Then, it’s Ed’s turn, I see him stand up at the end of the row, his notes in his hand. Listening to Ed read out my tribute to Susie was going to be extraordinarily agonising, before last night’s discovery. Now I don’t have a way of categorising my emotional response.
At the lectern, he coughs into a curled fist and looks up at everyone. The sight of him momentarily blurs in my tears as I blink them back.
‘Afternoon,’ he says. ‘I may only be thirty-four years old, but I’m going to guess this will forever be the toughest public speaking gig of my life. As a teacher, I include the time fifth-formers smuggled a dozen two-litre bottles of Magners in on the last day of term.’
He gives a thin smile. It’s not as if audiences at funerals can give you much encouragement by way of laughter.
‘What I’m about to read to you has been written by Susie’s best friend, Eve.’ Justin squeezes my knee as Ed looks toward me. I would squeeze back, but I will primal howl.
Who are you, Ed? I never needed to rely on you more than now. The rug has been pulled from under me. I can’t imagine ever trusting you again.
‘Eve was not only one of the people who Susie loved most in this world, and vice versa, she’s also very good with words,’ he says. ‘We thought it fitting she say a bit about Susie from the perspective of her friends. Eve can write, I can read, so this is a team effort.’
He coughs again and I tense, waiting for my words in Ed’s voice. Whatever else, I’m very glad I didn’t try to read it myself. I wouldn’t make it through a sentence.
‘Eve met Susie in primary school in the 1990s. The first photo of them together is in a nativity play. Susie was the Virgin Mary, always natural casting as a lead, and Eve was the back half of a camel. Always a natural to cast as a dromedary’s arse.’
Ed looks up and says: ‘Just to remind you again, Eve wrote this.’
He gets an actual laugh.
‘There followed what was to become a notorious incident at Saint Peter’s C of E Primary, where the front half of the camel passed out and vomited into the head of the costume, and the back half of the camel struggled out and stood there dressed in vest and pants, and some vomit spray. Other children screamed. Susie Hart, ever the one to make lemons from lemonade, shouted: “Look, the camel also gave birth, like me!” and incorporated it into the storyline.’
This, too, gets a ripple of amusement.
‘From that day on, they were an inseparable duo. On the face of it, Susie and Eve were a total clash. Susie was the captain of netball, whereas Eve wore a fake bandage so she could sit PE out and read Sweet Valley High books.
‘Susie didn’t much care for rules, and would do anything for her friends. Susie was one of life’s winners, until a split second of horrendous bad luck took her from us. Yet she could never pass by on the other side. She strongly identified with the underdog, while being a straight-A student who succeeded at everything she tried to do. That was her particular magic. Eve remembers a time when a girl in their class was getting bullied for having cheap shoes and Susie not only stuck up for her, she bought the same pair and came to school in them the following week. When Eve said she was heroic, Susie shrugged it off and said “Ugh, I just hate bullies. And anyway, I think I look quite good in grey patent.”’
Another laugh.
‘That was Susie. Sardonic, audacious, confident, with a humanity and humour that always shone through. When Eve came to write this, she says she realised that all of Susie was contained in that moment, aged eight years old, when Susie anointed her as God’s vomit-covered baby camel. Confidence and compassion and a metric ton of sass.
‘There’s no way to explain how much our group of friends will miss Susie, or how we can begin to calculate how much has been taken from us. From everyone. There’s something exceptional about friendships with friends you’ve known since you were young. They know all the versions of you. They know how you were built. They have a map for you. There’s a shorthand between you, and a love that is as strong as any blood tie.’ Ed’s voice wavers and he pauses to gather himself.
‘I’m going to read Eve’s summing up in her own first person:
‘What I didn’t expect, after Susie died, was to feel this panic. A panic she’d be forgotten. Not her name, or her face, or achievements. The official things. The panic that her voice, the way she spoke, her attitude, all that was unique and specific to her, would pass into history. I wanted her to be here, and for her contributions and opinions to still be with us. That she is past tense, feels so impossible, when she was so vividly alive. As I wrote this tribute, I asked myself, what would Susie say if she read it? Hers was the only opinion I wanted, and the only one I couldn’t have.
‘I pictured her scanning through it, chin on hand, chewing the drawstring on that terrible rowing club hoodie she wore. She’d giggle at the camel anecdote, and say something about: “God, do you remember that games teacher though? Put the ‘hun’ into Attila the Hun.” Then she’d say, at the end, mouth going a bit wiggly and wiping a tear: “Oh you sentimental oaf, give me a hug. I’m not sure, it’s so sweet. Does it make me sound a bit like a cross between Mother Teresa and Samantha from Sex and the City though? I can’t even remember the shoes thing, are you sure? Oh well, if you say so. You can be my official biographer, you’ve got the job. Someone else can write the scandalous stuff about me singing ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’, and then bunking up with him.”’
Ed pauses.
‘… I hope I never stop hearing Susie’s voice, or keeping her memory alive. So, the final line is delivered fully in the spirit of Susie Hart, as we knew her – Susie, you were always too much. But we wanted more. Thank you.’
Ed closes his notes and steps down from the lectern.
People clap, which I’m not sure usually happens at funerals and which I will take to mean we did Susie justice.
Justin puts his hand on my leg, and says, in a strangled voice: ‘Perfect, Eve. Perfect.’
I barely hear the celebrant’s wrapping-it-up speech.
As we file out to the Twin Peaks music, all I can think of is Susie’s costume that said: She Is Filled With Secrets.
19
‘The quiche is really good, actually,’ Hester says, and I know it must be as she does not dole out praise willy nilly, or indeed ever. ‘Want my other slice?’
She’s done the buffet drive-by heaped plate load, where you pick things up for the sheer hell of it and share your scavenger’s bounty when you get back to the table.
‘No, thanks. Does look nice though.’
‘Can’t eat?’ Hester says, and I shake my head. ‘Well, at least think of how skinny you’ll get. Every cloud.’
This is such tone-deaf classic Hestering I can’t be bothered to mind. There’s no Susie to text, no 4G in heaven.
Your violent death had a silver lining, I now fit that Whistles dress. You know, the zebra-print one with a waist so tight it was like a religious test of penance.
Wait, you mean if you’d bought a size up, you vain crow, I wouldn’t have had to die?!
As Hester pokes through the potato salad, I look curiously at the top of her head, her immaculate platinum parting, thinking: I was so jealous you had Ed, but did you have Ed? What’s been going on all this time, exactly? What would happen if I told her he’d played away? Would she dump him?