In the early hours of the morning, Vincent sends a group message reminding us that Cherie Reynal’s funeral is on in a few hours. He adds that we will hold my mother’s funeral in two days’ time. He then sends another message saying he’s sorry if the timing is insensitive, but we need to organise everything asap. Hugh messages to say that he will help out tomorrow and advises us to focus not on the things we can’t control but on the things that we can. Carmen sends a message saying how sorry she is for our loss, and how she loved our mother’s throaty laugh. Judy sends an animated heart. Vincent sends another message saying that it’s important to support each other in this difficult time. He forwards a link to a grief counsellor, and then sends a picture of our mother riding a bike in the sun. Simon doesn’t reply, and I throw my phone across the bed.
When I absolutely must, I pull on a dress and stamp my feet into some flat shoes before leaning against the wall, exhausted. Whenever I have felt this awful in the past, my mother was there to support me with hugs, and even though I don’t love them, I would happily cut off my own hand for one right now. If I let myself, I could stay leaning against this wall all day, breathing and creaking like another piece of the house. Vincent could have cancelled Cherie Reynal’s funeral, repaid the deposit and lost a few dollars. We could have had a whole day to mourn our loss, to cry alone or together. Anything but go to work as normal. The thought of Cherie at work, waiting, hurts. But I need to go in, and so here I am, two earrings still pressed into my body, deodorant on, packed and ready. But he could have cancelled, we all know it.
‘I should brush my teeth,’ I say aloud, before taking seventeen long, slow breaths.
‘Go to work,’ I say, willing it to happen. ‘Pick up your bag and go to work.’
Judy is sitting at the desk stapling pamphlets, and as I trudge in she bursts into tears. She brushes her hand along my leg as I trudge past her into the back office, and again when I return, sipping my water bottle and staring absently at the apricot trees. When I trudge back over to her desk and put the bottle down, she immediately puts two fingers over my thumb.
‘How are you going inside that head of yours?’
‘I’m compartmentalising every moment,’ I say, moving my hand away.
She hands me an invoice for coffee pods, and I sign the sheet while she slides her puffy foot out of one Swedish clog and places it over my shoe. She loves the clogs, even though they give her blisters and make her sound like a Shetland pony walking across cobblestones.
‘Judy, are you going to keep touching me like this?’
She nods.
‘I don’t need it,’ I say. ‘It’s unnecessary.’
‘I think you do need it, and Josephine would have wanted me to look after you. Putting things in boxes won’t cut the mustard in the long run.’ She lifts her hand to cup my chin, and then starts to cry again.
Reaching into the top of her tunic, she takes out a sodden tissue from her bra strap and blows her nose into it. She then folds the tissue in half and wipes her eyes. I lift my arm to touch her, because it appears to be her love language, but before I’ve made contact she’s hugging the tops of my legs sideways, resting her forehead on my hip.
I pat her on the back a few times. ‘Remember, the shoe that fits one person pinches another,’ I say. This is written on a post-it note near the photocopier. She nods through a sniffle and I give her shoulder a firm rub.
Hugh steps out of the back office dressed in a pair of formal suit pants and a checked shirt. He has brushed his hair, and his face is pink from shaving. He looks surprised to see me.
‘Vincent didn’t hear back from you last night, so he’s done Cherie’s make-up himself.’
No. I shake my head. That can’t be right. He wouldn’t.
‘Mr Reynal came in early to drop off her make-up bag, but Vince says he’s already finished.’
Simon walks out of the office with a mug of black coffee and a piece of toast. He’s wearing our mother’s red silk scarf and a few of her silver bracelets.
‘We’ve told him it’s against regulation, but he’s being an absolute nightmare,’ Simon says, waving his mug towards the prep room. ‘I really can’t deal with him right now.’
We all watch as he throws his head back and drains his coffee.
He swallows, then says, ‘Also, Carmen and Hugh are going to move in during this period because I can’t be alone.’
‘Don’t want to intrude, though,’ Hugh says, folding his arms in front and looking at the ground.
I glance over at Judy, who swivels back and forth on her ergonomic chair, following the conversation. She sees me and quickly snaps into action, busying herself with shuffling papers and checking that the phone is hung up properly.
Hugh scratches the back of his head. ‘I was thinking that maybe …’ He looks at Simon, who nods encouragingly. ‘I thought I could organise us a few surfboards for after your mum’s funeral, then we could all paddle out and make a circle together in the ocean to celebrate her life.’
‘No,’ I say.
‘I think it’s Hawaiian,’ Hugh adds.
‘It’s a beautiful idea,’ Simon says. ‘Really touching.’
