Chapter 58 Later
Later
Funerals are never easy. The priest’s words bounce off the stone walls and zip through the yawning gaps between the bodies dotted among the pews.
The turnout is paltry, although I suppose that’s unsurprising given how far the rumors spread about James.
Nobody wants their mourning to be misunderstood as support.
Certainly not for trying to murder his wife. Nor for murdering his exes.
The police could only really try to pin him for trying to murder me in the first instance, but it didn’t stop the claims from coming. Chioma’s and Jade’s parents took to the news. Ama surprised me by filing a report about Mad Mary. When I’d asked her about it, she was sheepish.
“I left my house keys in the office one day,” Ama had explained.
“I went back for them after a drink with a mate in the evening. And I saw them. Mary and James together in his office. Together, together. So I always thought it was weird how he shit-talked her to everyone else. Nicely, mind. Dressed up like concern. You know what I mean. And then he asked me out…. I don’t know.
The whole thing felt off. So I started looking for other jobs.
I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I didn’t think he was dangerous until everything else came out. ”
I think of Mad Mary. The titters about her in the office.
I think of James inside her. Of his faux concern as he says, Bless her.
She just wasn’t quite right. I hope she’s found the help she needs.
I didn’t want to think of what he said about me when I wasn’t around, but Molly sent me a guilt-laden voice note not long after the claims started coming out.
A choice clip from the five-minute ramble: You have to know we never believed it when he said you were losing it.
The idea that not being able to have kids was messing with your head is so misogynistic. I should have spoken up.
I didn’t know what was worse—that James had weaponized such painfully private things, or that Molly had the gall to message me when it turned out she’d been sleeping with him all along.
In the end, it was all too much for James, who’d made enough rope to hang himself with. Quite literally. It was Hettie who found him hanging in the living room a few weeks after he’d attacked me. I guess she got her wish of having only one child in the end.
For obvious reasons, I don’t speak at the funeral, although James’s dad, Peter, invited me to. I’m sure the invitation would have come from Hettie had James’s death not unraveled something in her. She seems to look through everyone and everything in the sparse church hall.
My guess is James’s parents thought my speaking would rehabilitate his image. But I don’t know how to speak authentically without bringing the mood down even further, and making a funeral more depressing is not something I desire to tick off as a life achievement.
Instead, I sit at the back of the church and let the ceremony wash over me.
I feared it would shake something loose inside my fragile heart or mind, but I realize as the ceremony wears on that I’ve already grieved for the man I thought I married.
Emily’s beside me, hand clasped in mine.
When it’s over, we’re the first out and into the car.
“You did well in there, babe,” she says as she fires up the engine.
It’s nice having her back in my life. Not just nice. A relief. Like a cool drink of water after hours thirsting on a long, hot day.
I hadn’t realized the wedge between us after uni wasn’t just George-shaped, but Claire-shaped, too.
That she’d figured out what Claire had done to Luca.
Didn’t know how to hold that information and be my friend at the same time.
And then George and Claire were gone, but I didn’t want to live in a world where my sister was dead.
I wanted to remain in denial, and that’s a place in which Emily could never reside.
It’s not a place in which I can reside any longer, either.
The app in which Claire’s voice lived is now gone, deleted one night after a bottle of wine and an hour of talking myself into it.
My account had already been suspended for breaching the terms of service—shocking that you can’t use corporate technology to force a murder confession from your dead sister.
It was a decision that was ultimately the right call, but it left me with an abrupt silence from my sister at a time I wasn’t prepared to admit to her absence yet.
A lot of the apps have been cracking down after a spate of bad news stories.
It’s easy to get too attached to something that feels so much like someone.
Easy for that to send you off the deep end.
No one in Big Tech wants to be sued by suicide victims’ families.
But this deletion feels more intentional. More permanent. I cried myself to sleep that night, even though I know it was the right thing to do.
“Thanks for being there today,” I say to Emily as the car pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
I see the tall shape of Will emerge from the church door, Hettie tucked under one arm, doing a zombie-like shuffle.
