonde hair pinned into an
elaborate up do. She’d obviously found the strength to get herself to the hairdresser. ‘Do what you have to do.’

‘It’s just a formality though?’

‘Yeah, sure, it’s quite normal . . .’ Ged winced at his choice of word. ‘With suicides it’s often an open verdict, if they feel like they don’t
know exactly what happened. It’s not “beyond reasonable doubt”. I’ve been reading up. Didn’t think the Mrs was in need of regular updates.’ We looked back over
to her, and, almost as if she could feel our gaze, she broke away from the group. She half ran towards Ged, mascara painting her raw cheeks.

‘Come on,’ she said, urgent, grabbing hold of each of our hands, and pulling us towards the dark mouth of the church door.

Just for a second, my feet refused to comply. I looked behind me at the open church gates, my heart lurching. Tragedy came through the door every day in my job, but it wasn’t like
this.

*

The church was thronged with mourners, airless and muggy. The coffin was already there at the front like a hostess waiting for her guests. When silence eventually fell it was
more like a scream. Lysette’s gang were in a pew a few rows from the front and we squeezed in next to them. I perched on the end, which gave me a perfect vantage point of the front row.
Joshua was in the middle, his arm firmly encircling a small boy. Max. I’d seen him outside, a doll – Woody from
Toy Story
– clutched in his hand, a big
pair of glasses dominating his small, freckled face. When Joshua turned to whisper something in his son’s ear, I saw his aquiline face in profile. It was lined and angular, moulded by grief
into an equation all of its own. When he bowed his head down towards Max’s ear, his movement was slow and measured, like he had his feelings under control, but it was taking every scrap of
his energy. Max looked up at him, his face full of trust that was absolute and broken all at once. Tears rolled down my cheeks unbidden, and I searched my pockets for the wad of loo paper I’d
hastily snatched from the downstairs bathroom when we left.

The vicar – a tall, spindly man with greying curls – stepped up to the pulpit. His opening words felt like thin gruel, inadequate for what it was we’d come to mourn –
when he directed us to the order of service for the first hymn I was glad he’d been put out of his misery. But as the singing started – quiet at first and then swelling and rising to
engulf the space – I found myself almost missing the dull monotony of his voice. This was only the beginning. It was like the first juddering shakes of a roller-coaster car, the whole
tumultuous ride still to come. People were openly sobbing all around me, but the jagged, animal cries from a few rows behind were impossible to ignore. My head swivelled round before I could stop
myself.

It took a few seconds to recognise him. His face was torn apart, savage and otherworldly, a million miles from the meek-looking man who had shepherded Saffron towards her classroom the other
day. I quickly turned back, but the image of his ravaged expression felt like it was stamped on my retinas. I hoped there was someone there to hold his hand but I couldn’t allow myself to
keep looking back at him like a curtain-twitching old lady.

Joshua was crossing to the pulpit now. Kimberley slid her cat-like eyes towards Helena, quick and sly, the message one that I couldn’t decode. But then . . . I saw him
before he saw me, stranded as I was on the end of the pew with a perfect view of the aisle. My heart pounded in my chest, my whole body straining for an escape route. How could Lysette have failed
to share this vital piece of information? I looked at her, her hand in Ged’s, clenching and unclenching, her eyes trained downwards on the order of service. The last thing I wanted was to be
thrown together with the man – he was technically a man now, but to me Jim would always be a boy – who had broken my heart, broken my spirit, when I was too young to protect myself from
him.

He’d arrived now: I stared at him, a frozen smile hitched across my face, and he grinned back at me like it had been a week, not a couple of decades. His green eyes sparkled the way they
always had, only now they had lines etched into the olivy skin that surrounded them, pads of flesh beneath. I continued with my spiky inventory: his dark hair was greying at the temples, his
well-turned features hollowed out by age. He was short and wiry when we were teenagers, but now he had a cushion of flesh around his midriff. For all of that, he was still handsome: even now, I
knew him well enough to know that he enjoyed that fact. His eyes darted back to me as he reached across to kiss Lysette.

