Page 36 of The Art of Loving You

But they weren’t strangers to Jack, I wanted to say. I knew the funeral wasn’t about me but it seemed it wasn’t about Jack either.

‘We’ve decided on the wording for the headstone,’ Rhonda said. I let out a low moan, I couldn’t help myself.

Elaine squeezed my hand. ‘We advise on waiting for a least six months before erecting any sort of memorial; the ground needs time to settle.’

The thought of Jack’s name on cold marble, the date of his death was too much.

It was time to go.

I said a stiff goodbye to Bryan and Rhonda.

‘You’ll send Jack’s things? His guitar?’

I nodded. I didn’t have a choice. At least, legally, Jack’s half of the house belonged to me, even if nothing else seemed to.

It’s not as if we were married.

‘You can choose two songs for the service,’ Rhonda relented before she turned away.

By the front door Elaine swept me into her arms.

‘Can you let me know if there is someone who wants to speak so I can factor it into the order of service?’

There was one person I could ask. There was something else I needed to ask them too.

Something I’d been avoiding.

Too scared of the answer.

Chapter Twelve

Outside the vicarage Alice looped her arm through mine. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Rhonda and Bryan didn’t know Jack.’ I was despairing. ‘He’d have hated hymns and prayers and … all of it.’

‘I’m so sorry. It’s so unfair. And asking for his guitar is awful.’

‘I guess it got me an extra song though.’

‘Home?’

‘No.’ I told her where I wanted to go. As she drove, I watched a bird, its wings flapping through the cornflower sky. It landed on the spire of the church perching against a backdrop of fluffy white clouds. It looked so small, so insignificant and yet something about it stood tall and proud. ‘I am here,’ it seemed to say as it puffed its chest out. ‘I can make a difference.’

That was what Jack wanted. ‘Be the change you want to see’, he was fond of quoting. What did I want said about him at his funeral? I thought I knew him so well, all of his hopes and dreams tightly parcelled up with mine, but now he wasn’t here the string was lax and some of the little pieces that had made up Jack were slipping away.

Have you spoken to Libby yet?Faith had texted.

Regretfully I realised there were so many things I didn’t know about him.So many things now I wished I’d asked. Things I had thought inconsequential were now of the utmost importance to me. What was his favourite flavour of rock?

Not long after we’d started dating we had taken a trip to Norfolk – it was somewhere Mum had often taken me and Alice when I was a child. There was a particular place I had wanted to revisit but I hadn’t known exactly where it was. Jack had driven along the coast while I had peered out of the windows, eyes searching for something familiar. Regularly we’d climbed out of the car to explore. Sipping sweet cider in pub gardens, eating chips doused in vinegar, ears full of the screech of the gulls as they circled for scraps. Trudging over dunes in the midday heat. Every now and then I’d turn to the sea to glance at the lighthouse for direction, leading Jack more to the right, to the left until finally we stumbled across it.

I crouched down and parted the long grass.

‘There’s a bunker under here.’ It was covered now, by a manhole, but it used to be open to explore.

Jack tried to lift the heavy metal cover but it had been fixed down somehow.

‘This was my favourite childhood place. Me and Alice had been running up and down the dunes to get warm after being drenched by freezing waves as we paddled and we found it.’

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