We Are Family

by Nicola Gill

  Laura shivered. It was cold inside the church, the sort of damp chill that spreads through your bones. ‘It’s been a miserable January,’ a woman had said to Laura earlier, seemingly unaware of the layers of meaning.

  Jon and Billy were both in their new suits. Billy was driving one of his small toy cars along a pew. ‘You okay?’ Jon mouthed at her.

  She nodded. He’d been great today. Been up before her, told her her skin just looked a little ‘sun-kissed’ and managed to brush Billy’s hair without him noticing. And now, in this seemingly endless wait before the service began, he was keeping Billy happy while simultaneously greeting people and chatting to Jess’ husband.

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ a pale, elderly man said, placing a liver-spotted claw on Laura’s shoulder.

  Laura felt a rush of shame. She didn’t deserve people’s sympathy. She was a fraud. Well, not a fraud, because she was upset. But, oh … it was so complicated. When Dad had died it hadn’t been easy but it had been simple.

  The service was about to start. Laura could do with some Gaviscon but she didn’t think sipping it in church was a good look really. She took her place at the front, Billy to her left and Jess to her right. Jess smiled at her and Laura smiled back.

  The vicar was a tiny but robust-looking woman who had told Laura and Jess that in some countries in the world sixty-one was a very good age. Laura hadn’t been sure what they were supposed to do with that. Feel guilty? Grateful?

  Now the vicar was talking about how she hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Evie herself but had learned a lot about her from her two daughters. Evie was strong and funny and even in her last days she could still make a joke.

  They stood for a hymn: ‘Immortal, Invisible’. Laura felt as if her voice wasn’t coming from her.

  Lola was going up to do the first reading. ‘Is she old enough to do that?’ Laura had said when Jess first suggested it. ‘She wants to,’ Jess had replied. And, of course, here she was now, as composed and calm as someone who had spent a lifetime public speaking. Jess’ mini-me.

  ‘Is my party this Sunday?’ Billy said in the world’s loudest whisper.

  Jon nodded and put a finger to his lips.

  Another hymn, a reading from their mum’s self-proclaimed ‘best friend’, a title she no doubt felt she richly deserved having been in Evie’s life for a whole ten years. And more or less without breaks, too, except for that time after they went to Ibiza together and stopped speaking for three months.

  Now Jess was going up to the pulpit to do the eulogy. Do you want to do it together? she’d asked Laura. Laura had shaken her head, said Jess was better at stuff like that. Which was true, but not the whole reason. Seeing her sister up there all alone now, with her voice trying not to shake, made Laura feel incredibly guilty. Jess kept fiddling with the button on her white jacket (of course she hadn’t worn black), as if twisting it would release some kind of superpower.

  ‘You were great,’ she whispered to Jess when she came back to her seat. And she had been great. She had dished out the praise and honour a eulogy demanded, yet still not been dishonest in any way. It was no mean feat.

  They bowed their heads for a moment’s silent reflection. Laura started thinking about how much she missed her dad, how people were talking shit when they told you that time healed everything because, yes, things were less raw now and she could talk about her dad without bursting into tears, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss him every single day. It didn’t mean that the sight of his favourite chocolate bar or a Manchester United shirt couldn’t make her feel as if she’d been winded. Her dad had died twenty-five years ago and, ever since, all the nice things that had happened to Laura had been less nice, and all the bad things worse.

  The sound of someone crying snapped Laura into the present and she felt a sharp stab of guilt: today was supposed to be about grieving for her mother. Her mother who had only been dead for two weeks. Laura was a bad person.

  ‘Is Angus Murray coming to my party?’ Billy said.

  Laura nodded and told him to shush.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t hit me!’

  ‘Sssh!’ Laura said, glancing across at Lola and Hannah, their small heads bowed and still. They were older than Billy, a lot older.

  ‘Am I getting a Nintendo Switch for my birthday?’ Billy whispered.

  ‘Sssh,’ Laura and Jon said.

