Then
On a scale of my grandad’s funeral (I was two and have no memory of it or him) to my mum’s funeral (the worst day of my life), Felix’s funeral lands somewhere in the middle.
I’m sad, but I’m mostly sad because Felix was the only link to my old life with Mum and Dad.
Can I really be the last person alive who remembers the time when Mum’s dressing-gown sleeve caught fire when she was cooking porridge and Dad panicked and threw his coffee on it?
Is it possible that nobody else remembers the time when Dad took us to the corner shop for ice-cream, but their freezer had broken, so we went home with as many Giant Sandwiches, Frosty Fruits and Magnums as we could carry?
Still, it feels useless to pretend that Felix and I were ever close.
We just didn’t get along. Blame it on the ten-year age gap, our clashing personalities or, my own theory, the fact that he was a massive arsehole.
We were never friends and we barely felt like family.
Probably won’t mention that at the funeral, though.
I do the reading that I picked out (‘If I Could Tell You’ by WH Auden, which I can tell you right now Felix never read in his life) and sit between Aunty Sam and Elena, Felix’s widow, in the front row.
I’ll get to her in a bit because widows are always suspect number one when their husband gets bumped off, right?
Aunty Sam does the eulogy. I don’t entirely recognise the Felix she’s describing, but nobody jumps up to shout ‘I object!’ like a wedding scene in a bad rom-com.
Afterwards there’s tea, coffee and little cakes on a tray in another room, where Aunty Sam circulates and I let people shake my hand and murmur some variation of I’m so sorry for your loss.
Some of these people I know (a couple of girls from school whose parents probably made them come; my old history teacher) and others I would swear I’ve never met in my life.
After ten minutes, I hide in a corner with hot chocolate and as many biscuits as I can conceal in one hand.
‘This feels weird, right?’ It’s Elena, wheeling right past me. I swallow the biscuit in my mouth to reply, then I realise she’s talking to the guy next to her. He’s scruffy and looks about my age. ‘Should I have had the wake at the house instead? Or would that have been worse?’
Elena is an overthinker. At least, I think she is.
I don’t know her well enough to be sure.
She was only twenty-two when she married Felix, which we can all agree is too young to get married unless it’s 1950 and you’re seven months pregnant.
When Felix introduced us, I’d wondered if we might establish a big sister–little sister vibe; she’d seemed kind, interesting and occasionally displayed a dark sense of humour I appreciated.
But Felix being Felix meant we rarely saw each other.
The teenager next to her, whose face is disconcertingly familiar now he’s up close, shrugs, dislodging a comma of dirty blond hair that falls into his eyes.
Dye his hair red and gel it into a quiff and he’d look like Tintin.
Or a long-lost Weasley triplet. ‘I think it’s going to feel weird whatever you do.
’ He does a quick, performative scan of the room.
‘But, yeah, it’s like a dentist hygienist networking convention in here. ’
Elena snorts. ‘What have you been doing for fun in Melbourne?’
It’s the voice that places him for me as Elena’s little brother, Patrick. I haven’t seen him since the wedding, and the three years have added a foot to his height and revealed the existence of cheekbones.
‘Elena, some girl is staring at you,’ Patrick says.
Clearly, I’ve changed too.
Elena twists around and her smile, when she sees me, feels genuine.
‘Heidi,’ she says, awkwardly backing up her wheelchair, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t see you there.
’ She looks up at Patrick. ‘Patrick, this is Felix’s sister, Heidi.
You literally just saw her read a poem at the service and you’ve met her before.
’ Then she turns to me. ‘It was a lovely reading. I didn’t know Felix liked Auden. ’
I hesitate, unsure whether to be honest. Then I see her smile, one of those small, sad ones you’re allowed to do at funerals. ‘Neither did I,’ I say tentatively, and Patrick laughs and takes the seat next to me.
‘I was joking,’ he says. ‘Although the last time we saw each other, I’m pretty sure you were eight.’
‘I was twelve.’ One year younger than you, I don’t add, because this is a funeral and I’m trying to be nice. At Felix and Eliza’s wedding, where we’d been the only kids, we’d hidden under a table, scoffing profiteroles off the giant croquembouche, and reading Percy Jackson on my Kindle.
‘I see your dessert-stealing skills have only grown, my young apprentice,’ he says, looking pointedly at the biscuits on my lap. ‘I still dream of those profiteroles.’ And he grins the kind of smile that probably lets him get away with murder. (I said probably, let’s not get carried away.)
‘Are you over from Melbourne?’ I ask.
