We were sitting on the wall outside the crematorium while the rest of the mourners trickled past on the way to the wake, which was being held at the Blackwoods’ house. And I wanted to say something supportive, but he was probably right. “I mean…people surprise you?”

“I think I just surprised her in the worst possible way.” Blinking, he wiped his eyes, which were still a little red. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Well…I suppose it was sort of a combination of grief, frustration, and confusion, which is pretty par for the course for funerals.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have to tell everybody.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I mean, who does that? Who goes to his own father’s funeral and gives a rather incoherent speech about how he wasn’t a very nice person actually?”

“Would you have preferred,” I asked, in a vain attempt to lighten the mood, “to have made a coherent speech about how he wasn’t a very nice person?”

He glanced up. “Obviously, I’m a lawyer.”

“Barrister,” I corrected. And that, at least, won a tiny smile.

It didn’t last, though. Oliver lowered his head back into his hands. “I feel like such a fool.”

“You shouldn’t,” I told him. “It was really brave of you. I mean, there was me, thinking the options were eulogy or no eulogy. But, dark horse that you are, you went through the door marked Extemporaneous monologue about fatherhood and loss.”

Oliver made a mortified groaning noise into his hands. “You’re not going to be able to make me laugh about this, Lucien. I’ve done a terrible thing.”

“Okay. One”—I put up a finger—“you know when you say I won’t be able to make you laugh, I take that as a challenge, even at a funeral. Two, you haven’t done a terrible thing. You’ve just done…a thing. And, yes, it was a slightly unconventional thing and I don’t think it’s going to become a Blackwood family tradition. But you needed to say it, and at least some people in that room needed to hear it.”

He lifted his head again. “I have a therapist for exactly this reason.”

“And,” I said, “you can talk to her about it on Tuesday.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself. I mean,” he went on quickly, “not in a suicidal ideation kind of way. In an I’m-not-sure-how-I-can-continue-to-have-self-respect kind of way.”

I put an arm across his shoulders. “Hey, I did without self-respect for ages. It’s very overrated.”

He gave in and laughed at that.