  They stood for the Lord’s Prayer. Jon put his arm around her, as if he somehow knew she suddenly felt unsteady on her feet. Laura said the words, almost surprised she remembered them. She felt a pang of envy towards people who had genuine faith. Death must be an altogether different prospect if you didn’t believe it was the end.

  The vicar was doing the wrap-up. Laura felt a surge of relief. The funeral was over and, in so far as these things can, it had gone well. All the bickering she and Jess had done in the lead-up to this had been set aside, and Jess hadn’t killed her over the phone flowers. It wasn’t just Laura and Jess who had been on their best behaviour either – Jon had been sober, suited and supportive, and Billy had refrained from shouting, ‘Grandma’s dead!’

  They were the perfect family.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Then

  They had to sit in this big black car, just Laura, Jess and Mum. In front of them was another big black car, which was carrying Dad’s coffin. They were driving very slowly but Laura’s stomach lurched and plummeted.

  She couldn’t believe Dad was in there. The coffin didn’t look big enough. She would have liked to have seen him but Mum had said it wasn’t a good idea, that he ‘looked a mess.’ Laura didn’t care how he looked, she just wanted to hold his hand. She knew better than to argue though.

  Mum was sitting between her and Jess, her huge black hat pushing the girls to the edges of their seats. She had been worrying she was going to have ‘hat hair’ later. She didn’t want to face all those people ‘looking a sight’.

  She turned her head towards Laura and made a face. ‘For goodness’ sake, Laura, you look so pale. Jess, have you got any blusher in your bag we can put on your sister?’

  Jess said she hadn’t and their mum sighed. She reached over and pinched Laura’s cheeks. ‘That’ll stop you looking quite so washed out.’

  Laura knew her mum was trying to be nice but the pinching hurt.

  ‘Now,’ Mum said, ‘what have I told you both about today?’

  Laura and Jess exchanged a glance. Laura let Jess speak because she was better at stuff like this.

  ‘We need to be brave. There will be a lot of people there watching us today and we need to show them that the three of us are a united front and that we’re fine.’

  Laura nodded even though she felt anything but fine. She could scarcely believe that Dad was gone. That he’d never tease her again about being a Dolly Daydream, that next time they ordered a Chinese takeaway no one else would want the lemon chicken (Jess and Mum both hated it), that he’d never give her one of his great big hugs that made her feel safe.

  Yesterday, she’d taken one of his jumpers to bed with her. It still smelled of him. Her mother had seen it when she’d come in to wake Laura up and her lips had pursed. She brought the subject up over breakfast. ‘You’re a bit old for a comfort blanket, aren’t you?’

  Jess had said that she couldn’t see the harm and Mum, who wasn’t used to Jess siding against her, had been frosty with her for the rest of the day.

  Eventually, Mum had forgiven them both; hugged them and said this was so difficult for her. She’d lost her soulmate in that car crash. She might not ever meet someone else now she was so old.

  Jess told Mum that that was crazy talk. She wasn’t that old and she was so pretty.

  Her mother hugged her tight and told her she was her ‘best girl’.

  Someone else? Laura thought. Why did Mum want someone else? You couldn’t replace Dad.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Oh my God, you are not taking selfies at your mother’s wake?’ La
ura said to Jess.

  Jess shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m very honest in my blog. I write about all aspects of my life.’

  Laura snorted. Jess was not very bloody honest in her blog. She looked perfect in every photo. Her husband and kids looked perfect in every photo. Her idea of being ‘very honest’ was saying that the weather hadn’t been great for their picnic but they’d still had an amazing time. Or saying that something was part of a paid partnership but she would have wanted to talk about this awesome collection anyway. (Laura was sick to bloody death of the word ‘awesome’, which people seemed to use all the time. It means inspiring awe, people. Does it really inspire awe that we’ve got a date in the diary for that meeting?)

  Auntie Shelia and Uncle James came to say their goodbyes. They wanted to get on the motorway before it got dark. They used to drive at night no problem but, well, they weren’t getting any younger. Had Laura been away on holiday? Auntie Sheila said she looked a little sunburnt. Laura said she hadn’t been anywhere and there was a slightly awkward silence before Uncle James said what a lovely service it had been. ‘Beautiful,’ Auntie Sheila said. ‘And I must say your home is absolutely gorgeous, Jess.’

