Page 52 of Last Night

And yet not very dear to one.

I look at the back of Finlay Hart’s head, staring straight ahead, and wonder what he’s thinking.

A Celebration of the Life of Susannah Hart

I focus on these words until they’re no longer the English language. It feels like they’ve bored holes into me.

The celebrant’s recitation of the key dates and events in Susie’s life, reiterating her value to all of us, apoem, ‘Life Goes On’by Joyce Grenfell, read by Susie’s Auntie Val.

‘Nor when I am gone / Speak in a Sunday voice.’

A piece of music, Billie Holiday, ‘The Very Thought of You’. We wrestled with this choice: Vivaldi and Val Doonican are so easy to slot in when a pensioner passes, crematorium-appropriate, but Susie’s love of the Pet Shop Boys wasn’t quite so useful. Much as we loved them too, it was hard to imagine everyone trying to remain impassive and pensive listening to ‘Paninaro’.

‘“Being Boring”?’ Justin said, but although there was consensus it was great and apt, we couldn’t imagine the poppiness of it working.

Thankfully, I remembered how much Susie loved Billie Holiday sound-tracking a late bar we found in Rome, her seeking an album out and playing it endlessly when we got home. It’s a catalyst, and as soon as it starts up, I’m back getting drunk on Aperol Spritzes with her, in a bar lit by a jukebox and tealights, making plans for a future she barely got to see. My face is a flash flood.

Then, it’s Ed’s turn, I see him stand up at the end of the row, his notes in his hand. Listening to Ed read out my tribute to Susie was going to be extraordinarily agonising, before last night’s discovery. Now I don’t have a way of categorising my emotional response.

At the lectern, he coughs into a curled fist and looks up at everyone. The sight of him momentarily blurs in my tears as I blink them back.

‘Afternoon,’ he says. ‘I may only be thirty-four years old, but I’m going to guess this will forever be the toughest public speaking gig of my life. As a teacher, I include the time fifth-formers smuggled a dozen two-litre bottles of Magners in on the last day of term.’

He gives a thin smile. It’s not as if audiences at funerals can give you much encouragement by way of laughter.

‘What I’m about to read to you has been written by Susie’s best friend, Eve.’ Justin squeezes my knee as Ed looks toward me. I would squeeze back, but I will primal howl.

Who are you, Ed? I never needed to rely on you more than now. The rug has been pulled from under me. I can’t imagine ever trusting you again.

‘Eve was not only one of the people who Susie loved most in this world, and vice versa, she’s also very good with words,’ he says. ‘We thought it fitting she say a bit about Susie from the perspective of her friends. Eve can write, I can read, so this is a team effort.’

He coughs again and I tense, waiting for my words in Ed’s voice. Whatever else, I’m very glad I didn’t try to read it myself. I wouldn’t make it through a sentence.

‘Eve met Susie in primary school in the 1990s. The first photo of them together is in a nativity play. Susie was the Virgin Mary, always natural casting as a lead, and Eve was the back half of a camel. Always a natural to cast as a dromedary’s arse.’

Ed looks up and says: ‘Just to remind you again, Eve wrote this.’

He gets an actual laugh.

‘There followed what was to become a notorious incident at Saint Peter’s C of E Primary, where the front half of the camel passed out and vomited into the head of the costume, and the back half of the camel struggled out and stood there dressed in vest and pants, and some vomit spray. Other children screamed. Susie Hart, ever the one to make lemons from lemonade, shouted: “Look, the camel also gave birth, like me!” and incorporated it into the storyline.’

This, too, gets a ripple of amusement.

‘From that day on, they were an inseparable duo. On the face of it, Susie and Eve were a total clash. Susie was the captain of netball, whereas Eve wore a fake bandage so she could sit PE out and readSweet Valley Highbooks.

‘Susie didn’t much care for rules, and would do anything for her friends. Susie was one of life’s winners, until a split second of horrendous bad luck took her from us. Yet she could never pass by on the other side. She strongly identified with the underdog, while being a straight-A student who succeeded at everything she tried to do. That was her particular magic. Eve remembers a time when a girl in their class was getting bullied for having cheap shoes and Susie not only stuck up for her, she bought the same pair and came to school in them the following week. When Eve said she was heroic, Susie shrugged it off and said “Ugh, I just hate bullies. And anyway, I think I look quite good in grey patent.”’

Another laugh.

‘That was Susie. Sardonic, audacious, confident, with a humanity and humour that always shone through. When Eve came to write this, she says she realised that all of Susie was contained in that moment, aged eight years old, when Susie anointed her as God’s vomit-covered baby camel. Confidence and compassion and a metric ton of sass.

‘There’s no way to explain how much our group of friends will miss Susie, or how we can begin to calculate how much has been taken from us. From everyone. There’s something exceptional about friendships with friends you’ve known since you were young. They know all the versions of you. They know how you were built. They have a map for you. There’s a shorthand between you, and a love that is as strong as any blood tie.’ Ed’s voice wavers and he pauses to gather himself.

‘I’m going to read Eve’s summing up in her own first person:

‘What I didn’t expect, after Susie died, was to feel this panic. A panic she’d be forgotten. Not her name, or her face, or achievements. The official things. The panic that her voice, the way she spoke, her attitude, all that was unique and specific to her, would pass into history. I wanted her to be here, and for her contributions and opinions to still be with us. That she is past tense, feels so impossible, when she was so vividly alive. As I wrote this tribute, I asked myself, what would Susie say if she read it? Hers was the only opinion I wanted, and the only one I couldn’t have.

‘I pictured her scanning through it, chin on hand, chewing the drawstring on that terrible rowing club hoodie she wore. She’d giggle at the camel anecdote, and say something about: “God, do you remember that games teacher though? Put the ‘hun’ into Attila the Hun.” Then she’d say, at the end, mouth going a bit wiggly and wiping a tear: “Oh you sentimental oaf, give me a hug. I’m not sure, it’s so sweet. Does it make me sound a bit like a cross between Mother Teresa and Samantha fromSex and the Citythough? I can’t even remember the shoes thing, are you sure? Oh well, if you say so. You can be my official biographer, you’ve got the job. Someone else can write the scandalous stuff about me singing ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’, and then bunking up with him.”’

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