The useful thing about our social media era is that profile pictures on Facebook provide a nest-clutch of images you know for sure the user liked, or at least was happy enough with to make public. Susie had very definite ideas about things, she was very certain of her own mind.
We feel reassured that the snap of her on a ferry, blonde-brown hair whipping round her face as she grins stoically through rain, complexion rosy in the cold, was as attractive to her as it was to us, if it had been available viewing to everyone on the internet in years gone by. It’s from her late twenties, but she looked no different. There was a younger one at a wedding which we pondered, before deciding it was too ‘puppyish pre twenty-five’ to those who knew her face well.
They’re quite strange, the calculations you find yourself making. There’s no rule that says the photograph has to closely resemble the person at the point they passed, but it feels as if there is.
If I stare at the picture too long, I go slightly light-headed. She is right there, and yet not here.
‘Maybe use the initials for her middle names then, like on official documentation, or your bank card?’ Ed says, not entirely serious.
‘We can’t call her “Susannah. C.O. Hart”. That makes her sound like a 1950s movie studio mogul,’ I say.
‘Or Irish, to be sure to be sure. Susannah Cee O’Hart, so it is,’ Justin says.
‘What about Susannah Hart?’ I say.
‘If you’re giving her the full first name but not the middle name it feels unbalanced, somehow,’ Ed says.
‘Susie Hart? Too casual?’ I say. ‘It’s how everyone knew her. Except maybe in close family.’
‘Yeah, that’s my fear. Her dad also chose the names Susannah Carole Octavia,’ Justin says. ‘I’m not sure it’s OK for us to erase that and go: “The S Dog, The Susiemeister General” nicknames on her order of service.’
‘Without being either flip or nasty,’ Ed says. ‘How much will Mr Hart Senior know what’s going on anyway?’
‘Hmmmm.’ We collectively stare sadly and contemplatively into the foam on our second round of coffees – the one you fancy and know you don’t need, that leaves you too wired.
‘I think Susannah Hart,’ I say. ‘That’s her birth certificate name and the name we knew her by. If there’s a benefit to your friends doing your order of service it’s that they knew your taste in a way your parents didn’t. If we put her full name on there, everyone’s first minute will be spent whispering “Carole Octavia lol?” and we know she’d loathe that.’
‘Motion carried,’ Justin says. ‘One point: what if her brother objects?’
‘Hmmm, he didn’t seem the type,’ Ed says, and we all laugh, and I’m glad we can still clown like we used to. It feels like fortitude.
‘… Can I raise a practical point if he does,’ Ed says. ‘Finlay’s signed off on us putting together the order of service. If he doesn’t like the names we chose, he’s going to see that at the same time as everyone else, as they’re being handed out at the crematorium. So what’s he gonna do, huh? You’d have to be a psychopath to start finger-jabbing and shouting at a funeral.’
‘Oh yeah? You need to meet my mum’s family up north,’ Justin says.
‘I wouldn’t rule psychopathy out,’ I say. ‘That’s an inactive amygdala if ever I saw one.’
‘Wasn’t that just the way he was sitting?’ Justin says.
‘Can you translate that from the Eve?’ Ed says.
‘The bit of the brain that doesn’t function in scans of serial killers. How can he be a psychiatrist? He’s like Harold Shipman, posing as a doctor.’
‘Shipman was a doctor,’ Justin says.
‘Well, regardless of how many people he’s murdered, if he kicks off, that’s on him. We’re in the clear,’ Ed says, sitting back.
‘Edward, you crafty ferret,’ Justin says.
‘I think he lets you and I blaze out in front as the bad guys while he’s actually the worst,’ I say, and Ed makes a ‘straightening the brim of an invisible hat’ gesture.
‘Other point of controversy,’ I say. ‘We’re definitely going with the Twin Peaks theme to play us out at the end? I didn’t mention that to Fin, I’m quite glad now.’
‘I love it,’ Justin says. ‘She loved it, it’s so her. She went to that Halloween night as Laura Palmer, didn’t she?’
‘Yep,’ I say. I helped her with that costume. A plastic wrap, blue hair dye, glittery robot face paint and a sign that said She