Afterwife (3 page)

Jenny raises her glass. “Deal. That is what unmarried friends are for, isn’t it? To get their married friends off the hook with their husbands.”

When we finally leave the restaurant it is raining outside, hard rain that comes at you at an angle. It is icy cold, threatening sleet. The street is splashy and full of people who’ve drunk too much, have not got an umbrella and want to get home, people like us, desperately trying to get cabs. We give up trying to hire a cab on Beak Street and wander toward the promising river of traffic on Regent Street,
the leather soles of my boots skiddy on the wet pavement. Occupied cab after occupied cab zooms by, some maddeningly clicking their lights off just as they pass, others commandeered by new groups of revelers filtering in from Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, nicking cabs that are rightfully ours, seeing as we’ve waited for years already. A newly stolen cab throws a wash of dirty puddle over our feet.

“This is rubbish, Jenny. Time to get a dodgy cab.”

“Minicab drivers all look like criminal photo fits.”

“I’m not doing the flippin’ Tube at this time.”

“Yay!” Jenny grabs my hand. “O ye of little faith. Look. There’s one. Just behind that bus.”

We watch as a yellow light, a warm, happy smudge in the wet darkness, moves toward us, slowly getting brighter.

“Right,” I say, jaw set, arm outstretched. “Watch
this
! I’m going to get this cab if it kills me.”

T
he coffin was white, decorated with a trembling bunch of marshmallow pink lilies. To Jenny it seemed pitifully insubstantial. The idea that Sophie’s body—beautiful, funny, larger-than-life Sophie—was inside, dead five days, cold as clay, was almost unbelievable. She squeezed Sam’s hand harder, feeling the stiff rim of his shirt cuff push into her wrist.

A sob echoed around the overcrowded church. Each time a sob erupted, which was frequently—every four or five breaths; she’d counted—Jenny’s teeth ground together and her fillings twanged. Not knowing where to look, she kept her gaze on the forlorn figure of Ollie standing in the front pew. He had a new stoop in his coathanger shoulders and his face was full of shadows. It was as if all his energy had pooled into his left hand, the hand knitted tightly to Freddie’s. No wonder. Freddie looked so heartbreakingly tiny, shrunk to Lilliputian proportions by the soar of the stained-glass windows and the yawning width of the church.

Ollie and Freddie, the two great loves of Sophie’s life, were
flanked by Ollie’s formidable-looking mother, Vicki, and, holding Freddie’s other hand, Soph’s mother, Sally, slighter than ever, all angles and elbows in a black skirt suit, the lone black feather on her hat shaking. Mike, Soph’s dad, had one arm belted tight around her shoulder—squishing the jacket’s shoulder pad up oddly—and his other around Sophie’s sister, Mary. Poor Mary, whose normally pretty face was puffy as a mushroom from crying and given a strange pallor by light streaming through a yellow pane of stained glass.

She had no doubt that they must wish it were her, Jenny, who’d stepped out in front of the bus instead of their beautiful daughter. She wasn’t a mother, a wife; she didn’t and never would burn as brightly as Sophie. If she could have taken her place she would. But it had all happened in an instant. A hand outstretched, a slip of leather sole, a knuckle crunch of metal and bone. She could still see Sophie lying in the road. The image was imprinted in her brain forever, like a bright lightbulb after you close your eyes.

“Deal.” That was her word. And it kept coming back to haunt her. She’d selfishly cajoled Sophie into drinking more wine when she should have realized that Sophie was a mother, they weren’t twentysomethings anymore. Sophie had responsibilities: most women their age did. Jenny was the oddity, needily trying to squeeze more out of Sophie, unable to let go. If she’d let Sophie return home earlier, then it wouldn’t have been raining and the road wouldn’t have been slippery and that particular bus wouldn’t be on Regent Street, it would have been somewhere else on its route. And so would they.

As requested by the rev—Colin, she thought how much Sophie would appreciate the fact he was called Colin—she held up the photocopied hymn sheet. Sophie’s beautiful face was stamped at the top, so that it resembled a newsletter. The paper shook and the ink smudged beneath her sweating fingers. Could she sing? She was amazed that a song was coming out of her mouth, not a scream. “Jerusalem.” She and Soph had sung this many times over the years
at weddings. Some couples had worked out; others hadn’t. None of them were ever as glamorous and besotted as Ollie and Sophie were. Had been. Oh, God. The hymn sheet shook harder in her hand. So, so wrong. She looked up at the sweeping church rafters, eyes prickling with tears. Sophie, where are you? Please stop being dead. It’s not big and it’s not funny. No one’s bloody laughing.

