I wasn’t very comfortable any more: my feet were cold and my neck was stiff and my back bruised, and my stomach felt small and tight. But despite this, when I stood up to stretch I found that I felt remarkably refreshed given the circumstances, as if I’d slept for eight straight hours on a well-sprung mattress rather than just a few on bare wooden boards. And my head felt clear too – completely free of clutter, like it had been cleaned and rebooted overnight.
In tiny increments, the sky brightened. I drank some Diet Coke and took my tablets, and then leaned my elbows on the side of the refuge point as the tide crept out and the sun rose over Lindisfarne.
It was a little after eight thirty. The waves had passed beneath me and the sky was a pale blue. I had just shouldered my rucksack, and was preparing to climb back down the ladder, when my phone rang. It was my mother.
‘Abby, you’re awake.’
‘Yes. Stating the obvious but—’
‘I thought it would be better to call straight away.’
There was something strange in her voice. The sort of strange that immediately makes your stomach drop. ‘Mum, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘Darling, it’s your father . . .’
26
ANOTHER DEAD BODY
The funeral was organized by Marie and my sister. They asked me, when they started, if I’d like to have an input. Actually, I think what Francesca told me over the phone was that she and Marie ‘wanted’ me to be involved. It was a lie, of course, but I believe it came from a good place. She didn’t want me to feel excluded. Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to imagine how the three of us would work together. Arranging the catering for the reception, selecting music, writing the eulogy – everything seemed fraught with danger. Not that I expected anyone to ask me to write, or even contribute to, the eulogy. Whatever Fran and Marie envisaged my involvement could be, I knew they’d have to draw the line somewhere. But even simple things like flowers and sandwich fillings and venue felt far, far beyond me. The truth is I had no idea what Daddy would have wanted, and in my limited experience, this is the first question people ask when planning a funeral. I didn’t have a clue if he’d want flowers; I didn’t even know if he’d have wanted to be buried or cremated. These were things I’d never thought about.
Unfortunately, Daddy had never thought about them, either – or if he had, he’d kept it to himself. My father had left no instructions in the event of his death. In part, of course, this was because he hadn’t been expecting to die, and I don’t just mean that in the sense it might apply to any apparently healthy fifty-eight-year-old man who suffered a fatal stroke in his sleep. I mean, also, that I don’t think the notion of dying ever really entered my father’s head. He had too large an ego to contemplate a world without him in it.
If I had been asked to write a eulogy, that would have been the title.
‘You know, he doted on you as a child,’ my mother told me in the car, as we drove to London on the morning of the funeral; and it wasn’t the first time she’d told me this. She’d told me many times over the past week. I think it was meant to make me feel better in some way. ‘You were much closer than he and Fran were, or you and me, for that matter.’ She gave a small, wry laugh. ‘It actually made me a bit jealous at the time, seeing how close the two of you were.’
I threw my mum a look, but she had her eyes fixed on the motorway. ‘Mum, you’re talking about a very small portion of my life, and one that I hardly even remember. Daddy may have loved me when I was a child – I’ll take your word for it – but I’m not going to pretend that our relationship was anything more than it was.’
‘Oh, Abby. You make it sound as if he stopped loving you. He didn’t – of course he didn’t. He stopped loving me. There’s a huge difference. It was me he wanted to leave, not you.’
‘I was a teenager, Mum. He couldn’t leave you without leaving me as well. We came as a package. You can dress it up however you like, but at some point he opted for a future that did not involve either one of us. There were things that were more important to him. His penis, mostly.’
I added this last point because I couldn’t stand the grim frown that had crept over my mother’s face. I’d expected more of her, to be honest. Ostensibly, she was coming today so that she could ‘be there’ for me and Fran, but it was becoming clear that she would struggle to do this on my terms. She thought it would be much healthier if I just allowed myself to grieve.
What she didn’t understand was that I was grieving. It’s just that my grief was complicated. Because I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t experiencing a new grief; I was grieving afresh for something I’d lost many years earlier. Something that may not ever have existed.
Beck wasn’t there when we arrived at the crematorium, but we were quite early; and, all things considered, I felt myself lucky that he was coming at all. Last week’s phone call was yet another that I’d got very badly wrong.
‘The funeral’s on Wednesday,’ I’d told him, ‘if you want to come.’
There was a short pause down the line. ‘Do you want me to come?’
‘I think Daddy might have liked that,’ I answered. ‘I mean, let’s be honest, you got on with him better than I did.’
I only realized how awful this sounded after we’d hung up. In my defence, I was very tired at the time. It’s not much of a defence, but it’s the only one I have.
I texted back immediately.
I do want you there – of course I do. There’s nothing I want more. Please come.
Then I spent the next two minutes, until I got a reply, worrying that I’d now gone too far the other way, and written a message so effusive it could only be read as disingenuous.
But it wasn’t. I meant every word, and I realized that now more than ever, in those several moments when I looked and didn’t find him.
Instead, I saw a handful of Daddy’s work friends and a few distant relations. Basically, I could glance around the car park and at once divide the assembled crowd into two partially overlapping categories: people I didn’t really know, and people I didn’t really like. And, inevitably, many of these people felt duty-bound to seek me out at the earliest opportunity to offer their condolences. In most cases, I responded with a neutral smile and a ‘Thank you’ and left it at that. But I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to feign feelings I didn’t have. When people asked me how I was ‘holding up’, I told them. If they didn’t appreciate the answer, this was their problem, not mine. Still, after the third or fourth such occasion, I was aching for a bit of moral support.
For the most part, I still had no idea how things would pan out when Beck arrived; but I was certain that he, at least, would respect my right to mourn – or not to mourn – as I saw fit.
We found Fran and Marie in the small foyer outside the chapel. It came as no great surprise that Marie could be numbered among the tiny fraction of women on the planet who wear grief well. She looked stunning, as ever – long black dress, black shawl, black veil with pretty black flowers on it. Funeral chic. Fran had offset her black top with a dark grey skirt, appearing poised, pensive and solemn – although, really, this wasn’t much of a departure from her everyday look. Fran had a wardrobe that was particularly conducive to funerals.
As for me, I’d not had a lot to work with at my mum’s. In the end, I’d gone for black trousers and a black cardigan with a (borrowed) white blouse. It was sober enough, I thought, but without making me look like a wraith. And I was wearing bright pink underwear – just because it made me feel a little better and wouldn’t do any harm. I’d checked myself in the mirror and it didn’t show through. In this, at least, I felt I could do as I wished and not offend anyone.