The Mirror World of Melody Black

by Gavin Extence

  In tiny increments, the sky brightened. I drank some Diet Coke and took my tablets, and then leaned my elbows on the side of the refuge point as the tide crept out and the sun rose over Lindisfarne.

  It was a little after eight thirty. The waves had passed beneath me and the sky was a pale blue. I had just shouldered my rucksack, and was preparing to climb back down the ladder, when my phone rang. It was my mother.

  ‘Abby, you’re awake.’

  ‘Yes. Stating the obvious but—’

  ‘I thought it would be better to call straight away.’

  There was something strange in her voice. The sort of strange that immediately makes your stomach drop. ‘Mum, what is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Darling, it’s your father . . .’

  26

  ANOTHER DEAD BODY

  The funeral was organized by Marie and my sister. They asked me, when they started, if I’d like to have an input. Actually, I think what Francesca told me over the phone was that she and Marie ‘wanted’ me to be involved. It was a lie, of course, but I believe it came from a good place. She didn’t want me to feel excluded. Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to imagine how the three of us would work together. Arranging the catering for the reception, selecting music, writing the eulogy – everything seemed fraught with danger. Not that I expected anyone to ask me to write, or even contribute to, the eulogy. Whatever Fran and Marie envisaged my involvement could be, I knew they’d have to draw the line somewhere. But even simple things like flowers and sandwich fillings and venue felt far, far beyond me. The truth is I had no idea what Daddy would have wanted, and in my limited experience, this is the first question people ask when planning a funeral. I didn’t have a clue if he’d want flowers; I didn’t even know if he’d have wanted to be buried or cremated. These were things I’d never thought about.

  Unfortunately, Daddy had never thought about them, either – or if he had, he’d kept it to himself. My father had left no instructions in the event of his death. In part, of course, this was because he hadn’t been expecting to die, and I don’t just mean that in the sense it might apply to any apparently healthy fifty-eight-year-old man who suffered a fatal stroke in his sleep. I mean, also, that I don’t think the notion of dying ever really entered my father’s head. He had too large an ego to contemplate a world without him in it.

  If I had been asked to write a eulogy, that would have been the title.

  ‘You know, he doted on you as a child,’ my mother told me in the car, as we drove to London on the morning of the funeral; and it wasn’t the first time she’d told me this. She’d told me many times over the past week. I think it was meant to make me feel better in some way. ‘You were much closer than he and Fran were, or you and me, for that matter.’ She gave a small, wry laugh. ‘It actually made me a bit jealous at the time, seeing how close the two of you were.’

  I threw my mum a look, but she had her eyes fixed on the motorway. ‘Mum, you’re talking about a very small portion of my life, and one that I hardly even remember. Daddy may have loved me when I was a child – I’ll take your word for it – but I’m not going to pretend that our relationship was anything more than it was.’

  ‘Oh, Abby. You make it sound as if he stopped loving you. He didn’t – of course he didn’t. He stopped loving me. There’s a huge difference. It was me he wanted to leave, not you.’

  ‘I was a teenager, Mum. He couldn’t leave you without leaving me as well. We came as a package. You can dress it up however you like, but at some point he opted for a future that did not involve either one of us. There were things that were more important to him. His penis, mostly.’

  I added this last point because I couldn’t stand the grim frown that had crept over my mother’s face. I’d expected more of her, to be honest. Ostensibly, she was coming today so that she could ‘be there’ for me and Fran, but it was becoming clear that she would struggle to do this on my terms. She thought it would be much healthier if I just allowed myself to grieve.

  What she didn’t understand was that I was grieving. It’s just that my grief was complicated. Because I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t experiencing a new grief; I was grieving afresh for something I’d lost many years earlier. Something that may not ever have existed.

  Beck wasn’t there when we arrived at the crematorium, but we were quite early; and, all things considered, I felt myself lucky that he was coming at all. Last week’s phone call was yet another that I’d got very badly wrong.

  ‘The funeral’s on Wednesday,’ I’d told him, ‘if you want to come.’

  There was a short pause down the line. ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘I think Daddy might have liked that,’ I answered. ‘I mean, let’s be honest, you got on with him better than I did.’

  I only realized how awful this sounded after we’d hung up. In my defence, I was very tired at the time. It’s not much of a defence, but it’s the only one I have.

  I texted back immediately.

  I do want you there – of course I do. There’s nothing I want more. Please come.

  Then I spent the next two minutes, until I got a reply, worrying that I’d now gone too far the other way, and written a message so effusive it could only be read as disingenuous.

  But it wasn’t. I meant every word, and I realized that now more than ever, in those several moments when I looked and didn’t find him.

  Instead, I saw a handful of Daddy’s work friends and a few distant relations. Basically, I could glance around the car park and at once divide the assembled crowd into two partially overlapping categories: people I didn’t really know, and people I didn’t really like. And, inevitably, many of these people felt duty-bound to seek me out at the earliest opportunity to offer their condolences. In most cases, I responded with a neutral smile and a ‘Thank you’ and left it at that. But I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to feign feelings I didn’t have. When people asked me how I was ‘holding up’, I told them. If they didn’t appreciate the answer, this was their problem, not mine. Still, after the third or fourth such occasion, I was aching for a bit of moral support.

