about Justin’s, assuming he wasn’t in on the ‘torrid’ (torrid, torrid) banging.
Right behind Justin are Ed and Hester.
‘Eve, my darling, how are you! I’ve not seen you,’ Hester says, throwing her arms around me.
She’s had a blow-dry that is ruffled by the slight breeze, golden-corn waves against the navy of her coat, and black leather gloves. She smells of roses.
‘Alright, you,’ Ed says, tenderly, and I submit to an embrace, blank-faced, thinking: don’t bother with your faux-adoring chummy bullshit. It’s been a long, long con, but it’s over.
Hester starts fussing with Ed’s tie under his overcoat and I think, a strange aspect of my new knowledge is that I may revile her, but she’s the one who’s been wronged here, more than me. Ed and Susie only broke unspoken promises to me. He fully cheated on her.
But what a hypocrite I am – I never minded the idea of Ed being unfaithful to Hester, but it had to be with me. It had to be about love, and it had to promise a future together. Was the other unfaithfulness about love?
‘Holy moly,’ Justin says, with a low whistle, indicating to look over our shoulders.
Approaching over the brow of the hill I see the Teacup Girls, in black body-con dresses, pill-box hats with birdcage veils and four-inch heels, two of them with crimson Louboutin soles, and fishnets. Despite the freezing weather, they’ve clearly opted to carry their coats to better show off their outfits.
‘They look like mistresses attending against the wishes of the family,’ Justin says.
‘Do you know what, Susie would’ve loved it,’ I say, with a tightness in my chest about what she did and didn’t love. Torrid. ‘Why not.’
I see Finlay in the distance, immaculately suited and booted, chatting to elderly attendees unknown. I can’t see his dad.
The hearse with the white coffin comes crawling up the path towards us and I breathe in, and breathe out, and Justin grips my arm tightly to let me know he knows how hard this is, but doesn’t try to speak to me, and I’m incredibly grateful for his getting it right.
The sombre-faced undertakers perform their rituals with the arrangement of the car and another terrible moment arrives, Justin loosening his grip on me and stepping forward to join the pallbearers. We agreed it would be Ed, Justin, Finlay, and one of her friend’s husbands.
Being a pallbearer, and concentrating on not messing it up as they shoulder the weight of the coffin, looks less difficult than watching them do it, which is a sight I will never forget. It leaves scorch marks on my soul.
To my chagrin, Hester is suddenly by my side, grasping my hand and dabbing at her eyes.
I don’t doubt Hester is upset, you’d need to be an alien life form not to be. I also know she’ll bounce back in no time, because Susie was a familiar feature of her life courtesy of Ed, but not anyone truly vital or valuable to her. They pissed each other off. Hester is performing a proprietorial sadness in public that won’t smudge her mascara. Now she can’t, in this moment, be Ed’s elegant fiancée, she has to be Susie’s best friend’s comfort. I don’t mind her not hurting as much, but leave me in peace to hurt more.
We follow the coffin inside to the classical music we chose, heads bowed, mourners who recognise each other murmuring hellos. The coffin, the celebrant explained to us prior, will sit in the chapel space in this room and the cremation takes place elsewhere on site afterwards. I’m glad, as the ‘pressing of a button, coffin sliding out of view to the oven’ section has always struck me as faintly bleakly comic.
We take an order of service from the box – oh, her face, her joyful, smiling, unwitting face – and I choose my seat carefully, knowing Ed and Justin will slide in alongside myself and Hester.
I pick the opposite side from Finlay and other distant family members, and a few rows back, so as not to overstate our importance.
I glance across at the Teacups, at others from Susie’s office. Something bothers me, and at first I can’t figure out what it is. As I watch them riffling through the service card, craning to see who’s here, and if anyone’s about to take to the lectern, it hits me – they’re excited.
Not in a malicious way, or that in they wished this upon Susie. But a premature, dramatic exit like hers – it’s plot. It’s