The Last Time I Saw You (4 page)

Now the hearse draws up. The undertakers open it, the dark-suited pallbearers step forward: Sally’s father is there, as well as a cousin I met once and her brother. Last to take his place is William, her husband. He’s kneeling on the ground, eye level with a dark-haired little girl clad in a blue velvet frock. He’s holding her small hands in his, urging her toward Sally’s mother, the tableau almost too painful to watch. He gives her a hug, a gentle little push, then helps heave the coffin aloft, shouldering the weight. He doesn’t stumble or break down, he just keeps his eyes fixed on the black mouth of the church doorway.

We file in behind them, the coffin now resting at the front of the church. I can’t tear my eyes from it, it’s only now it really seems real, if you know what I mean; the idea that Sally’s body is held by that wooden box feels chilling to me, absurd and horrific. I stare at it, keep thinking that this is
the closest I will ever be to her. I lean into James, sucking in the warmth and solidity of him, my jaw clenched tight.

The energy in the church feels physical in its intensity, taut and stretched. I can hear Sally’s mother sobbing from the front of the church, a heart-wrenching sound that makes me want to go to her, even though it would be totally inappropriate. But then, nothing about this is appropriate.

It’s a Catholic funeral, full of pomp and circumstance, which should be comforting but is somehow the absolute opposite. I don’t remember Sally ever talking about religion, let alone Catholicism. The priest tries his best to instill some kind of sense of spiritual order to things, talking about how we can’t always know why, how tragic it is to preside over a funeral of this kind, and as he speaks I can’t help but grow more and more frustrated. Surely there is no order to this, divine or otherwise—parents burying their children can never be right. I wish I knew for sure what I believed—I wouldn’t want to be a spooky happy-clappy type, thumping a tambourine and urging people to repent, but I would love a little more certainty. Even the certainty of real atheism would be better than my wistful half belief: I want there to be something—for Sally to be playing whist with my grandmother, wise enough to have consigned our feud to the fires of hell—but wanting and believing are very different things. I try to engage with his description of her, to feel her presence conjured up by his words, but the blushing bride and obedient schoolgirl he describes don’t resonate.

We sing a hymn, voices breaking, then listen to a reading her cousin gives. Now William crosses to the pulpit, slow and dignified. There’s a longish pause before he begins to speak, emotion pulsing and surging in the heavy silence.

“I’m sorry,” he says, clearing his throat. “It feels so extraordinary to be stood here that it’s hard for me to find my words. The last time I took my place here was for my wedding, and I would never have envisioned that this would be how I would return.” He speaks so beautifully, despite his distress. He’s incredibly posh, but it’s not the grating version, instead his words weave and dart, taking you on the path he’s carving out with them. “When I first met Sally I couldn’t believe that someone as vital and lovely as her would look twice at a dull old fart like me.” What a relief to have a moment’s levity, a tiny lifting of the smog of tension. “But incredibly she did. All I had to do now was convince her I was more than a flash in the pan, and so began my relentless courtship. She was far too clever to let me know I’d made an impression, she kept me guessing right up until she finally accepted my proposal. Colin will remember me rushing here to ask for her hand, only for her to miss the Eurostar I was patiently waiting on with a ring box.” Now she’s starting to appear for me, flighty and infuriating, but always somehow forgivable. I couldn’t believe how tenaciously her university boyfriends would hang on—it would be a game for her, like chicken, seeing how far she could push them. “I finally proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower, seriously worried she’d turn me down for being such a cliché. And she could have, being Sally—but happily she didn’t, a fact many of you could attest to because you were . . . here.” Not me, I think, narcissistically. Not me. William looks into the middle distance, steadying himself, then looks at his daughter and gives her a pained smile. “And before long we were bound for New York, Sally unselfishly putting her own blossoming career in PR on hold to follow my
latest posting. I don’t think she ever regretted it though, because the result was our daughter, Madeline.” He looks to her as he says it. I can only see her profile from here, her face set as if she’s repelling the weight of us all looking at her—what poise she has for one so small. “Madeline was a great joy to us both, and I know the proudest achievement of Sally’s all too short life.” He pauses, too emotional to continue. “My wife was a unique creature, a person of great beauty both inside and out. I will remember her wit, her vivacity, her sharp intelligence. She never missed a trick, never let me get away with anything, and I hope she will continue to watch over us from wherever she is now. I believe she will, because it is unthinkable to me that a spirit as vivid as hers could simply cease to be. And all I can do, all I can promise, is that I will ensure that that spirit lives on via Madeline and me, that our lives going forward are a testament to her. She will never be forgotten. My beloved . . . beloved wife.”

