Chapter 7
Almost three weeks had passed since it happened, and at dawn Alice was back in her room, sitting up in bed, wondering why the sun had chosen today of all days to shine again. It seemed cruel.
Ed was nursing his cup of tea beside her, making small talk that she wasn’t hearing.
‘I guess I’d better have a shower.’ Alice made a move to get up, lifting the duvet and glimpsing, before quickly looking away, the long, thin wound that would eventually scar, sweeping its way up her left leg. She stood and made it halfway to the door when she just stopped. Her shoulders sank, her head tipped and she stood in her pyjamas, hopeless. ‘I don’t want to go, Dad.’
Ed put his mug down on a book that had remained unopened on Alice’s bedside table, and rushed to his daughter’s side, enveloping her in his arms. His poor little girl. This poor, happy little thing going through something so very horrible, and as he kissed her straggled hair he thought, not for the first time, how at least he still got to hold her. It was heartbreaking, but his daughter was intact. He felt awful for even comparing himself to Jill’s parents.
To Alice it was akin to being a small child again, unable to process anything beyond the walls of the past three weeks. And simultaneously it was as if her soul had aged twenty years overnight at having to face mortality.I can’t do it, she repeated to herself.I can’t do it. She can’t be gone.
And then as quickly as they came, the tears retreated for now, like the watering can had just needed emptying again. She was back to empty, and she took a big breath. ‘But I have to go, don’t I?’
Ed stepped back. ‘You don’t have to, my love. You don’t have to do anything. We’ve still got a lot ofVicar of Dibleyepisodes to watch.’
‘But you think I should?’
‘I think you should. I don’t think it’ll be easy; in fact I think you’ll be in for a pretty lousy day, and I don’t think you’ll feel any better afterwards. But I think my Alice of the Future will be glad she went to her best friend’s funeral.’
A little stabby thought crossed through her:Jill won’t have a future. But he was right. ‘Yeah. Okay. I really need that shower, though.’ She smiled at her dad and left the room.
I don’t have a best friend any more, she thought, as the hot water rushed onto her scalp.I don’t have my Jill. We had plans.
She squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing a facial scrub into her forehead in slow circles.This shower gel is mango scented. Jill and I had those mango mojitos in Vegas. She really liked them; I think she’d have liked this shower gel.
I miss Jill. I wish we could switch places.
That wasn’t true, though, and a little part of her was ashamed for wishing her life away at this time. If she had a wish, she’d wish for neither of them to be in the coffin. None of them to be in any of the coffins.
Alice wondered if any of the other victims’ funerals were being held today. It was possible, but she probably would never know. She certainly wasn’t about to scour the newspapers for grainy paparazzi shots and saccharine-soaked write-ups.
She lifted her face to the water, and it felt good. If only she could hide in here all day.
Alice was on the outside looking in. A spectator letting other people make the small talk around her, glancing at her occasionally with a morbid curiosity that pulled people’s attention from poor Jill.
‘Nobody’s looking at you,’ Bahira had whispered inside the church.
Alice had shuffled on the spot, her smart shoes pinching, her collar tight on her throat. Deep inside she knew Bahira was right, but with tissues squeezed tightly in both her hands she knew that if she fully let her guard down and accepted the reality that she was at Jill’s funeral she didn’t know if she’d ever come back out. It couldn’t be real. The world wasn’t that cruel.
The funeral was horrible but peaceful, and over quickly. She’d clung to her friends, Bahira, Theresa and Kemi, silently pleading with them to not be angry at her for ever.
Alice now stood in the churchyard, under the newly appeared sunshine with Bahira, Kemi and Theresa, their faces looking like reflections of their younger selves, with their make-up minimal, their mascara wiped away onto tissues, their eyes tired. Inside the church hall was a small wake, but most guests were bringing their china cups of tepid tea back out into the open air. Theresa was telling a story they all knew, slowly and carefully, peppered with genuine smiles, about the holiday they’d all taken with Jill right after uni. Jill’s many friends, from her many walks of life, stood in huddles all recounting their own memories.
‘ . . . And when we finally got on the boat, she said, “You can all call me the Codfather!”’ Theresa paused and Bahira and Kemi chuckled. Alice realised a beat too late and then joined in too.
As Theresa, bless her soul, continued the story to fill the silence with a sliver of happiness, Alice’s ears focused in on the conversation behind her. Jill’s parents were talking to her brother.
‘I spoke to Max, the man Bear came from, and he can’t take him back,’ Jill’s mum was saying wearily. ‘I mean, he was very sorry and said he would if we couldn’t find anyone else, but he doesn’t have the space to keep him.’
‘He’s a lovely dog. Jilly loved him so much already.’ Jill’s dad’s voice cracked, which in turn cracked Alice’s heart a bit more. Why were they talking about this here, now? Perhaps the mundanity of keeping organised helped keep reality at bay. Alice should try it sometime.
Jill’s brother Sam, only in his early twenties and too young to be going through this, spoke with the quiet voice of someone who didn’t know if they should be parent or child in this situation. ‘I don’t know how to help. I can’t have pets at uni. I could take a year out maybe?’
‘No, no you can’t do that,’ insisted his mum.
‘Or I could come home every weekend to walk him, if you kept him, and I could look into finding someone to walk him on weekdays?’
Of course Jill’s parents, her dad with his arthritis and her mum with her dodgy knee, wouldn’t be able to raise a puppy, especially a big strong puppy that was, in Jill’s words, going to grow into a grizzly. Alice felt silly for never thinking past the assumption that they would take on the dog, especially as they appeared more fragile than ever now.
