Loosening his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt, Ellis sank into a chair on the verandah. Lucas did the same, except he removed his tie and wound it around his left hand, just as he used to do as a boy when he came home from school.

‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ said Naomi, ‘but I’m parched. Anyone else want a cup of tea?’

Everyone said yes and Ellis immediately made to stand up. ‘I’ll come and give you a hand.’

‘No, you won’t. You stay right where you are and relax. You look positively done in. Rick, would you like to help me, please?’

Rick hesitated, perhaps wondering why he had been singled out. Then: ‘Of course,’ he said.

When they’d gone, and wondering if by asking Rick for help, Naomi was trying to make him feel more a part of the family, Ellis said, ‘What is it about funerals that make them so exhausting?’

‘It’s the pretence,’ said Willow. ‘Pretending to feel something when actually you don’t.’

‘Wow,’ said Martha, ‘that’s a bit insensitive, isn’t it?’

Willow flushed. ‘Sorry,’ she said, looking at Lucas and Ellis. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound quite so bad. What I meant was, that it’s the effort you have to make to be polite to so many people you hardly know that is so wearing, when all you want to do is be alone and deal with your own feelings. I remember being like that at Dad’s funeral.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Lucas. ‘I felt the same way at my mother’s funeral. I can remember listening to some woman going on and on about how she and Mum were at school together and how they did this, that and the other together, and I just kept wishing she’d shut the hell up so I didn’t have to keep nodding my head as though I gave a damn. So yeah, when you say it’s the pretence that’s so tiring, you’re spot on, Willow.’

Ellis had never heard Lucas speak this way before about Diana’s funeral. But what struck him most, as Martha and Tom looked on, was the obvious connection between Lucas and Willow, the way they seemed so at ease with each other. It was as though they had known one another for years, and Ellis was strongly reminded of the close friendship he and Naomi had enjoyed when they’d been students at university. Reminded too of all the times they had missed their moment.

He might be leaping to conclusions, but he was glad Rick was inside with Naomi and not out here to witness the scene.

Chapter Forty-Two

The day shone bright and glittery in the way that an October morning so often did, and while Ellis was in the shower, Naomi, wrapped in her warmest dressing gown, was outside on the balcony drinking the tea he had made for her. After a lifetime of marriage, Colin had never made her tea the way she liked; he’d always been too heavy-handed with the milk. Ellis didn’t make that mistake, he always got it just right.