People can sometimes act boldly around the bereaved. They can quickly take care to an unfathomable level. It’s part of the horror of it all really. One person rolls out of your life and half-a-dozen others roll right in. I’ve seen people turn up to funerals ready to harass Judy for extra biscuits or seat cushions. In it for the long haul. Peripheral family members are often the ones to cry the hardest through the memorial montages; the ones that look at each other wistfully and say, That was our John, with sad smiles, while John’s close family sit mutely by his coffin. Close family get medicated, everyone knows that. In my opinion, the bereaved need a very specific amount of care. The ratio of care to being left alone is around forty to sixty. The bereaved need time to stare at a wall blankly, but then they need help remembering to brush the back of their hair, not just the front.
I walk quickly down the hall to the prep room, picking up speed until I am almost running. I use the momentum to barge through the door, making Vincent jump in fright.
‘You are not qualified! What gives you any right?’ I yell.
‘Amelia! Don’t you dare come in here like that! My god! My heart!’ He stands at the end of Cherie’s coffin, grasping a handful of my brushes to his chest. His eyes are glassy and his clothing is crumpled.
‘You didn’t write back to me last night,’ he hiccups. ‘Who knew where you were?’
‘Are you drunk?’ I demand.
‘No! Certainly not,’ he says. ‘Don’t be rude.’
Cherie looks absolutely cooked with the amount of makeup he has applied to her face. She rests in her satin-lined coffin, dressed in a lilac skirt suit with a white shirt underneath. Her hands have been placed unnaturally high across her chest, so that it looks like she’s grabbing at her crucifix, as if trying to take it off. I have seen her wear this necklace while pouring carafes of wine down at the bistro, watching as the Lord Jesus sank feet first into the long seam of her bosom.
‘You are making this all about you.’ I wave my hands around the room signifying everything.
He gasps, ‘I am a widower.’
I ignore him and look instead at Cherie’s face, trying to analyse how to work backwards from all the layers of product. Overwhelmed, I begin by finger-combing some of her curls so that they are less like ringlets, but my hand gets stuck, and I bet it’s because he has set them with one of the shellac sprays.
‘There’s not enough time to wash her off and start again,’ Vincent says, making his way over to the sink, where he plonks onto one of the stools.
‘I used the gold powder to give her a bit of liveliness.’ He sweeps a fanned brush through the air to demonstrate.
‘Enough talking,’ I say.
He pulls a flask from his pocket and takes a swig.
‘Where did you get that?’
He shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He takes another sip. ‘The French drink in the mornings,’ he says. ‘Italians drink at church …’
‘No one drinks at work,’ I say, while trying to wipe Cherie’s face clean.
‘Sommeliers do.’
I fix her hands so that they are crossed neatly at the wrist, because the whole purpose of positioning the deceased is to show their loved ones that they are resting comfortably. He hasn’t done the research. He doesn’t get that things need to be done in a specific way if Cherie is to have a successful viewing. This job is very important and incredibly detailed, and little mistakes can make a big difference to the family’s funeral experience. I adjust the crucifix so that it sits at an even angle from her neck, and then align each side of her jacket, making sure all buttons strain at the exact same point across her torso.
I continue to work on Cherie in a panic-driven rush, with no time to hold deep commune with her body. While hastening around her coffin, I realise she is a similar age to my mother, and I quickly try to push this feeling so far down that it’s in the soles of my feet, and I can keep it contained by stepping on it each time I move. As Vincent cries and drinks, and as my mother lies in a cold store two metres away, I use the corner of a wet cloth to scrub flecks of make-up off Cherie Reynal’s shirt.
Forty minutes before the ceremony begins, we wheel her into the viewing room, which Carmen and Judy have set up beautifully. A cluster of mason jars have been filled with sprigs of golden wattle, and the large LCD screen steadily rotates through a series of photos. Bob and Cherie on a cruise at sunset, both sunburned and beaming at the camera; Cherie is wearing a turquoise sarong and a rattan cowboy hat. Bob and Cherie celebrating Christmas lunch on their deck. Cherie riding a mechanical bull in Vegas for her fiftieth, with her legs to the sky.
Bob peers into her coffin. ‘She’s really left me, hasn’t she?’ He sniffs loudly.
‘We are born alone and die alone,’ Vincent announces. ‘Except for twins.’ He cocks his head to the side then wanders back into the foyer, where he grabs the arm of Hugh, who happens to be walking past.
‘My beautiful wife is gone,’ I hear him tell Hugh, who looks deeply uncomfortable.
Vincent pulls out his phone. ‘Listen to my beautiful wife’s voice,’ he says. He starts scrolling through his phone, looking for a voicemail message that my mother left him weeks ago.
