Chapter 9 Zoe Spring 2025 #2
The microphone crackles as Fiona passes it to her.
‘In the midst of our grief, we pray for un-un-un-ity among those who gather to remember our mother,’ she says.
Mum will be cross she’s stumbled. Unity, unity.
She glances down the line of her sisters, all dressed identically to her.
Like they never did as children. Why did they do this now?
Before Mum died, she’d never felt a sense of unity with them.
She hates to admit it even to herself, but she’d actively disliked them for abandoning her to look after their parents, and felt they didn’t deserve to be part of their mum’s death and funeral.
But just a week later, she feels differently.
They are her family, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
‘May this shared experience bring us closer together, reminding us of the bonds that transcend the challenges we face. Help us find strength in one another as we navigate this emotional journey. Thank you for the unity we find in times of sorrow. Lord hear us.’
‘Lord graciously hear us,’ the congregation murmurs, faces warm with sympathy. For her mistake or for the loss of their mother, or both. The coffin is silent. Zoe can’t help touching it as she files back past. Sorry, Mum.
Later Fiona stands to give the eulogy. They offered it to Zoe as the one they believed was perhaps closest to their mother, but what could she say?
She has too many memories of her, too much to say to fit in the standard five minutes.
And she knew she wouldn’t have been able to get through it.
Her throat tightens just thinking about it.
‘Camilla Constance DeProse was born in Highdown Hall in 1949, the eldest child of Evelyn and Edward DeProse.’ Fiona’s first line sounds like a history lesson.
‘She lived at the hall, or on the estate, her entire life and went to what was then called Hambrough Village School from the age of four until she was thirteen when she went away to boarding school. A lover of the English countryside, she met my father Paul on a shoot on the estate when she was just eighteen. She was a gun and he was a beater and our family initially disapproved of the relationship. Mum argued and argued and eventually got her way – as she usually did.’ A murmur of laughter ripples through the church. Fiona smiles.
‘And they were eventually married here in this church in 1971. Time was to prove Mum’s parents wrong, for Mum and Dad’s was a true love affair lasting more than fifty years.
Testament to her love is that she is still wearing her wedding band, more than five years after my father died.
’ Fiona swallows and glances towards the coffin. So Fiona noticed that too, thinks Zoe.
‘Mum played a big role in the village community throughout her life,’ she continues.
Zoe turns and glances around at the congregation, their faces watching her sister.
Alice is already dabbing her eyes. The lady at the post office who Mum had waged war with is smiling at Fiona’s mention of Mum’s campaigning.
The headmistress laughs at Fiona’s comment on Mum spending more time in the school than some of the pupils.
Everyone here loved her in some way, or at least respected her.
It gives Zoe a warm feeling that so many people have come to see their mother off.
Would it feel different if there were just a handful of people to witness her funeral?
She’d been to funerals here with Mum when there was just the deceased’s immediate family and a villager or two.
Being part of a big congregation makes her grief feel bigger, more important.
But she supposes it feels exactly the same if you loved someone and were the only mourner.
‘Mum had always said she wanted a big family,’ continued Fiona.
‘She only had one sister, Josephine, who sadly died as a young child, and she felt the three of them had rather rattled around in the hall. Stephanie came along in 1974 and, like clockwork, Mum and Dad had another child roughly every five years – me in 1979, Sara in 1984 and Zoe in 1990. We were all christened in this church too. Milly was a wonderful mother – always willing to listen, to help with homework, to create a craft project, to build a den in the woods.’
Zoe knows the thickness in her throat is a sign she’s going to cry, like your mouth watering before you’re going to be sick.
The tears come and Zoe wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
Someone pushes a tissue into her fist and she presses it to her face.
At the pulpit, Fiona pauses for too long and Zoe realises she’s also struggling.
Her steel-like sister swallows and looks down at her notes.
‘Mum took to being a grandmother as enthusiastically as she had to motherhood. The arrival of my twin nieces Charlotte and Isabelle and then little Katy was an enormous joy for her.
‘My parents had the sort of relationship that it was impossible to imagine one without the other. When her beloved Paul died in 2020, that was the start of my mother’s own decline.
She never quite recovered from the grief and it seemed to weigh her down each day.
’ So Fiona listened to what Zoe had said.
Zoe wipes the tissue against her nose. Poor Mum never got over Dad’s death.
‘When she turned seventy-five last year, the age my father was when he died, it was as if she’d had enough.
After the celebration with Zoe and Sara and her family, she started complaining of pain in her torso which was soon diagnosed as cancer.
She took the news as you might expect, stoically, and looked on the positive side.
She would soon reunite with Paul. While I didn’t manage to get there for the end’ – was it Zoe’s imagination or did Fiona still say that through gritted teeth?
– ‘my sister Zoe was with her as she died peacefully in the house she loved so much, as she had been for the weeks and months before that.’
Across the aisle, tissues are being raised like white flags.
Sara sniffs and wipes at her eyes. Only Steph sits silently, staring directly ahead at something Zoe can’t see.
It’s funny how they all show their grief differently.
Zoe thought Fiona’s organising drive was evidence that she hadn’t felt as close to their mum, hadn’t missed her.
But it was just her way of coping. Just as Steph said little, and kept it all inside, and Sara fussed around and mothered them all.
A dropped hymn book echoes through the church as Fiona slowly walks back from the pulpit, touches the coffin, mouthing something, and then takes her seat next to Zoe.
‘Well done,’ Zoe whispers. ‘That was beautiful.’
Fiona presses her lips together and takes Zoe’s offered hand. Her eyes are full, a tear teetering on the edge of her eyelid. Fiona wipes it away with a manicured finger.
The vicar Mum had bossed about for years, finally given the chance to take the lead, is finishing the service with a blessing.
He nods to someone and the pall-bearers reappear, carefully picking up the coffin.
Fiona stands, then Zoe and Sara. She feels Steph move behind her and they file out to walk behind their mother to some piano music Zoe doesn’t recognise.
What was it Mum chose? She can’t remember now.
That’s it, it’s all over. The tears come again and she stumbles momentarily.
Steph grips her arm, keeping her upright.
Zoe smiles at her and then keeps her eyes on her mum as they walk out into the sunshine and the men slide the coffin back into the hearse.
She watches it inch its way down the street.
A postwoman walks alongside the hearse for a while, pushing her red trolley on the pavement, huge headphones clamped over her ears.
Next door, children are screaming in the school playground.
For everyone else this is a normal day. But for her, it’s the final day.
They won’t see Mum again. Next time, she will be a pile of ashes in a box ready to be placed in the cold earth next to their father.
The hearse picks up speed, heading away, and the four of them turn towards Highdown Hall. Behind them, the congregation follows.
This is the only time she envies smokers – the ready-made excuse to go outside, to get away. If one more person asks her how she’s feeling, she’ll scream. And bloody Fiona for organising the caterers. If it wasn’t for them, she could escape into the kitchen and fiddle about with the food.
‘Are you okay?’ Zoe turns towards the voice, about to explode, and realises it’s Alice.
She feels her shoulders drop as she shakes her head. Alice envelops her in a hug, just as she had when she was small and she’d fallen out with friends, or been told off at school. She relaxes into it.
‘It’s a tough day for you – for all of you,’ Alice says, stroking her back.