2018

On the whole, they enjoy a funeral. Michael, because it appeals to his sense of ceremony, Hanna, because she likes the drama, and Alice, because it brings people together.

Their mother, because it gives her a sense of achievement. Alice is early today, waiting at the entrance of the crematorium to greet people. It is her role in life to be early for things, just as it is Hanna’s to be late (or else not there at all, or else there when she shouldn’t be).

‘It would be friendlier to wait outside,’ her mother says. ‘But it’s raining.’

‘This is a funeral, Alice,’ her mother says, as if this requires people to be wet. But since her mother has shown no sign of volunteering to wait in the rain with her, and has in fact now vanished, Alice stays where she is, loitering in the overheated entrance corridor that smells of disinfectant and damp wool and something else more cloying and elusive that Alice fervently hopes is not the scent of death.

She has helped her mother to organize the funeral, or at least that seems to be the party line. In fact, Alice has done most of it alone, quietly liaising with the funeral directors, finalizing the order of service with the celebrant (a slightly odd title in the circum- stances, Alice thinks) and booking the nearby Working Men’s Club for the wake. The refreshments have caused her the most worry, since she has very little idea who will be attending. She spent a Saturday a couple of weeks ago going through her aunt’s papers in the old house, finding a few addresses here and there (some without accompanying names), to which she sent out notes about the funeral. There were some telephone numbers too, so Alice was able to leave a couple of voicemails, spoke to one very nice man who denied all knowledge of her aunt, and a less nice woman who shouted at her and slammed the phone down. A few of her aunt’s neighbours have said they’ll come, mostly elderly people who have lived on the street since long before Alice’s grandparents died.

Her aunt’s coffin is already in place at the front of the chapel. Alice’s mother didn’t want it being carried in ceremoniously in front of everyone. ‘Such an unnecessary fuss,’ she said. ‘And what if they drop it?’

‘They won’t drop it,’ Alice said.

‘They may do. Your aunt was not a light woman.’

Alice, who has always tried to love her aunt, let this pass.

The first few cars are pulling into the car park now. Through the rain-streaked panel of the door, Alice watches people emerge, and feels an anxious pang on their behalf: her old problem with arrivals. She has had difficulty arriving her whole life. As a child, being taken to a friend’s house to play (or worse still, for a party), or even to her grandparents’ house, she would feel the prickling, restless build of anxiety as the car pulled up, then the horrible plummet in her stomach as the engine was turned off (Hanna, meanwhile, would be striding ahead down the path, never looking back). The occasions themselves would usually be fine, and sometimes even enjoyable. But the chasm that exists between not being at a social gathering and being at a social gathering has always seemed vast to Alice, and yet must somehow be traversed in a few seconds.

Alice can’t see Hanna among the arrivals. She heaves open the thick wooden door to welcome in a pair of elderly women she recognizes as her aunt’s neighbours, Mrs Linden and Mrs Jackson, the names coming back to her just in time. They exchange some remarks about the miserable weather, then Alice turns to greet the man who has come in after them. He is very thin, with a sparse comb-over, and is dressed in a light brown suede waistcoat, now speckled with darker spots of rain.

‘I was an intimate friend of hers,’ he says, shaking Alice’s hand. Alice is slightly unsettled by the special emphasis he places on ‘intimate’.

‘That’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Where did you meet?’

He glances round him, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Here and there,’ he says.

This response does not seem to invite elucidation. ‘Did you know each other for a long time?’ Alice tries.

‘Well. In a manner of speaking.’

Alice is starting to find this exchange rather challenging, so she is relieved when her attention is claimed by a large woman she doesn’t recognize in a sparkly navy blazer, who comes through the door and presses her hand and says, ‘Hello love!’