‘Yes, he was,’ I agreed.
‘I always looked forward to his visits. I’m going to miss him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said absurdly.
‘As a matter of fact, he was going to visit me the day after he died. That was how I heard – when he failed to arrive I rang his office to ask where he was. It was such a shock.’ She gave me a piercing glance. ‘I’ll be eighty-eight in two months’ time. It doesn’t seem right, does it? People dying out of their turn.’
I couldn’t speak and she lifted a hand like a claw and placed it lightly over mine. ‘You have my sympathy, my dear,’ she said.
For the main part, however, it was a funeral party where nobody seemed able to do the sort of things that funeral parties are for. They couldn’t offer their condolences without seeming embarrassed or creepy; they couldn’t engage in uncomplicated, emotional reminiscences about the deceased. They couldn’t do anything else either. Some picked at the food, others gulped the wine (the woman who had approached me outside the crematorium had much more than was good for her, whether in remorse or some perverse kind of revenge). And gradually they just peeled away.
In the end, Gwen, Mary and I were left with a handful of Greg’s relatives I didn’t know; they had ordered a taxi that kept not arriving. They sat on the sofa with empty glasses, refusing top-ups and more food because it would spoil their dinner. They phoned the cab company repeatedly while we cleared and wiped and finally vacuumed around them. In the end they left, muttering something about finding a taxi in the street or catching a tube.
Gwen and Mary stayed on and I opened some more wine and told them about the woman outside the crematorium and what she had said, and Mary said, ‘You don’t have to fight it, you know.’ I asked her what she meant by that and she said I had nothing to feel bad about. Men were bastards. My friends loved me and would support me. I would get through this. I can’t remember making much of a reply. Instead I just poured myself glass after glass of wine and drank it as if I was insatiably thirsty. They asked if I wanted them to stay and I said I wanted them not to stay, so they left and I think I drank one more glass of wine, a big one, though, filled almost to the lip, so that I had to hold it with both hands.
When I was ten my grandfather had died. I didn’t want to go to the funeral but my mother said funerals were where we went to say goodbye to people who had died. We thought about them and we cried for them and we said goodbye to them and then we went back to our lives.
I lay on my bed fully clothed and couldn’t decide whether the room was rotating around me or whether my bed was rotating inside the room or whether in deep, philosophical terms it made a difference. But as I lay there, drunker than at any time since my first year at university, I knew that on that day I hadn’t cried for Greg, and, above all, I hadn’t said goodbye to him.
Chapter Nine
In the middle of the night I suddenly sat up in bed, straining my eyes in the darkness. I didn’t know what time it was. I had turned off the digital alarm clock because, over the past weeks, I had come to dread waking in the small hours and gazing at the time clicking past. I only knew that it was dark and that something had roused me. A thought, which must have wormed its way into my dreams. A memory.
Like most couples, I’m sure, Greg and I used to have conversations about which of our friends were unfaithful. After all, if one in three partners cheats on the other, or something like that, we figured we must be surrounded by people who were betraying each other. Now I remembered a conversation so vividly it was like being there again, and there we were in bed together, warm under the duvet and facing each other in the grainy half-light, his hand on my hip and my foot resting against his calf.
‘My parents?’ he was saying, and I giggled: ‘No way!’
‘Your parents?’
‘Please!’
‘Who, then?’
‘Fergus and Jemma?’ I suggested.
‘Impossible. They’ve only been together for a couple of years and he’s not that kind of guy.’
‘What kind of guy is that? And, anyway, it doesn’t need to be him, it could be her.’
‘She’s too moral. And too pregnant. What about Mary and Eric?’
‘She would have told me,’ I said firmly.
‘Sure? What about if it was him?’
‘She would definitely have told me that too. Even if she didn’t, I’d know.’
‘How?’
‘I just would. She’s a very bad liar. Her neck goes blotchy.’
‘What about me – would you be able to tell with me?’
‘Yes – so watch it.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I just would.’
‘Trusting fool.’
We smiled at each other, sure of our happiness.
I got out of bed, pushed my feet into slippers, went downstairs and into the kitchen, turning on the overhead light and blinking in the sudden dazzle. I saw from the wall clock that it was nearly three o’clock. It was windy outside and when I pressed my face to the window, trying to make out the shape of the roofs and chimneys, I imagined all those people out there, lying safely in bed with each other, warm and submerged in their dreams. I could still hear Greg’s voice and see his smile, and the contrast between the intense comfort of that memory and this cold, empty darkness was like a blow to the stomach, making my eyes water. No one tells you how physical unhappiness can be, how it hurts in your sinuses and throat, glands, muscles and bones.
I made myself a mug of hot chocolate and drank it slowly. Greg’s face faded. I knew he wasn’t here, wasn’t anywhere. His ashes were in a small square box with a rubber band around it. But I heard his teasing voice. Trusting fool, he called me.
‘Fergus.’
‘Ellie?’ His eyes widened with surprise. He was still in his dressing-gown, unshaven and puffy with sleep. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Did I wake you?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Can I come in?’
He stood back, pulling his dressing-gown more tightly around him, and I walked past him into the kitchen, where the four of us had sat so many times, eating takeaways, playing cards, drinking almost until it got light. The supper things were still on the table: two stacked plates, an empty serving bowl, a half-drunk bottle of red wine. Fergus started to collect them up, dropping the forks on the tiled floor with a clatter.
‘I know it’s a bit early.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Coffee? Tea? Breakfast? Devilled kidneys? That last one was a joke. Jemma will be in bed for ages. She’s on maternity leave now.’ As he said this, I saw anxiety cross his face: Jemma was on maternity leave and I was childless, barren, shamed and alone.
‘Coffee, please. Maybe some toast.’
‘Marmalade, honey, jam?’
‘Whatever. Honey.’
‘If we’ve got any. No. No honey. Or jam, actually.’
‘Marmalade’s fine.’
‘The funeral seemed to go off all right,’ he said cautiously, as he filled the kettle and slid a slice of bread into the toaster.
‘The funeral was crap.’
He smiled ruefully at me.
‘No one knew what to say to me.’
‘It’s over, at least.’
‘Not really.’
He looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’ve decided to believe him.’
The kettle started to boil, sending puffs of steam into the air. Very methodically, he measured spoonfuls of coffee into the pot, then poured in the water. Only when he had handed me the hot mug did he look me in the eye. ‘Come again?’ he said.