Page 53 of Last Night

Ed pauses.

‘… I hope I never stop hearing Susie’s voice, or keeping her memory alive. So, the final line is delivered fully in the spirit of Susie Hart, as we knew her – Susie, you were always too much. But we wanted more. Thank you.’

Ed closes his notes and steps down from the lectern.

People clap, which I’m not sure usually happens at funerals and which I will take to mean we did Susie justice.

Justin puts his hand on my leg, and says, in a strangled voice: ‘Perfect, Eve. Perfect.’

I barely hear the celebrant’s wrapping-it-up speech.

As we file out to theTwin Peaksmusic, all I can think of is Susie’s costume that said:She Is Filled With Secrets.

19

‘The quiche is really good, actually,’ Hester says, and I know it must be as she does not dole out praise willy nilly, or indeed ever. ‘Want my other slice?’

She’s done the buffet drive-by heaped plate load, where you pick things up for the sheer hell of it and share your scavenger’s bounty when you get back to the table.

‘No, thanks. Does look nice though.’

‘Can’t eat?’ Hester says, and I shake my head. ‘Well, at least think of how skinny you’ll get. Every cloud.’

This is such tone-deaf classic Hestering I can’t be bothered to mind. There’s no Susie to text, no 4G in heaven.

Your violent death had a silver lining, I now fit that Whistles dress. You know, the zebra-print one with a waist so tight it was like a religious test of penance.

Wait, you mean if you’d bought a size up, you vain crow, I wouldn’t have had to die?!

As Hester pokes through the potatosalad, I look curiously at the top of her head, her immaculate platinum parting, thinking: I was so jealous you had Ed, butdidyou have Ed? What’s been going on all this time, exactly? What would happen if I told her he’d played away? Would she dump him?

The wake is in the kind of kooky, plushy boutique hotel surrounds – chandeliers, mismatched crockery and colourful Chesterfields, open fires – that would make for a great ‘do’ at any other time.

As it is, it’s a peculiar, energy-drained sort of sub party. All the trappings of a get-together without the bonhomie. When a person goes ‘at their time’, as my mum says, you can find solace in that. You’re allowed to brighten up after the main farewell. Yet as much as we’re supposed to be ‘celebrating’ Susie, obviously, we can’t.Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called death.The volume level rises with inebriation, but it’s still half-hearted.

My mum wanted to come but she had a walking break planned with her friends, and I didn’t want her to miss it. Losing a holiday to a funeral didn’t seem fair, given the amount of things she has to enjoy.

After we arrived, we found a table in a corner, territory with walls behind us so we could more easily defend it. Justin bought a bottle of Veuve in an ice bucket, declaring he couldn’t care less ‘if Uncle Rod from Chepstow disapproves’. (This is a generic relative, I don’t think Susie actually has an uncle Rod from Chepstow, disapproving or otherwise.) ‘It was Susie’s favourite drink and she’d not give a stuff that you don’t usually drink champagne at wakes. In fact, that’s precisely what would appeal to her.’

I still keep my back carefully turned to the room during the telltale phunk-splut-fizz noise of the cork emerging.

‘To Susie,’ Justin says, holding his glass up. ‘Our dearest girl. Not here, but as far as we’re concerned, never not with us.’

We hold ours up and mumble: ‘To Susie.’

I think of her on that trolley. Not moving.

‘What was that daft thing she used to say when she got “one for the road” in?’ Ed says.

‘A brandy for the reindeer,’ I say, and Ed laughs, and I look away quickly in case he tries to make it any moment of connection.

Our dearest girl, not here. Her Not Hereness gives me a low hard stomach pain, what she and I used to call theempty sads. I lost a lexicon with her, a shared cache of things only the two of us understood.

If Susie was returned to me, though, would we have a friendship-ending size of fight? I would have to know the answers to things that I doubt we’d have fully recovered from. She’s died twice.

‘Ed, want some quiche?’ Hester says.

‘No, thanks,’ he says, with a smile. ‘Gorged myself senseless on the sausage rolls.’

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