Just Last Night(38)

“Can you translate that from the Eve?” Ed says.

“The bit of the brain that doesn’t function in scans of serial killers. How can he be a psychiatrist? He’s like Harold Shipman, posing as a doctor.”

“Shipman was a doctor,” Justin says.

“Well, regardless of how many people he’s murdered, if he kicks off, that’s on him. We’re in the clear,” Ed says, sitting back.

“Edward, you crafty ferret,” Justin says.

“I think he lets you and I blaze out in front as the bad guys while he’s actually the worst,” I say, and Ed makes a “straightening the brim of an invisible hat” gesture.

“Other point of controversy,” I say. “We’re definitely going with the Twin Peaks theme to play us out at the end? I didn’t mention that to Fin, I’m quite glad now.”

“I love it,” Justin says. “She loved it, it’s so her. She went to that Halloween night as Laura Palmer, didn’t she?”

“Yep,” I say. I helped her with that costume. A plastic wrap, blue hair dye, glittery robot face paint, and a sign that said She Is Filled with Secrets on the back. I refuse to dwell on the fact that I daubed silver highlighter down her signature Hart family cheekbones to simulate alluring rigor mortis.

“If she can see us from anywhere, when that comes on, she’ll laugh out loud. And do a fist pump,” Justin says.

“That’s what matters then,” Ed says. “We’re honoring her, not some snark in the third pew.”

“Amen!” Justin says.

“Amen,” I agree.

“And give her brother a break too,” Ed says to me, trying his luck.

“Sure,” I say. “Leg or arm, lol?”

Heart isn’t possible.

After a pause, I say to Ed: “And you definitely want to do the reading? Whatever I write?”

“Without a doubt.” He squeezes my hand.

This is what we agreed, through a vale of tears. I can write about Susie but can’t bring myself to perform it. Ed says he can read something, but can’t steel himself to write anything.

Justin has offered to critique it all afterward.

Ed keeps hold of my hand and I squeeze back again, to make it polite to release it. He gives me a meaningful look as I withdraw my fingers.

“You’ll be great at it. You know that, don’t you? Don’t be scared of it.”

“Thank you,” I say. Ed is right, I am scared of it. It feels so good to be understood.

“Ooh, er. I’ve just realized something spooky,” I say. “You know how you always said Susie was Laura? The penny’s dropped who Fin reminds me of. Agent Cooper.”

Both Ed and Justin tilt their heads, think, nod.

Justin clicks on an imaginary recorder, leans in: “Diane. Met three more assholes today.”





16


The countdown to the funeral is awful. “Awful.” What a limp word for this experience. Queues at the supermarket on Christmas Eve are awful. Banging your elbow on a hard surface is awful. My sliding scale for “awful” has completely changed and I need an enhanced vocabulary to deal with it. You don’t realize the flippancy of your generation’s attitudes and language until you grasp for the terminology that conveys the impact, and it’s not there. It’s been shopworn by silly jokes and ironic hyperbole.

Reliving the morning I found out, which I do, constantly, compulsively, is harrowing to the point of some sort of PTSD. Yet the word “harrowing” isn’t enough.

I can see myself and Susie in my mind’s eye, sitting in sleepwear at her house. Susie in a cricket sweater over her pajamas, hair like Beetlejuice and with brightly pedicured feet up on the coffee table, describing our aftereffects from shotgunning rosé wine in a local bar as “harrowing.”

“This is an ordeal,” Susie would say. “We’re going to need Uber Eats KFC, and possibly dips from Domino’s. We’ve been to war. We have been through the wringer and in the trenches.”

When you’ve used those words to mean “got sick” and “wish you’d not kissed a man whose Twitter handle is @DoctorPenis” it feels wrong to apply it to seismic, disturbing, stuff-of-darkest-fears that have changed you forever.

It took me two and a half hours, and pauses for whimpering and bawling, to write my eulogy for Susannah Hart. I sent it to Ed, who replied: That’s me broken into pieces. And then a few minutes later. It’s beautiful. I can only hope to do it justice. Xx

Then I went back to work on Monday, accepting everyone’s curious pitying looks with a wan smile, fielding the volley of questions with polite but peremptory answers. Yes, hit by a car. No, they weren’t a drunk driver. Funeral next week. Yes, it was no age. No, she wasn’t married and didn’t have kids. Thanks, I am bearing up.

Satisfied they have the intel, Phil, Lucy, and Seth go back to staring at their monitors.

I feel like I’m playing dress-up at normal life. As if I’ve put on armor in a battle reenactment game with a bunch of fellow geeks in a field. Oh, are we doing the one where it’s life as usual and we write for a website?

I sit and type:

There’s hotdogs, then there’s THESE hotdogs. Find out why people are going crazy for the dirty loaded sausages at Who Let the Dogs Out?