Page 115 of The Spark

I nod. ‘Felix. He lives in America. And she’s... flying out there to be with him. That’s where she wants to be when...’ I trail off. I can’t say the word again, because every time I do, it makes it seem more real.

‘What’s her prognosis?’

‘They said she had a year, back in July.’ I let Mum figure out the rest, because that’s the most painful kind of maths there is.

On the stereo, Bublé starts singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, and everything suddenly feels too much, too cruel.

Next to me, Mum is shaking her head in apparent disbelief. ‘Poor Lara.’

‘She’s having a living funeral next week.’

She brightens slightly. ‘Oh, they’re good, aren’t they?’ she says, like we’ve decided to switch topics to the merits of slow cookers, or that hand car wash she really rates on the Ipswich Road. ‘I know someone who had one.’

‘What did they have?’

She frowns. ‘A string quartet, I think? And a buffet – though a lot of the guests did get food poisoning the next day. There were speeches, too. It was quite similar to a wedding, really.’

I shut my eyes briefly. ‘No, Mum. What did they have, as in, what did they die of?’

‘Oh, they didn’t in the end. False alarm.’

I smile wearily. ‘This wasn’t The Duke, by any chance, was it?’

‘I just call him Duke.’

‘Right.’

‘It wasn’t, actually,’ she says. And then, thoughtfully, ‘Although they do share a lot of the same personality traits.’

My smile fades. ‘Well, Lara’s funeral... definitely isn’t a false alarm.’

‘You know, after your father stopped bothering to keep it in his trousers, I did sometimes worry about how you were faring. But I always knew you’d be okay. Do you know how?’

I shake my head, wondering what she’s on about now, praying she doesn’t mention Jamie, or anything else to do with my dad’s trousers.

‘Because you had Lara.’

I smile softly. ‘Really? That’s nice.’ I shuffle back on the sofa so I can look at her properly, tucking my legs up beneath me. Then I take a breath. ‘Jamie was cheating on me.’

It’s funny how quickly the taste of his name has already altered in my mouth. It’s turned into something oily and unpleasant – and especially today, given my oldest friend is currently having to organise her own death. But a part of me wants to let Mum know she was right. That maybe her maternal instincts weren’t so defective back then after all.

She stares at me for a couple of moments. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Lara. She said he confessed, just before he died. He was going to leave me and move to London with another girl.’

‘Was he indeed,’ she says, murderously, as if she’s already considering a midnight excursion to decant eggs and flour all over his headstone.

‘Did you know?’

‘Did I know what?’

‘That Jamie had it in him... to do that?’

‘Do I have a functioning cheating bastard radar, you mean?’

I think of The Duke, and The Duke’s wife, and smile weakly. ‘Never mind.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m not at all surprised.’

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