Collette has been silent since they left the hospital. Dry-eyed. Still in shock, thinks Vesta, even though she’s known that this was coming. It’s always still a shock. I had eighteen months with Mum, changing her sheets and mopping her brow and cleaning her down with a sponge as she crumbled away into her pillow, but I still didn’t expect it when it finally came. Still felt like I was falling off a cliff. I remember: until the funeral, it was like looking at the world from the other side of a wall of glass. Everything – sound, smell, touch – was doughy and dull, as if someone had turned the dials down on my senses. That’s how she’ll be feeling now. Just – empty.
As they wait to turn right into Tooting Bec Road, she notices a shiny black car, smoked glass windows, two cars back with its indicator on. Why would you want to drive around in something that looks like a hearse? she wonders. There’s enough death in the world without reminding yourself of it every second you’re on the road. It bounds forward as the lights change, cuts across the oncoming traffic as though the law didn’t exist at all, provokes a chorus of blasting horns. Collette seems to jump from her fugue state and stares at the shaking fists of the drivers on the Balham High Road.
‘Bloody Mercedes,’ says their driver. ‘It’s always Mercedes, isn’t it? They think they own the road.’
Collette’s head drops back against the headrest and the life goes out of her eyes. Vesta waits a few seconds, then says: ‘You did well tonight, Collette.’
Collette looks at her with watery eyes. ‘Thanks.’
‘How do you feel?’
She grimaces, shrugs. ‘You know,’ she says.
Might as well broach the subject, thinks Vesta. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘About what she said. About Tony. That must have been… a shock.’
‘I might have known,’ says Collette. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t work it out. She’d do anything for a man who paid her a bit of attention. I just didn’t think he’d find her. Denial, I suppose. That’s what they’d say it was.’
‘You can’t know everything, Collette. That was good of you, though. I admired you. What you did with it.’
‘Thanks,’ says Collette.
‘You mustn’t take it to heart. I daresay she didn’t know what she was doing.’
‘No, I daresay,’ says Collette, but there’s an ugly edge of bitterness to her voice.
Vesta tries another route to comfort. ‘Hossein’ll be waiting when we get back. They all will.’
Collette sighs. ‘I think I could just do with some sleep.’
‘I’m sure. Me too. Some sleep before you start dealing with things.’
Collette’s brow puckers, as though it’s not occurred to her that there might be things to deal with.
‘You’ll want to call an undertaker,’ she says. ‘They gave you some cards, didn’t they?’
‘Um, I…’ she holds her bag out, open, as though this constitutes some kind of answer. ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to miss her, Vesta.’
Vesta lays a hand over hers. What do you want me to say, lovey? Don’t worry, the pain will kick in soon?
‘You have to just take this stuff one day at a time,’ she says, horribly aware of all the clichés that death forces from one’s lips. She has heard so many with-the-angels-now palliatives from well-meaning people over the years that she wants to bring in a law to ban them.
They turn right past the common, and Vesta notices that the Mercedes is still behind them. Maybe it is a hearse, she thinks. Or a funeral car. What would someone in a car like that be doing down here in the middle of the day? ‘It will kick in sometime, I’m afraid. You can’t avoid it. It’s just – how it is.’
‘Maybe it won’t,’ says Collette. ‘She’s been gone a long time already. And so have I. I don’t know if there’s much point in throwing a funeral, really. It’s not like I know who her friends were. Even if she had any. All she ever wanted to talk about was what had happened on EastEnders, when I used to go and see her. Or moan on about the council.’
‘Oh, Collette,’ says Vesta, ‘you’ve got to have a funeral.’
A flash of defiance. ‘I don’t, you know.’
Their driver is agog. She can feel him longing to turn the music down so he can hear properly. Collette’s head slumps back against the window, and she stares out once again, her lips pursed. They reach the three-way junction at the bottom of Northbourne Common, and the driver takes the right-hand branch.