Afterwife (9781101618868) Read online

“Supermarket this afternoon.” I gulp back some wine, warming to my theme. “You know those self-service tills that never work and you always end up having to wait for a real live human being to come and unlock the damn thing because it malfunctions if you use your own bag? ‘Unidentified object in the bagging area!’ Fuck, I hate them. I hate supermarkets. And no, I don’t have a Nectar loyalty card! No, I don’t want a Nectar card!”

  “Don’t be poncy.”

  “The day I get a supermarket loyalty card, it’s all over, Jenny.” I gulp back more wine. “See, a clear case of midlife crisis.”

  Jenny leans back in her chair and studies me in that scrutinizing way of hers. “You’re not old enough for a midlife crisis, Soph. You have to be forty. You’re thirty-five.” Jenny is very exact. She has an ordered walk-in wardrobe of a mind. Mine is more like an overstuffed knicker drawer.

  “I could die when I am seventy and that would make me midlife exactly.” (Posthumous note: no discernible shiver of irony felt at the time.) I scoop a spoonful of crème caramel into my mouth and its sweetness is like a kiss.

  “Women don’t die at seventy anymore. We die at eighty-two or something.” Jenny breaks into the crust of her chocolate torte with the edge of her spoon, releasing a river of sweet goo. It looks better than my crème caramel. “The blokes go first.”

  “Just as well. Ollie would confuse the laundry rack with his Zimmer frame and hang underpants on it.”

  “This is amazing. Taste?”

  I reach across the table and attack her torte with my spoon. (Calories don’t count if they belong to someone else.) It is better than my custard. “But isn’t the really tragic thing that we’ll be too old to enjoy our freedom when we finally get it?”

  “No! I’m looking forward to us being old.”

  I try to imagine us old, like, proper old. It is hard. We’ve been young forever. I still buy polka dot tights at Topshop. Last year I rolled around in the mud at Glastonbury, naked.

  “I don’t want to be one of those exhausting women who try to stay thirtysomething forever. I want to wear different shades of beige and write letters of complaint about bad language to the BBC. I’ll feel cheated otherwise.”

  “Why is it you always order the better dessert, Jenny?”

  “I just go for the most calorific option. Simple tactic.” She wipes her mouth with her napkin. It takes off the last bit of her pink lipstick. She looks about ten without makeup, like a frighteningly intelligent schoolgirl with her pretty, soft baby face, wide blue eyes and permanent little frown of studied comprehension. Jenny is my only girlfriend who tackles the weekend newspaper comment pages before the magazine supplements. She devours all the big, heavy books you’re meant to read, rather than the fun ones. She actually finished Wolf Hall! That said, Jenny knows all the lyrics to Dolly Parton’s back catalog too. “I intend to eat more dessert all year,” she adds cheerfully. “My New Year’s resolution is not to beat myself up for being over ten stone. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather eat pudding than be skinny.”

  “Me too, me too.” I reach across for another spoonful.

  “Fat, happy and gobby.”

  I pick up my wineglass with camp flourish. “My New Year’s resolution was not to drink in January.”

  Jenny raises her glass and we giggle.

  “Fat faces age bloody well, you know,” I reflect with my drunk puzzler.

  “True, true.”

  “The brilliant thing is fat people don’t have to choose between their face and their ass. They say, I’ll have both, please! Like in a restaurant.”

  “Good point.” Jenny licks her spoon. “And you know what, Soph? When we’re old, like, proper old, we will eat pudding for every meal because…who gives a toss?”

  “All the men will be dead, anyway! And all the skinnies will have died of carb deficiency.” I rest my chin on my hand and reflect on the happy gluttony awaiting me. “For the record, Jenny, when I’m old I’m going to wear one of those see-through plastic headscarves to keep the rain off my blow-dried bouff. And I’ll be rocking those orthopedic shoes with padded soles. I’ve always fancied those.”

  “We can go on cruises together. I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise, one of those really cheesy ones with a songstress in red sequins on a white grand piano belting out Shirley Bassey.”

  “Me too! Me too!” I raise my glass. It wobbles in my hand. “We can cruise to the Galápagos. I’ve always wanted to go to the Galápagos.”

  “To see turtles and those giant spooky stones.”

  “That’s Easter Island.”

  “Okay, Easter Island too.”

  “And St. Barts. I will dreadlock my pubes and smoke psychotropic skunk on the beach because, hell, why not?”

  “Shall we do Vegas too? We could gamble our pensions.”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  We laugh and sit in easy silence for a few moments, scraping the last smears of sweetness off the dessert plates, enjoying the crushed, happy hubbub of the restaurant and being away from the dog end of the Christmas holidays. We devour the remains of the bread basket and chortle childishly when a waiter drops a tray beside us in a slapstick manner. The tea light is at the end of its wax, smoking and spluttering a salty blue. It is in this happy drunken blur I decide that this is the moment to bring the subject up. “Dare I ask, Jenny?”

