The chapel was much bigger than it seemed from the outside. The dais accommodated an organ, a substantial wooden lectern and a standing arrangement of Stargazer lilies six feet tall, but the space looked bare nonetheless. There was very little ornamentation; the thin January light fell on white walls and the twelve or fourteen long pews were modern and utterly plain. By the time she had filed in, the coffin with its spray of evergreens and white roses had been set down on a long covered trestle. She looked at it in disbelief: she was in there, Marianne was in that box.
Rowan edged along the penultimate pew, moving up close to the woman next to her so as many as possible could squeeze on. She looked to the front, searching for Jacqueline and finding her almost immediately. She was in the middle of the first pew, sitting very upright, shoulders back, her chin lifted so that her profile and the outline of her famous brunette mane were picked out by the light from the narrow clerestory windows. Jacqueline the Lionheart. To her right, head bowed, was Adam, Marianne’s brother. His hair was cut shorter now, the waves gone, at least at the back, but it was as dark as ever, almost black. Like his father’s hair. At the sight of him Rowan felt an odd twist of emotion, pity mixed with a painful nostalgia.
To Jacqueline’s left was a man Rowan had never seen in the flesh before, Jacqueline’s new partner, the Irish writer and commentator Fintan Dempsey. Partner or boyfriend: what had she called him? In an interview Rowan’d read, Jacqueline had said she hoped to be with him for the rest of her days but she didn’t want to marry again. After what had happened with Seb? the journalist had pressed, wanting blood, but Jacqueline had just said no, she’d had her children and that part of her life was over; she was in a different phase now. Middle age, said the journalist, late middle age, really; did she feel that her power as a woman – a woman who’d always been physically attractive – was diminishing? Light the touch paper, Rowan had thought, and retire.
Next to Dempsey but encircled by the arm of the man on her other side was a woman – no, a girl – with long dark-blonde hair. Rowan watched as she brought a tissue to her face. She’d never seen her before, either, but she could guess who she was because the arm around her shoulders belonged to James Greenwood, Marianne’s boyfriend.
An amplified cough and the room pulled itself to attention. Elgar stopped awkwardly, the stereo turned off mid-phrase. At the lectern a chubby man in church vestments and heavy square-framed glasses smoothed his notes and cleared his throat again before looking up.
‘Welcome, friends,’ he said in a Welsh accent. ‘We are here today to celebrate the life of Marianne Simone Glass. The fact that there are so many of you – apologies to those who are standing – is a tribute in itself.’ The room shifted, those in the pews turning to look at the twenty or thirty people packed in at the back.
‘As we all know,’ said the vicar, if that was what he was, ‘though it was cut tragically short, Marianne’s life was one lived to the full and made remarkable by great talent and achievement. We’ll hear a tribute from Marianne’s mother, Jacqueline,’ he made a sort of half-bow in her direction, ‘but let us start with a prayer and then the first of our hymns, Lord of All Hopefulness.’
He spoke the prayer quietly, as if he were murmuring its promises of resurrection and renewal to Marianne in her casket rather than the mourners. The raw sound of crying could be heard from the front of the room, rising over it the single sustained note that Rowan had heard on the telephone. The sound brought tears to her eyes, too, and she fumbled in her pocket for tissues only to discover she’d left them in the car.
It was a relief when a slight blond man slipped onto the stool at the organ and without any preamble started to play. Caught out, the congregation got quickly to its feet but they were several lines into the verse before the singing assumed any kind of conviction.
‘Jacqueline,’ she heard the vicar say as the last notes faded and they took their seats again. Leaning to see around the man in front, Rowan watched her stand. Adam was still holding her hand. Jacqueline turned to whisper something to him and for a few seconds, Rowan had a view of her face. A movement in the room, an intake of breath quickly suppressed, told her that everyone else was watching, too. Jacqueline looked as if she’d been beaten. Her eyes were so swollen, the lids and the skin underneath so pink, that from a distance, she appeared to have been punched. The rest of her face, by contrast, was gaunt, the blood and flesh leeched away, leaving her pallid and eerily aged. She was sixty or sixty-one but usually looked ten years younger. Today a stranger wouldn’t question it if she’d said she was seventy.
They watched as she squared her shoulders and walked to the microphone. She took a few seconds then gripped the sides of the lectern and looked out over the room.