Friends and family stood up at the lectern one after another. Gina Brennan played a sarabande from a Bach suite on her cello, Alex read a poem, Nathan Kearney read extracts from a satirical mag he and Zachary had edited when they were undergraduates. Kids from the Art Club played steel pans, then Tomo Okamoto danced as a warrior re-enacting the scene of his own death, in full Noh costume and mask. Hannah in her tight black dress, with her slash of brilliant lipstick, couldn’t finish reading out what she’d written, Jenny had to do it for her; Martin Shield made everyone laugh. Christine sat with her mother and Isobel and Sandy, struggling against weeping, pressing her knees together in her blue dress, gripping her screwed-up wet tissue in her fist. She envied her mother’s poised, dry face, so carefully made-up, with its sad little smile of regret lifted towards the lectern or the dancing – when you were eighty you were more used to funerals. Scowling into her lap, she tried to hold off every real thought of Zachary, rehearsing trivialities. She would need new keys cut if Lydia was going to stay with them. Had she remembered to arrange for the cat sitter to come in today? Fixing her gaze on a painting hung on a side wall, she was furious with its daubed hieroglyphs, its stupid posturing. Dislike was a relief, it dried her eyes. Some of the art Zachary had liked was awful.