  Something flickers across her eyes. She doesn’t want me to ask. “The answer’s no.”

  I sloppily lean over the table, warming my hands on the dying tea light. “But I thought you were going to have the Big Conversation.”

  “It shrank. It became a conversation about the best way to cook the rack of lamb,” she says briskly, looking away from me into the restaurant.

  “I guess you’ve got to set a wedding date at some point,” I say carefully. “I mean, you don’t want to end up walking down the aisle in your seventies looking like Vivienne Westwood.”

  She doesn’t laugh like she’s meant to. Instead she sniffs. “It’s perfectly normal to be engaged for one year.”

  “I was joking, Jenny.” This is my cue to tell her. My mouth opens then closes. Nothing comes out. I can talk absolute nonsense until my larynx bleeds but I can’t talk about this. Best friends, no secrets? True. But I don’t want to ruin our supper, or worse. Anyway, I’m probably too drunk. So I promise myself that I’ll call round to her apartment next week, during the day, while Sam’s out, and we’ll have coffee and passion fruit cheesecake and we’ll talk then. She loves cheesecake. The cheesecake will help.

  She looks at me, narrows her eyes. “I know you don’t approve of him, Soph.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Silence. We both know that the conversation has hit a protrusion like a speed bump in the road. We do the same thing, look away from each other and around the restaurant, smiling hazily, women who’ve drunk too much and know each other well enough to drop the topic before we start whacking each other over the head with our handbags. Some diners are beginning to leave now, picking up bills, bustling to the loo, while the late-night crowd, flushed from a theater or bar, take their tables and overorder tapas.

  A waiter asks us if we want to order anything else, like he wants us to leave. I glance at my watch. “Where has the evening gone? I feel like I only got here five minutes ago. I should get home.”

  Jenny looks disappointed. “But we haven’t dissected Sarah’s affair yet.”

  “I know, nor Maxine’s new teeth. They file the real teeth to Shane MacGowan pegs before they put veneers on. Isn’t that totally gross?”

  “I’ve heard that the veneers drop off all the time. Imagine, you’d never want to bite into an apple again.”

  Giggles snort through my nose. “Do you remember when my hair extension blew off on Primrose Hill and landed on that labradoodle?” I don’t know why I suddenly remember this but I can see it vividly. That gorgeous gusty day on top of Primrose Hill, London unrolling before us, Freddie, a baby then, sitti
ng on the picnic blanket, squashing strawberries into his mouth with his fist. A lifetime ago, literally.

  “And the dog humped the bouff!”

  I catch the time on the oversized watch face of the woman sitting adjacent to us. It really is getting late.

  Jenny catches me looking. She knows what I am thinking. “Isn’t it bad karma to leave so much wine?” She draws a finger down the bottle’s label. “Good wine too.”

  “It would be a bit studenty to ask to take it home, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would, Soph. Yes.”

  “It does seem rather a shame.”

  “And you were late, Sophie. Had you been on time then we would have finished the bottle by now.”

  “Excellent point. What do you suggest, then?”

  Jenny fills our glasses. “Rude not to.”

  “I hold you fully responsible, Jenny.” I hiccup. “And I want you to know that I will put all the blame on you when Ollie’s on my case about me coming home rat arsed.”

  Jenny raises her glass. “Deal. That is what unmarried friends are for, isn’t it? To get their married friends off the hook with their husbands.”

  When we finally leave the restaurant it is raining outside, hard rain that comes at you at an angle. It is icy cold, threatening sleet. The street is splashy and full of people who’ve drunk too much, have not got an umbrella and want to get home, people like us, desperately trying to get cabs. We give up trying to hire a cab on Beak Street and wander toward the promising river of traffic on Regent Street, the leather soles of my boots skiddy on the wet pavement. Occupied cab after occupied cab zooms by, some maddeningly clicking their lights off just as they pass, others commandeered by new groups of revelers filtering in from Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, nicking cabs that are rightfully ours, seeing as we’ve waited for years already. A newly stolen cab throws a wash of dirty puddle over our feet.

  “This is rubbish, Jenny. Time to get a dodgy cab.”

  “Minicab drivers all look like criminal photo fits.”

  “I’m not doing the flippin’ Tube at this time.”

  “Yay!” Jenny grabs my hand. “O ye of little faith. Look. There’s one. Just behind that bus.”

  We watch as a yellow light, a warm, happy smudge in the wet darkness, moves toward us, slowly getting brighter.

