How to Kill Your Family(47)

My decision was made on the day of the funeral, a private affair which ended up being a total free-for-all, with minor celebrities, a few fashion faces, and a host of burly businessmen all turning up to the Church of St Peter in Kensington to be seen paying their respects. I don’t know how much respect there actually was in the congregation, but that wasn’t the point for these people. I’d read about it in the morning paper, had taken a long lunch break – saying I had a dentist appointment – and hopped on the Tube to see whether I’d be able to get in. It was too easy really, the silent men in black polo-necks standing outside with earpieces didn’t question a young woman smartly dressed in black who walked in with purpose behind a woman wearing a full fur coat and diamonds that even Joan Collins would’ve found gaudy.

I sat at the back, of course, and studied the programme with my head bowed as the guests poured in. From time to time I looked around, spotting Janine and Bryony at the front. Bryony was looking at her phone as surreptitiously as possible, while Janine talked to a grey-haired man wearing a blue pinstripe suit to her left. When she turned around and saw what her daughter was doing, she grabbed the phone off her and put it in her bag, saying something to Bryony, her mouth pursed hard. Janine was magnificent. Her hair was blow-dried so perfectly that it barely moved as she turned her head, the glossy caramel highlights tucked behind ears which held enormous emerald gobstoppers. She was wearing a cream silk blouse, which I couldn’t see enough of to judge, and her nails were painted a deep red. The money she spent was on full display, in a way that she evidently thought was subtle yet unmissable. But her clothes only told one part of the story. Even from the back of the church, I could see the work of the surgeon’s knife all over her face. The nose-job was OK, a procedure done many years ago when the gold standard was to remove any suggestion of character and leave just a girlish tip. But there was nothing else subtle here, her skin was pulled taut over the cheekbones, which made her eyes look small and angry. Her mouth had been puffed up so that it was always slightly open. And her skin had a waxy sheen, as though she were wearing a mask of her face over her face. The whole effect was to make her look grotesque. A face which only looked normal if everyone else you knew also looked like that. So I guess living in Monaco worked well for Janine. But under the light streaming in through the lovely ancient windows in the church, she just looked faintly frightening.

The ceremony started very late, perhaps fitting for a man who never needed to be anywhere on time. The last people to come in were Lara, Simon, and a man I didn’t recognise, who took Lara’s arm when she stepped into the church and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. Simon frowned slightly, and walked behind them as they made their way to the front where a surprisingly young vicar awaited them.

Lara looked nothing like the broken woman that Lee had made her out to be. She walked with her back straight, in a burgundy trouser suit and bright pink shoes which, on any other day, I’d have been tempted to ask her the origins of. The man who accompanied her towards the altar was almost the opposite of her husband. Tall, slim, wearing a well-cut but slightly crumpled charcoal suit and good shoes. He had brown hair flecked with grey and wore small, rimmed glasses. He wouldn’t have stood out anywhere else, but in here the contrast was striking. He looked like a professor in a room full of wheeler-dealers.

The service was boring, traditional, hymns and readings, blah blah. The casket sat at the front, draped in a gold silk scarf, and people stood by it to talk about how Lee was a true character, the life and soul of any party. It was all platitudes, there was nothing said that spoke to his real qualities as a person. When the last hymn was done, the vicar stood up to give a final address, but he faltered and I craned my neck to see what was happening. Lara had stood up, said something to him and walked over to the casket. The vicar sat back down and there was a moment of silence while the congregation waited for Lara to speak. She stood there for a second, and smoothed down her trousers with her hands, looking slightly ill at ease. I began to realise that this wasn’t planned, and checked the programme again for any mention of the grieving widow. Nothing. Oh boy.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said quietly. ‘My husband would’ve enjoyed being told how fantastic he was by so many people.’ There was muted laughter. ‘But he wasn’t really though, was he? Sure he was up for a night out. Many nights out actually. Any. But he wasn’t a decent human being by anyone’s definition. You liked him because he paid the bill at the end of the night, or because he invested in your companies, brought you on holidays, maybe even just because he might do one of those things. But I lived with him, and dealt with his selfishness and his disrespect. Daily. It was daily. For years.’ She looked down at the coffin at her side. ‘I was young when we met, too young really. And he was charming, but you all know how charming he could be, don’t you? How easy it was to ignore his worst instincts. But unchecked, they grew and grew, didn’t they? When our daughter died, Lee’s reaction was to go on a three-day bender, eventually coming home – high – with a 19-year-old Latvian girl wearing hot pants and asking our housekeeper to make them breakfast. I put it down to grief, stupid as it sounds. But when our son died years later, he did something similar. You’ve got to give him credit for consistency. It turns out he was a cruel and heartless person with a good front. But I was worse in a way. Because I stayed with him and enabled his behaviour. And now he’s dead, by his own hand. Dead through the constant pursuit of his own pleasure. And I can’t stand here and listen to his life being totally rewritten. You can’t get anything out of him now, so stop. Just stop.’