Chapter 14
14
“Ey up me ducks,” says Justin, unwinding a snazzy silk maroon scarf from his neck. Ed and I mumble greetings. “Nice day for it. Anyone want anything from the bar?”
We demur and Justin goes to order his coffee.
Uncharacteristically, I cringe at Justin’s playful manner, in the direst of times. It’s been just over a week since Susie died and we are gathering to discuss her funeral plans. I know he’s nothing but good intentions, I love his general iconoclasm. He gives the impression of recklessness for the purposes of his comedy, but he’s emotionally intelligent.
When we were at sixth form, Justin did work experience at an old people’s home. He took a man in a wheelchair out to see a lake and produced homemade sandwiches and KitKats for them to enjoy alongside the view. The man cried and said it was one of the nicest days he’d had in years, as his family didn’t visit.
“That was that,” Justin said, at the time. “I knew I couldn’t do any other sort of work.”
That’s who Justin is.
However, today I don’t trust a total stranger to realize Justin is entirely benign, and that goes triple when the total stranger is Finlay Hart. I am additionally unusually relieved that Justin left Leonard with his sister today, as I can’t see his yappy interventions being taken as comic.
It’s been just over a week since Susie died and Fin got in touch to ask to meet. I explained it was a group effort between me, Ed, and Justin, and Fin said, “Well, bring them.”
I asked if he wanted to choose a venue and he said, “Anywhere in the city center should be easy for everyone?” and I nominated the Caffè Nero by the Brian Clough statue, as straightforward to find.
“Are you coming in from Bridgford?” I said, not to be nosy, but because I was edgy and didn’t know how best to spin the conversation out to something of conventionally polite length.
“No, I’m staying at a hotel in town,” Fin said.
I didn’t know what to say to that other than “Ah.”
Now we’re here, on a Saturday afternoon, with a gang of twenty-somethings near us bellowing and playing music on their laptops, it feels a lumpenly stupid choice.
Ed and I bump into each other outside, and in the pin-sharp white sunlight I notice how drawn and shadowed he looks, after only a few days apart. Like Ed, but sketched in charcoal. From the way he squints at me before heaving the door open, I suspect I look much the same.
I once again allowed myself to believe the cosmetics industry’s lies that you can cover under-eye circles, and spent a while dabbing on three layers of beige. Then caught my reflection in a shop window and saw a very tired woman with ochre rac coon markings. Her expression is set to “embattled, and vaguely concussed.”
We choose a table upstairs with a view, looking down on the buskers and the shoppers and the people whose lives are continuing. Lucky foolish unwitting bastards. How can they make being alive seem so easy, when it wasn’t possible for Susie to stay that way? Do they not know how precarious this all is?
I feel scared, to the point of being in a secret sweat under my winter parka as I unzip it, even though there’s nothing to be scared of, exactly. I suppose I’m scared constantly, now, of this completely altered reality I’m expected to manage.
There’s something so counterintuitive in planning a funeral—the one person it’s for can’t attend. Dispensing a Lifetime Achievement award, but with no cutaways to their delighted face in the audience.
It’s not for Susie, it’s for everyone else , my mother said.
She made me strong cups of tea, sitting at her kitchen table, and rubbed my back as she said things like “Oh my God, how awful” and “That is no age, no age at all” and “I know you two girls were thick as thieves” and “I am so sorry, darling” at intervals as I heaved and near-retched, talking about what happened. I wasn’t holding my emotions in check for anyone else’s sake, I could let it out with my mum. She talked fondly about how she’d always thought Susie looked like Carly Simon, and I got a bittersweet pang of gratitude at a familiar observation that only days ago would be pleasant but mundane. The value of memories of Susie had shot up, like the hiked price of a rare autograph.
But how does that advice work, in practice? It’s for Susie and not for Susie, at the same time?
“How is everyone?” Justin says on his return, setting his cup down, spoon rattling in the saucer.
“Terrible,” I say. “You?”
“I look like I’m in prosthetics to play Winston Churchill, I’m that puffy.”
I laugh weakly. I wish Susie’s laugh was echoing mine.
“You brought notes, Eve?” Justin adds.
I look down at my gnawed-looking scrap of paper. “Uh yeah. Things we discussed previous.”
