“Where is she? Where? Where?” He felt himself start to shake, felt the rage burst out of its strict confines. “I’ve a right to know.”

“No,” Georgina said, “no, you haven’t. I’m not saying any more and don’t come here again.” She turned.

He grabbed her arm. “If I write a letter to her, will you pass it on?”

“I don’t know.”

He hesitated. He didn’t want to hurt Georgina. He didn’t want to hurt Alison. But others would suffer. Others. Others would never taste happiness.

He pulled himself up. “Thanks,” he managed to say, “thanks, Georgie.”

He walked down the path, closed the bright blue gate behind him and went fast up the road, and now he was shaking, now he almost lost it, almost knocked over an old woman who was going past him, almost pushed her to the ground. He was angry with himself. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. He needed to get himself under control.

He passed his car and walked on, walked fast and steadily, for a couple of miles, in and out of streets at random, talking to himself, bringing himself down, reining himself in slowly. It was like trying to get hold of a mad horse, but in the end, he felt that he was getting there.

He walked until he came to a corner pub and went in. Half of him wanted to drink himself into a stupor. He bought a pint of Guinness and sat down. He drank it slowly, making it last. His hands were shaking but he made that stop too.

When he was halfway down the glass, he started to think, coolly, rationally, point by point, trying to make a clear plan. He had the beginnings of it by the time the glass was empty.

He didn’t allow himself another.

Forty-seven

It was thundery. The narrow road that wound up the slope to the crematorium was slicked with rain making the cars move even more slowly. Three cars.

Jane Fitzroy waited, sheltering under the overhang, the rain slanting across the lawns. The hearse. One other funeral car behind it. And Cat Deerbon’s dark green Peugeot. And then, much further behind, just turning into the gates, a small battered van.

The hearse crunched slowly towards her across the gravel. Drew up beside her. The pale wood coffin had a small white posy, a wreath of red and gold, and behind those, a vast display of lilies and dark green ivy, commanding and extravagant.

Jane glanced at the card as the coffin was sliding out of the car. “ Dearest Karin, Our love and thanks for all the wonderful things you created for us and for your warm and loyal friendship. Too soon to leave us. Cax and Lucia.”

An elderly couple got out of the car behind the hearse. Then Cat. Then a young man, awkward in a suit, from the van.

Jane hesitated. A large crowd at a funeral did not necessarily mean they were a crowd of loving friends, far from it, but this group seemed pitifully small. Karin had left a note about her funeral. The pieces of music. The hymn. The reading, from the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd. “If it is you taking the service, Jane, I know you’ll pick the right prayers.” She hoped that she had.

She turned and went inside to the first notes of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” As she did so, she heard a car come fast up the approach road. She hoped Karin’s ex-husband might have thought better of his decision not to be here, but she walked on into the small, bland chapel, not glancing round.

She delivered the opening prayer, but as Cat got up to read a passage Karin had chosen from The Well Tempered Garden, Jane looked up and directly at Simon Serrailler. He was gazing at her. She turned her eyes quickly away, to Cat, to the flowers on the coffin, to the floor. He had slipped into a seat in the second row.

Cat read well, carefully and slowly.

Jane looked steadily at her as she finished, acutely, furiously conscious that her own face had flushed scarlet. But she kept her voice steady.

“Karin wanted the hymn ‘The King of Love My Shepherd Is.’ It isn’t always easy to sing when there are so few voices, so we have chosen a recording of a congregational version and we can join that. I hope it doesn’t seem too much like karaoke.”

Strangely, it did not. The voices from the tape took up the hymn and the real and present voices were clear above them. It was a compromise but better that, Jane thought, than a weak, thready rendering to embarrass everyone.

The rain drummed on the roof of the chapel as the hymn finished. It was hard to focus and she felt ashamed of that, angry that she was so disturbed by Simon’s presence, wishing he had not come, wanting to remember Karin. And what would she have said? A picture flashed into Jane’s mind: Karin looking amused. Yes, she would find it amusing, yes, she would have had something teasing to say. But if Karin was smiling, Jane could not.

“God our creator and redeemer, by your power Christ conquered death and entered into glory. Confident of his victory and claiming his promises, we entrust your servant Karin to your mercy in the name of Jesus our Lord, who died and is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.”

She hated cremations, hated the anonymity of these identikit chapels, hated the lack of beauty, hated the terrible curtain and the sound of the coffin sliding away. For her, a burial had dignity, though she knew plenty of fellow priests who disagreed.

She looked once more at Karin McCafferty’s coffin, the white flowers, the flash of brass on the handle in the dark chapel. Then she bent her head and began the committal prayer.

Cat had her eyes closed but made no attempt to brush the tears from her face. Andy Gunton stood rigid, swallowing hard. He had worked with Karin, spent part of almost every day with her in the gardens at Seaton Vaux, the Caxton Philips’s estate, learned from her, laughed with her and, not knowing what to do or say when her illness took a final grip, had kept away and was ashamed of the fact now, despising himself for being the kind of person who crossed the road to avoid an uncomfortable encounter.

“Amen.”

Simon heard his own clear voice bridging the short distance between himself and Jane Fitzroy. He had not known what his reaction would be to seeing her again and had been taken aback by it.

The coffin slid forward and Cat caught her breath. Chris, she whispered, oh God.

Simon looked at her but her head was bent. Chris, he thought.

“Karin asked for some music now. It meant a great deal to her. Please listen to it and think of her with gladness, remembering her brave and vital spirit.”

So often, Cat thought, there is a dire moment at cremations when the canned music blares out “My Way’, “Somewhere over the Rainbow’, “I will always love you” c But when “Blowing in the Wind” came in, it was right after all. Cat smiled.

“God, I hate these places,” Simon said, touching Cat’s shoulder as they came out to the porch. The thunder was rolling away but the rain was still heavy, the sky blue-black as a fresh bruise.

“I’m glad you made it.”

“Didn’t think I would.” He looked round quickly, then said, “I want to have a word with Andy Gunton. Now there’s an old lag who turned out well.”

“I think Jane would like to see you.”

“I have to scoot then, sorry.”

She gave him a look, said nothing, as he went up to Andy who was standing uncertainly to one side.

Jane was talking to Karin’s relatives. Cat waited, hearing the last of the song, sounding melancholy in the empty chapel behind them.

Simon ran through the rain to his car, followed by Andy. As they moved off, another funeral party was making its way up the drive. The undertakers had placed Karin’s flowers in the porch and the scent of the white, waxen lilies was exotic. No lilies, Cat thought. No lilies, no crematorium. It was something she and Chris had always disagreed about. He was not a believer, though he respected her faith, and he was firmly on the side of cremation, for rational, practical and what she now saw as heartless reasons. She knew what he would want.