  For the most part, I still had no idea how things would pan out when Beck arrived; but I was certain that he, at least, would respect my right to mourn – or not to mourn – as I saw fit.

  We found Fran and Marie in the small foyer outside the chapel. It came as no great surprise that Marie could be numbered among the tiny fraction of women on the planet who wear grief well. She looked stunning, as ever – long black dress, black shawl, black veil with pretty black flowers on it. Funeral chic. Fran had offset her black top with a dark grey skirt, appearing poised, pensive and solemn – although, really, this wasn’t much of a departure from her everyday look. Fran had a wardrobe that was particularly conducive to funerals.

  As for me, I’d not had a lot to work with at my mum’s. In the end, I’d gone for black trousers and a black cardigan with a (borrowed) white blouse. It was sober enough, I thought, but without making me look like a wraith. And I was wearing bright pink underwear – just because it made me feel a little better and wouldn’t do any harm. I’d checked myself in the mirror and it didn’t show through. In this, at least, I felt I could do as I wished and not offend anyone.

  There were many things about today that I’d not been looking forward to, but probably highest on the list was this initial encounter with Marie. I had no idea how I should greet her or what I should say, and these questions were still playing on my mind right up to the point when she and my mother were exchanging an awkward handshake. It was only then that I noticed – something I hadn’t noticed when I’d inspected her across the distance of the foyer. She looked surprisingly vulnerable. Maybe it was that she was standing next to Fran, who had never looked vulnerable in her life, or maybe it was the slight tremble I detected when she smiled thinly at my mum. Whatever the case, it caused me to do a last-minute rethink. I abandoned my own handshake and, standing on tiptoes, kissed he
r on both cheeks.

  There followed a short, peculiar silence. She was obviously as surprised as I was, but at least she seemed to understand that my action hadn’t been intended as mockery.

  ‘I like your bow,’ she said after a moment, gesturing at my headband.

  ‘I like your outfit in general,’ I told her. Then: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Likewise.’ There might have been a small barb at this point; I’m not certain. But either way, I didn’t have a reply. There wasn’t really anything else we could say to each other.

  Fortunately, it was at this instant that I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Beck, looking slightly flushed, as if he’d been rushing.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you mean today or in general?’

  ‘I mean both.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ I told him.

  Then he held me until the service began. I didn’t think it was something I could read too much into, but this didn’t really matter right then. It just felt good to be held, and that was enough.

  I buried my face in his chest; and on a day when almost everything felt awkward and unnatural, this did not.

  The service was simple, and over quickly. Non-religious, of course. No singing, no praying – although we were invited, at one point, to partake of a short silence so that each of us could remember Daddy in whatever way seemed most appropriate. I thought about a time when I was six or seven and he bought me an ice cream after I grazed my knee. Not a very remarkable memory, but one of the better ones.

  I don’t know if Francesca wrote the eulogy herself or if it was cobbled together by the officiant, based on what Fran and Marie had told him, but in any case, it was a masterpiece of the genre: a five-minute biography consisting almost entirely of suspicious holes. Fran and I got a mention – his ‘two wonderful daughters’! – but our mother was left out of the story entirely, as if my father had had us grown in a lab. Marie was the ‘beautiful partner he leaves behind’, and although they’d been together for less than a year, we were informed that in this time they’d enjoyed a ‘deep, deep happiness’. That might even have been true – who knows? Less than a year was a plausible time-frame for a happy relationship with my father. Nevertheless, if this had been a trial rather than a funeral, there’d have been a very long queue of women waiting to testify for the prosecution.

  The sanitized personal history was followed by a much longer inventory of his achievements at work. His colleagues, apparently, would remember him as a natural and charismatic leader, one with ‘a ready smile and a wicked sense of humour’. And he was generous, too; there was an anecdote about an occasion when he bought champagne for everyone in the office, and then a brief reference to his being a ‘passionate supporter of a number of charities’, though these charities were not listed (I was fairly sure that the only person, dead or alive, who would have been able to provide such a list would have been my father’s accountant). Towards the end, there was also a joke about his love of expensive cars – ‘his other children’ – which provoked several guffaws from his work friends.

  So that was my father in a nutshell: basically, he was Jesus with a Jaguar.

  ‘Well, what did you expect?’ Beck asked me afterwards. ‘A catalogue of crimes and misdemeanours?’

  ‘Why not? That’s what I want in my eulogy. In fact, I want you to promise me right now: if I should die tomorrow, you are to tell the truth – the full truth. Here’s a first line to get you started: “Abby could be a real pain in the arse sometimes . . .” After that, I want you to list every one of my faults. Leave nothing out.’

  ‘Christ! How long do you want this eulogy to last?’