In truth, I wanted to look as if I have homework if Fin gets testy about the fact we’ve not sorted much. The delay in the body being released after the postmortem means we can’t book the funeral yet.
The body. The remains , as someone said to me. It made Susie—whole and beautiful, if extinct—sound like a shard of bone found on a dig in a forest.
“You kind of wonder what aesthetic Manhattan restaurants use, now that even coffee chains in Britain have ripped it off, huh?” Ed says.
“Mmm?”
“The Edison light bulbs, exposed brick walls, and the knacked-up brown Chesterfield sofas in here. I mean, that was cutting-edge cool, once.”
“Hah. Yeah.”
“The Teacup Girls have got in touch with me, by the way,” Ed says. “They want to offer their input into Susie’s send-off. Also, they want to know why we haven’t changed her Facebook page into an In Memoriam. She has her wall locked down.”
“What?!” I say, chest immediately aflame with indignation. “Firstly, no way are they having input! They’ll give her horses with feathers on their heads and a Snow White glass coffin and ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’ Played by Boyzone. On kazoos.”
“That sounds pretty rad and status quo disruptive to be fair,” Justin says. “Make a note now: that’s what I want.”
“Also her page isn’t set up for lots of ‘rest in peace our princess’ posts because Susie would loathe that.”
I know why I’m incensed and protective. If attempts are made to rewrite who she was, to rival my claim to her, I’ll lose her by another degree. My Susie is the real Susie.
“Why did they go to you, and not me?” I add.
“Given your reaction, I can’t begin to imagine,” Ed says, tipping his cup to drink with little finger aloft, and Justin guffaws.
I harrumph and say: “Yes, well if they know her best female friend would cockblock them doing it, then that tells them they shouldn’t be doing it.”
“I’ll ask them to message me their thoughts and we can decide whether to use them. I have a feeling they’ll lose interest as time goes on. No one has the right to get across you, Eve. Everyone knows that. You two were practically a marriage.”
I nod and try not to cry for the thousandth time. I will never have a friend like her again. Not only because of our affinity, the sheer timescales. You can’t make new old friends. Doors in your life, open and closing.
Ed sips his Americano and glances across to the staircase. “... Oh, speak of the devil. That could be Finlay...?”
I look over.
It’s definitely Finlay. Even if I hadn’t recognized his features, the ink-dark expensive clothing and pristine white Adidas Superstars signal money, and Otherness. And yes, “the devil” seems apt.
He scans the room. I raise my hand, as if in class, to say “Here.”
I N THREE PURPOSEFUL strides across the room, Finlay Hart is at our table.
My first thought is: he’s taller than I remember. My second thought is: I’m surprised at how easily I recognize him. You know when someone asks you to picture a person you’ve not seen in years and you can’t, and therefore you think you wouldn’t know them? Then you see them, and bang , there they are, you have no doubt? Pattern recognition?
He still has the solemn, dark blue eyes, and straight brow. His nose is different to Susie’s uptilted one—how is it possible that nose has ceased to exist?—neat and straight, and those are Susie’s lips, just smaller, with the defined Cupid’s bow.
I trace similarities to Susie like I’m piecing together a facial composite—he also has her pronounced cheekbones. But their coloring was very different, so you’d never have put them together as siblings. I remember Susie saying: I’d love to think he’s adopted, and no doubt so would he, but sadly the documentation is in order and my dad’s dad was the absolute spit of him.
My third thought is, as Finlay pulls a knitted hat from his head and riffles his dark brown hair back into place: he’s intimidatingly well put together, if not actually appealing in any way. His face looks like a plasterer could sculpt it in a few quick swipes of a trowel: fierce geometry.
It suits his nature. No softness.
“Hi. I’m Finlay.”
I vaguely recall he had floppy Brideshead Revisited hair last I saw him; now it’s slightly shorter and neater and he’s got just got off the red eye stubble that’s pretending to be a beard.
Fin’s not smiling at us, but then, being fair, it’s not a smiling occasion.
“You must be Ed,” he says, sticking out a hand for a handshake. “And Eve?”
I give him my hand. It’s like we’re meeting for a job interview. He gives it one firm small downward yank.
“I’m Justin,” says Justin, who’s too far away for a handshake, so he waves.
