Chapter 55: The End

THE END

In the car, on the way to the crematorium, it starts raining. Hannah is glad. She sits there, staring out the window at the weeping world, and feels the tears slide down her own cheeks, soaking into the collar of her black coat.

“Are you okay?” Emily whispers from the seat beside her, and then shakes her head. “I’m sorry. Stupid question. How could you be okay?”

The driver of the funeral car says nothing. He is used to people weeping in the back of his limousine. The box of tissues between the seats is testament to that. Hannah isn’t sure what he’s been told—but he must know something about the circumstances of what’s brought them here. The fact that this isn’t a normal funeral—someone weary from old age, or taken early by cancer or heart disease or a thousand and one other inevitabilities of life.

No, this is a tragedy, nothing more, nothing less. And suddenly the unfairness of it all washes over her—the fact that Will should be here, with her, holding her hand, but he’s not—and she has to go through this alone. And all because of Hugh, and her own unbearable, inexcusable stupidity.

It’s like a bolt of anger tearing through her, and as the car draws up outside the crematorium, it’s that more than anything that gives her the strength to stand up and make her unsteady, top-heavy way across the gravel to where the others are waiting—Ryan in his wheelchair, Bella with a sympathetic hug.

She can get through this. She will get through this.

And then the baby inside her gives a long slow kick, more of a press, pushing outwards against the wall of her womb so that she can actually see the tight-stretched black fabric ripple and move against the pressure, and she corrects herself.

Theywill get through this. Together.

“Are you ready?” Emily says, and Hannah nods.

“As I’ll ever be.”

“We’ve got you,” Ryan says. And she nods again, and even manages a smile.

“His parents are already inside,” Bella says. “We should head in. Are you ready, Ry?”

Ryan nods, clicks the controller on his wheelchair, and they begin to move slowly up the ramp, towards the chapel of the crematorium.

Hannah is not sure what to expect when they enter the chapel. There are only two other people there in the cool dark, heads bowed, and they are the two people she has been dreading seeing. Because what can she say? What is there to say when the worst thing that can happen to a parent has happened to them?

But in the end, she doesn’t need to say anything.

His mother simply comes to her and holds her in a wordless hug. And they stand there, the two of them, bathed in the light from the memorial window, the stained glass surrounding them both with a sea of blue and green. And then the organ music starts, Hannah wipes her eyes, and they turn to face the front, as the vicar intones, “We are here to commemorate the passing of Hugh Anthony Bland.”

And Hannah knows it is really over.