I can sense he is working himself up into a full-blown histrionic display and I can’t stand it. His grief is dominating everyone else’s, taking up all the oxygen.
‘I don’t want to hear her voice right now,’ I say.
He turns to me and Hugh makes his escape.
‘I’m sorry, Amelia. I’m sorry I messed up Cherie’s face. I’m sorry I’m not better at all this’—he looks around the room full of water decanters and tissues—‘this … this shit.’ He kicks the table leg.
‘When I met Josephine you were only three,’ he tells me, his eyes welling with tears. ‘You were such a spiky little thing! So stern. You would even sit with your legs crossed at the table while we were having dinner.’
I put an arm around his shoulders, and together we sink onto the nearest sofa. I remember him sneaking me crackers and cheese whenever I did the special hand signal we’d devised, touching my pinkie to the tip of my nose. I remember him asking questions at parent–teacher evenings and writing down the answers diligently in his notebook, and I remember him sticking up for me when I was a hormonally deranged teenager, trying earnestly to understand my moods and triggers. He even bought a copy of How to Raise Girls and read it from cover to cover, underlining passages and dog-earing pages.
‘I wanted you and Simon to like me because I loved her so much. I was almost forty when we met; that’s a long time to be alone. And then within six months I had a life partner and two kids …’
I can see Judy sitting behind the reception desk openly crying into her forearm as she listens. She gets up shakily and walks through to the back office, where Simon is sandwiched in a hug between Carmen and Hugh. Before the door shuts, I see Judy join onto the end of it, wrapping her arms around Carmen’s waist and resting an ear on her back.
‘Did you tell Jack she’s gone?’ Vincent asks. ‘He’ll be in pieces and I would feel sorry for him, but he never pulled his head out after I brought her up here. He was so unreasonable about it.’
‘I will call him later.’
‘He won’t cope with it, he’s too sensitive. But we should invite him to the funeral,’ says Vincent, as if any of us are coping with it.
The throuple and Judy emerge from the back office, and Judy comes over to the couch carrying a glass of water. Bobbing down near Vincent, she holds it out to him. He takes it gratefully and then sculls it unselfconsciously. I watch as his Adam’s apple pulls up and down with each gulp.
Judy clears her throat. ‘I really think that you two should go home.’
Vincent shakes his head. ‘Everyone knows the captain goes down with the ship.’
She shifts position slightly. ‘Vin, she died yesterday, you stink of booze—the captain needs to go home.’
Vincent pulls himself up from the couch using Judy’s shoulders to steady himself.
‘Then I would like to form a final huddle before I leave for the day.’
He stands with his hands extended out either side of his body, like a cormorant drying its wings, and we all converge into a tight circle. I hear somebody force a cough, and I turn to see Bob Reynal leaning against the doorframe, looking on.
‘Get in here,’ Vincent says, and Bob walks over and slinks in hip first between Carmen and Judy.
‘A prayer for our loved ones,’ Vincent states, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Do not be frightened. Be free, my earth angel. My darling, sweet amaretto. My rose. My wife. My life, my soul. Amen.’
I sigh loudly, unable to grieve in a collective mound. She was not just his wife; she was my mother. I had a special relationship with her, and technically I shouldn’t even be upright now—I should be at home in bed, focused solely on gluing every single cell back together. I release my arms from the circle and start to back away as Bob pipes up, ‘And Cherie, if you can hear me, you were my everything. I didn’t love anyone except you. Nobody was significant anyway, and in my heart I’ve always been faithful.’
I stand on the outside of the circle, widening my eyes at Judy, before Carmen concludes with a sincere, ‘Amen.’
I maintain eye contact with Judy, trying to communicate my desperation to leave. As the circle disperses she reaches for my hand and I squeeze hers in a Morse code SOS, begging her to get me out of here and away from this nonsense. She acknowledges with a squeeze and release. Squeeze, squeeze, release. Our shorthand for Yes.
‘We’re just going to pop out for a nice, brisk walk,’ she addresses everyone over her shoulder as she propels me towards the door. ‘Won’t be too long.’
I don’t look back to see who wants to come, or what might need doing. I don’t let myself think about my mother or Vincent. I just hold tight to Judy’s hand all the way out of Aurelia’s and across the gravel to her car. She opens the passenger door and feeds me through the gap, and I sit hunched unnaturally forward, unable to relax. Judy leans across and fumbles with my belt, finally clicking it into place, then eases my shoulders back until they touch the leather of the seat. I let my heavy, heavy skull lean back against the headrest. Here at last is a pocket of peace.