I can’t stop raking Fin’s features for resemblance to Susie’s. It’s the tingle of having a shadow of her returned to me, her genes in someone with even less body fat, and more testosterone.
But though he has her lips, it’s interesting how character comes out as you age, because they are set in a superior sort of pouty sulk. You can see he looks down on everyone around him, no acquaintance needed.
Don’t they say they have the face you deserve by forty? Tick tock motherfu—
“You don’t want to get a drink?” Ed says, of the space on the table in front of Fin.
“I’m not keen on the coffee here. I’ll get one somewhere else after we’re done.”
Wow.
“Do you want to go somewhere else now? It’s no trouble,” I say, my arse rising, if not literally.
“No, it’s fine.”
“We all loved your sister very much and we are all so, so devastated about what’s happened,” Ed says, partly by way of diverting us from subpar roasting beans. “It’s horrific. But I don’t need to tell you that.”
“Thank you,” Fin says, levelly. For a frightening second I think he’s not going to say any more, then he adds: “There’s a complete meaninglessness to it that is tough to process.”
We three nod vigorously and mutter agreement, as much in relief that he’s given us something to work with, I think.
“... Though what meaning does any death have, I guess? It’s not as if a fatal illness has intrinsically more significance,” he concludes. I can’t say I’m surprised that Fin doesn’t do cozy platitudes.
“No...,” Ed says and I suspect, in the brief silence that follows, we’re all mentally sifting potential responses and discarding them.
I could say that the difference for me is that if you’re going to get sick, you’re going to get sick. There is an inevitability, a mystery.
What tortures me is that there were so many tiny but necessary contributory factors in that evening that cumulatively brought Susie to be standing in the way of that car, in that single second. Playing variables, as Ed said. She wouldn’t have been there if the taxi had taken longer to arrive. If it had stopped at more red lights. If the quiz had been shorter, or longer. If we’d gone back to mine for a nightcap. If the person in the car who had the stroke had chosen a different route, or if that bulging blood vessel wall in their brain had held out a moment longer. There was chance upon chance to survive, and she didn’t.
Our environment is so extraordinarily perilous. That’s what I can’t unknow, sitting in rooms abuzz with ignorant noise. Nothing is for granted, and everything you know can be taken away in an instant.
Nevertheless, even if I didn’t suspect Fin to be both hostile and toxic, I can’t stop obsessing that your younger sister could’ve so easily escaped her untimely end is not a remotely comforting or acceptable thing to say to anyone.
“So. Regarding the funeral,” Fin says. There’s no trace of transatlantic in his voice. No Midlands either, but then the Harts are from the sort of postcode where everyone’s accent sounds posh-neutral to the point of southern. “You said you’ve not been able to confirm a date for it yet?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling the onus on me to take charge. I explain we should be able to, very soon. I describe the readings and the music choices and a rough order of service, and Fin nods, neutral, throughout.
“I didn’t know if you wanted to do a reading?” I ask him.
“No, thank you,” Fin says. I try not to judge this, without knowing his reasons, though obviously I’m judging it hard. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t elaborate why, beyond that curt confirmation.
“As to the venue for the wake, there’s a hotel at the top of Derby Road called The Waltons. It’s chintzy and pretty, but not too stuffy. We thought that’d be fitting? It has a bar and we could put out a buffet. I don’t want it to be too youthful and like a party, but Susie would’ve hated something... fogeyish? For want of a better word.”
Fin nods. “The family will pay for this, obviously. Give us costs and if anything needs paying upfront, I’ll transfer to you straightaway.”
I nod back. Just as I think this is going to pass off without controversy, I say (congratulating myself this is a thoughtful touch, he will appreciate it): “We called the church about the churchyard where your mum was buried, and they have a plot free for Susie.”
I can’t believe I’m saying these words. She is arriving fifty years ahead of schedule.
“It’s not right by your mum, but it’s very near. Under a tree, which seemed...” I was going to say nice, and realize that there’s nothing nice about this whatsoever. “A good idea.”
“I don’t want her to be buried,” Fin says. “Absolutely not.”
I startle. “What? Why?”
“It’s how I feel,” he says, fixing intense eyes on me. “I hate the thought of her rotting in the ground. She’d agree. Cremation only.”
