I once again allowed myself to believe the cosmetics industry’s lies that you can cover under eye circles, and spent a while dabbing on three layers of beige. Then caught my reflection in a shop window and saw a very tired woman with ochre raccoon markings. Her expression is set to ‘embattled, and vaguely concussed’.
We chose a table upstairs with a view, looking down on the buskers and the shoppers and the people whose lives are continuing. Lucky foolish unwitting bastards. How can they make being alive seem so easy, when it wasn’t possible for Susie to stay that way? Do they not know how precarious this all is?
I feel scared, to the point of being in a secret sweat under my winter parka as I unzipped it, even though there’s nothing to be scared of, exactly. I suppose I’m scared constantly, now, of this completely altered reality I’m expected to manage.
There’s something so counter-intuitive in planning a funeral – the one person it’s for can’t attend. Dispensing a Lifetime Achievement award, but with no cutaways to their delighted face in the audience.
It’s not for Susie, it’s for everyone else, my mother said.
She made me strong cups of tea, sitting at her kitchen table, and rubbed my back as she said things like ‘Oh my God, how awful,’ and ‘That is no age, no age at all’ and ‘I know you two girls were thick as thieves’ and ‘I am so sorry, darling’ at intervals as I heaved and near-retched, talking about what happened. I wasn’t holding my emotions in check for anyone else’s sake, I could let it out with my mum. She talked fondly about how she’d always thought Susie looked like Carly Simon, and I got a bittersweet pang of gratitude at a familiar observation that only days ago, would be pleasant but mundane. The value of memories of Susie had shot up, like the hiked price of a rare autograph.
But how does that advice work, in practice? It’s for Susie and not for Susie, at the same time?
‘How is everyone?’ Justin says on his return, setting his cup down, spoon rattling in the saucer.
‘Terrible,’ I say. ‘You?’
‘Minging, yep. I look like I’m in prosthetics to play Winston Churchill, I’m that puffy.’
I laugh weakly. I wish Susie’s laugh was echoing mine.
‘You brought notes, Eve?’ Justin adds.
I look down at my gnawed-looking scrap of paper. ‘Uh yeah. Things we discussed previous.’
In truth, I wanted to look as if I have homework if Fin gets testy about the fact we’ve not sorted much. The delay in the body being released after the postmortem means we can’t book the funeral yet.
The body. The remains, as someone said to me. It made Susie – whole and beautiful, if extinct – sound like a shard of bone found on a dig in a forest.
‘You kind of wonder what aesthetic Manhattan restaurants use, now that even coffee chains in Britain have ripped it off, huh?’ Ed says.
‘Mmm?’
‘The Edison light bulbs, exposed brick walls and the knacked-up brown Chesterfield sofas in here. I mean, that was cutting-edge cool, once.’
‘Hah. Yeah.’
‘The Teacup Girls have got in touch with me, by the way,’ Ed says. ‘They want to offer their input into Susie’s send-off. Also, they want to know why we haven’t changed her Facebook page into an In Memoriam. She has her wall locked down.’
‘What?!’ I say, chest immediately aflame with indignation. ‘Firstly, no way are they having input! They’ll give her horses with feathers on their heads and a Snow White glass coffin and “Wind Beneath My Wings”. Played by Boyzone. On kazoos.’
‘That sounds pretty rad and status quo disruptive to be fair,’ Justin says. ‘Make a note now: that’s what I want.’
‘Also her page isn’t set up for lots of “rest in peace our princess” posts because Susie would loathe that.’
I know why I’m incensed and protective. If attempts are made to rewrite who she was, to rival my claim to her, I’ll lose her by another degree. My Susie is the real Susie.
‘Why did they go to you, and not me?’ I add.
‘Given your reaction, I can’t begin to imagine,’ Ed says, tipping his cup to drink with little finger aloft, and Justin guffaws.
I harrumph and say: ‘Yes well if they know her best female friend would cockblock them doing it, then that tells them they shouldn’t be doing it.’
‘I’ll ask them to message me their thoughts and we can decide whether to use them. I have a feeling they’ll lose interest as time goes on. No one has the right to get across you, Eve. Everyone knows that. You two were practically a marriage.’
I nod and try not to cry for the thousandth time. I will never have a friend like her again. Not only because of our affinity, the sheer timescales. You can’t make new old friends. Doors in your life, open and closing.
Ed sips his Americano and glances across to the staircase.
‘… Oh, speak of the devil. That could be Finlay …?’
I look over.
It’s definitely Finlay. Even if I hadn’t recognised his features, the ink-dark expensive clothing and pristine white Adidas Superstars signal money, and Otherness. And yes, ‘the devil’ seems apt.
He scans the room. I raise my hand, as if in class, to say: ‘Here.’
In three purposeful strides across the room, Finlay Hart is at our table.
My first thought is: he’s taller than I remember. My second thought is: I’m surprised at how easily I recognise him. You know when someone asks you to picture a person you’ve not seen in years, and you can’t, and therefore you think you wouldn’t know them? Then you see them, and bang, there they are, you have no doubt? Pattern recognition?
He still has the solemn, dark blue eyes, and straight brow. His nose is different to Susie’s uptilted one – how is it possible that nose has ceased to exist? – neat and straight, and those are Susie’s lips, just smaller, with the defined Cupid’s bow.
I trace similarities to Susie like I’m piecing together a PhotoFit – he also has her pronounced cheekbones. But their colouring was very different, so you’d never have put them together as siblings. I remember Susie saying: I’d love to think he’s adopted, and no doubt so would he, but sadly the documentation is in order and my dad’s dad was the absolute spit of him.
My third thought is, as Finlay pulls a knitted hat from his head and riffles his dark brown hair back into place: he’s intimidatingly well put together, if not actually appealing in any way. His face looks like a plasterer could sculpt it in a few quick swipes of a trowel: fierce geometry.
It suits his nature. No softness.
‘Hi. I’m Finlay.’
I vaguely recall he had floppy Brideshead Revisited hair last I saw him; now it’s slightly shorter and neater and he’s got ‘just got off the red eye’ stubble that’s pretending to be a beard.
Fin’s not smiling at us, but then, being fair, it’s not a smiling occasion.
‘You must be Ed,’ he says, sticking out a hand for a handshake. ‘And Eve?’
I give him my hand. It’s like we’re meeting for a job interview. He gives it one firm small downward yank.
‘I’m Justin,’ says Justin, who’s too far away for a handshake, so waves.