Same Time Next Week

Chapter 56

When Amanda turned up at Hyde’s funeral parlour on Friday morning with the floral arrangement she’d picked up the night before, it was to find Erin, Mel, Astrid and Sky there waiting in the car park for her, bunches of flowers in their hands. She could have cried with gratitude at their consideration if she’d any tears left inside her. She’d cried them all during the night and now she needed to be composed, focused, strong.

Mr Hyde opened up the back of the hearse and put her spray of cream roses, gold-tongued lilies and gysophila on the top of the coffin with her card among them: For Mum, from your always loving Amanda . Then he placed the others around, with their cards: Rest in Peace; For Ingrid, beloved mother of Amanda; Mein aufrichtiges Beileid ; May He grant you eternal rest. Bradley hadn’t even ordered some flowers from the money he’d screwed out of his mother. Amanda hadn’t thought she could be any more disgusted than she was with him, but she’d been wrong.

They’d all taken the morning off work to be with her, a show of solidarity and friendship that they hoped would help Amanda on this hard day, made harder for too many reasons to count.

Their cars all followed the hearse as it drove at a respectful speed through town, up the hill, into the grounds of the crematorium, a small cortège, but a cortège all the same. Amanda blew a kiss as the hearse drove around the side of the building and she felt a stab of anger that it wasn’t pulling in at the front with a line of people waiting to file into the chapel and pay their respects.

The others met up in a small café just around the corner from the church. The service would start at ten. Amanda didn’t join them, she was going to pick up Dolly Shepherd and two of her mum’s friends from the coffee shop that her mum liked to frequent. She parked up early outside the house she had grown up in and just sat, remembering. But there wasn’t much she wanted to remember really other than the wall at the side where she and her dad would sit when they had anything to talk about, although she couldn’t for the life of her dredge up what they did talk about. But he was always calm, he never shouted, he never hit her. He had loved her and she missed that love when he’d gone because she didn’t feel it again in that house. It was that wall she’d gone to when she’d seen Seth die and sobbed and asked her dad to take care of him for her. If only she’d been Bradley, she’d have been able to recall it all so differently: as a house full of affection and indulgence.

She pulled herself together and called for Dolly and the other two ladies. They were in their best black, head to foot, a sign of respect for their friend. Amanda knew that their mother would have wanted nothing less than the traditional gravitas on her big day.

In the church, she wondered if Bradley would have heard about the service from a third party, because she hadn’t invited him, but walking in, a quick glance at all the back of the heads yielded no sighting of his big bald patch. He wasn’t there, but plenty were which Ingrid would have been proud of.

Amanda delivered the eulogy to a mum who was a good cook, kept an immaculate house, who enjoyed her friends and trotting down to meet them for coffee and who’d had a healthy and long life, give or take a couple of minor blips. Dolly had given her some nice anecdotes to include. They sang her favourite hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art’ and together they recited the Lord’s prayer. And though the coffin was not there for the vicar to say his final words over, it didn’t matter; he sent Ingrid Ann Worsnip on her way, in absentia, to meet her maker, who would forgive her sins and grant her eternal peace. Amen.

There was tea and coffee, sandwiches and cakes laid on in a room at the back of the church made available for services. A lucky and convenient arrangement, as the vicar’s wife did the catering and was the daughter of one of Ingrid’s coffee crew. They had connections everywhere, that lot.

It had gone well; Ingrid’s friends needed that final full stop, they wanted to say goodbye to her formally. Mainly because they knew her real thoughts on what she would have wanted, not the ones written in her new will.

There was a valuable exchange of information at the wake. Amanda learned, for instance, that Arnold Worsnip had died with a fair amount of creditors chasing their share of his estate. Poor Bradley hadn’t been expecting that, then. Shame. It appeared that the stories Arnold encouraged of his purported wealth had been greatly exaggerated.

Dolly was still confused about the whole ‘lack of a proper’ funeral, though, and wasted no time in pinning Amanda to a pillar to get her answers.

‘When you said Ingrid wasn’t having one, I thought, that’s not right. She was looking forward to it,’ Dolly said, sweeping up some more ham and mustard sandwiches. She liked the funerals here best as the buffet was always very acceptable. ‘Where is Bradley, anyway? I haven’t seen him and I wanted to offer my condolences. I’ll have to watch out for him up at the house. I did try ringing but all I get is a dead line.’

He’d changed his number, obviously. Wonder why .

‘Well, about Bradley…’ Amanda bent her head in preparation for taking Dolly into her confidence. ‘This is strictly between us of course…’ There was no better surefire way of making sure that Dolly spread news as far and as wide as possible than by telling her to keep it to herself, because a secret’s only value to Dolly was the sharing of it. Dolly Shepherd made Hedda Hopper look like a Trappist monk. Amanda asked her if she wouldn’t mind doing a favour for her. And then, by way of a reward, she told her everything .