Chapter Five

      I timed my arrival at the church to avoid the bit where everyone mingles outside before they go in. I’ve never liked that part. I can still remember to this day, outside this same church, the humiliation of having to face my six-foot, surf-dude cousin, Nathan, whilst I was a blotchy, snotty wreck at my own mother’s funeral. All the embarrassing hugs from people I didn’t know. I was glad Joe was spared that part too, because he was carrying the coffin. I walked up the path of St Bart’s, just as they were taking it out of the hearse. It was pale oak against the vivid blue sky, with a waterfall of peach roses on top (I was right about those).

      There was the crunch of shoes on gravel. Someone cried ‘one, two, three’ as it was lifted onto the shoulders of six men. I recognized Joe straight away, of course; at the back, one trouser leg stuck in his sock, a look of such gritty determination on his face, as if he were about to charge through the stained-glass window of the church and deliver her to the gates of heaven himself. I recognized every single one of the five other pallbearers too: Joe’s uncle Fred at the front. Peg-leg Uncle Fred, Joe used to call him, Joe being one of those people who could get away with insulting people to their face. On the other side of him was Mr Potts, still with his extraordinary eyebrows. Mr Potts would often be sitting at the vicarage kitchen table when you went round, talking really animatedly as his caterpillar eyebrows did Mexican waves across his forehead. Joe and I used to debate how differently Potty’s life could have turned out, if only he’d trimmed those eyebrows. So simple! He could have had a wife by now. Behind him was Ethan, Joe’s youngest brother, and then at the back, his other brothers, Rory and Simon, and then Joe. Joe’s dad was at the front of it, all in his black funeral regalia. So he’d made it. But then, as if the Reverend Clifford Sawyer was going to let any other rev guide his beloved Marion on her final journey to the gates of Paradise.

      I gave the coffin a wide berth and joined everyone else in the churchyard. Half of Kilterdale was there. Side on, you could see how all four Sawyer brothers had the same profile: long face, these big, deep-set doe eyes and a slightly beaky nose; all put together it was somehow very handsome. Ethan has Down’s syndrome, so his features are obviously a little different, but they all have the same hair: light brown, with a hint of red, and so fine and straight you never have to brush it.

      People’s conversations tapered to a murmur and then that awful, sombre silence as they parted to make way for Marion’s last journey.

      The plan was, I’d slip in at the back, say a quick ‘Hi’ to Joe at the end of the service, then slip out again, unnoticed. I found a place on the back pew and kept a low profile, leafing through the Order of Service. The first, magical, angelic notes of ‘In Paradisum’ from Fauré’s Requiem struck up just as they brought her in. Then, it was unbelievable: the whole place was illuminated by a freak beam of sunlight coming smack-bang from between Jesus’s thighs, on the far right window. It really was like heaven in there – and I wished, not for the first time, that I was a believer. But then perhaps when you work with people who try to recruit disciples in Morrison’s, you start to equate religion with madness.

      A cough echoed around the cool caverns of the church. Some kid goes, ‘Daddy, you’re funny,’ just as Marion was lowered onto the trestle. Joe’s dad stood at the feet end, palms pressed together. ‘Well,’ he said, gesturing to the beam of sunlight, ‘she’s here, ladies and gentlemen.’ And everyone laughed and shed a tear at the same time, including me.

      The service was lovely. I know people always say that, but I feel I can comment with sincerity, since I’ve been to a few not-so-lovely ones in my time, including my own mother’s. Joe’s dad told funny stories: how Marion was working behind her parents’ shrimp bar on Morecambe front when they met, but that even the ever-present whiff of cockles couldn’t keep him away, such was her luminescent beauty.

      Occasionally, during the hymns, I looked over at Joe’s pew. Rory and Simon were grim but dry-eyed, Ethan looked confused as to where we were on the Order of Service, but I decided Ethan was probably fine, in Ethan’s own world. Joe was on the end, crying his eyes out, wiping the snot and the tears on the back of his hand because Joe wouldn’t think to bring such a banal item as a packet of tissues. And although I knew the pain he was feeling, I also thought: Good for you, Joe. Him being such an open book was always the thing I loved about him. In fact, when I look back to that time, I can probably remember Joe crying more than me.

      It was such a warm day that they’d left the door open, and so if I looked to the left, down the hill on top of which the church teetered, and past the crumbly tombstones, I could see the sea, springing up the glossy, black rocks; the same sea Joe and I had played in as loved-up teenagers, and it comforted me for some reason. Here we were, in this church, half on land, half looking like it might slip away into the sea at any time. This was all so momentary; we were all just passing through, liable to drop off the end of the world at any given time.

      Of course, I didn’t philosophize like this at my mum’s funeral. I was far too busy concentrating on the church door and whether my bloody sister was going to walk through it in time. If I’d known that when she did, the real trouble was going to start, I might have concentrated more on thinking about Mum. I guess I’m still a bit angry about that.

      A funeral congregation always says so much about the person in the box, I’ve always thought, and there was every walk of life in that church: old and young; your floral-society twin-sets; as well as single mums and ASBOs and hoodies from the work she used to do with the Probation Service.

      And me … I wished I’d had a chance to thank Marion. For feeding me, and often Niamh, in that year Dad was mainly AWOL; for being my mum, basically, when I didn’t have mine. And when I thought about it like that, I felt really glad I’d come.

      Ethan stood up and read a ‘poem’ he’d written, which was all of two lines and said: ‘Mum, I miss you and I love you. I hope you can hear me, from Ethan.’ That was it. Niagara Falls. Just as I was recovering, Joe stepped up to the lectern. He hugged Ethan, then unfolded a piece of A4 paper, his hands trembling. It was all I could do not to go up there and give him a hug.

      ‘Words can’t really express how much I’m going to miss my mum, or how much I loved her. She was so many things to so many people, but to me, to us, she was just our mum.’

      Our eyes met briefly and I smiled at him, encouragingly.

      ‘I wrote long lists of what she meant to me. I even tried writing a poem,