The hallway smelled sharply of medicine and overboiled potatoes. We went into the room and said goodbye.

It was afterwards we were supposed to sing. The tradition was the nursing home’s, not ours. You sang the residents out, gave them one last song for the road, as a white coat told us slowly, distinctly, as though death were a 26catching loss of IQ. The coffin was mounted on a gurney. Meanwhile we readied ourselves in the corridor outside: a guard of honour, close family in clammy winter coats. A few members of staff, hands in the pockets of their white coats.

The small lady came trotting out of the TV room. Manifested, almost. Out of the flickering. Her brown-patterned slippers made a noise. She was fat. Her face, now folds of grey, had lost its shape. Small, happy eyes bulged out of oatmeal skin. Now she stopped and clapped her hands. Her voice creaked.

‘Ooh! Is it a birthday?’

As she began to sing we all stood grave-side still, including the staff. She bobbed rhythmically at the knees, clapping to the beat and interrupting herself once or twice to wave her hands. ‘Happee burssdaeh too yoo,’ she sang.

Tears came to her eyes.

I noticed a liver spot.

Then a white-coated carer slipped away from the wall and took her by the elbow, turning her around and marching off down the hall. The voice dragged after them. A door shut. Silence fell.

I saw Abbe’s hands hanging. His gaze was confused, then it went out, as though something had dawned too late.

The coffin was rolled out. Then we sang.

27

NO ISLAND

Later, my mother said of the funeral, ‘At least that organist meant I wasn’t sitting there crying snot.’

The church’s regular organist was on long-term sick leave, and the replacement’s playing was godawful. The psalm accompaniment was garbled, the notes hobbling off like winged birds. I felt sorry for them. Even the priest, standing hands folded amid a sea of garlands and bouquets, looked aggrieved.

The abundance of flowers was the only merry thing, and thick. Roses, chrysanthemums, gerberas. The church was full.

My mother led the singing. She bawled her lungs out, determined to be heard above the slow murder of ‘Sorrow and Joy’, the crackling discord as peace failed to descend ‘O’er Land and City’. From the banks of pews behind us, voices rang loud and clear. Everybody pulled together.

Then the psalms were over. The priest emptied his little trowel of earth over the coffin, down onto the shiny lacquer. Now the moment I’d been dreading.