All she wanted to do was lie down in bed with a pillow over her head and listen to Sophie’s answer machine message over and over—
“Soph’s phone, don’t you dare hang up before leaving a message!”
—and pretend none of this was happening.

“You alright, babes?” whispered Sam, looking down at her from his six-foot height.

She nodded, mouth dry. She could sing but not speak. Which did not bode well for her speech. (Unless she sang it?) The service continued, painfully slowly. It was like Sophie’s wedding, she thought, but in reverse.

Oh, God, speeches. They’d started! She was nowhere near ready. She needed another six months of prep. Sophie’s little sister, Mary, was the first to go. Never lifting her swollen eyes from her notes, she attempted some anecdotes about Sophie as a child—how she’d once found a kitten, which she named Sock, in the street and, fearing that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep it, had nurtured Sock in her knicker drawer for three days on milk-sodden digestive biscuits before anyone realized he was there—and then tried to articulate what a wonderful mother she had been. At that point Mary’s voice crumpled like a brown paper bag and she had to be led back to her pew.

Not her yet. Not her yet. She had a few minutes to pull herself together. Come on, Jenny.

A new speaker started to walk purposefully down the aisle. She checked the service notes. Suze. Suze Wilson. She vaguely remembered Sophie mentioning her name. A school mum? Yes, she was pretty sure she was a school mum. Suze. Long on the
z
.

Suze had a rubbery face beneath an extraordinary helmet of frizzy hair, the hair oddly fascinating in its extreme of unflattery. (How could Jenny still notice unflattering hair in the depths of grief? What was wrong with her?) Suze tilted her chin upward, revealing a large mole resembling a squashed raisin beneath her jaw, and started to speak, her thunderous voice submitting the congregation into still, respectful silence like an evangelical pastor’s. She rhapsodized about Sophie’s contribution to school life and the community, her volunteering, her cake baking, her quiz night organizing, the fact that she was the most glamorous mother at the school gates. How the other mothers used to joke that she never wore the same shoes twice. Then, minutes later, the frizzy orator had finished. Colin was looking at Jenny expectantly, one bushy eye brow raised.

“Sure you’re up to it?” Sam looked doubtful.

Jenny started the long walk to the podium, her hard-soled shoes clattering unpleasantly on the stone floor. Her new black trousers, bought in haste online for the occasion, dug into her hips as she walked. They were a size too small, she realized—she was a twelve, not a ten, kidding nobody—and frumpy in their bland formality, like a campaigning regional politician. She wished she’d worn something more flamboyant in homage. Sophie would have worn black and leopard print, a vintage fifties full-skirted suit. Something like that. The walk went on forever, and the trousers shifted around her waist with every step so by the time she finally stood up on the podium and raised her eyes to the congregation, the zipper was twisted and pulled up inside her crotch. Camel hoof. Great. Sophie would be laughing.

All eyes were on her now. The tension in the church pulsed. She could hear it. Tick, tick, tick. Like an electric fence.

Notes. She just needed to read her notes and she’d be fine. But the handwriting swam before her. She gulped, refocused. The words she’d written and practiced reading aloud to Sam over the porridge
she couldn’t eat this morning suddenly seemed wrong, written about someone who wasn’t Sophie. She looked up helplessly at the rows and rows of expectant, flushed, strained faces, then quickly down again. Sweat dripped down her nose and splodged onto the paper. I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to fuck up explosively.

