Spoke so well...
Thank you, Annie...
She’d have loved...
But she could only see one face, hear one voice, feel one pair of arms around her. Helping her into her seat. Dr. Max’s clean soapy smell. “You did well, lass. You did it. It’s over now.”
*
The rest of the service was a blur to Annie. Dr. Max sat beside her, his arm around her, and she sobbed freely into his shoulder, breathing him in. Music, and flowers, and funny stories, and tears. George breaking down as he told childhood stories of Polly. Milly’s little girl singing “Over the Rainbow,” forgetting the words and running offstage. Reverend Ziggy making everyone move about the room and hug people. Annie saw Valerie locked in a very uncomfortable embrace with one of the hospital porters, and Milly’s little Harry shaking the hand of Dr. Quarani.
As soon as it was over—“The Wind Beneath My Wings” soaring out of speakers—Annie pushed her way through the crowd into the sun, sucking in lungfuls of air as if she was suffocating. “God,” she said shakily to herself.
“I know. I already bailed.” She turned. Valerie was sitting on a gravestone, her red hat beside her, smoking a cigarette. “Don’t tell George, okay? I just needed something. She was married out of this church, you know. All in white. She was so beautiful.”
“Are you holding up?” It was a stupid question, but Annie didn’t know what else to say.
She drew in more smoke. “Polly told me you lost your baby.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever get over it? Does it stop, this feeling...” Valerie tapped her chest. “Like you’re dying, too? She was my little girl, Annie. My baby.”
“I know. Honestly, I don’t know if it does. I think you just...kick some layers over it, as time goes by.”
“I don’t want to kick over her. I want to remember everything.” Valerie stubbed out her cigarette. “Why do these things happen, Annie? Your baby and my girl?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said, gently taking the cigarette butt from her. “I’m not sure we’re meant to know. There’s no reason. They just are. They just happen, and we have to live with it.”
Valerie gave a great juddering sigh and put her hat back on. “Stupid thing. Typical Polly, making us all dress up like clowns.”
“I quite like it,” Annie said truthfully. “It’s special. Like her.”
“Thank you for what you said about her. It meant a lot.” She stood. “I just have to get through today. Just have to hold it together.” She stooped to look at some of the wreaths piled up by the wall. There’d been so many they wouldn’t all fit in the church. “People are so kind. Aren’t they? Total strangers, many of them. Look at this one. ‘From Jeff and everyone at Lewisham Council.’ I didn’t think the council provided that kind of service. How nice.”
Annie jumped up to read the card herself. A wreath of yellow roses. They must have taken up a collection, an envelope going around as it had so many times when she was there, for someone’s baby or birthday or leaving gift. All the small gestures she’d once thought were pointless, when people didn’t really know you. She must remember to send a thank-you.
George came across the churchyard. “Okay, Ma? Annie, were you smoking?”
Annie flashed Valerie a conspiratorial look. “Um, no, I just found it lying here.”
He tutted. “Litterers. Ma, apparently there’s some kind of bus taking us home?”
Valerie shrugged. “Another of your sister’s mad plans.”
“Typical.” He held out his arm to his mother. “Come on. I’ll find you a seat.”
*
“Typical Poll,” muttered George again, hoisting himself up into the Routemaster bus. “Hiring a wedding bus for her funeral. God, there’s even favors.” There were, too—little photo frames with a picture of Polly on one side and a poem on the other. “‘Do not stand at my grave and weep,’” read George. “Sweet God. I wish I could tell her how twee this is.”
“I might pitch an article,” said Suze, who was swigging from a bottle in her handbag. “Are funerals the new weddings? Gin, anyone?”
“I’ll need it to get through this,” George said, drinking deep.
Costas was muttering, scandalized. “Where was prayers? Where was incense? And clapping and hugging in the church! Is not right.”
“That’s my little Orthodox gay.” George put his arm around him. “Here, have some gin. You are over eighteen, yes?”
**
At the house, more abundance greeted them. The trees were hung with bunting, and Polly must have got someone to print This Way to the Funeral signs. A slideshow of pictures played in the living room. Polly graduating. Polly on a yacht. Polly on the Inca Trail. Polly running the marathon. A smiling blonde woman, lacquered and perfect. Annie could not imagine she would ever have been friends with that person. With Old Polly. She could only be thankful they’d met when they did, both changed so utterly by life.
Inside there was smiling catering staff in black waistcoats, dispensing flutes of champagne. “Fuck’s sake,” Annie muttered, taking it all in. “How much did this cost? You couldn’t have just gone with Cava from Aldi?”
Then she realized Polly wasn’t there to smile at her grumpy frugality, or roll her eyes or shout, “Cancer card!” while popping the cork with both thumbs. Where she’d been there was only a blank, a silence that would go on and on forever. She would never hear Polly’s voice again.
*
“Hi!” said Polly.
Annie froze. She’d had a few glasses of champagne, but surely not enough to start hallucinating her friend’s voice. Then she realized it was real, and coming from the living room. She stumbled in, bits of the lawn caught in her stupid heels. A young man in a polo shirt was fiddling with the projector, and fending off Valerie. “Sorry, missus. She paid me to come and play the video, like. I have to do it.”
“But it’s a funeral! George, did you know anything about this?”
He shrugged. “Another mad Polly thing, I’ll bet. What video is it?”
The hapless technician pressed Play, and Polly’s giant face filled the screen. It had been filmed the week before—Annie could tell by the knitted hat she was wearing, and the background of her hospital bed. “Hi, everyone! Hope you’re having fun at my funeral. Sorry I can’t be there, after all. Try the salmon things, they’re amazing.” Everyone was staring. A video message from the dead person? That really was a first.