  “Right,” I say, jaw set, arm outstretched. “Watch this! I’m going to get this cab if it kills me.”

  Two

  The coffin was white, decorated with a trembling bunch of marshmallow pink lilies. To Jenny it seemed pitifully insubstantial. The idea that Sophie’s body—beautiful, funny, larger-than-life Sophie—was inside, dead five days, cold as clay, was almost unbelievable. She squeezed Sam’s hand harder, feeling the stiff rim of his shirt cuff push into her wrist.

  A sob echoed around the overcrowded church. Each time a sob erupted, which was frequently—every four or five breaths; she’d counted—Jenny’s teeth ground together and her fillings twanged. Not knowing where to look, she kept her gaze on the forlorn figure of Ollie standing in the front pew. He had a new stoop in his coathanger shoulders and his face was full of shadows. It was as if all his energy had pooled into his left hand, the hand knitted tightly to Freddie’s. No wonder. Freddie looked so heartbreakingly tiny, shrunk to Lilliputian proportions by the soar of the stained-glass windows and the yawning width of the church.

  Ollie and Freddie, the two great loves of Sophie’s life, were flanked by Ollie’s formidable-looking mother, Vicki, and, holding Freddie’s other hand, Soph’s mother, Sally, slighter than ever, all angles and elbows in a black skirt suit, the lone black feather on her hat shaking. Mike, Soph’s dad, had one arm belted tight around her shoulder—squishing the jacket’s shoulder pad up oddly—and his other around Sophie’s sister, Mary. Poor Mary, whose normally pretty face was puffy as a mushroom from crying and given a strange pallor by light streaming through a yellow pane of stained glass.

  She had no doubt that they must wish it were her, Jenny, who’d stepped out in front of the bus instead of their beautiful daughter. She wasn’t a mother, a wife; she didn’t and never would burn as brightly as Sophie. If she could have taken her place she would. But it had all happened in an instant. A hand outstretched, a slip of leather sole, a knuckle crunch of metal and bone. She could still see Sophie lying in the road. The image was imprinted in her brain forever, like a bright lightbulb after you close your eyes.

  “Deal.” That was her word. And it kept coming back to haunt her. She’d selfishly cajoled Sophie into drinking more wine when she should have realized that Sophie was a mother, they weren’t twentysomethings anymore. Sophie had responsibilities: most women their age did. Jenny was the oddity, needily trying to squeeze more out of Sophie, unable to let go. If she’d let Sophie return home earlier, then it wouldn’t have been raining and the road wouldn’t have been slippery and that particular bus wouldn’t be on Regent Street, it would have been somewhere else on its route. And so would they.

  As requested by the rev—Colin, she thought how much Sophie would appreciate the fact he was called Colin—she held up the photocopied hymn sheet. Sophie’s beautiful face was stamped at the top, so that it resembled a newsletter. The paper shook and the ink smudged beneath her sweating fingers. Could she sing? She was amazed that a song was coming out of her mouth, not a scream. “Jerusalem.” She and Soph had sung this many times over the years at weddings. Some couples had worked out; others hadn’t. None of them were ever as glamorous and besotted as Ollie and Sophie were. Had been. Oh, God. The hymn sheet shook harder in her hand. So, so wrong. She looked up at the sweeping church rafters, eyes prickling with tears. Sophie, where are you? Please stop being dead. It’s not big and it’s not funny. No one’s bloody laughing.

  All she wanted to do was lie down in bed with a pillow over her head and listen to Sophie’s answer machine message over and over—“Soph’s phone, don’t you dare hang up before leaving a message!”—and pretend none of this was happening.

  “You alright, babes?” whispered Sam, looking down at her from his six-foot height.

  She nodded, mouth dry. She could sing but not speak. Which did not bode well for her speech. (Unless she sang it?) The service continued, painfully slowly. It was like Sophie’s wedding, she thought, but in reverse.

  Oh, God, speeches. They’d started! She was nowhere near ready. She needed another six months of prep. Sophie’s little sister, Mary, was the first to go. Never lifting her swollen eyes from her notes, she attempted some anecdotes about Sophie as a child—how she’d once found a kitten, which she named Sock, in the street and, fearing that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep it, had nurtured Sock in her knicker drawer for three days on milk-sodden digestive biscuits before anyone realized he was there—and then tried to articulate what a wonderful mother she had been. At that point Mary’s voice crumpled like a brown paper bag and she had to be led back to her pew.

  Not her yet. Not her yet. She had a few minutes to pull herself together. Come on, Jenny.

  A new speaker started to walk purposefully down the aisle. She checked the service notes. Suze. Suze Wilson. She vaguely remembered Sophie mentioning her name. A school mum? Yes, she was pretty sure she was a school mum. Suze. Long on the z.

