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open, so we take some leaflets advising us on coping with bereavement – just because they’re there – and head out to look at the chapel. The large doors are locked and like naughty children we creep across the perfect lawn to balance between the flowers and peer into the gloom.
    The window is small and modern and I can’t see much apart from a couple of rows of pine pews. I don’t know what I’m looking for so I step back. I don’t want to look too much. It makes me think time is folding again. Here with you, but I’ll soon be here again
without
you.
    Your face is pressed to the glass, hands wrapped round the edges of your eyes to block out the light, but after a while you push away and nod slightly.
    ‘What do you think?’ I ask, as if we are looking at a venue for a party.
    ‘I suppose it’ll do,’ you say. ‘Seems pleasant enough.’
    We head back to the car and I’m relieved to start the engine and leave the place behind. Halfway home I open the window a touch. I say I’m hot. It’s a lie. That awful rotting smell is erupting from you as you burp and release more liquid into the tub. I think you don’t notice it. Maybe your sense of smell has decayed already. Another part of you breaking down. Irreparable. After a while I shut the window again, but it lingers on. I shallow breathe, ashamed of myself.
    You are quite perky when we get home, happy to have another thing ticked from your list now that thedoctor has told you, ‘Two months, no more.’ I smile and laugh as I make the tea and you think I’m fine, but it takes me hours to shake the dark shadow off. I scrub hard in the shower that night, trying to wash away the cold, clinical finality of death that stabs terror into my soul. I don’t have your Zen.
    *
    After Mum left and we rented the house out – moving into the grounds of the special school you were working at – Penny and Paul used to sneak out and spy on the town embalmers. Did you ever know about that? They used to peer through the windows at the cadavers in the back room of the funeral parlour or crematorium or whatever it was. They would come back giggling and exhilarated. I pretended to be interested, but I never went with them. The coldness never fascinated me. Terrified me, perhaps, the stillness of it all, but never fascinated me. I sometimes wonder how true their breathless stories were and if in fact they ever saw a body at all, but I’m glad I never went with them. There is too much of the darkness inside me without adding to the fear. Even as a child I knew that.
    I realise I’m shallow breathing again when I hear Penny release the water and send it fleeing through the pipes. I put the kettle on to make more tea.

5
    ‘The boys are coming.’ We look at each other and say the words and it feels like we’re speaking in metaphors. We may as well have said a hurricane was coming. It feels that way. A force of nature. A law unto itself. Fascinating and destructive. Burning itself out too soon. I blow hair out of my face. We are certainly making the house safe, in a different way than you would for a storm maybe, but still battening down the hatches.
    Penny holds up a dust-coated bottle of port that usually stands on the kitchen windowsill. ‘How long have you had this?’
    I stare and shrug. ‘Came with some Stilton, I think. Couple of years ago? Maybe three? We’d better hide it anyway.’
    She looks at the label and laughs. ‘Hmmm. Consume within one year of purchase. This one can go straight in the bin.’ She empties it into the sink, the smell very strong for a moment, and then puts the bottle in therecycling bin. The windowsill looks strange without it and for an irrational moment I want to fish it out of the bag and put it back. There has been too much change. I want it to stop. But of course nothing ever does.
    Pulling two bottles of wine out of the fridge, Pen waves them at me. ‘Where can we hide these?’
    ‘Under my bed?’
    She nods, giggling, her eyes