It’s only been a few hours since we were last at this house but it already feels as if everything has changed. The energy is different. I can feel that he is gone. I stop for just a moment – taking a deep breath, revelling in how fresh the air feels in a house that has been oppressive for so long.
Alex must mistake my shivering for a wave of grief. He wraps his arms around me, holds me and kisses the top of my head. I stand still and let him believe what he needs to.
I hear the slam of a car door and turn to see Ciara walking up the short drive towards the house, hand in hand with Stella. Tiredness is written all over her face, I suppose, but then none of us slept well last night.
‘Has the undertaker been in touch with you?’ I ask as she walks through the door and slips off her coat.
She nods, fidgets a little, pulling the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand. ‘I don’t know what it’s all about. I thought it was just a matter of them … you know … preparing his body.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ Stella says, rubbing her girlfriend’s arm. ‘Don’t let it upset you, anyway. At least we have a bit more time to get things organised here.’
‘True enough,’ Ciara says, her eyes darting around the house as if she is seeing it for the first time, even though we’d all been here for most of the night.
Stella speaks next. ‘Where should we start?’ she asks, taking off her coat and hanging it at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’m not familiar with all your traditions over here, so just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’
Stella is very practical by nature. No nonsense. I’m glad to have her around. Ciara gives her a small smile. It lasts just a moment or two before she turns to look at me with a more serious face. Her expression reminds me of how she looked when we first met – full of teenage angst and intransigence.
‘Well, Heidi, what do you suggest?’
I don’t know what to do any more than Stella does, if truth be told. I avoid death rituals. I saw enough of them as a child that I blanked them out. I stare, unspeaking, at her.
‘Well, where do you want to have him laid out?’ Alex asks, stepping close to me and taking my hand. ‘Do you think the front living room would be best? If so, I’ll start clearing the furniture.’
I could kiss him for taking charge. Stella is not the only person who can help in a crisis.
‘That’s fine with me,’ Ciara says.
‘Grand. I’ll get started on that, then,’ Alex replies.
‘You can’t do that on your own,’ I say. ‘I’ll help.’
‘How about I help Alex?’ Stella asks. ‘I’m sure you and Ciara have enough to be doing elsewhere.’
Ciara and I look at each other, neither of us sure what else we should be doing at all but sure that whatever it is, we don’t want to be doing it together.
‘That would be great.’ Alex speaks for me again.
It isn’t lost on me that both Alex and Stella are talking slowly, as if giving instructions to truculent toddlers. There is an air of broken eggshells all around us and we’re all being careful not to tread them further into the ground.
‘Mum has the refreshments under control,’ Ciara says. ‘She knows a caterer and wants to help.’
Ciara’s mum, Marie, has always been kind to me. Unlike her daughter, she doesn’t seem to hold me partially responsible for her husband leaving her. I’m glad of her offer of help.
‘And she has been talking to Kathleen about the funeral,’ Ciara continues. ‘Kathleen has very definite ideas about what she wants. I imagine it doesn’t matter to you that much,’ she says. ‘Besides, it will free you up to call the estate agent and get the house on the market. Do you want to do that now, or is it time enough to wait until he’s actually buried? It might get a little awkward showing people around and seeing a coffin in the living room.’
I’m not sure which is my most overriding emotion: shame, embarrassment or anger.
‘Sweetheart,’ I hear Stella say gently.
Alex is quiet. Ciara stands and stares at me, waiting for an answer. She’s not letting me get away with it. She wants to break me down just like her father did.
But I won’t let her. I’m not a child any more. I won’t apologise or cower.
‘After the funeral is fine,’ I say, my voice steady.
Ciara glares at me, waiting for more maybe. But she won’t get it. Not about the house, anyway. I slip into organisation mode, trying to remember all the things we did twenty years ago when it was my mother’s turn to be laid out in the front room. Of course I was so young then, my memories are hazy at best.
‘I think maybe we should be closing curtains. Find somewhere to place the candles from the undertaker. Do people still cover all the mirrors?’
Seeing that she’s not getting a rise out of me, Ciara shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll check.’
She takes her phone from her pocket and starts to search for ‘wake traditions’.