‘I flew in for the funeral,’ Patrick says. ‘Michael’s in a show, so he’s coming in a couple of days.’
Patrick, Elena and Michael – their oldest brother – lost their mum to cancer less than a year before Elena and Felix met.
Their dad left when they were really young, so they’ve been on their own since.
Given how little else Felix and Elena had in common, I always assumed the whole No Parents thing was part of their bond.
‘Sam said you just came back from Europe?’ Elena asks me.
‘I got in yesterday.’
‘Where were you in Europe?’ Patrick asks.
‘This tiny village in Switzerland you’ve never heard of.’
‘Rude.’
‘Trust me: you couldn’t find it on a map. Those cartographers are doing you a favour.’
Patrick wrinkles his nose. ‘Why were you in here be dragons territory?’
‘I was … wait, here be dragons?’
‘It’s what they used to write on the bits of maps that hadn’t been explored yet,’ Patrick says.
And I’d thought he might ask me what ‘cartographers’ meant.
‘Exchange program.’ I can’t bear to go into the backstory.
‘You’ve turned into one of those well-rounded teenagers,’ he says. ‘If you tell me you speak French and German, I’m going to throw myself in the coffin after Felix.’
‘Patrick,’ Elena says.
‘I’m fluent in Chinese, too,’ I lie.
‘Bullshit,’ Patrick says, but he’s grinning.
‘Patrick,’ Elena says, ‘shut up. You’re being so rude. Heidi, I’m sorry about him, he’s horrendous when he’s jet-lagged.’
‘Only then?’ I say, but I’m grinning back. It’s coming back to me why I might have wanted to spend three hours under a table with this guy. If we’d been old enough for social media at the time, maybe we would have kept in touch.
‘I should know by now he’s not safe in public spaces,’ Elena says.
‘Have you tried a muzzle?’
Elena and Patrick both laugh, and I almost wish that Lilia and Ben had turned up after all, to see me killing with my comedy routine. (Are you allowed to do comedy at a funeral?)
‘You could go back to my hotel room for a nap,’ Elena says to Patrick, sounding hopeful.
‘I am knackered.’
‘You look it.’
‘Sorry, did someone say, “Thanks for your support, Patrick?” It’s hard to tell over the panpipe music.’
‘This is what support looks like, is it?’
Something in me aches at their easy sibling banter. (Is banter allowed at funerals?) I never had any of that with Felix.
‘There you are!’ Aunty Sam has found us.
She exchanges cheek-kisses with Elena (they’ve always got along, despite the Felix of it all) and gives me a shoulder squeeze that I think is supposed to be comforting but actually hurts a bit (she’s strong).
She stops when she gets to Patrick. ‘Patrick,’ she says slowly.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says. Clearly, Patrick can do polite when the moment requires it.
Aunty Sam is still staring at him; it’s not like her to be bothered by rumpled plane clothes or whatever is going on with Patrick’s hair.
A beat passes and she remembers her smile.
‘Thank you.’ She turns to me. ‘Heidi, you remember Mrs Craven?’ At first, I have no idea who she’s even talking about, then Aunty Sam steps to the side so I can see the older woman standing behind her.
Neither her silvering cropped hair nor her friendly smile look remotely familiar.
But her (let’s be real, entirely awesome) last name helps me place her.
‘I used to babysit you after school,’ Mrs Craven says, confirming my memory is not completely cooked.
‘Right. Thanks for coming.’ I’m surprised to see her.
It’s not like she got to know Felix particularly well; at eighteen, he didn’t need a babysitter and would only come over to Mrs Craven’s house to pick me up and scrounge some free snacks.
(Aunty Sam never trusted him to look after me for long after the time he locked me in her ensuite.)
‘Felix was always such a spirited boy.’
‘Uh huh,’ I say, recalling, all in a flash, more than I’d care to about Mrs Craven’s house and what Felix liked to do to her pet cat when Mrs Craven was distracted fetching us muesli bars and tiny packets of Twisties. ‘We were total nightmares, from what I remember.’
‘Kids will be kids,’ she says, so I guess Mr Wuffles recovered. I’m not really paying attention anyway, because I’ve spotted Lilia and Ben over her shoulder.
It’s so my life that they’re five minutes too late to see me cracking up guests with my gags and just in time for the awkward small talk with my old babysitter, who smells like kitty litter. This fucking day, I think, then immediately realise I’ve said it out loud. ‘Sorry.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Frances?’ Aunty Sam asks loudly, steering Mrs Craven in the direction of the big silver urn.