Peter trails him. Will’s eyes gloss over our car as it rolls away and I think he sees me but he gives no reaction.
His words echo in my ears: He has to pay.
I wonder how Will feels. While there’s no hostility, whatever camaraderie there was between us seemed to die when James did. While we endured a few stilted check-in calls after James’s arrest and then suicide, the trickle of communication between us has since run dry.
—
By the time we reach my flat, it’s still light outside, missing rush hour on this rare sunshiny day.
I didn’t stop to consider keeping the house.
With everything that had happened there, including James’s final moments, I wanted a fresh start.
Wanted to not feel so isolated so far out of town.
And I considered returning somewhere else in London with the past in mind, but I had loved East London before James and was determined to love it until his ghost faded from the street corners and coffee shops.
Emily shuffles into the small lift with me, the floor a patchwork of ominous stains. We ride up to the third floor and push open the door of my brightly lit flat.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” a voice says back.
We kick off our shoes and round the corner of the corridor.
Dimple—I can’t quite think of her as Joy yet—stands in the living room, expectant.
It’s minuscule, but her jaw jostles from side to side as it does when she’s uncomfortable.
Her signature glasses are pushed up her nose, although her hair is in its natural state, close curls fanning out from her face.
Sometimes, I think she looks like Claire.
But I think it’s just that I want her to.
My new therapist says it’s normal to want to transfer feelings from one sister to another with the loss and the discovery, but we’re working hard on my not doing that.
They’re very different people, and I need to respect that about them both.
Emily and I enter the living room. I give Dimple a hug I wish were warmer as I make my way to the sofa by the French doors.
Emily gives her a narrow-eyed look and doesn’t embrace her at all.
Dimple notices it and glares at the back of Emily’s head.
I smile. Think of Claire. Try not to think of Claire.
“So, how was it?” Dimple asks, pulling out a dining chair to face us. It’s a small, open-plan living area in a new build. Bright and airy with slightly high ceilings but limited space. The sofa isn’t big enough for the three of us.
I tell her about the funeral. Not that there’s much to tell.
“Sounds like you’re taking it all in your stride,” she says in a very even voice. “You’ve done an incredible job processing all of this.”
My mouth twitches in irritation.
“Jesus,” Emily blurts out. “You know you can stop fake therapizing her now, right?”
Dimple frowns and sits on her hands. It’s a childlike gesture. She does a lot of those around me. But she doesn’t like me to point out her regression any more than I like her to use her therapy voice on me. Besides, she has her own therapist with whom she can work through these things.
“Emily, be nice,” I say.
“Hmm” is all she replies.
“Thanks for putting the lamb in,” I throw back to Dimple, who’s chewing the inside of a cheek. “I know it’s stupid, but I felt like I had to cook something showy, and—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself.” A small smile.
I get us all something to drink. With each of us on our best behavior for various reasons, it’s a very small glass of white wine apiece. Not long after she finishes hers, Emily checks the time.
“I’m so sorry, Nat, but it’s time for me to head.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t want you to miss your scan.”
Emily smiles and cradles her stomach with her hand.
I feel like I’ve been kicked in mine, although it’s not like when I first got the news.
When she first told me, I was winded. I’m not ashamed to admit that I went home and screamed into my pillow.
But not because of what she has. Because of what I’m reminded I’ve lost. Beyond the selfish pain, the thoughts of “what if” and regret, I’m thrilled for her.
I’ve no doubt she’ll make a great mom. And though I missed the years of her courtship and romance with Ash, on the few occasions I’ve met him, he strikes me as kind.
That’s the most important thing, after all.
Dimple and I say our goodbyes, although Dimple’s is more mumbled than spoken. I usher Emily toward the door, hold her tight.
“I’m so proud of you for surviving everything you’ve been through,” she says, and I can feel that her cheeks are wet. And then mine are, too. We hold each other for a moment more, and then she adds, “And this isn’t anything at all like what she said.”