I feel Mike’s hand pat my back as Julia guides me gently out of the row and down the central aisle. Eyes are on me; there are murmurs. I daren’t look up. Not because I’m afraid of the stares – I would have been, back in the days before the bonfire, before you – but because I know you’re waiting for me, like always, somewhere up ahead.
I’m fighting flashes of memory as we go. The ones that have haunted me these past weeks and won’t let me sleep, but also flashes of Julia herself: the bathroom floor at your flat, blood on the lino, you comforting and cursing her at the same time. I mount two shallow steps and, head still down, see the side of your coffin and the sawhorse things that hold it up. My eyes drift. I see puffy satin; the sleeve of a smart suit I don’t recognize. Maybe it’s not you in there. Maybe this is all a joke.
Let it be a joke.
“I’m sorry, Dylan. I didn’t know if you’d want him like this, but I had no way of contacting you and I had to make a decision. It had to be an open casket, didn’t it? Because we don’t want our boy shut away in the dark.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. Whatever you want. It was your decision.”
I can’t move beyond the suit. Not yet.
“No, sweet boy,” she says. “He wasn’t just mine. He wasours.”
I nod, though I know she wouldn’t think this if she knew the truth. She’d hate me then, maybe almost as much as I hate myself.
“I’m sorry, Julia. I should’ve come to see you.” I fight the lump in my throat. Surely we have to move. Surely they have to start the service. But Julia isn’t the kind of person anyone can move before she’s ready. “I wasn’t…”
I see her hands reach out and straighten something in the coffin.
“Now listen,” she says. “None of this is your fault. Are you hearing me, Dylan?Noneof it.”
But you don’t know, Julia,I think.You have no idea…I reach into the back pocket of my trousers and take out a crumpled, rain-stained envelope. Unfolding it, I pull back the flap and thumb through a few damp notes, then try to pass it to her.
Is this appropriate? Who the hell knows? I don’t think there’s an etiquette for losing you.
Julia sees what I’m trying to do and waves her hand. “What is this, Dylan?”
“A hundred pounds. I’m not sure if that’s even close to being enough, but… It’s some of my uni savings. I’m not going. Please take it, Julia. I know you’ve probably already paid for all this, but I’d like to make a contribution, maybe towards the wake.”
“Put that back in your pocket before we fall out,” she tells me. She isn’t offended, she just sounds tired. “If I took that, Ellis would never forgive me. He was so excited about you going to Bristol. It’s all he ever bloody talked about.” And suddenly she’s laughing and straightening something else I can’t – won’t – look at. “Morning, noon and night. You know he had your whole student flat decorated in his mind.”
I nod. “It would’ve been spectacular.”
“Course it would. Now listen, don’t you give up on that dream. If you do, you’ll have me to answer to, understand?” She laughs again, and there’s a stir behind us as if everyone’s super-curious about this endless coffin-side conference. “I’m just fine with the expenses. I stopped taking that junk the day you and Ellis found me, so I’ve saved a bit. And it’s a simple coffin…”
I twine my fingers together. George Ezra has stopped singing about his “Saviour” and there’s a shuffling quiet in the chapel. Someone whispers in Julia’s ear and she hisses back, “Wait. Give him time.
“Look at him, Dylan,” she says softly.
I can’t. I ball up my fists. I can’t.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Just look.”
And I do.
You have a halo, but it isn’t snowdrops. It’s even more perfect. Pillowing your head and fanning out all around you are your drawings. Dozens of them, big and small, scribbled into life on napkins and carefully worked out on foolscap. Quick, breathless sketches, some barely more than a scratch or two on the paper, others spellbindingly intricate studies. People, animals, still life, cityscapes and country lanes, abstract shapes and honest portraits, every style mastered, every subject echoing your force and energy. Your work is your shroud, Ellis, and it’s the saddest, most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.
I grasp the edge of your coffin when I see it. I’m here, right with you. A simple portrait you must have sketched of me when I had no idea you were working. This seems impossible, because surely I wasalwayswatching you. But here I am, looking off into the distance, the side of my lip caught between my teeth, my eyes brimming with happiness. Where were we that day? A rooftop picnic? Cross-legged under our favourite tree in the park? High up in our bell tower? The thing is, Julia has placed me so that I am nestled right beside you on the pillow, and those joyful eyes seem focused on one thing only – you.
I gather up the last shreds of my courage and let my eyes move inwards from this perfect halo. I remember hating you when you wouldn’t wake up in the car. How could I ever hate this face? Those eyes, closed now, that saw some worth in me. That chin and jaw and those sharp cheekbones that rested against my own poor face when we held each other. Those lips that gifted me my first real kiss, and my last.
“El,” I murmur.
I reach for your hands, folded across your chest like you’re trying to protect your heart. When I touch you, I realize something. There is no cold like this – not anywhere in the world. It isn’t the cold of stone or wind or ice.
It’s emptiness.
And suddenly this sound rises up from someplace I’ve never felt before. It’s not my stomach or my lungs, it’s a deeper, secret place that perhaps you only get to reach into once or twice in a lifetime. Some of the people behind us give this little surprised cry when they hear it. El, I can’t describe this sound. It’s all our tossed and torn and battered hopes, all our stolen future and our darkened past rolled into one. It comes without tears. It’s too huge for them.
