Thursday 5 September (Last Year)

[Minus four]

I’m sweating hot. Autumn, and the air is glossy with sunshine. It’s the wrong day to be wearing a black wool dress. Any day is the wrong day for what we’re doing.

We’ve been standing, singing hymns I don’t know, for ten minutes. I’m not used to wearing heels; Sof got the bus to town and bought me these. They’ve rubbed all the skin off the back of my feet—I can feel my tights sticking to the blood. I sway in the heat, shifting my weight from one foot to another. I want to sit down, I think. Then immediately try to unthink it.

Ned grips my elbow as I sway, and I look up at him. His hair is tied back in a neat bun.

“You okay?” he mouths. I nod as the hymn finishes and we sit down with a murmur, a clatter of pews, a rustle of paper. There’s a pause while the pastor climbs back up to the lectern. I glance over my shoulder, searching for Jason. He’s looking at Ned, not me. Sof catches my eye. I turn back to the front.

“Grots,” Ned hisses at me, nodding at the coffin. “It kind of looks like a picnic basket.”

A giggle forms in the back of my throat. I chose it—one of those woven, willow branch ones. Grey would have been pushed out to sea and shot at with burning arrows if he could. Instead, after this, there’s—

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t.

We stand up again.

Papa gets the words of the next hymn wrong, confidently launching into a second chorus. Ned snorts.

It’s been like this all day, lurching from ordinary to horror, a binary rhythm.

Washing my hair with mint-flavor shampoo, eating a piece of toast. Putting Marmite on the table before I remembered. Pulling on black tights even though it’s twenty-nine degrees outside and Grey would want us all barefoot anyway. I took them on and off a thousand times and I was still ready too early. Ned’s arm around me on the sofa, flicking through the channels. Waiting for the motorcade to arrive, even though the church is a five-minute walk from our house.

Traveling in a hearse. Feeling hungry. Trying to remember what food I asked the pub to prepare for afterwards. Papa red-eyed. Ned asking me to tie his tie.

The word eulogy.

Listening to the pastor talk about James Montella. Thinking, who’s that? Why aren’t you calling him Grey? Everybody laughing at a story the pastor tells about him trying to jump across the canal to prove something, and his daughter asking him to at least hand over the keys to the Book Barn first. I try to remember, then understand he’s talking about something that happened before I was born. He’s talking about Mum.

We’re standing up again, another hymn. I wince, my feet aching.

“Take them off.” It’s Ned, his hand steady on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Grotbags. Take them off.”

It’s what Grey would do. But I can’t, I don’t deserve to be comfortable, and I sway in the heat and I’m falling—