  After they’d gone, Jess turned back to Laura. ‘I’m obviously going to do a post about Mum passing away.’

  ‘I thought it was a fashion blog? Also, I really hate the term “passed away”.’

  ‘Fashion and lifestyle. What’s wrong with “passed away”?’

  Laura made a face. ‘I dunno. It’s just so … eeurgh. So what the hell are you going to write about? Grief hacks? Five fun ways to bury your mother?’

  Laura looked across the room at Billy, who was ensconced on the chaise longue chatting to an old lady with hair that looked like peach-coloured candy floss. ‘Grandma’s dead!’ Billy told her. The woman looked so utterly charmed that Laura could only surmise she must either be deaf or have dementia.

  Lola and Hannah were handing around plates of sandwiches. They really were preternaturally well-behaved.

  ‘You can be as snide as you like,’ Jess said. ‘But I think it would be odd if I didn’t mention that Mum pass— died.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Yup. Look, I didn’t mean to be snide.’ Which wasn’t entirely true because she had very much meant to be snide, only now she felt guilty about it.

  They were interrupted by Corinne, a ‘friend’ of their mother’s who had repeatedly told her she could beat cancer if only she would think positively (yup, it’s that simple). ‘What a shame Evie lost her battle,’ she said.

  Laura had to zone out as Corinne carried on talking, lest she tell her how unwittingly but unspeakably cruel she thought she had been. Are you really stupid enough to think a mindset could have done what chemotherapy and modern medicine couldn’t? Do you really think my mother – who was actually very positive by nature – somehow failed?

  ‘My God,’ Laura said to Jess as Corinne finally drifted away. ‘Don’t you just hate her?’

  ‘Well, I try not to hate anyone,’ Jess said.

  Laura, who could find at least three people she hated on a single tube journey, was just about to tell her sister not to be quite so insufferably sanctimonious when they were approached by a woman with big, red glasses and teeth that looked like they were trying to climb out of her mouth. She had worked with their mother back in the day, she told them. She complimented Jess on her ‘gorgeous home’ and told them both she was so sorry for their loss.

  Laura and Jess made murmurs of thanks but the woman was keen to get back to the subject of Jess’ house. Where had she got those cushions? How clever to use green as an accent colour. Was that table an antique?

  Laura made her excuses and went to find Jon. She walked past Billy, who was telling his peach-haired admirer that he was having a birthday party this Sunday. ‘I’m going to be five!’ he told her, showing her all five fingers of one hand. ‘How old are you?’

  The woman lifted up both her papery hands and stared at them for a very long time. She was going to need a lot of fingers.

  Jon was talking to Jess’ husband, Ben. Laura suddenly heard her mother’s voice in her head: Jon and Ben are so different. The comment had irritated Laura, somewhat irrationally, really, because the two men were indisputably different, but Laura had known what her mother was really saying was that she deemed Jon the lesser.

  ‘Hey, babe,’ Jon said, snaking his arm around her waist. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ Laura said. Her mother had rarely said ‘fine’ when people asked her how she was. To her, such a question wasn’t just a conversational nicety but something that deserved a full and frank answer. And if that meant hearing about her piles, well then so be it.

  ‘I was just asking Jon how the novel is going,’ Ben said.

  ‘Slowly,’ Jon said. ‘But then no one said to Michelangelo, “Look, mate, you’re taking quite a long time on one ceiling,” did they?’

  Ben laughed and Laura did too, even though she’d heard this joke – A LOT – and frankly she was a bit worried about the progress – or rather, lack of progress – on this novel. Last time she had sneaked a peek it was three pages long. Given that Jon had been working on it for ten years, she could only assume he was meticulously crafting each word syllable by syllable. Also, and she felt so disloyal even thinking this but she couldn’t help herself, when Jon had described the idea to her, it hadn’t sounded that great. It was about a tortured spirit-guide, apparently. Once she’d said to Jon that she hoped his humour would really come across on the page. It was meant to be a compliment but he’d been furious with her. He didn’t want to write funny books, for Christ’s sake. He wanted to write important books.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Ben said. ‘I know they say everyone has a book in them but I don’t think I could write one if my life depended on it. Well, not unless it was some boring textbook about corporate law.’

