‘Motion carried,’ Justin says. ‘One point: what if her brother objects?’
‘Hmmm, he didn’t seem the type,’ Ed says, and we all laugh, and I’m glad we can still clown like we used to. It feels like fortitude.
‘… Can I raise a practical point if he does,’ Ed says. ‘Finlay’s signed off on us putting together the order of service. If he doesn’t like the names we chose, he’s going to see that at the same time as everyone else, as they’re being handed out at the crematorium. So what’s he gonna do, huh? You’d have to be a psychopath to start finger-jabbing and shouting at a funeral.’
‘Oh yeah? You need to meet my mum’s family up north,’ Justin says.
‘I wouldn’t rule psychopathy out,’ I say. ‘That’s an inactive amygdala if ever I saw one.’
‘Wasn’t that just the way he was sitting?’ Justin says.
‘Can you translate that from the Eve?’ Ed says.
‘The bit of the brain that doesn’t function in scans of serial killers. How can he be a psychiatrist? He’s like Harold Shipman, posing as a doctor.’
‘Shipman was a doctor,’ Justin says.
‘Well, regardless of how many people he’s murdered, if he kicks off, that’s on him. We’re in the clear,’ Ed says, sitting back.
‘Edward, you crafty ferret,’ Justin says.
‘I think he lets you and I blaze out in front as the bad guys while he’s actually the worst,’ I say, and Ed makes a ‘straightening the brim of an invisible hat’ gesture.
‘Other point of controversy,’ I say. ‘We’re definitely going with the Twin Peaks theme to play us out at the end? I didn’t mention that to Fin, I’m quite glad now.’
‘I love it,’ Justin says. ‘She loved it, it’s so her. She went to that Halloween night as Laura Palmer, didn’t she?’
‘Yep,’ I say. I helped her with that costume. A plastic wrap, blue hair dye, glittery robot face paint and a sign that said She Is Filled With Secrets on the back. I refuse to dwell on the fact that I daubed silver highlighter down her signature Hart family cheekbones to simulate alluring rigor mortis.
‘If she can see us from anywhere, when that comes on, she’ll laugh out loud. And do a fist pump,’ Justin says.
‘That’s what matters then,’ Ed says. ‘We’re honouring her, not some snark in the third pew.’
‘Amen!’ Justin says.
‘Amen,’ I agree.
‘And give her brother a break too,’ Ed says to me, trying his luck.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Leg or arm, lol?’
Heart isn’t possible.
After a pause, I say: ‘And you definitely want to do the reading? Whatever I write?’ I say to Ed.
‘Without a doubt.’ He squeezes my hand.
This is what we agreed, through a vale of tears. I can write about Susie but can’t bring myself to perform it. Ed says he can read something, but can’t steel himself to write anything.
Justin has offered to critique it all afterwards.
Ed keeps hold of my hand and I squeeze back again, to make it polite to release it. He gives me a meaningful look as I withdraw my fingers.
‘You’ll be great at it. You know that, don’t you? Don’t be scared of it.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. Ed is right, I am scared of it. It feels so good to be understood.
‘Ooh er. I’ve just realised something spooky,’ I say. ‘You know how you always said Susie was Laura? The penny’s dropped who Fin reminds me of. Agent Cooper.’
Both Ed and Justin tilt their heads, think, nod.
Justin clicks on an imaginary Dictaphone, leans in: ‘Diane. Met three more assholes today.’
16
The countdown to the funeral is awful. ‘Awful’. What a limp word for this experience. Queues at the supermarket on Christmas Eve are awful. Banging your elbow on a hard surface is awful. My sliding scale for ‘awful’ has completely changed and I need an enhanced vocabulary to deal with it. You don’t realise the flippancy of your generation’s attitudes and language until you grasp for the terminology that conveys the impact, and it’s not there. It’s been shop-worn by silly jokes and ironic hyperbole.
Reliving the morning I found out, which I do, constantly, compulsively, is harrowing to the point of some sort of PTSD. Yet the word ‘harrowing’ isn’t enough.
I can see myself and Susie in my mind’s eye, sitting in nightwear at her house. Susie in cricket jumper over her pyjamas, hair like Beetlejuice and with brightly pedicured feet up on the coffee table, describing our after effects from shot-gunning rosé wine in a local bar as ‘harrowing’.
‘This is an ordeal,’ Susie would say. ‘We’re going to need Uber Eats KFC, and possibly dips from Domino’s. We’ve been to war. We have been through the wringer and in the trenches.’
When you’ve used those words to mean ‘done a sick’ and ‘wish you’d not kissed a man whose Twitter handle is @DoctorPenis’ you’re kind of scunnered for applying it to seismic, disturbing, stuff-of-darkest-fears that have changed you forever.
It took me two and a half hours, and pauses for whimpering and bawling, to write my eulogy for Susannah Hart. I sent it to Ed, who replied: That’s me broken into pieces. And then a few minutes later. It’s beautiful. I can only hope to do it justice. Xx
Then I went back to work on the Monday, accepting everyone’s curious pitying looks with a wan smile, fielding the volley of questions with polite but peremptory answers. Yes hit by a car. No they weren’t a drunk driver. Funeral next week. Yes, it was no age. No she wasn’t married and didn’t have kids. Thanks I am bearing up.
Satisfied they have the intel, Phil, Lucy and Seth go back to staring at their monitors.
I feel like I’m playing dress-up at normal life. As if I’ve put on armour in a battle re-enactment game with a bunch of fellow geeks in a field. Oh, are we doing the one where it’s life as usual and we write for a website?
I sit and type:
There’s hotdogs, then there’s THESE hotdogs. Find out why people are going crazy for the dirty loaded sausages at Who Let the Dogs Out?
‘Are you doing the trashy frankfurters piece?’ asks Phil. Phil has been tentative around me, as even he doesn’t think his bombastic mode of jocular insult works with a newly bereaved person.
‘Yeah,’ I say. Defiantly calling them ‘frankfurters’ is so Phil. Coke is still ‘fizzy pop’.
‘Bloody horrible, aren’t they. Who wants fried prawns on a hotdog? Filthy bastards. We’re not in America.’
‘It’s hipsters,’ I say. ‘They’ll put anything on anything.’
‘There seems to be a glorification of things you only used to eat when you were steaming at three a.m. in my day.’
‘Modern world, Phil. It’s not for us,’ I say.
‘Ah stop, you’re young!’ Phil says, and I can see by his face he’s awkward at being even that complimentary. Is this that thing called flattery, he’s thinking. Am I doing it right?
‘Well, thank you.’