‘Thank you,’ Sue said. She’d rather gouge her eyes out and that was saying something because she had always struggled with gory things. Whenever Gary wanted to watch a film with a certain amount of bloodshed, he’d had to do it on his own. Her heart felt hollow as it lurched off of her ribcage. Had that been the problem? Leaving Gary to confront all of his fears on his own? ‘I think I’d prefer to stay at home, if you don’t mind.’ Perhaps then she could figure out why her husband had killed himself. The Support Officer who had come over to her parents’ a handful of times had tried to explain that the ‘circumstances’ of Gary’s death weren’t unusual. She simply couldn’t wrap her head round that. They were definitely unusual to her. After all, she’d only put together tea, called her husband to join her and found him hanging from a rope just the once.
‘Of course,’ Katie said a bit too quickly. ‘You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.’
‘It was very kind of you to offer.’
Katie obviously thought so too and went off to tell Dean the good news.
If Gary were here she would’ve added the story to their catalogue of Katie-centric tales that he told the lads down the pub – this pub – after the football. Remember the time at my funeral when Suey was freshly widowed and Katie checked to make sure she’d still be raising her children for her?
Oh, how they’d laugh.
And then Sue would go and do it anyway. Everyone’s favourite little helper.
She glanced down at the wilted sandwiches. Perhaps the pub had changed management since they’d had Gary’s birthday. The catering genuinely had slipped. She made a mental note to put an addendum in her will (when she wrote one) that there should be minimal catering at her wake. Zero, in fact.
No wonder no one had wolfed them down. They didn’t look at all appetising. Untidily cut brown bread, then white. Soggy tuna bleeding into the cheese and onion. Neon coronation chicken. Some rather lacklustre looking roast beef.
She watched as her mother teased a bit of egg salad out of one of the more generously filled sandwiches then popped it into her mouth with a furtive look that suggested she’d be lying to her Weight Watchers app later.
Gary had been loved hadn’t he?
She’d loved him.
Obviously not enough given the circumstances, but … she’d loved him in her own way. Quietly. Without too much fuss, but …
Anyway.
She blinked against some approaching tears. The last thing on earth she wanted was to be comforted. Or cry. Crying would be akin to admitting that this was all deeply, unmanageably, irrevocably real. She scanned the smattering of people glancing at their watches and relocating their winter coats from the backs of the stackable chairs.
Was this all her husband’s life had amounted to?
Barely a dozen people remained (there’d been more at the beginning but there’d been a mass exodus about forty-five minutes back when one of the wives ‘suddenly’ remembered their babysitter had a doctor’s appointment). They were mostly family now – hers – making awkward chit chat over their phones until the next booking pushed them out the door into the wintry gloaming.
Perhaps she should’ve dug out Gary’s phone and made some calls. He’d been much more social than she’d ever been. Footie with the lads down the playing fields come rain or shine. Any position they’d needed. He’d run a 10k for the local hospice for the past four years back. Raised a few hundred pounds for them each time, he had. Spent years – his entire adult life actually – building up his father’s plumbing business. Installing hundreds of toilets and showers all over Oxfordshire. And Berkshire. Fixed her parents’ toilet heaven knew how many times. Gratis. His grandad’s shower. Her brother’s hot tub. He’d done countless kindnesses, her Gary, and this is how people repaid him on a day when he needed them most?
She fretted at the hangnail again. Perhaps she should’ve made a bit more of an effort when he’d been alive to be their friend, too. One of those wives who knew just when to dip in and out of their laddish bantz. Knew when to pull out a tray of hot sausage rolls or a cheeky bottle of rum. To be perfectly honest it had never once occurred to her that there might come a day when Gary wouldn’t be there.
‘Sue, love.’ Her mother was holding a tray out to her. ‘Will you be taking the sandwiches or shall I give them to someone else?’
She stared at the handful of people left in the room. Weren’t any of them hungry? Couldn’t one of these people show a bit of appreciation for her husband by eating a tiny triangular sandwich in his honour?
She looked over to another table where the hot water urn was being replaced by a fresh set of tea and coffee jugs. A better grade of chinaware from the looks of things. The Agricultural Show folk appeared to have ponied up for a higher level of catering.
Flo, the woman from work who had taken her call, was already in her winter coat. A bright red, knee-length, puffy down number that made Flo, a woman who definitely looked to be in Bus Pass range, look very … vital. As if both Flo and her coat would cling to every last vestige of life they were afforded. She held a small square of (stale) Victoria sponge in one hand and was asking for a cup of the freshly brewed coffee. The catering woman was shaking her head no, the fresh brewed was for the Agricultural Show.
A surge of white-hot indignation rushed through her. Denying a woman a cup of coffee at a wake? What on earth did this woman know about anything?
Perhaps Flo had a condition and required coffee. Perhaps she needed sobering up before she drove off home where, no doubt,
