Derek shifts in his seat next to me. A pungent, damp smell rises from his feet and I try to ignore it.
‘Yes, she was that. A complicated, glittering person …’
Glittering? Fucking hell.
‘… who bravely fought her own demons for many years.’
Christ. He might as well have carved ‘She was a massive drug addict’ into the chapel walls.
‘And in the end—’ Ben’s voice cracks, right on cue. ‘My apologies – if I can just …’
He whisks out a silky handkerchief, dabbing at his face, then straightens his shoulders, exhales and gives another rueful smile.
‘Right. Enough of that.’
A smattering of sympathetic noises from the congregation.
‘And in the end, those demons were bigger than her. It was a tragic accident that ended her life’ – at this, Derek stiffens – ‘and perhaps none of us could have done anything to prevent it. But I can’t help but blame myself. If she’d been happier, if she’d been sober – as she had been for so many months before this final lapse – if she’d been here with us at home, then perhaps she wouldn’t have done that most Fliss-like of things. Perhaps she wouldn’t have walked into the Balinese sea and gone for a moonlight swim. But that was Fliss, wasn’t it? Dear, darling Fliss. Beholden to her passions until her final breath. At least, I comfort myself, she died doing a thing she loved. That makes the injustice of this terrible accident a bit easier to bear.’
Derek sucks his teeth. He jabs my arm with his elbow.
‘Ain’t an accident, man, why they saying that?’
He is sitting so close to me our thighs are touching. His trousers have purple patches sewn over the knees. On his feet, I am surprised to see flip-flops.
‘And so we wish you farewell, sweet, sweet Fliss,’ Ben is saying now,addressing his closing words to the coffin, which is draped in heavy, braided material bearing the Fitzmaurice coat of arms. ‘May your final swim be to the peace that you deserve, and may the ocean rise to meet you there.’
The congregation is applauding now – a soft pitter-patter at first, rising to a polite yet noticeable crescendo. There’s Serena, smiling sadly, a tendril of hair working itself loose from her chignon. Lady Katherine’s back is erect and unmoving. She gave birth to three children and has outlived two of them and a husband. The survival instincts of a cockroach.
‘She weren’t using, you know.’ Derek’s voice pulls me back.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
He brings his face to within an inch of mine. His eyes are bloodshot, the whites yellowing.
‘I told you,’ Derek says, his breath grazing my ear. ‘Her brother said she weren’t sober. But she were. She were drinking a bit, you know, but nothing else. She had the drugs under control.’
Ben is back in his seat now and the vicar is asking us all to pray. I attempt to shush Derek by dropping my head in a suitably worshipful pose, but he’s still talking to me in an urgent whisper.
‘She killed herself, man, I told you.’
I’m not your man, I think, but something about his insistence is compelling. If Fliss was sober and if she deliberately walked into that sea to drown herself in the night currents, then why on earth were the Fitzmaurices lying about it?
Trust me, I didn’t intend to stay for the reception. You might not believe me, given my past predilection for inserting myself wherever I could into Fitzmaurice business, but it’s true. I thought I would come to the funeral, show Ben I was no longer scared of him, satisfy what remained of my morbid curiosity and then return to the cottage and the cat and the quiet lecturing life.
I couldn’t have known it was Serena who’d sent the invitation, or that I was going to sit next to Derek or that the confluence of thesetwo unexpected revelations would result in a suspicion – no, it was stronger than that: an absolute certainty that the Fitzmaurices were trying to bury the truth in that freshly dug grave. So of course I have to stay. I want to know what happens next. Don’t you?
Outside the chapel, the sun streams weakly onto the lawn. We stand sombrely in small groups gathered around ornamental topiary and are served glasses of champagne by bow-tied waiters. It seems odd to be serving champagne at a wake, but there you have it. The family members have all disappeared – one assumes to bury the body. Although, now that I think of it, there is a Fitzmaurice mausoleum in the bowels of the chapel. Does one bury bodies in mausoleums? (Should it be mausolea?) Or does one cremate, then place the ashes in a ceremonial urn to be placed under a marble gravestone? I can’t imagine Fliss would have wanted this. An eco-friendly cardboard cradle, disintegrating underneath freshly planted carbon-neutral trees would be more her style.
A waiter offers me a smoked salmon blini. I take it. He smiles at me. I frown, remembering the smile and touch and lips of a different waiter at a different party a long time ago. I always did have a thing for staff. I eat the blini in two bites and wipe my hands on the paper napkin.
‘Ah, hello there!’
I find myself accosted by Richard Take. I have never met him before, despite the jovial familiarity of his greeting.
‘Good afternoon,’ I reply, with what I hope is inescapable finality.
‘Beautiful service, wasn’t it?’
