Page 4 of The Fall-Out

I closed my eyes. I felt like I’d spent the past ten days either crying or about to cry, and here I was again, about to cry.

‘Uncle Andy’s not coming back.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he died.’

And if you ask me why, I’ll legit scream, because I’ve already tried to tell you about six million times, even though I don’t really understand it myself, because it’s the most fucking unfair thing that’s ever happened.

‘Why did he?—’

Hearing the hairdryer shut off, I fled upstairs.

‘Patch, please can you get the kids to your mum’s, like, now?’

‘There’s no rush, is there?’ He hitched the towel higher up on his hips. ‘We don’t need to leave for another hour and I’m not dressed.’

I could see his suit hanging on the wardrobe door, encased in a dry-cleaner’s bag. There’d be a lengthy faff while he dressed, I knew, with me expected to play personal stylist and advise on his choice of everything from shirt to socks.

‘Just put on jeans and go, please? I’ve been getting the third degree down there and I can’t stand it any more.’

For a second, he looked mutinous, the way his daughter had earlier when I’d vetoed the Coco Pops. Then his face softened and he hugged me, fragrant from the shower. ‘On it. Are you sure they’ll be all right with Mum all day?’

‘More like whether she’ll be all right with them. But what can we do? We couldn’t exactly take them, could we?’

‘Well, we?—’

‘Couldn’t. Come on. It’s out of the question. It’s not going to be one of those funerals where the person’s led a long and happy life and died in their sleep at ninety, and everyone goes on about how they had a good innings. It’s going to be fucking traumatic.’

Patch pulled a jumper over his head and forced his feet into trainers without undoing the laces. ‘Right. I’ll be back in fifteen.’

‘I’ll be in the shower, so don’t forget your keys.’

I heard his feet thumping down the stairs and his voice calling for the children to get their coats on because he was taking them to Granny’s in the car, and flopped down on the unmade bed, immediately remembering that I’d left my phone downstairs. The effort of getting up to fetch it, straightening the duvet and hanging up Patch’s wet towel on my way, felt almost too much to bear. Then I remembered my half-drunk coffee and the children’s breakfast plates, the dishwasher still unemptied from the previous night, the load of wet stuff in the washing machine.

The ache that had settled on my heart days before had gradually spread, infecting every muscle and bone in my body so I could only move very slowly; like an old woman, I got up.

But I did nothing about the dishes or the laundry. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table, surrounded by toast crumbs and butter smears, winced at the taste of my cold, stale coffee and opened WhatsApp.

There’d been no new messages since our greetings half an hour earlier – like me, everyone would have been getting ready for the day. Kate would have spent the night in the converted South East London warehouse where her boyfriend, Daniel, lived, maybe getting up to feed Jigsaw, their kitten – or maybe still in bed having the kind of life-affirming shag that would temporarily banish the shadow of death. Rowan and Alex would be having breakfast with Rowan’s daughter, Clara, assuring her that crying at funerals was fine, everyone did it and there was no shame in it. Abbie and Matt would be getting dressed together in silence, knowing each other’s thoughts so well neither of them needed to say anything, only occasionally locking eyes or touching hands to reassure the other that they were there and they felt the same.

All of us, getting ready for an event we’d dreaded on one level for a long time, but also blindly, bloody-mindedly believed would never happen.

And how do you? I thought despairingly. How do you even prepare for this? You can’t. And it’s not just one day that’ll be over soon, like going to the dentist. It’s one day that’s just a kind of punctuation mark in a story we’ve all been living for years and will have to carry on living forever.

Someone had to get the day’s conversation under way, I thought, and it might as well be me. I knew that when we saw one another later, there’d be tears, reminiscences and laughter – now, though, some instinct told me that what my friends needed was what I needed – a brief interlude of normality.

How’s everyone doing?

I posted.

Patch has taken the kids to his mum’s. God knows whether we’ll get them back – she’ll probably take them to McDonald’s and lose them en route.

There was a pause after my message popped up on the screen. I pictured my friends glancing at their phones, seeing it was me and thinking, I don’t need to leave for an hour and a half. There’s time for a chat. Just the same as I’d thought.

Rowan:

Clara just puked up her breakfast. I’m hoping it’s nerves not bulimia (jokes). I’m kind of tempted to puke mine up too, I feel horrible.

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