Indy straightened the hem of Gina’s dress, fluffed up some of the coffin lining around the edges. She had a good eye for detail. She’d been very precise about her own parents’ funeral, something that could’ve been taken for coldness, but Dorothy knew otherwise. It was a way of keeping control when chaos has taken over your life.72

‘I remember when we first met,’ Dorothy said. ‘I was very impressed with you.’

Indy looked up. ‘How so?’

‘It was obviously a very difficult time.’

Indy angled her head in acknowledgement.

‘But you had a stillness about you,’ Dorothy said. ‘You’ve always been very centred.’

‘I didn’t feel like that at all,’ Indy said. ‘I felt lost. But you found me.’

Dorothy smiled. ‘You found yourself. You just needed a point in the right direction.’

Indy shook her head and looked down at Gina in the coffin. She reached out and put a finger to her neck, where Archie had covered the belt mark.

Dorothy remembered the young woman Indy was when she arrived at the Skelf house to arrange her parents’ funeral. Her hair was bright red back then, and while her face was flushed and puffy from crying, there was something meticulous and centred about her, even amongst the pain. She was studying psychology at Napier Uni but said she saw no point in continuing. She wanted to know how people worked, but the car accident that took her parents on a wet road at night made it clear that everything was just random, from the cradle to the grave and beyond, if you believed in that. Indy had never believed, she told Dorothy, despite her Hindu heritage, but her parents didn’t mind, and allowed her to choose her own path without friction. Once they were gone, she was even more free to choose her own path, but there seemed no point, no purpose anymore. Dorothy was worried and stayed in touch, as she often did with the younger bereaved, and when she realised Indy was serious about quitting her studies, she stepped in with a job offer.

‘It was more than that and you know it,’ Indy said. ‘I was a wreck. You changed my life, Dorothy. I mean, obviously it still hurts, thinking about Mum and Dad, having to live on without 73them. But I have a purpose here now. I have Hannah. I wouldn’t have had any of that if it wasn’t for you.’

‘You’re a natural here,’ Dorothy said. ‘You’re brilliant with the clients. They all adore you.’

‘I like to help people.’

Dorothy nodded. ‘That’s what I mean. And you’re great for Hannah, too.’

‘She’s great for me.’

It was said matter-of-fact, but true all the same.

Something occurred to Dorothy. ‘Has Melanie turned up yet?’

Indy frowned and shook her head. ‘Han was talking to her brother earlier, and Jenny was down at uni speaking to a tutor.’