Alex sat up all night with Zachary. They set up steel spotlights at either end of the coffin and switched off all the other lights; briefly the chapel burned with the sunset, and the high pink walls seemed transparent as shells. Spotlit in gold, the coffin seemed unreal as a tableau, or a kitsch artwork. Christine went upstairs early with Lydia, to see her into bed; Grace was determined to stay, and sat in a plastic chair pulled up close beside her father, hugging her jack-knifed long legs in her arms, her chin on her knees, staring bleakly. Then she fell awkwardly asleep, and Alex signed to Isobel to take her up to her own room. Roused, Grace opened her eyes wide on her friend in incomprehension, wondering where she was, like a child who’d fallen asleep at an adult party: she submitted to being led away. Hannah in her stocking-feet took round the teapot and the whisky bottle among those mourners left; then her wife Jenny took her home to rest.

Alex must have fallen asleep because when he woke up his mouth was full of bile, as if he’d drunk something disgusting. When he looked at Zachary’s dead face he thought that it was doughy and flaccid. Had he really grown so fat? Alex hadn’t noticed it when he was still alive. As a boy at school Zachary had been so keenly hopeful, with his fresh pink cheeks and irrepressible laughter, bubbling up even as it got him into trouble and he was ducking to avoid blows, sobbing and laughing at the same time, snotty and blubbing and giggling because the punishment was ridiculous too. And now he was extinguished, easily as putting out a candle.

Zachary’s send-off in the gallery was beautiful, everybody said so. The undertakers came in the morning to close the coffin. There wasn’t enough room for everyone, people were standing outside in the bookshop and cafe, lapsing into the tradition of so many other convivial occasions in this same space, in much the same company, with the same wine and flowers and interesting things to look at on the walls. The artworks were their own strong statements: an angry Jane Ogden glowered over the gathering, debris erupting through a crust of filthy paint. Children threaded tactfully through the adults’ solemnity; patches of sunshine bloomed and withdrew on the floor tiles like tentative reassurances. Then a squall of rain blew against the windows and latecomers hurried in apologetically, shaking their umbrellas. So many friends brought flowers, which they heaped up on top of the coffin. A huge wreath spelled out Goodbye, in acid yellow against vivid red: no one knew who’d sent it. Another gallery with a grudge, Hannah suggested.