IF YOU WALKED PAST GOLDERS Green Crematorium without knowing its purpose, you would see redbrick Victorian chapels built in the Italian style and probably think births, marriages and hymns. The rolling gardens behind, and the slender-columned colonnade, are a well-intentioned deceit, an attempt to lighten the burden of the grim industrial-scale processing that takes place inside. The business of saying fond farewells and then disposing of the evidence never stops. The only sign of what really goes on in this factory is a chimney, though one hidden inside a bell tower. This is traditional British squeamishness about death made manifest in bricks and mortar.

As we wait to be let into the larger of the two non-denominational chapels, the car park outside is a flower bed of brightly coloured coats and jackets. There are Marks & Spencer and Jaeger overcoats, and furs worn only for high holidays or funerals; greens and navy blues, oranges and reds, browns, greys and charcoals. We’re wrapped up against a biting March wind. I’m in my Jean-Paul Gaultier three-quarter length deep blue coat, grey narrow-legged Paul Smith suit, and electric-blue wide Kenzo tie. Jews – atheist, agnostic, religious – don’t wear black to funerals. Or at least it’s not compulsory.

The hearse arrives and the ushers herd us in. Over the speaker system, I can hear Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, ‘The Song of the Earth’. Whether Clare would really have wanted Mahler, I doubt. The last time we talked music, years ago, she joked she would take the Ramones to her desert island, and I said I would take Funkadelic. Mahler – one of Dad’s pantheon of geniuses who were born to our faith though like him not professing it – is my father’s notion of what Clare wanted.

The chapel, if that’s what we are supposed to call it, is a cavern of Victorian dark wood. The light oak of the coffin under an avalanche of lilies can’t be missed. I don’t want to think about who is inside and what happens next. I am praying softly, ‘Never leave me, Clare, never leave me, Clare; Clare, never . . .’ to still my panic, fifteen times, to the power of infinity.

‘It should be a burial,’ sighs Uncle Jake, behind me. Technically, he’s right: Judaism frowns on cremation. But this is where North London Jews who no longer practice the faith – agnostics, atheists, Arsenal and Spurs supporters – have their funerals. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been here in my life. I take my place in the front pew, third along from the aisle next to Mum and Dad. Mum is weeping as quietly as she can. I’ve never seen her cry either, except possibly in exasperation, and I am not precisely sure what is expected of me. My father – sitting bolt upright, skin stretched over his skull – will not notice. I put my arm around her and give her a gentle squeeze.