He looks to the coffin, puts the pads of his fingers to his lips, and strides back to take his place next to his daughter. Just for a single, self-centered second I wonder if anyone will ever love me the way he loves Sally, will mourn me the way that he mourns her. Even so, I haven’t seen him shed a single tear.

The same cannot be said of me. Sally’s well and truly here for me now and I do nothing but sob for the rest of the funeral, my face red raw and my handbag stuffed with sodden Kleenex. Her father’s eulogy is equally heartbreaking, memories of childhood taking their place alongside William’s picture of her as a wife and mother. Finally it’s over, and we file out to the strains of Mozart’s Requiem. The burial is family only, and the cowardly part of me is
relieved—I don’t think I could bear the finality of watching the ground swallow her up.

The wake takes place at Sally’s large, well-appointed and slightly tasteless parental home. I don’t want to be a snob, I always liked them, but there’s a definite leaning toward brass horseshoes and slogan-ridden doormats. It’s thronged with people, and I feel a bit disoriented. William is standing next to Sally’s parents, fielding a barrage of people who are determined to offer their condolences. Somehow I can’t tear my eyes away. What was he to Sally? Did he become the answer that she’d been looking for, or was he another question—a puzzle that she rattled and shook to try and get it to settle into the shape she wanted? I watch his face, the reflexive way he molds it for each person, as they clumsily try to express the inexpressible. Each one of them thinks it’s a moment of connection, but I can see the switch flicking on and off like a light. He’s retreated to a place far away from here—perhaps it’s the only way to endure it.

“Livvy!” says Lola, appearing at my elbow, her eyes brimming over. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Me neither,” I say, awkwardly hugging her. We haven’t exactly lost touch, but nor are we bosom buddies. Partly it’s cowardice: I’ve never quite forgiven myself for how Sally and I dumped her as a roommate in our second year, but I’ve never had the guts to properly have it out with her either. While she and Sally made a full recovery, we never quite managed to repair our friendship. She’s moved out of London and had a clutch of kids, our lives so different it’s been all too easy to let it slide. The other reason makes me feel ashamed: I don’t think I could stand the sense that
I’d ended up being the one on the outside, she and Sally signed up to a club that I was blackballed from.

“It was beautiful though, wasn’t it?” says Lola. I want to agree, but it feels like the wrong word.

“Yes. Was she Catholic? I don’t remember her ever . . .”

“William is,” she says, looking over to him. “I only saw her a couple of months ago.” She looks at me, helpless, like she’s hoping I’ll have some kind of blinding observation that will make sense of it all.

“Where?” I ask. “Was she in London?” It still hurts, that she could be so close and never call.

“New York.” There’s an awkward pause. “She invited me out for my birthday.”

“Was she . . . did she seem well?”

“She was great. You know—Sally!”

I wonder what that means. Lola was always such a foot soldier, running to keep up with Sally: I can’t imagine her ever promoting her to an equal. I look over at William, still trying to imagine the two of them together. He’s moved across the room, flanked by a stern-looking man with a beakish nose who must be his father. I don’t see it so much in their faces, as in the way they inhabit their suits, their ramrod posture—years of breeding translated into a million tiny signifiers. I smile at Lola, too proud to ask for details, to admit that I don’t know if her Sally—the polished married lady—was the same as mine.

“And they still don’t know what happened,” adds Lola, her voice low.

“What do you mean?” I ask, the hairs on my arms prickling to attention.

“She was meant to be picking Madeline up from school, but she never turned up. She was somewhere out in the depths of New Jersey in the middle of the day. No one knows
why. It was pouring with rain. She just lost control of the car, spun into the median strip.”

