that statement. You can’t find the moment, or the words, without it seeming tasteless. How can they be dead, and you’re still preferring pepperoni to ham.’
Eventually Justin said: ‘So what did you have for your tea?’
‘Microwaved burgers from Co-op.’
‘That seems more of a statement that life doesn’t go on.’
We shrieked, tutted and laughed, and I knew we were a huge comfort to Susie, in that time. I was the female sympathy and shoulder to cry on, Ed was the calm organiser and steadying backbone, Justin the irreverent clown, puncturing tension.
As Ed and I sit, once more in my small front room with the half-burned pillar candles in the fireplace and the red velvet sofa that Roger has scratched till it bled, we are without Susie, and waiting nervously and miserably for Justin. My stomach growls and as soon as I think: should I bother to raise eating? Is it an inappropriate thing to say? I remember Susie. I wasn’t meant to find out what she meant, this way. I want to tell her, I ache to tell her. I can never tell her anything again. It’s inconceivable.
There is a Susie-less space torn in life – and it’s only been hours. How do we handle this forever?
The doorbell goes and I feel nauseous. Seeing People for the First Time Since is frightening. It’s like having to experience being told, all over again. I stand up slowly and Ed senses my hesitation and answers it.
Justin walks in – my front door opens into the sitting room, I can’t afford anything as fancy as a hallway – and says nothing, throws himself into Ed’s arms. They stand there sobbing, Justin with his head on Ed’s chest, and I think about how I’ve never seen them cry before. I don’t know what to do with my arms, until Justin says, indistinctly: ‘Don’t just stare, join in!’ to me, and I grip them in an awkward huddle.
The room is silent but for the sound of our weeping. It’s quite eerie.
When we break apart, I see Roger in the doorway from the kitchen, ears cocked, frowning in confusion. Noisy humans.
‘Fucking hell, Suze,’ Justin says, when it abates, sitting down heavily: ‘Always a show-off, that one. Has to be the centre of attention. Has outdone herself with this.’
We laugh weakly and slightly hysterically, laughs that are half-sobs.
‘I did not see that coming. And neither did she, clearly.’
I wince, while being able to hear Susie’s delighted shriek in my imagination. She was the biggest fan of Justin’s taboo-breaking. I have a flash mental image of her on that trolley, not laughing. Not moving.
I glance over at Justin, out of habit – he always grins at his own jokes – and instead see him slumped, devastated.
‘You saw her?’ Justin says. ‘… What did she look like?’
I understand this is a way of asking about her injuries.
Ed opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He looks at me, stricken.
‘Exactly like Susie and absolutely nothing like Susie,’ I say.
‘That is … well, Eve has always been good with words. Spot on,’ Ed says.
He looks at his knees. I sense that I needed to see Susie, as difficult as it was, to accept it. Ed found it harder.
‘Do you want to see her?’ I ask Justin and he shakes his head, emphatic: ‘God no, no thank you. I have seen my share of bodies at the home.’
We run through the minimal information we have about the accident and soon stop, because no better answers about what happened will bring her back to us. It makes us think about that moment on the hundred yards from taxi drop to her house, Susie digging in her bag for her house keys, and a hurtling box of metal coming into view behind her. I swallow hard and my heart races, picturing it.
I can’t go back, push her out of the way, shout at her to move.
The text. If I had replied to her text, and she’d stopped to read it, or texted me back? It’s very hard to absorb that I will be thinking and ‘what if-ing’ about last night’s events for the rest of my life. It has an instant permanence, like looking at a fresh wound and knowing the scar it leaves will always be a part of your body.
If thirty-four is still some superannuated version of youth in our era, I’m aware I’ve aged exponentially in the space of a morning. That my life has bifurcated into a Before and After and