Sunshine thudded off headstones and grass, bees flitted between flowers and the gravel path threw up dust as she walked. Jenny’s funeral suit was too hot for this weather. She smelled pollen and diesel from the buses over the wall on Northfield Broadway. Piershill Cemetery was a compact, pretty space sloping down to the railway line and Fishwives’ Causeway at the bottom of the hill. Jenny didn’t know this part of town well, a no-man’s land between more charismatic neighbourhoods. It was halfway between her old flat in Porty and Arthur’s Seat, which loomed over her now. She looked at Whinny Hill, a wide grassy knuckle criss-crossed with paths in the shade of the picturesque cliff of Arthur’s Seat.
Sunny funerals were weird. Grieving in weather more suited to ‘taps aff’ in the park was very strange. Yet here were Howard Bergman’s friends and family, sweating in unfamiliar outfits, tissues clutched in fists or tucked up sleeves. They were mostly elderly, like the majority of funerals. Howard wasn’t ancient but he was old enough to die, especially given that he was a working-class man suffering from obesity and other health problems. Jenny saw the body when they picked him up from hospital, sepsis was nasty, but Archie had done his usual impeccable job of hiding the worst.
They were near the top of the cemetery, the other end from the Jewish graves. With a name like Bergman Jenny had expected a Jewish funeral, but this was standard Church of Scotland. She should’ve realised because of the embalming and open-casket viewing, neither allowed in the Jewish faith.
Indy was carrying out the funeral duties with dignity and care. Jenny had got a call from Dorothy saying she was stuck in traffic. Indy had stepped up, and was running things with ease. Jenny admired her as she moved gracefully through proceedings, keeping a low profile. Funeral directors were like football referees, you shouldn’t notice them if they’re having a good game. Indy was playing a blinder.
The minister was a young woman and Jenny was annoyed by her own surprise at that. After all, they were a funeral director’s full of women, right? Twenty-first-century feminism, blah, blah, blah. But for a working-class guy’s funeral, this was a good sign. Jenny had dealt with the widow, also called Jennifer, which gave her a wee shudder. Living around death you should get used to it, but nudges about her own mortality still had the power to make her stop and swallow, feel something rising inside her.
She watched the Bergmans lower Howard into the ground and throw dirt on top, and remembered walking in on Karl Meyer’s gran in North Berwick. She’d had no comeback yet, but it was surely just a matter of time. She had a sudden stab of anxiety at the thought of Sophia, out there somewhere. What if it wasn’t Craig? What if she was taken by someone else, or just wandered off? What if her bloated body was floating in the North Sea, weeks of loneliness until she washed up on the Norwegian coast. Or never found, torn apart by fish and the sea and the weather until there was nothing left, Fiona still sitting at her kitchen table crying for a lost daughter.
Death could be dealt with as long as there was resolution, but what if that never came? We were programmed for our stories to have an ending, happy or sad. But sometimes a life story just doesn’t have an ending. Imagine if you never found out what happened?
She really wasn’t cut out for the funeral business. The minister wrapped things up and Indy orchestrated the mourners. We need to be told what to do sometimes, that’s the only way to keep going. She could hear two women chatting at the bus stop behind the high wall, woodpigeons cooing in the treetops.
She wondered how Hannah got on with the spy cameras at Vanessa’s place, if Mum had got any closer to finding a body for her foot. It was all just so fucking endless, and for what? She stared at Howard Bergman in a hole in the ground. The bereaved turned away, back to a busy city full of life.
Jenny drove as Indy checked her phone.
‘Han says the Chalmers thing went fine.’
Jenny smiled. ‘Cool.’
She turned the hearse into Melville Drive, the Meadows rammed with people in the sunshine. There’s a black panther on the loose, idiots, doesn’t that mean anything? Apparently not. They’d stopped letting Einstein off the lead on walks, and only went out in pairs to walk him since Hannah and Indy met Whiskers. What a stupid name for a deadly animal, she almost preferred the Beast of Bruntsfield.
Jenny and Indy had shown their faces at Howard’s wake at The Scottie round the corner from the cemetery then ducked out. Jenny was looking forward to getting out of these clothes, sipping a large gin in the garden.
She turned the hearse into Greenhill Gardens. A million memories flirted at the edge of her mind, learning to ride her bike on the Links, falling from the neighbours’ tree and splitting her knee open. Snogging that bastard Craig against a wall like she was a besotted teenager, not a lost middle-aged woman thankful for attention. Lying in bed with Liam, touching his back as he slept, thankful. She felt a pang of regret in her gut. She’d let him go for all sorts of reasons, but maybe it was time to try and get him back. She imagined getting in touch with him and was surprised that the idea felt so good. Maybe she would, instead of stalking him on Facebook.
She turned into the driveway, felt the crunch of gravel under the tyres.
‘Fuck,’ Indy said, and Jenny realised at the same time, punched the brakes and the hearse jolted to a stop.
‘No, no, no,’ Jenny said.
She and Indy jumped out the hearse. Hanging from the large oak tree in the middle of the garden was a man, head at an ugly angle, face purple, rope straining from one of the thick branches. Piss was dripping from his trouser legs into a wet patch on the grass below. A garden chair was kicked over to the side, and Schrödinger crouched underneath it, watching as if the man was a bird to stalk.
The body swung in the breeze, neck clearly broken. With the sun coming from behind, Jenny couldn’t make out much except that he was overweight, middle-aged. She didn’t think she recognised him.
The front door of the house opened and Abi ran out with her bandmates behind. She stepped forward then put a hand over her mouth. Kazuko put an arm round her.
Jenny looked at the kids. ‘What the fuck? Do you know him?’
When she was their age she’d seen plenty of dead bodies in the embalming room, but nothing like this.
Abi swallowed and wrapped her arms around herself as Taylor and Kazuko shared a look.
‘It’s my dad,’ Abi said, and sat down on the gravel with a thump.