It’s funny, isn’t it? How we’d all have been horrified if a blackened, putrid Dr Williams was on display instead. Our loved ones may be concealed by an overpriced box made palatable by lilies and shiny brass handles, but inside, they’re decaying, disappearing. The person you need. The person who’d be alive if not for you.

I know you find such ideas laughable, but some believe the dead show themselves in white feathers floating from the sky. Or snow. But Mum wasn’t a feather. Or at peace enough to be snow. She was fallen leaves, swirling, uneasy, as I walked the path. It wasn’t a comfort. Her watching me there, knowing she was checking if I’d make it to the end.

As we approached the building, I’d managed to break free from Linda and Alison, and somehow found myself directly behind four emotionally restrained pallbearers in matching black suits heaving the coffin upwards. The effect slightly ruined by one lad’s brown shoes and the uneven dip caused by his diminutive height.

I held back. Allowed the family to take their correct positions. First a fragile Mrs Williams, then their two daughters. The teenager comforted her little sister, who sobbed with each solemn step.

The rest of us remained mute, kept our heads down, followed, as the muffled melody of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ floated through the air.

I made it through the service by thinking of you.

As the celebrant, who resembled an off-duty Elvis impersonator, delivered his insincere speech, I imagined your delighted face when telling you I’d be able to stay over that evening. When Dr Williams’s brother recounted the story of how his sibling was destined to become a doctor because aged six he’d amputated the arm of his Action Man, I imagined our afternoon ahead, alone, together. During his sister’s reading of that deluded poem which pretends it’s like the dead are only in the next room, I thought about us kissing openly in your office. And for the most difficult part, when the curtains drew around the coffin to Mama Cass singing ‘Dream a Little Dream’, the pain was so sharp, so intense that I closed my eyes and imagined you deep inside me.

Everyone left the building. Except, ironically, Shit Elvis. The majority would continue their lives as before. Others would never be the same again.

Standing outside, surrounded by the chattering about the poignancy of it all, it became apparent no one had arranged a cab to take me back. So I lit an urgently needed cigarette and began the long cemetery route towards the exit. As I walked, the leaves gathered momentum and swirled angrily around my feet.