By the time Nikki called for her, she was desperate to get out of the house, and squeezed herself into the back of Nikki’s aunt’s car gladly. Nikki’s mother was there, too, sitting in the passenger seat, and she reached over the headrest to pull Heather into an alarmingly fierce hug.

“How are you, Heather? How you doing?”

“I’m fine, Mrs Appiah, honestly. Will be glad to get this out of the way, though.”

There was a larger group at the crematorium than Heather had honestly been expecting—more neighbors like Nikki’s aunt, a couple of very distant second cousins that she only recognized from old photographs. Lillian was there, too, wearing a very smart black dress suit and a small black hat with a crisp flourish of black lace. Seeing her, Heather felt a flush of shame; someone who had lived down the road from her mother had made more of an effort than her own daughter.

“Come on, Hev,” Nikki took her elbow lightly. “We’re going inside now.”

Slowly, the tiny group of people shuffled into the little red brick chapel, their heads down, their eyes dry. As they passed under the arch and moved down the pews, Heather felt a shiver of dread move through her—there was a large wooden cross on the far wall, dominating everything else, and her mother’s coffin lay in front of it, a spray of white flowers draping the warm toffee colored wood.

For a long moment, she felt herself almost pulled backwards, as though the room itself was repelling her, and then she remembered; of course, this was the same chapel where they had said goodbye to her dad. How could she have forgotten that? Except that in some weird automatic act of desperate self-preservation, she had forgotten most of it. Her father’s funeral now only existed in her memory as a series of painful images and impressions. The smell of leather from the coat she was wearing; the sound of her mother’s painful sobs; and her own grief and guilt, a bright shard of glass lodged so deep in her throat she had spent the ceremony in a kind of stunned silence.

Nikki looked up at her, concern creasing a line in between her eyebrows.

“Hev?”

She nodded rapidly, forcing herself to smile.

“Come on,” Mrs Appiah slipped her meaty arm around her waist. “We’re sitting with you.”

Nikki’s family ushered her to the front pew and sat around her, fussing and handing out handkerchiefs. They were at home in churches, completely unfazed by the smell of old flowers and the looming cross, and Heather felt a surge of gratitude for them that threatened to make her cry before the service had even started. However, when the vicar stood and cleared her throat, she found herself oddly calm. She glanced around once, and spotted Lillian sitting at the back by herself, her hands folded over her large handbag and her eyes focused intently on the coffin.