The pause stretched, taut, painful, like a doctor pulling a stitch from a wound. She glanced at Sam. His face was knotted with embarrassment. She looked at Ollie and his wounded black eyes surprised her by their softness. He was the one person who should hate her and didn’t. “I’ve written these notes…” she began, taking courage from Ollie. If he could be brave, so could she. The microphone amplified her voice. She didn’t sound like herself. “And they’re all about what a wonderful person Sophie…” She couldn’t say “was.” She couldn’t. “But you all know that. That’s why this church is crammed. So I’m going to go off trail with this, please bear with me.” Sam was biting his fist now, shaking his head and looking at her like she’d completely lost the plot. “I was the last person to see Sophie alive.” A collective intake of breath. “And for this I am hugely privileged. We had fun that night, the night she died. Apart from anything, Soph, my oldest, dearest friend, was the best laugh. And she found humor in the blackest places—she’d find it here today.” Ollie cracked a small, surprised smile. The rest of the congregation looked stony faced, like she’d said something terrible. “And that night, she was more alive than most of us will ever be. She was one of those people, full of…light and dazzle, the central point in any room. And she had the rudest, loudest laugh. We used to call it the Honk.” She choked up then. Her mouth made an involuntary pop-pop noise, as if her heart was exploding like space candy on her tongue. It was unimaginable that she’d never hear the Honk again. “Whenever I think of Sophie, I think of Sophie dancing. She loved to dance and she never gave a sh—” She caught herself. “…a hoot what anyone thought. She didn’t have hang-ups like the rest of us. In fact, she loved people looking at
her. Which I guess brings me to…” She paused, suddenly unsure what to say next. “…
hats!
Sophie loved hats, especially vintage ones with plumes. And swirly skirted dresses. Sequins and shoes. She was the high priestess of shoes.” There was a ripple of laughter, a sense of people finally relaxing. “Sophie could get away with anything because she was beautiful but also because she was happy. She made happiness glamorous. And it was her family who made her so very happy, so secure in who she was.” Ollie was wiping away tears on the sleeve of his crumpled black jacket. “She was madly in love with Ollie. And Freddie…” Freddie was staring down at the floor, as if willing himself to disappear. “Freddie made her just the proudest mother on earth.” Her voice broke. She sniffed, collected herself. “I guess all I want to say is that I will miss Sophie forever. As a girlfriend, as a human being, she is totally irreplaceable.” She looked down at her unused notes, a wave of doubt crashing down on her. What on earth was she thinking? Wrap, wrap! “That’s it, um, thanks.”

As she began the excruciating walk back to her pew, eyes boring into her navy Marks and Spencer shirt, Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” started to crackle through the church’s ancient speakers. Rows of people—the friends, the cousins, the exes, Freddie’s teacher, Sophie’s hairdresser, her cleaner, the music industry friends of Ollie’s, all the people who’d ever known and loved Sophie, for to know her was to love her, Jenny realized, wishing she’d said that too—dissolved into tears. Jenny wondered how many of them recognized the song. It was Sophie and Ollie’s first dance song at their wedding reception.
“Because I’m so in love with you, I want to see you dance again,”
Young sang, filling the belly of the church. Sucking the tears down her throat, she joined the mass shuffle to the throng in the graveyard. The light was yellowy and dark clouds were boiling over the steeple of the church. The air smelled of rain.

“Why did you change your speech at the last minute?” asked Sam.

“Was it rubbish?”

Sam pulled her toward his dark blue suit. His second best suit. “No, your speech was…” He hesitated. “Sweet, really sweet, Jenny. Don’t worry about it.”

She fisted her hands deep in her jacket pockets. All she wanted to do was go home, pour herself a humongous glass of wine and phone Sophie. That was what she always did after a bad day. And this was the baddest of days. She turned to Sam and saw him being pulled back into the crowd by Crispin, the bisexual gardener with the gold tooth who Sophie had recommended for their flower boxes. Without Sam sandwiched next to her, she felt exposed, watched, the last person to have seen Sophie alive, the bad influence. She wished she could scoot away like the other guests, sink back into the north London streets, into her altered life. She checked her watch. Not long now. The burial in Highgate Cemetery was to be just a small, immediate family affair, thank goodness. She didn’t have the stomach for it. Her job was to take Freddie back to Ollie’s and make him supper. She was glad she had a job, a use. Yes, she must find Freddie. Where was he? Peering over the obfuscating hats and feather fascinators in the crowd, she noticed a woman determinedly plowing toward her. “Jenny!”

She froze. It was the woman who was being eaten by her own hair.

“Suze Wilson.” An extended purple-gloved hand. The handshake crunched her fingers. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“You have?” she said, taken aback.

“From Sophie,” Suze explained.

She felt the heat rise on her cheeks. “Yes, of course.”

Suze moved closer conspiratorially, biscuit breath on Jenny’s cheek. “You were brave speaking off-the-cuff like that, really brave.”

“Thanks.” She smiled back, not knowing what to say. Sophie’s death had left a smoldering gap in her conversation. Yet it was all anyone wanted to talk about.