There was a dip in the pillow where his head had rested since Sunday. We hadn’t cleaned the room while the body was still there. My father’s clothes were lying on the chair where he had left them. I unzipped his overall pocket and took out a wad of bank notes, the previous Wednesday’s takings. I threw away the medicine and put his clothes with the dirty laundry.

The day before the burial we cooked a side of veal for the meal which was to follow the ceremony. It would have been thoughtless to send the people who do you the honour of attending a funeral home with an empty stomach. My husband arrived in the evening, suntanned, embarrassed by a bereavement in which he had no part. He seemed more out of place then than he had ever been. We slept in the only double bed, the one in which my father had died.

In church there were quite a few people from our neighbourhood, housewives and also factory hands who had taken an hour off work. Naturally, none of the ‘high-ranking’ officials with whom my father had dealt over the years made the effort, and neither did the other shopkeepers. He didn’t belong to anything, just paid his yearly contribution to the tradesmen’s union without taking part. In his funeral oration, the priest spoke of ‘an honest, hard-working life’ and ‘a man who had never done anyone any harm.’17

Then there were the handshakes. Owing to a mistake made by the sacristan – unless it was a stratagem devised to increase the number mourners – everyone who had shaken hands with us came round a second time. The second round of handshakes took place quickly and in silence. At the graveside, when the coffin was lowered into the pit, swaying between the ropes, my mother burst into tears as she had done at my wedding during mass.

We held the funeral lunch in the café, where the tables had been set up in rows. After a difficult start, the conversation began to flow. The child, well-rested after a nap, went from one guest to the next, offering a flower, some pebbles, whatever he could find in the garden. My father’s brother, who was sitting at the far end of the room, leaned over and shouted in my direction: ‘Remember when your father used to take you to school on his bike?’ He had the same voice as my father. The guests left around five o’clock. We put the tables away in silence. My husband took the train home that evening.

I stayed on with my mother for a few days, to settle the usual formalities which occur after someone has died: registering the death at the town hall, paying the funeral directors, replying to messages of sympathy. Ordering new visiting cards, widow of the late A— D—. It was a blank, empty period, devoid of thought. On several occasions, as I was walking down the street, ‘I’m a grown-up now.’ (My mother used to say to me, because of my periods, ‘You’re a big girl now.’)