done. Call me if there’s anything else.’
He picks up his phone and says a brisk: ‘Hello?’ into it, puts his hand up by way of farewell, and strides away across the café.
We sit in stunned silence for a few beats. Ed with clenched teeth, me lightly seething, Justin quizzical.
‘Well. He puts the strange in estranged,’ Justin says. ‘Was it me, or was there some hateration and holleration in this dancery?’
‘Not a complete mystery why he and Susie didn’t see eye to eye, is it?’ I say. ‘Not up there with the Bermuda Triangle and who built Stonehenge. Fucking hell.’
‘Ah dear … I don’t expect him to be cheerful,’ Ed said. ‘That did seem unnecessarily confrontational.’ He pauses. ‘But maybe he has particular reasons regarding not wanting a burial.’
I roll my tired, eyelinered eyes at Ed.
‘Oh come on, Ed. Even you don’t believe that. That was about a show of strength. It was testing how it felt to get his own way, when Susie’s not here to stop him. He’s not even fussed she’s gone, from what I can see. He’s a monster. A walking Voight-Kampff test in spotless sneakers.’
‘That’s the check to show whether or not you’re a replicant in Blade Runner,’ Justin says to Ed and Ed says: ‘I know!’ indignantly.
‘Should I have insisted on burial?’ I say, doleful.
‘Wait, that wasn’t you insisting?’ Justin says, with a sly expression.
‘You know what I mean.’
Ed shakes his head, emphatically. ‘No. Even if he is secretly a robot, it’s his call. We’re only getting to do as much planning as we are due to Fin allowing it. He could be owning every last detail.’
‘It’s only as he doesn’t want the hassle and didn’t know her. Can you imagine him having an insight on anything she liked since the “Barbies” age?’
‘Whatever the reason,’ Ed says. ‘Don’t piss him off. You only have to tolerate him until the end of the wake and then you’ll never see him again.’
‘Imagine. He might sack his dad’s funeral off entirely,’ Justin says.
‘Oh no, he’d come back for that, and you know why?’ I say. ‘Little thing called being a sole living heir.’
‘Unless his dad disliked him so much he wrote him out of the will,’ Justin says.
‘… And the unscrupulous long-lost son reappeared, when his father was infirm and mentally unsound of mind … and got him to change it?’
‘Woah,’ Justin says, and we boggle at each other at the eminent plausibility of this being Fin’s current, concurrent project.
‘Alright you two, this isn’t an episode of Inspector Morse,’ Ed says. ‘Concentrate on the tasks in hand.’
15
We decide, after Fin’s flourish of a departure, to sketch out the order of service before I go to the printers.
A Celebration (??) of the Life of …
‘Are we going with “celebration” – yay, look on the bright side?’ I say, looking sceptically at my own words. ‘I see no cause for optimism.’ I add another question mark.
‘It’s not saying there’s an upside. It’s saying we won’t only weep and lament but also remember why it was so good to have had her here,’ Ed says.
‘Yeah, I agree with that,’ Justin says. ‘We’re celebrating Susie, not celebrating her death. That’s a category error.’
‘But “In Memory of” seems more neutral?’ I say. ‘With celebration I worry people will think they’re meant to wear jaunty colours and all that jazz.’
‘It feels like “In Memory of” is more for old people,’ Ed says. ‘Not so much for Susie.’
‘Nothing about this feels right for Susie,’ I say, instantly raw.
‘So it’s …’
I write, carefully:
A Celebration of the Life of
Susannah Carole Octavia Hart
‘She hated her middle names,’ I say. ‘No one was allowed to know them! I can hear her now saying “Strike that shit off there, you’re showing me up!”’
‘Yeah, I used to call her “Cocktavia” and get hit with her knuckleduster rings,’ Justin says, and I laugh, and for once it’s not just a weak teary laugh. I sense recovery may be buried somewhere in laughter. Partial recovery.
‘Her mum loved Carole Lombard,’ I say. ‘You know, married to Clark Gable? I can remember Susie fuming that Carole was “not a film star name by the 1980s, it was a ‘can I speak to the manager’ name.”’
‘Where did Octavia come from?’ Ed says and Justin says ‘Škoda.’
As they guffaw, I think about how there are still things I know about Susie’s origins that they don’t, having had ten years’ jump on them. Octavia was her gran.
We’ve chosen a photograph for the cover of the order of service.