  Suze had a rubbery face beneath an extraordinary helmet of frizzy hair, the hair oddly fascinating in its extreme of unflattery. (How could Jenny still notice unflattering hair in the depths of grief? What was wrong with her?) Suze tilted her chin upward, revealing a large mole resembling a squashed raisin beneath her jaw, and started to speak, her thunderous voice submitting the congregation into still, respectful silence like an evangelical pastor’s. She rhapsodized about Sophie’s contribution to school life and the community, her volunteering, her cake baking, her quiz night organizing, the fact that she was the most glamorous mother at the school gates. How the other mothers used to joke that she never wore the same shoes twice. Then, minutes later, the frizzy orator had finished. Colin was look
ing at Jenny expectantly, one bushy eye brow raised.

  “Sure you’re up to it?” Sam looked doubtful.

  Jenny started the long walk to the podium, her hard-soled shoes clattering unpleasantly on the stone floor. Her new black trousers, bought in haste online for the occasion, dug into her hips as she walked. They were a size too small, she realized—she was a twelve, not a ten, kidding nobody—and frumpy in their bland formality, like a campaigning regional politician. She wished she’d worn something more flamboyant in homage. Sophie would have worn black and leopard print, a vintage fifties full-skirted suit. Something like that. The walk went on forever, and the trousers shifted around her waist with every step so by the time she finally stood up on the podium and raised her eyes to the congregation, the zipper was twisted and pulled up inside her crotch. Camel hoof. Great. Sophie would be laughing.

  All eyes were on her now. The tension in the church pulsed. She could hear it. Tick, tick, tick. Like an electric fence.

  Notes. She just needed to read her notes and she’d be fine. But the handwriting swam before her. She gulped, refocused. The words she’d written and practiced reading aloud to Sam over the porridge she couldn’t eat this morning suddenly seemed wrong, written about someone who wasn’t Sophie. She looked up helplessly at the rows and rows of expectant, flushed, strained faces, then quickly down again. Sweat dripped down her nose and splodged onto the paper. I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to fuck up explosively.

  The pause stretched, taut, painful, like a doctor pulling a stitch from a wound. She glanced at Sam. His face was knotted with embarrassment. She looked at Ollie and his wounded black eyes surprised her by their softness. He was the one person who should hate her and didn’t. “I’ve written these notes…” she began, taking courage from Ollie. If he could be brave, so could she. The microphone amplified her voice. She didn’t sound like herself. “And they’re all about what a wonderful person Sophie…” She couldn’t say “was.” She couldn’t. “But you all know that. That’s why this church is crammed. So I’m going to go off trail with this, please bear with me.” Sam was biting his fist now, shaking his head and looking at her like she’d completely lost the plot. “I was the last person to see Sophie alive.” A collective intake of breath. “And for this I am hugely privileged. We had fun that night, the night she died. Apart from anything, Soph, my oldest, dearest friend, was the best laugh. And she found humor in the blackest places—she’d find it here today.” Ollie cracked a small, surprised smile. The rest of the congregation looked stony faced, like she’d said something terrible. “And that night, she was more alive than most of us will ever be. She was one of those people, full of…light and dazzle, the central point in any room. And she had the rudest, loudest laugh. We used to call it the Honk.” She choked up then. Her mouth made an involuntary pop-pop noise, as if her heart was exploding like space candy on her tongue. It was unimaginable that she’d never hear the Honk again. “Whenever I think of Sophie, I think of Sophie dancing. She loved to dance and she never gave a sh—” She caught herself. “…a hoot what anyone thought. She didn’t have hang-ups like the rest of us. In fact, she loved people looking at her. Which I guess brings me to…” She paused, suddenly unsure what to say next. “…hats! Sophie loved hats, especially vintage ones with plumes. And swirly skirted dresses. Sequins and shoes. She was the high priestess of shoes.” There was a ripple of laughter, a sense of people finally relaxing. “Sophie could get away with anything because she was beautiful but also because she was happy. She made happiness glamorous. And it was her family who made her so very happy, so secure in who she was.” Ollie was wiping away tears on the sleeve of his crumpled black jacket. “She was madly in love with Ollie. And Freddie…” Freddie was staring down at the floor, as if willing himself to disappear. “Freddie made her just the proudest mother on earth.” Her voice broke. She sniffed, collected herself. “I guess all I want to say is that I will miss Sophie forever. As a girlfriend, as a human being, she is totally irreplaceable.” She looked down at her unused notes, a wave of doubt crashing down on her. What on earth was she thinking? Wrap, wrap! “That’s it, um, thanks.”