Gabrielle let go of a long annoyed breath before answering that. ‘I was going to ring you the day before the funeral.’
‘Which is when?’
‘Tuesday. So I would have rung you tomorrow to inform you of the arrangements.’ Now she was packing a stack of saucers and putting them in a box. It was all so laughably matter of fact. As if they were talking about going to see a play.
‘And would you have? Had Mrs Smith not told me?’
Now Gabrielle stopped what she was doing and scowled at Marnie.
‘Of course I would have. What do you take me for?
Best not answered, thought Marnie. She looked around the kitchen. The oven, the washing machine and the fridge weren’t there any more, she noticed.
‘It’s all gone to charity, as she requested, in case you’re wondering,’ said Gabrielle, following the track of her eyes. ‘Oh, and I’ve put a red box in the garage next to the others you left. It’s got some stuff of yours in it.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘I don’t know. Just stuff. Photos, school books. The door’s open. The house is going up for sale this week so you’d better move them sooner rather than later.’
‘You’re not hanging about, are you?’ Marnie gave a mirthless laugh.
‘Is there any point in doing that?’
‘I’ll take them with me now.’
‘The service is at the crematorium at eleven. The car is leaving from Benson’s funeral parlour on Summer Street at quarter to. There will be refreshments there after the service. I’ve arranged everything as she wished. She didn’t want flowers apart from a customary display on her coffin and I’ve ordered that. I’ll send you a cheque for your due when the house has been sold after I’ve paid off the funeral costs and whatever else is owed.’
What could she say? She was as excluded in her mother’s death as she had been in her life. ‘I’ll go and get my boxes,’ said Marnie, defeated.
‘Don’t spoil it, Marnie. For once, please don’t spoil things for her,’ Gabrielle appealed to her, just before the door closed. Marnie didn’t answer.
*
Marnie rang Mrs Abercrombie and told her that her Monday delivery wasn’t going to happen because her mother had died. Mrs Abercrombie said she was very sorry to hear that and would the Wednesday delivery be there as normal. If so, could she add four pina colada cheesecakes to the order. Marnie said of course. She understood there was little sentiment in business.
Marnie stayed at the Premier Inn for a second night and booked in for a third. She went to Meadowhall and bought a black outfit because she hadn’t brought one with her. She trailed around the shops rolling the thought around in her head that she was buying a dress for her mother’s funeral and was both fascinated and perturbed by her detachment. A therapist might have put it down to shock, she hoped. Or that it was a natural consequence of how she had been treated.
She had never felt loved by Judith and yet she’d been brought up in a house where the love for her sister had been so thick in the air it had choked her like smoke sometimes. She’d known that from an early age. She couldn’t even remember a time before it. Judith had fed her, clothed her, covered all her material needs. She had gone to parents’ evenings, made sure she did her homework and brushed her teeth, but it all felt as if she were going through the motions rather than actually caring. Marnie had been naughty sometimes, just to claim notice, attention – negative was better than nothing. She’d poured her love onto toys but teddy bears didn’t cuddle back, dolls didn’t reciprocate kisses. She’d got used to love being one-way traffic.
She awoke very early the next morning with her pillow wet from the tears that leaked from her eyes as she dreamt. Her mother, features softened with affection, was holding out her arms for Marnie to run to. But she was older and her accent tinged with a Scots burr.
‘Ma wee Marnie. I’ve always loved you. I never knew how to show it, but I did. I really did.’
Dreams could lie so cruelly sometimes.
Chapter 24
For the second time that week, Marnie stood in front of the mirror checking her reflection, dressed in black. But on the first occasion she hadn’t considered wearing a white suit and kicking against convention. A white suit and long black hair, a two-fingered statement against all those blondes in black suits that she would encounter today. A white bullet-proof vest might have been a good idea too. Her mother’s funeral congregation would be full of poison-leakers hissing behind Marnie’s back like the nest of vipers they were. What poor Judith had to put up with. Thank goodness she had St Gabrielle the Immaculate Contagion in her corner. Today of all days, Marnie had to keep her dignity intact, her head held high, her trap well and truly shut. They would be waiting en masse for the black sheep of the Salt family to ruin her mother’s interment and she would not give them the satisfaction.
Marnie had dressed carefully: mid-calf plain dress, long jacket – also plain. Shoes: demure heel, hair pinned up in an artful but not too showy bun, no hat. Make up, subtle. No bright red lips that a wayward daughter might choose to hint at subversion, but rose pink. Never had it been so important to strike the right balance between respectful and classy.
She arrived at the funeral parlour at ten-thirty. Gabrielle was already there, along with a man Marnie didn’t recognise. Her sister’s usual type: older and no Prince Charming, smart clothes, moneyed, if the penis-extension convertible in the car park was anything to go by. He introduced himself as Duncan, Gabrielle’s fiancé, which came as a surprise but Marnie didn’t bother to ask how long they’d been affianced. His handshake was limply polite, indicating that he already knew her by reputation.
Judith’s coffin was in position in the back of the hearse with a modest cross of white flowers on it, as befitted someone who went to church every Sunday and paraded herself as the good Christian, charitable woman she was. ‘Her organs might not have been worth donating but people would have benefitted from her quality clothes and white goods.’ She’d have enjoyed the congregation talking about her like that in absentia.
Gabrielle made sure she herself occupied the middle back seat in the limousine. Marnie wondered if that was to keep her away from Duncan; her sister needn’t have worried on that score.
Marnie felt her nervous levels ratchet up when the car reached the crematorium. There were a lot of people clustered outside the doors. She spotted Uncle Barry – her mother’s brother – and his wife, Auntie Diana, in the midst of them and she felt her jaw tighten with tension. Towards the end of the 1990s, Judith hadn’t spoken to them for two full years. Marnie’s fault again, obviously. Marnie had hoped she would never see either of them again. On the lists of people for whom she was persona non grata, she was in indisputable first place on theirs.
Marnie kept her head up and her eyes resting on no one as she followed the coffin down the central aisle of the crematorium chapel. A CD was playing classical music as people filed to their seats. It would have been chosen to impress rather than it being meaningful. Something like ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.
The young smooth-faced vicar gave a resumé of Judith’s life. He filled everyone in on where she was born and went to school and how she liked to knit squares for blankets to be shipped out to Africa even as a child. He said that she had an older brother called Barry; he didn’t mention that he was a twat. He said that Judith was very much in love with her husband Tony and that marriage was blessed with a daughter and an adopted daughter but sadly it was not to last. He didn’t say that Tony ran off to shag half of Thailand and that he’d never laid eyes on his real child. They sang ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ and Gabrielle folded, turning to Duncan for comfort as she dabbed at her eye with a delicate handkerchief so she wouldn’t smudge her eyeliner. Marnie’s composure slipped on the second verse and she didn’t know if it was because she was genuinely emotional or because it was a sad hymn with beautiful words which were renowned for making people cry.