Chapter 46: News

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny. Aren’t funeral days meant to be gloomy, wet and grey, reflecting everyone’s mood? Not this one. The thin curtains in the east-facing dining room where Will and Vicky had set up my bed couldn’t keep the early morning sunlight at bay, so I was up and hobbling into the lounge by myself far, far too early.

“Oh, good, you’re already up,” Vicky said when she came downstairs and saw me in my armchair, remote control in hand as I flicked through the early morning dross. “I’ll just shower and then help you get ready.”

“Ready for what?” I mumbled.

“The funeral. You need to look smart. Or as smart as you can like this.”

“But I’m not going.”

“Of course. Half an hour and a cup of coffee and I’m good. Okay?”

An hour later she came back carrying the jacket from my best suit, a shirt and an old pair of jogging pants. “We might have to cut these to get them on,” she said, holding up the jogging pants. “But it’s better than cutting your good trousers to shreds.”

“I’m not going, Vic,” I said.

She huffed, dumped the clothes on the sofa and retrieved her phone from the kitchen. She waited for the other person to answer then said, “He’s still adamant he’s not going.” A Pause. “Yes, okay. Here he is.” She held the phone out to me and said, “Will.”

I took it with a scowl and barked into the handset, “I’m not going, Will. And you can’t make me.”

“I can and I’m going to. Now, listen here, Paul. How many times over the past four years have I made you do something that you didn’t want to?”

I thought for a second before answering, “Never. At least, not that I can remember.”

“Exactly. So this is the first, and probably the only time. Like it or not, you’re going to this funeral.”

“But I don’t think I could cope with it.”

“Which is why you need to go. I know that sounds twisted, but trust me on this, please, Paul. I have experience. I’ve seen people tear themselves up with regret over not going to a loved one’s funeral.”

“Well, I won’t do that.”

“They all say that. Paul, funerals aren’t for the dead. They’ve for those left behind. This is your chance to grieve. To get it out of my system.”

“But I don’t want to get it out of my system. I don’t want to just put her in a box, bury it in the ground and forget about her!”

“That’s not what we’re going to do. No one wants to forget about her. They just want a chance to show how much they loved her and say goodbye.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“You don’t really have a choice, now do you? Trust me, okay. It’ll be hard today, but if you don’t go, it’s something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. And that’s not what Clarissa would want, is it?”

“I guess not.”

“Good. I’ll be around in half an hour to take you and Vicky to the church.”

I suppose you expect me to tell you it was the worst day of my life, the worst pain of my life. That the whole tortuous episode is burned in my memory forever. But the truth is, I don’t remember all that many of the details of Clarissa’s funeral. I spent the service on autopilot, sitting comatose between Christine and Emily as they each squeezed one of my hands for all they were worth. The vicar said something. Somebody I didn’t know read something. Hymns were sung. Women cried.

Me? I spent the entire service staring at that damn box containing the woman I loved, and not a tear was shed.

I felt ... nothing. I think my emotions had shut down. So I stared at the coffin while pain grew in my hands where the ladies on either side of me squeezed. And squeezed. And squeezed.

Afterwards, I sat in my wheelchair by the graveside as the vicar did his Ashes to Ashes bit and the coffin was lowered. I watched as people threw flowers or dirt down on top of it, then asked Will to take me home. Emily came with me, and we spent the rest of the day watching telly. We didn’t speak, well, not much. We didn’t want to. Either of us.

I don’t think I slept at all that night.

Although term didn’t start until the end of September, it was too late to rescind my application to take a gap year. Apparently, they’d already allocated the place I’d vacated to someone else through the clearing system. Not that I’d have been able to start the course anyway as my cast wasn’t due to come off until around the same time and the rehab I’d need after that would have meant it would have been very difficult to get around campus and to lectures on time.

Clarissa and I should have been making last-minute preparations for the European leg of our trip. We had planned to get the ferry to Calais the weekend after the ball, but obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, I spent most of September with Emily. Or should I say that Emily spent most of September with me? I felt guilty because she should have been getting ready to move into halls of residence in Westmouth, not hanging out in my lounge watching telly. Because that’s all we did. Watch telly.

I graduated from the wheelchair to crutches, but getting around was still an effort. It was so much easier to stay at home—plus, this had the added appeal of not bumping into anyone and going through the god-awful ritual of them offering their sympathies and enquiring as to how I was bearing up. I cringed every time I heard those words.