done this; Hugo’s skull splitting under the ax in my hands while I moaned No no no. Sometimes I was my adult self, sometimes I was a teenager or once even a little kid; often it was in my apartment and I had done it because I thought he was one of the burglars. I would wake sobbing and wander around the house—dark landings, pale blurs of windows, no way to tell whether it was dawn or dusk—till the dream faded enough that I could go back to bed.
Because this was the thing I couldn’t stop coming back to, awake or asleep, poking at it like a rotten tooth: Hugo’s death was my fault, maybe not the fact that he had died but the way of it. If he hadn’t rung the detectives, he would have been at home in bed when the hemorrhage hit. He would have died there, with familiar smells and his own duvet, with dawn and birds starting outside the window. Instead he had died in that hellhole hospital, being mauled and probed like a cut of meat amid the reek of disinfectant and piss and other people’s deaths, because he had shielded me.
Somewhere in there my mother came over, to pick out clothes for Hugo to wear and to bring me my black suit, which she had collected from my apartment. I got the vague impression of intense activity going on out there, among the rest of the family: Phil was in charge of the arrangements, Susanna was picking out the music and she was sure Hugo had liked Scarlatti, did that sound right? did I want to do a reading? because my father was organizing those, and he thought maybe I would—
“No,” I said. “Thanks.”
We were in Hugo’s room, which I hadn’t gone into since the hospital. It was a nice room, mismatched old wooden furniture, a huge teetering stack of books beside the bed and a faded photo on the wall of my great-grandparents in front of the house. It smelled like him, a faint comforting scent of wet wool and dusty old books and smoky tea. On the mantelpiece was a vase of yellow freesias that Melissa had brought home, on a day that felt much too long ago for them to still be alive.
“OK. It’s up to you.” My mother was going through shirts in Hugo’s wardrobe. She was doing it gently, but still, the casual invasion of it set my teeth on edge. “You’ll be a pallbearer, though, won’t you? Your dad and your uncles, and you and Leon and Tom. You’re OK for that?”
What with your leg and all. “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”
“It won’t be swarming with reporters, anyway, or at least it shouldn’t be. His name hasn’t been in the papers.”
It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about—I had been asleep when she knocked on the door. “Right,” I said. “Good.”
“So far, anyway.” She unhooked a white shirt and examined it, turning it to the light. “I don’t know if the Guards are just being considerate, letting us get the funeral out of the way—”
“I don’t think they do considerate,” I said. “If they’re keeping quiet, it’s because it suits them.”
“You could be right. Maybe they just don’t want to have to show up and keep photographers and gawkers away from the graveside. Either way, I’ll take it.”
That—graveside—pulled something out of the foggy tangle in my brain. “He wanted to be cremated,” I said.
My mother turned sharply from the wardrobe, shirt dangling from her hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. He said it, back in—” I couldn’t remember how long it had been. “A few weeks back. He wants his ashes to go in the garden.”
“Shit. I don’t think Phil knows that. He was talking about your grandparents’ cemetery plot—I’ll have to ring him.” She turned back to the wardrobe, in more of a hurry now. “This tie? Or this one?”
“No,” I said suddenly. “No tie. And not that shirt. That one, the striped one”—a faded flannel thing that Hugo had worn around the house—“and the dark green jumper, and the brown cords.” Hugo had always hated suits; at Susanna’s wedding, grimacing, running a finger under his collar— This much at least I could do.
“Oliver won’t be happy. He said the blue suit—” My mother narrowed her eyes at the shirt and tie in her hands. “You know what, Oliver can get lost. You’re right. You pick out whatever you think; I’ll ring Phil