‘Hello, sis, sorry I’m late,’ he whispered. ‘Hi, Mia.’

‘Hi.’

Was he evaluating me the way I was evaluating him? Of course he was. I tried not to care about the verdict.

‘Thanks for coming,’ gulped Lysette.

Joshua had arrived at the pulpit. He stood there for a few seconds in silence, his gaze trained on the front row where Max was wedged between two older children who I assumed were his
half-siblings, his eyes glued to his dad. An auburn-haired woman – Lisa, I felt sure – was sitting directly behind them, her hands resting on the dark wood of their pew, proprietary.
Joshua slowly withdrew some pages from the inside pocket of his immaculate charcoal suit.

‘It’s impossible to put into words what me and my family are feeling right now, so I’m not going to even attempt it. Instead I’m going to talk about the Sarah we all knew
– the woman who lit up our lives and will be utterly impossible to forget.’

My eyes unconsciously moved towards the redhead. It seemed almost comical, the idea you’d be left for a younger model and then have to endure sitting through your ex’s love-soaked
eulogy. Another guttural sob wrenched itself out of Mr Grieve. I forced myself to focus, reaching for Lysette’s hand as Joshua continued. It was as much for comfort as it was to comfort her
– I was grateful for her hard squeeze back. She was meant to be giving a reading and I could sense the dread building up inside her. There wasn’t really enough room on the pew now Jim
had arrived, and I was uncomfortably aware of his thigh resting against mine. I wriggled away, but there was nowhere much to wriggle to.

‘It’s that fact that gives me a scrap of comfort. The idea that Sarah will never be forgotten. Her spark, her beauty, her . . .’ He looked down at the
typewritten pages that lay on the lectern. ‘Life force. None of those things can be erased from our memories, and that means she’ll always be part of us. She was a wonderful mother to
Max . . .’

As his words continued, my eyes strayed back to the front rows. There was a man squeezed close to the auburn-haired woman, I now realised: his hand intermittently stroked her hand, which still
lay on the pew where her children sat with Max. Max turned his body round as I watched, kneeling on the wooden seat to show her his Woody doll. She smiled at him kindly, nodded towards his dad. I
squeezed Lysette’s hand again, and she caught my eye, her fear naked and palpable.

‘You can do this,’ I whispered.

She gave me a tight smile, then looked back towards the still sobbing teacher. I thought she’d smile at him too, send him a crumb of comfort even if it went unseen, but instead her face
stayed still. As she turned back, I saw Kimberley’s mouth pucker into a barely detectable moue.

‘Sarah made time for everyone, but she always fought hardest for the underdog,’ said Joshua, shuffling the pages. Typewritten, neatly stacked: it was probably the only way he could
make it through, but there was something about it that felt chilly. Heathcliff would’ve scrawled Cathy’s eulogy in his own blood, thought the geeky English student inside of me. What
would Patrick say, if it was him up there? Was everyone asking the same? Was Kimberley secretly watching Nigel, hoping that if she died, his politician’s polish would get swept away by a
torrent of grief? I snuck a glance at her. Her face was moulded into a mask of appropriate sadness.

‘Even when Max was tiny, she insisted on volunteering at the homeless centre in Cambridge. She joked it was so she’d come home smelling of fags and booze and I wouldn’t know
what she’d been up to, but it was really because she never wanted to forget how much we had. There but for the grace of God, is what she’d say.’ He tried to smile, but it was more
a twist of pain. Did he believe in God, I wondered, and if he did, did he feel like God had punched him in the face? I took comfort in my own half-belief in a shadowy force that was too nebulous to
make any real commitment to – I was like an ambivalent dater on Tinder, swiping right but never sending a message. Sometimes I envied Patrick his rock-solid Catholicism, however much I mocked
him for it when I was feeling mean.

