Chapter 18
Rose knows that using her own son as a human shield probably isn’t in the Big Book of Good Parenting, but she can’t help it.
She is struggling to keep herself together, here, bum squashed up on the wooden pew of the village church, feeling like a trapped, wounded animal.
It’s a tiny place, dating back to the sixteenth century, and today it is crammed.
She risks a quick glance around, and sees that most of the village is here.
Mrs Rubens from the post office. Jack Slater who runs the Farmer’s Arms, and his counterpart from the Tennyson’s.
Gloria Lubbock, who used to be the head teacher of the village school.
Fred, whose last name she never discovered and was only ever known as Fred the Milkman.
Sergeant Taylor, who’d been the local bobby throughout her childhood, and shooed her out of bus stops on more than one occasion.
The farmers, en masse, sitting together in their tweedy suits, looking unnatural without their green wellies.
So many familiar faces – but, at the same time, not familiar. She’s not been back here for so long, and they have aged. Not in the normal, gradual way that people living around you age – but all of a sudden, like they’ve fast-forwarded in a time machine.
Hair has turned grey; skin has become wrinkled; tummies have grown. The grown-ups she thought of as old when she was a teenager – but were actually only the same kind of age as she is now – suddenly look old. Properly old.
As she glances around, she gets some sympathetic nods from people she doesn’t even recognise at first. People, she soon realises when she adjusts her mindset and sees them through time-lapse goggles, she was at school with.
They, too, look so much older. It’s just completely weird, like something from a science-fiction film.
Of course, she knows, they are probably thinking the same about her.
They’re thinking how much weight she’s put on.
That her hair is a mess. That she was once such a pretty young thing, and now she’s a frumpy 40-something wearing a horrible black dress that she panic-bought from Evans and now hates.
It’s a hot day, summer finally deciding to kick in, and she’s hot and too sweaty and her hair is the size of a privet bush.
They’re probably also thinking: haven’t seen her for ages. Her poor mother, abandoned in her dotage. Not that ‘dotage’ is a word that could ever really be used about Andrea, thank God.
Joe squeezes her hand, reassuring her, and she snaps herself out of her fast-approaching self-pity party. She gives him a smile, hopefully one that says ‘this is sad but I am fine’, and continues to look around.
No show-biz faces, which surprises her. She’d at least expected a few, or maybe her co-star from her Penny Peabody days.
Andrea herself, of course, is providing plenty of show biz – certainly more than this church has ever seen.
Big easels are set up all around, each holding one of her beloved headshots from different eras, blown up so her perfect face is clear for all to see.
Young and glamorous in the early Seventies, hair flowing wild and free.
Overly made-up and super-coiffed from the Eighties, in a red silk blouse with shoulder pads.
Dignified but still gorgeous, Penny Peabody era, right at the front.
Rose stares at that one, to distract herself from the coffin.
Every time she allows her brain to even consider what is inside that shining mahogany box, she starts to dissolve in a fizz of agony.
Her mother – everything about her mother – is surely too big to fit inside that thing? It defies the laws of physics.
It doesn’t feel real, none of it. Even now, over a week later, it doesn’t feel real. She feels like she’s playing a part in a film: the grieving daughter at the funeral. Playing it badly, as well.
Being back here – with these people, in this place – would be enough of an emotional overload at any time, but at her mother’s funeral it’s just too much.
She just has to get through the next hour; hold on tight until this ordeal is over with, and she has to face the next. One horrific step at a time.
She continues to look around, and gets a small finger-wave from a bleach-blonde lady who is even bigger than she is.
She smiles, and waves back, still not sure who it is until it hits her: Tasmin Hughes.
It’s Tasmin Hughes, her friend from another lifetime, who got pregnant when she was 15 and could well be a grandma by now.
Her first thought is that time hasn’t been kind to either of them, but then she tells herself off – Tasmin looks happy, at least.
As she scans the crowd, she knows she is only really looking for one person.
The person who wasn’t there for the sad, traditional procession behind the coffin; the person who left that walk of pain to her and Joe and Lewis.
She’s probably hiding in her car until she can sneak in, thinks Rose, or maybe she won’t come at all.
She is ashamed of the fact that even now – at the funeral – and even after watching that video, part of her is still desperately hoping that that is true.
That Poppy won’t show up, and she’ll be saved the extra anguish of that on top of everything else.
She doesn’t know if she can cope with anything else. Especially that.
As the vicar starts to move towards the pulpit, and the low-level buzz of chatter clears, she hears the sound of high heels tip-tapping on the stone floor of the aisle. She knows, without a shadow of a doubt, who it is. Who it has to be.
She hears the footsteps getting closer, and stares at her own hands.
She is so tense, so tightly screwed up with grief and anxiety and panic, that she starts to tear the skin from the sides of her nails.
It hurts, a sharp stab of pain as bright-red blood flows, and it is enough of a distraction to stop her from getting to her feet, and running out of this place screaming.
She senses, rather than sees, Joe look up.
Feels him move slightly closer as he shuffles along to make room.
She’s there, she knows she is. Poppy is sitting next to Joe, and her mum is in that box, and every person she knew in her childhood is staring at her like a gang of gargoyles that has come to life.
She gulps, and tries to breathe, and pulls more skin from her thumb. It’s never too late to start self-harming, she thinks, wiping the blood on her dress.
She refuses to look up, and stays deadly still, and completely quiet. As though if she stays still enough, she will become invisible.
The vicar taps his microphone, and the sound echoes around the walls of the church. As the congregation falls completely silent, she hears one sentence being whispered a few spaces along the pew: ‘You must be Joe. I’m Poppy. It’s so nice to meet you at last.’