She led them to an open space, a couple of gurneys parked in the corner, industrial-sized fridge taking up the opposite wall. She and Archie wheeled the gurney to the fridge and she opened the door. There were nine slots arranged three by three. She pulled one out as Archie unfurled the body bag onto the gurney, unzipped it and lined the gurney up.

Moira and Archie exchanged a glance then looked at Dorothy. She stood there thinking about Jim’s skin crisping on the pyre, then about the sunburn he always got on the beach, his pale Scottish skin unprepared for Californian sunshine. They used to joke about it, how he burnt in five minutes.

She didn’t step any closer to the body in front of her.123

Moira took John Duggan’s feet while Archie put his hands under the armpits, then they counted to three and shifted him onto the body bag, tucked him inside then zipped up.

The cold air from the fridge made the skin prickle on Dorothy’s arms and neck.

‘Got any holidays planned?’ Archie said.

‘Tenerife in October,’ Moira said. ‘I need it.’

‘Sounds nice.’

They sorted paperwork and swapped small talk as Dorothy watched, feeling dislocated, as if she was the corpse here. She had an inkling of how Archie felt before his medication stabilised, what point was there in interacting with the world if you were already dead? How could you expect others to take you seriously when you weren’t here at all?

She touched the folded piece of paper in her pocket with Natalie’s hairs inside and felt like she was a ghost, walking invisibly through the world.

What use was a funeral director who couldn’t touch dead bodies?

She sat on the bed and looked out of the window. All she could see from here was the top of the high wall between their house and the neighbour’s, white clouds scudding across blue sky like they were racing each other. The uppermost branches of an oak, waggling its fingers towards heaven in the breeze.

She lowered her head until it was in her hands. She pressed her face into her fingers, pushing at her eyeballs until it hurt. She felt something rising inside her then sobs came out, shaking her shoulders, tears dampening her palms, snot suddenly in her nostrils that she had to sniff back. She gasped in air and sat up, arching her back.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘Get a grip.’124

She shook as she wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands, breathing with jerky movements of her chest.

She swallowed and pulled the piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it carefully. Four hairs, two with the root still attached. Was it illegal to take someone’s hair without consent? It certainly felt wrong. But she appeared to be that kind of woman now. She sat staring at the hairs for a while then folded them away.