Ellen wasn’t sure that I should be here today. She said why didn’t I stay at Stevie’s until it was over.
“Then we’ll come and fetch you, and take you home.”
She thought that it would be too much for me. She probably thought that I would cry. Well, I haven’t! I haven’t even sniffled. I am frozen, behind my brick wall. Like in an ice house, where in olden days, before they invented refrigerators, they used to store blocks of ice, hidden underground, deep and dark, where the sun could not get at them. The ice never melted. So she doesn’t have to keep shooting those anxious glances at me. Mum never cried, and I am not going to, either.
They haven’t brought Holly and Michael with them, and I am glad about that. They have always disapproved of Mum and me. Well, Holly has. So have Auntie Ellen and Uncle Mark, of course, but they are grown-ups. You have to accept it from grown-ups. But I don’t like being disapproved of by someone that is two years my junior. She is only ten years old! What right does she have to be disapproving?
I stop thinking about Holly and Michael and stare fixedly ahead at what looks like a spider crawling up the wall. Do you get spiders in chapels? I suppose you get them pretty well everywhere. But what would a spider find to live on? It is so cold in here, and bare.
Maybe it isn’t a spider. I wriggle a bit, and Auntie Ellen shoots me one of her glances. The man from Mum’s office is still talking, he is saying something about Mum having a wicked sense of humour.
“She used to keep us all in stitches! I remember, one time…”
I scuttle back inside my ice house. I am safe in here. I think of Mr Pooter in his cardboard carrying-box in the car. How long will it be before I can go to him? He will be so confused, he is not used to being shut away. I wish he could have come in with us! I know it’s what Mum would have wanted. After me and Stevie, Mr Pooter was the person she loved best in all the world. Maybe she even loved him more than she loved Stevie. But they would have been bound to say no if I’d suggested bringing him. Auntie Ellen has already hinted that it would be far better if I gave him to Stevie.
“She’s a cat woman.”
The way she said it, it was like a kind of sneering. Like Stevie is old and dotty and mad. Just because she loves cats! She has devoted her life to them. She has eleven at the moment, all of them rescued. Auntie Ellen, with one of her sniffs that she does, said that “one more wouldn’t make much difference. You can hardly move for cats as it is”. I feel good that I stood up to her. Mum would have approved! She wouldn’t want me and Mr Pooter to be parted from each other. But I know Auntie Ellen only gave way in the end because Uncle Mark told her to. I know she’s not pleased. She really doesn’t care about animals.
The man from Mum’s office has finished talking and is returning to his seat. I wonder about what is going to happen next. I have never been to anything like this before.
I have never been to a funeral before.
There. I have said it. But it’s all right, I am safe in my ice house. I am frozen, I feel nothing.
I am thinking back to when my gran died. I was only three, so I don’t really remember very much, except that Mum was sad and that we lived in a flat somewhere near Oxford and that Dad was still with us. And then later on Mum got sad all over again, only this time she was sad because Dad had started shouting a lot and growing angry. So next thing I remember is Dad going off and not coming back and me and Mum being on our own and moving to London and living next door to Stevie. I was six years old by then. I had to start at a new school, which frightened me, as I had only just got used to my other one. Mum said she was so, so sorry, but begged me to be brave. She said that life was full of changes.
“It’s a bit like books, all divided up into different chapters.”
She said that if Oxford had been Chapter 1, then London was Chapter 2. And then she hugged me and said, “Oh, but Lol, there will be so many more to come!” Like she thought that was a good thing. But I never wanted any more; I just wanted Chapter 2 to go on for ever. Only nothing ever does. You don’t realise that when you’re just six years old.
Mrs Miah has been standing up and talking about Mum. I feel guilty that I haven’t been listening, but maybe she would understand. Now she has gone back to her seat, and I think perhaps things are almost over. Nobody else has got up to speak, and somewhere off stage they are playing Mum’s song that I chose.
Though the final curtain’s fallen
And we two have had to part
My love still marches onward
To the drumbeat of my heart.
I can feel Auntie Ellen exchanging glances over my head with Uncle Mark. They don’t approve. Auntie Ellen doesn’t think the song is appropriate. She tried really hard to get me to change my mind.
“I’m not saying it has to be a hymn, necessarily, but at least something a bit more – well! Classical, maybe. Isn’t there anything classical that your mum liked?”
Mum liked all sorts of music, but this was the song that she would have wanted. It was one of her big favourites. She used to say it was her inheritance track that she’d inherited from her mum.
“Your gran used to play it all the time after she lost your grandad.”
I know that this is a really sad song, but it was special to Mum, and that makes it special to me. In any case, it was up to me to choose, not Auntie Ellen.
Now everybody is standing up. Uncle Mark stands up, so I do too.
“All right?” He looks down at me, and I nod. We file out, into the cold sunshine. I hold my head very high.
The women from Mum’s office kiss me again before going off to their car. The man who did the talking tells me that it was “a privilege to have known your mother. She was a very special lady”. I look at him stony-faced. Uncle Mark puts his arm round my shoulders and in slightly reproving tones says, “That is something we must always remember.” He thinks I am being ungracious. He doesn’t realise I am in my ice house, frozen like a fish finger.
Stevie comes over. She says, “Well, then!” She won’t kiss me; she never does. I suppose, really, she is quite a gruff kind of person. But I am glad. I don’t want to be kissed or made a fuss of.
Stevie scratches her head, under her plastic rain hat. She has probably got a flea from one of her cats.
“I’ll be going now,” she says.
She turns and stomps off, down the path. Uncle Mark calls after her. “Are you sure you don’t want a lift?” But Stevie just waves a hand and goes clumping on. Uncle Mark shakes his head. He says it’s a long walk for an old woman. “It must be a good mile.”
I tell him that Stevie walks everywhere. “She doesn’t approve of cars.”
“Tough as old boots,” says Auntie Ellen. She’s sneering again. I don’t think she has any right to sneer, after all that Stevie did for me and Mum.
I say goodbye to Temeeka’s mum, who kisses me and says, “Chin up, luvvie!” I say goodbye to Mr and Mrs Miah. Mrs Miah also kisses me, but Mr Miah takes my hand.