“I think... Susie would like the thought of being near her mum, though,” I say.
Fin’s eyes focus harder upon me. He clears his throat.
“I don’t think Susie would’ve liked the thought of any of this. Imputing ‘liking’ things to her seems slightly mad, given the situation. There’s only least worsts. The least worst to her would’ve been cremation, in my opinion.”
I am horribly stung by being called “slightly mad,” which would be hurtful any time, but in this context is like he kicked me while I was on the floor.
Only a pass the size of his loss can stop me openly losing it, in return.
“Erm, OK, but I knew her well too, and I am sure she’d... want burial.”
“With all due respect—” Fin starts.
A phrase that only ever means “which is none.”
“... You can’t be sure. Did you ever discuss which method of disposal she’d prefer, should she die suddenly?”
“No, obviously not, but...”
“Right, well. Neither did Susie and I. But we aren’t a religious family, and we aren’t a burials family. My mother’s was something of an anomaly.”
Oh, of course. The fight. He’s rerunning it. People don’t change. Bastards gonna bastard , I hear Susie say.
I’m left uselessly opening and closing my mouth. Purely at a debating level, it seems to me Fin should’ve picked a lane—he says it matters he’d rather she was cremated, while also saying Susie would agree. Which is it? Especially as you two disagreed on what color the sky was, from what I can gather.
I hadn’t—stupidly, perhaps—expected him to pull rank. I feel as if I’m letting Susie down by allowing Fin to prevail, and that feeling is powerful.
“But...,” I begin.
“If you want cremation, and you’re her surviving relative, then that’s what should happen,” Ed interrupts, with a pointed look at me that communicates let this go.
“Her surviving relative who’s compos mentis, anyway,” Fin says.
As I’m about to ask if he’s checked in on his dad, and what state he’s in, Fin’s phone rings and he says: “I’ve got to take this. Thanks for everything you’ve done. Call me if there’s anything else.”
He picks up his phone and says a brisk “Hello?” into it, puts his hand up by way of farewell, and strides away across the café.
We sit in stunned silence for a few beats. Ed with clenched teeth, me lightly seething, Justin quizzical.
“ Well. He puts the strange in estranged,” Justin says. “Was it me, or was there some hateration and holleration in this dancery?”
“Not a complete mystery why he and Susie didn’t see eye to eye, is it?” I say. “Not up there with the Bermuda Triangle and who built Stonehenge. Fucking hell.”
“Ah dear... I don’t expect him to be cheerful,” Ed says. “That did seem unnecessarily confrontational.” He pauses. “But maybe he has particular reasons regarding not wanting a burial.”
I roll my tired, eyelinered eyes at Ed.
“Oh come on , Ed. Even you don’t believe that. That was about a show of strength. It was testing how it felt to get his own way, when Susie’s not here to stop him. He’s not even fussed she’s gone, from what I can see. He’s a monster. A walking Voight-Kampff test in spotless sneakers.”
“That’s the check to show whether or not you’re a replicant in Blade Runner ,” Justin says to Ed and Ed says “I know!” indignantly.
“Should I have insisted on burial?” I say, doleful.
“Wait, that wasn’t you insisting?” Justin says, with a sly expression.
“You know what I mean.”
Ed shakes his head, emphatically. “No. Even if he’s secretly a robot, it’s his call. We’re only getting to do as much planning as we are due to Fin allowing it. He could be owning every last detail.”
“It’s only as he doesn’t want the hassle and didn’t know her. Can you imagine him having an insight on anything she liked since the ‘Barbies’ age?”
“Whatever the reason,” Ed says. “Don’t piss him off. You only have to tolerate him until the end of the wake and then you’ll never see him again.”
“Imagine. He might sack his dad’s funeral off entirely,” Justin says.
“Oh no, he’d come back for that, and you know why?” I say. “Little thing called being a sole living heir.”
“Unless his dad disliked him so much he wrote him out of the will,” Justin says.
“... And the unscrupulous long-lost son reappeared, when his father was infirm and mentally unsound of mind... and got him to change it?”
“Woah,” Justin says, and we boggle at each other at the eminent plausibility of this being Fin’s current, concurrent project.
“Alright you two, this isn’t an episode of Inspector Morse ,” Ed says. “Concentrate on the tasks in hand.”