easily I recognise him. You know when someone asks you to picture a person you’ve not seen in years, and you can’t, and therefore you think you wouldn’t know them? Then you see them, and bang, there they are, you have no doubt? Pattern recognition?
He still has the solemn, dark blue eyes, and straight brow. His nose is different to Susie’s uptilted one – how is it possible that nose has ceased to exist? – neat and straight, and those are Susie’s lips, just smaller, with the defined Cupid’s bow.
I trace similarities to Susie like I’m piecing together a PhotoFit – he also has her pronounced cheekbones. But their colouring was very different, so you’d never have put them together as siblings. I remember Susie saying: I’d love to think he’s adopted, and no doubt so would he, but sadly the documentation is in order and my dad’s dad was the absolute spit of him.
My third thought is, as Finlay pulls a knitted hat from his head and riffles his dark brown hair back into place: he’s intimidatingly well put together, if not actually appealing in any way. His face looks like a plasterer could sculpt it in a few quick swipes of a trowel: fierce geometry.
It suits his nature. No softness.
‘Hi. I’m Finlay.’
I vaguely recall he had floppy Brideshead Revisited hair last I saw him; now it’s slightly shorter and neater and he’s got ‘just got off the red eye’ stubble that’s pretending to be a beard.
Fin’s not smiling at us, but then, being fair, it’s not a smiling occasion.
‘You must be Ed,’ he says, sticking out a hand for a handshake. ‘And Eve?’
I give him my hand. It’s like we’re meeting for a job interview. He gives it one firm small downward yank.
‘I’m Justin,’ says Justin, who’s too far away for a handshake, so waves.
I can’t stop raking Fin’s features for resemblance to Susie’s. It’s the tingle of having a shadow of her returned to me, her genes in someone with even less body fat, and more testosterone.
But though he has her lips, it’s interesting how character comes out as you age, because they are set in a superior sort of pouty sulk. You can see he looks down on everyone around him, no acquaintance needed.
Don’t they say they have the face you deserve by forty? Tick tock motherfuc—.
‘You don’t want to get a drink?’ Ed says, of the space on the table in front of Fin.
‘I’m not keen on the coffee here. I’ll get one somewhere else after we’re done.’
Wow.
‘Do you want to go somewhere else now? It’s no trouble,’ I say, my arse rising, if not literally.
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘We all loved your sister very much and we are all so, so devastated about what’s happened,’ Ed says, partly by way of diverting us from sub-par roasting beans. ‘It’s horrific. But I don’t need to tell you that.’
‘Thank you,’ Fin says, levelly. For a frightening second I think he’s not going to say any more, then he adds: ‘There’s a complete meaninglessness to it which is tough to process.’
We three nod vigorously and mutter agreement, as much in relief that he’s given us something to work with, I think.
‘… Though what meaning does any death have, I guess? It’s not as if a fatal illness has intrinsically more significance,’ he concludes. I can’t say I’m surprised that Fin doesn’t do cosy platitudes.
‘No …’ Ed says and I suspect, in the brief silence that follows, we’re all mentally sifting potential responses and discarding them.
I could say that the difference for me is that if you’re going to get sick, you’re going to get sick. There is an inevitability, a mystery.
What tortures me is that there were so many tiny but necessary contributory factors in that evening that cumulatively brought Susie to be standing in the way of that car, in that single second. Playing variables, as Ed said. She wouldn’t have been there if the taxi taken longer to arrive. If it had stopped at more red lights. If the quiz had been shorter, or longer. If we’d gone back to mine for a nightcap. If the person in the car who had the stroke had chosen a different route, or if that bulging blood vessel wall in their brain had held out a moment longer. There was chance upon chance to survive, and she didn’t.
Our environment is so extraordinarily perilous. That’s what I can’t un-know, sitting in rooms abuzz with ignorant noise. Nothing is for granted, and