Page 105 of Such a Good Couple
‘Let’s take one thing at a time. Funeral first – you can catastrophise about everything else after tomorrow,’ Annie said, and Clara pulled her into a hug.
‘You are being so grown-up right now. Maggie would be so impressed,’ she whispered. Then added, ‘Don’t make me do the eulogy.’
‘Clara!’ Annie sat up. ‘You’ve been in this room for four days, have you seriously not planned the eulogy?’
‘Well,youwere understanding for all of twenty minutes.’ Clara laughed, and for the tiniest sliver of a second things seemed almost normal. Then she flashed back to Maggie prone on the bathroom floor and felt sick.
Annie, evidently seeing this play out on Clara’s face, said gently, ‘We’re allowed to laugh, Clara.’
‘Yeah.’ Clara nodded reluctantly. ‘I know.’
‘So, I know you’re joking about the eulogy. You’ve got something for tomorrow, right?’
Clara sighed and pulled herself off the bed to grab her laptop. ‘Yeah, yeah. Between panic attacks I put together some pictures to play on the projector. Brody was actually kind of helpful. He digitised a bunch of old college snaps. I gave him a list of songs for this string quartet he’s got and the twins are saying they want to sing ‘All of You’ fromEncanto. Emer and Donal will get up with them to help them with the words.’
‘Jesus.’ Annie closed her eyes. ‘God love them.’
The next morning, the rain had cleared but a low granite slab of cloud remained parked above the city.
They all met at Miavita first to divide into three large black cars and go, in convoy, to the beautiful old chapel in the foothills of the Dublin mountains. It had been deconsecrated years before and was the site of many of Dublin’s secular funerals. A fourth black car held Maggie’s coffin. Upon seeing it, the thought suddenly hit Clara that everyone would one day own a coffin – this idea rocked her. You could be going about your life and meanwhile your coffin could be already waiting for you, sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
Just as she was recovering from this strange new knowledge, she was confronted with a deeply unnerving sight. Fionn. The last four days had demolished him. He leaned listlessly against the back of the last car. His devastation was writ into his very being. His suit hung from his frame; his eyes looked too big in his sunken sockets. He looked up but didn’t seem to see her.
Clara stepped over carefully in her low black court shoes on the still-wet ground and embraced him. He dropped his head to her shoulder and shook silently. ‘It’s gonna be okay,’ she lied. ‘We’ll be okay.’
Nearby, Maggie’s parents and Donal and Emer all looked ashen-faced and haunted. Dodi and Essie stayed huddled together and Clara’s boys kept their distance. No one knew how to behave. Annie and Brody directed everyone to their respective cars and they pulled out onto the main road.
In the church, among the attendees, the sorrow and shock at what they were gathered to do was palpable. Fionn had remained drawn and vacant even as he carried his wife’s coffin into her funeral, but the second the photographs and videos started playing above the altar, his reserve abandoned him. He doubled over in the pew and started to sob.
Maggie glowed in every picture. There she was, no more than twenty, screaming at a gig, her mouth wide and her teeth bared in completely unselfconscious delight. There she was sticking her tongue out, dressed as a puppy for a Halloween party. There she was in the centre of the six of them, Ollie, Conor and Fionn on the girls’ backs. Clara remembered they’d all fallen over seconds after the click of the camera. The stills changed to a video of a young Maggie storming around a stage, directing one of the college productions. Then Maggie appeared with a bump so big it looked fake, with Fionn grinning and pretending to hold it up from underneath like Sisyphus. In the next slide Maggie and Annie were dancing with a bouncing baby twin each in the tiny London flat; at one point they leaned close and each kissed the other’s twin.
The images kept rolling. There were so many; how to show a whole life and friendship as big as theirs in such a dismally flat format as a projected slideshow?
Clara rose and went to the podium to the left of Maggie’s coffin.
‘Maggie was a girl who sparkled. And then she was a woman with astounding talent. And then she was a wife who would go to the end of the world and back for her love. And then she was a mother who gave her babies everything. And through all of this, she was my and Annie’s best friend. We have a group chat called Slags For Life – who can remember where these names come from! And I guess it might sound shallow but I don’t know what to do with that group chat. I’ve never been in a group chat that someone has died in before. It’s a very 2025 problem. I just can’t leave it, I can’t archive it. But can I bear living with it sitting in my phone forever? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can bear all her messages and jokes and pictures just existing there in my pocket like a butterfly under glass at a museum. I can’t believe we only got her for such a short time. When we called it Slags For Life, wewere assuming that life would be long.
‘Anyway, I don’t even know how to begin to tell you all the ways that Maggie was magical. She was so talented and fun and hilarious and brave and smart. So instead I’m going to borrow a song from one of the best gigs we ever went to. It was 2003 and we were drinking in the Pav planning to head to see Jerry Fish and the Mudbug Club later that night. For reasons that are lost to time, Maggie was wearing just a bin liner and a pair of runners. We didn’t know each other that long but I knew I wanted to know her forever. Ollie and Fionn were there and Maggie and I were on the hunt together. We both were mad about these guys but had failed to capture them and beguile them with our wares. By wares I mean boobs, obviously. Anyway, then we heard that –disaster!– Ollie and Fionn were going to two different house parties and that we would either have to split up or one of us was going to have to sacrifice her night for the other to net a dick. Soooooo. Then Maggie was like, “What about the secret third option? Feck the guys and we go to Jerry Fish and dance our arses off?” So we did that because I knew I could wait another week or so to shift my future husband but I couldn’t miss out on Maggie for a minute. So we danced and we sang this beautiful song that has been going around my head non-stop for the last four days. Please join in if you know it cuz I am a shite singer.’
Clara cleared her throat and started, trying to ignore how much her voice was wobbling.
Day will break, stars will fall
There’s always something you’ll forget to say
Don’t dismay
True friends never part
The congregation stood and began to sway and Clara began to cry.
We’ll meet again
Trust me my friend
There’s no harm in goodbye
Give me your glass