‘It seems a lot of it is up to us,’ she says. ‘But maybe we should go and look in his room,’ she adds. ‘Strip the bed, open the window at least and air it out. See what medications need to be dropped off at the chemist. Then we can close the curtains again. Or the blinds at least. I think we maybe should cover the mirror in the room he’ll be in,’ she says.
I don’t really want to go into that room again, but I’m determined not to show any weakness in front of Ciara.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘That seems a good place to start.’
‘Will you two be okay?’ Stella asks.
She’s keeping her voice light, but I know both she and Alex must be scared we will tear lumps out of each other given the chance. It wouldn’t be the first time, of course. It had become physical on occasion when we were younger. Ciara had been stubborn and I had been angry, and grew angrier every day until I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘We will,’ Ciara says. ‘We can do this together,’ she says gently to me. Her sudden change in demeanour – the shift from bitchy to supportive – is so fast that I feel wrong-footed.
Ciara crosses the hall and takes my hand in hers. I have to resist the urge to pull away. I have to stay in control and not be manipulated by her rapid mood swing.
I let her lead the way up the stairs, not pulling my hand away. I can play her game.
His room is dark. No one has opened the curtains; the light has been switched off. It smells of stale air with a faint undercurrent of something medical; disinfectant perhaps. I find myself standing for a minute or so just inside the doorway. Ciara has let go of my hand and she walks in and briskly pulls the curtains apart, the stream of light showing the dust motes in full flight.
This was where it all ended. It feels more real now than when the paramedic told me he was very sorry for my troubles. Or when the priest prayed over Joe’s body, or when the doctor made it all official.
That had been much less of a momentous declaration than it should have been. A life over, acknowledged with a shake of a head and a scrawled signature on some paper.
My lungs struggle to suck in the stale air of the room and I feel a weight of something akin to grief hit me directly in the centre of my chest for the first time. It’s a physical sensation that I have not expected. It makes me feel as unsettled as Ciara’s mood swings.
I half walk, half stumble to the bed, where I sit down and close my eyes, trying to find my breath.
I feel the mattress dip beside me. Ciara is sitting down.
‘It’s so strange, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘After all these years …’
Her words hang in the air. I don’t know what to say to her. How to respond.
Slowly, as my breathing returns to normal, I open my eyes. The room looks different in the light. Dated. I can’t remember the last time he had the painters in here. If ever. There’s a fine layer of dust on the chest of drawers. The mirror on the front of the wardrobe is smeared and smudged. Should I have cleaned for him? Or cleaned more? Should Ciara have?
An indentation in the shape of his head still exists on the pillow his head was resting on. The sheets are pulled back. His bedside table is less dusty, but it is cluttered. A glass of water, half empty, a straw poking from the top of it. A couple of boxes of tablets, which I lift and set on the chest of drawers. I’ll put them in a plastic bag shortly. Some loose change and a box of tissues. Some crumpled and discarded. His reading glasses, unfolded, the arms pointing upwards. A packet of Werther’s Original, three discarded wrappers from the sweets he had eaten. I pick up the detritus, drop it in the bin. I open the drawer on his bedside locker and slip the sweets and the change in. I’m not sure why I do this. He won’t be coming back for them later. A leather-bound diary, burgundy, and a pen are among the scarce contents of his drawer.
I feel wrong doing it, but not wrong enough to stop. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I open the diary, my heart contracting as I see the familiar loops and swirls of his handwriting. It’s this year’s diary. There aren’t that many entries completed, but I see that he has dutifully filled in his contact information.
‘What’s that?’ Ciara asks from across the room.
‘His diary,’ I say.
‘Well, I don’t think you should be looking at it,’ she says.
The harsh tone is back in her voice. I’m more familiar with this version of Ciara than with the Ciara who held my hand walking up the stairs.
In three or four steps she crosses the room and snatches it from my hands.
‘He deserves his privacy, you know,’ she says. ‘Even if he’s gone.’
I mutter an apology, feel shame burn at my face.
Ciara walks back to the other side of the room, opens the wardrobe with the smudged mirrors and places the diary high on a shelf. She closes the door with a rattle and turns the bronze key in the lock, which she then puts in the pocket of her dress. The message is loud and clear. I have overstepped the mark.
‘Ciara? Heidi?’ I hear Stella’s voice from downstairs before I have the time to react.
We walk to the landing and look down the stairs.
There are two police officers standing in the hall, looking directly up at us.