  At least corporate lawyers earn a decent salary though, Laura thought. A salary that lets them buy a much-admired five-bedroom house. A salary that means their wife’s only ‘job’ is uploading photos of herself in her new jumpsuit. Whoa! What the hell was she thinking? Surely, she wasn’t turning into one of those bourgeois women she’d always hated. ‘Excuse me, I’m just going to grab another drink.’

  Laura stood alone in the kitchen suddenly feeling really strange. She had this pain in her chest and her heart was racing. She felt weak and a little faint too. Christ, she was having a heart attack! Surely not; thirty-seven-year-old women don’t just keel over from a heart attack. She clutched the worktop and took a few deep breaths and gradually she started to feel okay again. She must start looking after herself better though. She owed it to Billy.

  ‘Hello,’ a woman with dreadlocks said, coming into the kitchen. ‘I’m Joanna. I knew your mum from Zumba.’ She touched Laura on the arm. ‘It was a lovely send-off.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Laura said, grateful that no one needed to be planning her send-off right now. She was definitely getting a gym membership though.

  ‘Your mum had such a great sense of humour,’ Joanna said.

  ‘Yes,’ Laura said, grateful for a compliment about her mother she could unequivocally agree with.

  ‘And isn’t your sister’s house lovely?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Laura and Joanna walked back into the living room together. Billy’s peach-haired friend was now absentmindedly dripping coffee over the cream chaise longue. Laura knew she should make a move to repair the damage or at least prevent more but she stayed rooted to the spot. Jess could write a ‘very honest’ post about stain removal.

  ‘Your mother would have been so proud of you today,’ Joanna said.

  Laura looked at her, smiled. She obviously didn’t know Evie very well at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Then

  ‘Oh, do stop upsetting everyone all the time,’ Mum said.

  Laura felt like she’d been slapped. All she’d said was that she couldn’t face a
Chinese takeaway because if they got food from Imperial Treasure and didn’t order a lemon chicken it would seem wrong.

  The pipes clanked and hissed. The house had felt noisier in the last few weeks: hostile. Laura stared through the open door into the hallway where boxes and boxes of Dad’s belongings were piled up, ready to be taken to various charity shops or the rubbish dump. Mum had been ruthlessly efficient about getting rid of nearly everything and Laura had had to force herself not to cling on to each shirt and jacket and sweater. If it had been up to her, they would have kept everything of Dad’s, right down to his socks and underpants, which would have remained in the big oak chest of drawers all neatly rolled, just how he liked them. She’d been almost hysterical when she noticed there were only three toothbrushes left in the mug by the washbasin.

  ‘We’ve all got to be brave,’ Mum said firmly.

  Laura nodded. She ached with trying to be brave and sometimes she just couldn’t. Like the other day when she’d been sitting in double maths and she had suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember the sound of Dad’s laugh. She knew it had been a brilliant laugh, but she couldn’t hear it in her head.

  Now her mum put her arm around Laura and she was hit by a wave of Shalimar. ‘Come on, buck up.’

  Laura tried to smile. She’d got herself in such a state earlier because Mum had been half an hour later than she said she’d be getting back from work. Laura had started to picture terrible things in her head. Her mother walking across the road without looking properly, a lorry not being able to stop – bam! Her mother walking past a building site and a piece of loose scaffolding falling from a great height and landing on her head. Laura knew she was being stupid thinking like that and that the odds of something happening weren’t high. But then what had been the odds that Dad – a good driver – would wrap his car around a tree? By the time her mother got home, Laura was in a terrible state, just like she had been when Jess had been late home from netball the other night. Just remembering those feelings of sicky panic made Laura start to cry.