Joshua was finishing now, directing us to the next hymn. I sensed how much Lysette wanted it to stretch out for ever, but it didn’t. She froze for a second as she made her way out of the
pew, and I gave her a tiny touch, something between a stroke and a push. Once she was walking down the aisle her perilously high heels tapped out a confident tattoo. She arrived at the lectern
looking more beautiful than I’d ever seen her, lit from within by purpose. She smoothed out the paper she was holding, looked down at it and then looked straight out at the packed church.

‘I’ve got a poem here . . .’ she said, ‘and it’s about grief and loss and all the things we’re all feeling.’ She looked at Joshua.
‘I’m sorry, can I just junk the script? Is that OK?’

Her words had a sharpness to them, but he must’ve nodded because she turned straight back to face us.

‘There are so many things I want to say about Sarah, but we’d be here until Christmas if I said them all. I don’t know if you know this about her, but she loved Fleetwood Mac.
She’d belt them out in the car, run too many red lights. I think a little bit of her wanted to be Stevie Nicks in 1977.’

When we laughed, it was like a cold compress on a fevered brow; I could sense Lysette gaining confidence, safe in the knowledge that she was holding us in the palm of her hand. Kimberley had
leaned in, eyes trained on her like a sniper, whilst Helena’s overflowed with tears.

‘There’s a song of theirs she sings, not one of the million dollar anthems, it’s called “Landslide”, and it’s either the most beautiful song you’ve ever
heard or the saddest. She says she’s afraid of changing, she’s built her life around this “you” that she’s singing it for. It’s been going round and round my
head since Sarah died.’ Her voice dropped, thick with emotion. ‘I think it’s because I’d built my life around her, without even realising it. That’s what she was like
– she got under your skin in this incredible way without even trying. You couldn’t be half-hearted about her. I can’t imagine how you, her family, feel, but please know
we’re right there with you. We’ll never forget her either. We couldn’t – not even if we wanted to.’ Lysette paused a moment. ‘I’m scared of changing
without her, leaving her behind, but like you said, Joshua, she’ll always be a part of us.’ She looked to the coffin, tears overwhelming her now, poise collapsing. ‘We’ll
never leave you behind. We won’t . . .’

Ged was out of his seat now, meeting her halfway down the aisle, gently leading her back as she collapsed into him, convulsing with sobs. The rest of the funeral passed in a blur, my hand
covering Lysette’s hot one, her tears never subsiding.

Like I said, she was doing the job of two.

It was the kind of house I’d have had to marry an oligarch to live in if I’d somehow managed to transport it back to London with me. It had Tudor beams, a huge
garden, a kitchen so cavernous you could fit mine and Patrick’s whole flat inside and have space left over. Even so, it was packed to the rafters, the noise and hubbub a contrast to the
pregnant hush of the church. It felt oddly celebratory, a collective exhalation of breath that had been held in too tightly all day. A few uniformed waiting staff slipped between tight bodies with
plates of sandwiches and bottles of wine, whilst Joshua moved between people with Max in tow, his Woody doll still clutched in his small hand.

As soon as we squeezed our way into the middle of the living room, Lysette was grabbed by a group of people I didn’t know and didn’t feel ready to meet. I looked around. The room was
blandly chic – squishy oatmeal sofas, expensively off-white walls that whispered Farrow & Ball. Sarah jolted her way into my mind – the way she’d hugged me tightly like a
long-lost friend even though it was the first time we’d met, the mingled whiff of fags and Orbit gum. I would never have imagined that she’d stepped out of this hushed good taste. I
looked over at Lysette, already deep in conversation. Her beautiful words about Sarah had made her into a strange kind of star, and a petty bit of me didn’t want to be the almost best friend
who no one had even known existed until now. Helena waved at me from across the room, but I didn’t go over there either, just waved back and went in search of a bathroom for a pee I only half
needed. Jim had driven separately, but I knew he’d arrive soon: I needed a couple of minutes to practise being magnificent and imperious.