‘My beautiful wife is gone,’ I hear him tell Hugh, who looks deeply uncomfortable.
Vincent pulls out his phone. ‘Listen to my beautiful wife’s voice,’ he says. He starts scrolling through his phone, looking for a voicemail message that my mother left him weeks ago.
I can sense he is working himself up into a full-blown histrionic display and I can’t stand it. His grief is dominating everyone else’s, taking up all the oxygen.
‘I don’t want to hear her voice right now,’ I say.
He turns to me and Hugh makes his escape.
‘I’m sorry, Amelia. I’m sorry I messed up Cherie’s face. I’m sorry I’m not better at all this’—he looks around the room full of water decanters and tissues—‘this … this shit.’ He kicks the table leg.
‘When I met Josephine you were only three,’ he tells me, his eyes welling with tears. ‘You were such a spiky little thing! So stern. You would even sit with your legs crossed at the table while we were having dinner.’
I put an arm around his shoulders, and together we sink onto the nearest sofa. I remember him sneaking me crackers and cheese whenever I did the special hand signal we’d devised, touching my pinkie to the tip of my nose. I remember him asking questions at parent–teacher evenings and writing down the answers diligently in his notebook, and I remember him sticking up for me when I was a hormonally deranged teenager, trying earnestly to understand my moods and triggers. He even bought a copy of How to Raise Girls and read it from cover to cover, underlining passages and dog-earing pages.
‘I wanted you and Simon to like me because I loved her so much. I was almost forty when we met; that’s a long time to be alone. And then within six months I had a life partner and two kids …’
I can see Judy sitting behind the reception desk openly crying into her forearm as she listens. She gets up shakily and walks through to the back office, where Simon is sandwiched in a hug between Carmen and Hugh. Before the door shuts, I see Judy join onto the end of it, wrapping her arms around Carmen’s waist and resting an ear on her back.
‘Did you tell Jack she’s gone?’ Vincent asks. ‘He’ll be in pieces and I would feel sorry for him, but he never pulled his head out after I brought her up here. He was so unreasonable about it.’
‘I will call him later.’
‘He won’t cope with it, he’s too sensitive. But we should invite him to the funeral,’ says Vincent, as if any of us are coping with it.
The throuple and Judy emerge from the back office, and Judy comes over to the couch carrying a glass of water. Bobbing down near Vincent, she holds it out to him. He takes it gratefully and then sculls it unselfconsciously. I watch as his Adam’s apple pulls up and down with each gulp.
Judy clears her throat. ‘I really think that you two should go home.’
Vincent shakes his head. ‘Everyone knows the captain goes down with the ship.’
She shifts position slightly. ‘Vin, she died yesterday, you stink of booze—the captain needs to go home.’
Vincent pulls himself up from the couch using Judy’s shoulders to steady himself.
‘Then I would like to form a final huddle before I leave for the day.’
He stands with his hands extended out either side of his body, like a cormorant drying its wings, and we all converge into a tight circle. I hear somebody force a cough, and I turn to see Bob Reynal leaning against the doorframe, looking on.
‘Get in here,’ Vincent says, and Bob walks over and slinks in hip first between Carmen and Judy.
‘A prayer for our loved ones,’ Vincent states, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Do not be frightened. Be free, my earth angel. My darling, sweet amaretto. My rose. My wife. My life, my soul. Amen.’
I sigh loudly, unable to grieve in a collective mound. She was not just his wife; she was my mother. I had a special relationship with her, and technically I shouldn’t even be upright now—I should be at home in bed, focused solely on gluing every single cell back together. I release my arms from the circle and start to back away as Bob pipes up, ‘And Cherie, if you can hear me, you were my everything. I didn’t love anyone except you. Nobody was significant anyway, and in my heart I’ve always been faithful.’
I stand on the outside of the circle, widening my eyes at Judy, before Carmen concludes with a sincere, ‘Amen.’
I maintain eye contact with Judy, trying to communicate my desperation to leave. As the circle disperses she reaches for my hand and I squeeze hers in a Morse code SOS, begging her to get me out of here and away from this nonsense. She acknowledges with a squeeze and release. Squeeze, squeeze, release. Our shorthand for Yes.
‘We’re just going to pop out for a nice, brisk walk,’ she addresses everyone over her shoulder as she propels me towards the door. ‘Won’t be too long.’
I don’t look back to see who wants to come, or what might need doing. I don’t let myself think about my mother or Vincent. I just hold tight to Judy’s hand all the way out of Aurelia’s and across the gravel to her car. She opens the passenger door and feeds me through the gap, and I sit hunched unnaturally forward, unable to relax. Judy leans across and fumbles with my belt, finally clicking it into place, then eases my shoulders back until they touch the leather of the seat. I let my heavy, heavy skull lean back against the headrest. Here at last is a pocket of peace.
CHAPTER SIX
Judy is upright and alert, her hands positioned precisely at ten and two on
