And so it was a big service. The church. All these people. The little booklet. Entry music. Welcome and Introduction. Hymn, Eulogy, Reflection, Prayers, Poem. As Marlon sucked his thumb and rested his sleepy head against Christian’s chest, I flicked through the eight-page order of service because I was the Poem.

The vicar welcomed us, and we followed his lead as we sang, we prayed and we reflected. Please stand. Please sit. Sun and moon, bow down before him. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses. I was a stranger, and you took me in. Amen. But the hymns and the prayers and the readings washed over me. It was only when we listened to Mary’s favourite song – ‘Wild is the Wind’ by David Bowie – that I felt her watching.

And then I was on.

Christian squeezed my hand in encouragement. Marlon stared at me wide-eyed with wonder. I licked my lips and went up to read. I looked out at them, all those faces from a lifetime, and the simple fact that they had all come here today for Mary meant more than anything that could be said, sung or prayed. It meant more than the flowers. I wanted to tell them all of that but there were no words to say it. I looked at Mary’s parents in the front row, both of them watching me. They were numb but not undone. Not here, not today. That was not their family way, they would do their mourning behind closed doors, and it felt like the worst thing in the world to be burying your child. I looked at my Marlon, my son, my beautiful boy and I knew how life would end for me if I had to do what Mary’s parents were doing today.

And then I read.

‘Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.’

Someone was crying too loudly towards the back of the church.

‘Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you.

And the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other – that we are still.’

And I didn’t believe it, I didn’t believe a single word of what I was saying, because to me it felt like the changes never stopped coming, it felt like life never gave you a chance to catch your breath. I felt like I knew all of these faces in front of me today but they were all changed, every one of them, all older, more beaten down, disappointed with the way things had worked out, faces that told you that time was running on and running out, the old certainties always sliding away. Ginger watched me and some kind light in her eye gave me encouragement to go on and get it done so that we could all go home. Kindness is so underrated, Mary, I see that now. But although they sat together today, I knew that Spike had moved out, and their marriage was coming apart under the impossible weight of historic betrayals, and it was another reason to feel that Henry Scott-Holland’s death poem was a pack of sugar-coated lies.