  ‘Okay, fair point. So cap the bad stuff at five minutes. Then you can finish by telling them I was kind to animals and had nice handwriting. It’s important to end on a positive note.’

  The post-funeral reception was at Fran and Adam’s, and although their flat was twice as large as the one I shared – had shared – with Beck, that still meant little room to accommodate the twenty or so people who came back from the crematorium. It was hot and crowded, and entailed yet more uncomfortable conversations with people I barely knew.

  So before long, inevitably, I found myself smoking on the balcony; and before long, inevitably, Marie came out to join me. No one else was there because no one else could be there. Fran’s ‘balcony’ was typical of a central London new-build: more a ledge with a safety rail. Marie and I both leaned on this rail for some time, facing out over the street and saying nothing.

  ‘I had a friend who was in a psychiatric hospital once,’ she told me eventually. ‘Anorexia.’ As conversation starters went, this was not the best, but there was something in her voice that conveyed more than her words.

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked after a moment or two.

  Marie shrugged. ‘She nearly died, then she got better. It’s still a battle, though. Most days.’

  The fact that Marie would know a detail like this last one confirmed my suspicions.

  ‘I’m sorry I was horrible to you. You know, at the restaurant. It was my father I was angry with, not you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t like my father very much.’

  She laughed, a small laugh devoid of humour. ‘Yes, I know that too.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him.’

  I wasn’t sure how well this sentiment was expressed, or even if there was a genuine sentiment there, or just wishful thinking.

  Marie turned to look at me for a moment, as if gauging something, then reached into her handbag. ‘I have something for you. I didn’t know if you’d want it, but . . . well, you decide.’

  It was the postcard, the one I’d sent from Lindisfarne. ‘He kept it.’

  ‘He was pleased that you were feeling better.’

  I stared at the card for a while, front and back. My message, my final contact with Daddy, ended with a small x. There were worse ways it could have ended.

  I stubbed out my cigarette on the railing. No ashtray, of course.

  ‘Marie, I’m going to leave now. I hope you’re happy again – in the future.’

  She nodded once in acknowledgement, then turned back to the city. ‘I hope you’re happy too.’

  Inside, I found Beck talking to one of the distant relatives. I touched him lightly on the arm. ‘Would you mind getting me out of here?’ I asked him. ‘Perhaps we could go for a coffee?’ I cut straight across whatever my second cousin once removed was saying, but this seemed rather trivial at this point. Beck let me steer him towards to the door, and a couple of minutes later, we were out in the fresh air.

  Going for a coffee turned out to be more complicated than expected. It was close to lunchtime, and close to Christmas, so everywhere was packed. Standing room only in Starbucks, same in Costa. I thought, for a while, that we could just walk and talk, but it soon became apparent that this wasn’t really an option either. The streets were almost as crowded as the coffee shops: a constant tide of people to negotiate, Band Aid blaring from every open door. In the end, we decided to go back to the flat – our flat. It was the only choice, really.

  In the taxi, I sent my mum a message saying I’d phone her in half an hour. Then, as an afterthought, I sent another to Fran telling her she’d done a very good job organizing the funeral. It wasn’t snipey; it was something I knew she’d like to hear. As a further afterthought, I then sent Fran a second message saying we should meet up soon – go for a drink or something.

  I couldn’t decide if being back at our building felt strange or not. Probably both; a mild case of cognitive dissonance. Nothing had changed, of course – or very little. We passed a woman I didn’t recognize on the stairs. She was moving at a pace, carrying two reusable shopping bags and plugged into her iPod, but she smiled and nodded at Beck as she passed.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged. ‘New neighbour. Well, not that new any more. They moved in a few mo
nths ago.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘She and her husband. They’re Polish.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Right.’

  I’m surprised how easy it is.

  We go inside, we drink coffee, we talk. I tell him about the conversation with Marie, but apart from that, it’s nothing too heavy. We don’t talk about us. We talk about work, Lindisfarne, London. And then, at some point, with no discussion beyond a couple of exchanged glances, we go into the bedroom and have reconciliation sex.

  Reconciliation sex is a sub-genre I’ve always enjoyed very much. It feels like wounds being instantly healed, or like a work of art restored so its colours glow afresh. Yet now, despite this, I find myself hoping that I won’t have to go through it again, or not too often.

  Afterwards, I realize that my phone is ringing once more, back in the other room, past a small trail of discarded funeral clothes.

  ‘I think I’d better get that,’ I say.

  Of course, I don’t want to get it; I want to stay exactly where I am now. But it will probably be my mother, and there’s a good chance she’ll be worried. The phone rings for at least a minute before I manage to get to it.

  ‘Abby, where are you? You said you’d call me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I . . . lost track of time.’

  I stifle a giggle, which I think my mum mistakes for a sob, because her voice becomes much gentler.

  ‘Darling, where are you?’

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. I’m fine. I’m still with Beck. We went home.’

  ‘You went home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s a small pause down the line. ‘Darling, please don’t take this the wrong way, but nothing would make me happier right now than to hear you say you’re not coming back to Exeter with me.’