Is that why it’s taken weeks for the funeral to happen? I’ve thought of her, lying there, cold in some morgue, waiting to come home. I haven’t even voiced the thought, ashamed of how ghoulish it seems, but it wasn’t that—I was worried about her, in a childish sort of a way. It seemed so long, but perhaps they wouldn’t release her back to her family until they had some answers.

“It would’ve been instant, wouldn’t it?” I demand, bile rising in my throat.

“Yeah, I’m sure it was,” says Lola, tearing up. “She wouldn’t have suffered.” She reaches out and grabs my hand, her fingers tight around mine, their grip anchoring me in the living present. She always had that easy, instinctive warmth about her. My neurotic, competitive, younger self never valued it enough; it was easier to protect my position with Sally by joining in her sly, semi-affectionate mockery. Lola was an easy target—earnest, her heart worn proudly on her sleeve—but we were the ones who got it wrong.

“Let’s not be so crap at keeping in touch,” I plead, and she nods, mute, overcome by emotion.

“Lola?” interrupts a glamorous-looking American woman, around our age but far better groomed. She looks both younger and older all at the same time, her figure-hugging, beige wool tube dress reeking of money, the gold hoops at her ears setting off her caramel highlights. She reminds me of one of those gated communities so beloved of Americans, all pristine façades and manicured lawns, sinister in their refusal to let anything be less than perfect.

“Mara, hi! This is Livvy, she lived with me and Sally at uni. Sally and Mara were . . . you did everything together, didn’t you?”

Mara turns her green-gray eyes on me, her smile reaching her face a fraction later. She’s wondering why I’m here if she never met me—a question I’m still asking myself.

“Our daughters met on day one of kindergarten, and that was it: done,” she says, with that rapid fire pace that New York women often have. It’s a little too much for me right now. “So it sure was lucky we felt the same way. Richie and William too,” she adds, gesturing toward what I assume is her husband, a grizzled bear of a man who’s standing near the buffet. He’s handsome in a rough-hewn kind of a way, his dishevelment artfully designer labeled. He’s wearing black, but it’s not a suit. It’s a collarless shirt, worn over a pair of dark chinos, a jacket flung over the top. He’s gazing into space, a sense of disconnection about him, but he starts toward us when he sees she’s looking over. I’m finding it incredibly hard to engage, Lola’s words pinballing around my brain. It opens up a million new questions, but it answers one: Sally was still Sally.

Richie introduces himself, his manners impeccable. Despite that, I sense he’s struggling every bit as much as me, and it makes me like him more than his wife, who I somehow imagine could mix a perfect martini in a fallout shelter.

“How long are you here for?” I ask, unsure what the social etiquette is at an occasion as awful as this. Is it disrespectful to digress from the subject of Sally? I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep it together if we keep talking about her, and I dread anyone probing too much into where I was in the intervening years.

“We’re heading out on the red-eye,” says Richie. He’s one of those men who gives you his complete and utter attention when he talks to you, as if the rest of the world has receded into nothing. His dark hair is flecked with gray, but it only adds to his rough-hewn good looks. “We left the kids with my sister. We’ve gotta get back.”

There’s something about the way he says it that speaks of more than practicalities.

“We’ll be there to support those guys when they get home,” says Mara, looking over at Madeline, standing at William’s side like a small, dogged guard. “That’s our job, right?” she adds, looking to Richie.

“Yeah,” he agrees, but then sinks back into numb silence.

I stare at Madeline—I can’t help myself—this little sprig of Sally, the part of her that she’s left behind. There’s something about the cast of her face, her self-determination, that is so evocative of Sally that I can no longer trust myself to stay here.

I clumsily excuse myself and head for the bathroom, but the door is locked. I cast around for somewhere to go; there’s Sally’s childhood bedroom, the door firmly shut. Tears prickle at the back of my eyes as I remember the two of us holed up in there, talking so late, so obsessively, that her mom had to bodily haul us out of bed the next day. It takes all my self-control not to open the door, check inside in case our student incarnations are still there, babbling in giggly whispers, trapped in some kind of suspended animation. It’s insane, but as William said, standing up there in front of a church packed with mourners, it seems more insane that a spirit as sharp and bright as hers would simply evaporate.