The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [172]
Stacey didn't read, but back at the house, where we all gratefully went for tea and sandwiches later, much needed after the burial, she got up on a kitchen chair and said a few words. Blushing to the roots of her blonde hair, even her scalp turning pink, she stammered to begin with, but she got those words out: about how her mum would have liked to see everyone in her kitchen like this, eating her home-made jam and the scones she'd made herself and put in the freezer. How pleased she'd be to see us admiring her garden, how thrilled she'd be that the magnolia was out. How Stacey wished she was here, but knew she was very much amongst us, smiling and happy, no longer in pain, and that, however sad it was to lose her, she, Stacey, was glad she was no longer suffering. Those of us who'd held it together in church for Stacey's sake completely lost it now, myself included. I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the house.
Ted, beside me, mopped furiously with his huge white hanky, pulling faces to stem the flow, but Stacey ignored our blubbing. She looked her grandfather firmly in his damp eye and thanked him for all he'd done, for the rock he'd been. Then, to my surprise, she introduced Ant as her father, Anna as her half-sister and referred kindly to Anna's mum, who'd offered her a home in Oxford. It wasn't, she went on, that she was deserting her Yorkshire friends and family: her roots – her heart – she insisted, would always be in the High Peaks, she'd always be a Yorkshire lass, it was just that her mum, Bella, had wanted her life to move on: for there to be a natural progression, and for her to get to know her father properly. It was a straightforward, upfront little speech, one she'd clearly practised in her bedroom a few times, maybe even in front of her mother, but it told everyone precisely what the score was. It didn't exactly spare Ant's blushes, who, as everyone turned to peer at this Johnny-come-lately, went puce. It ended with a glass of champagne raised – ‘To Mum. The best a girl could ever have. My world. My everything.’ This last bit, I suspected Bella hadn't heard, and it was the only bit where Stacey's voice cracked.
‘To Bella!’ we all roared, to cover it, as she was helped down from her chair by Ant. Then the tea cups were put away and out came the wine and the drinking started in earnest.
Stacey was hugged by school friends with whispered assurances she'd done ‘really really well’, then, likewise by teachers, and neighbours and friends of Bella's. I felt very proud of her. I waited for my turn to come and told her so.
‘Was it OK?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Not too schmaltzy? Mum and I felt something should be said before I just sort of – disappeared; thought it would be a good moment with everyone gathered. We also thought it might stem the flow of – oh, didn't you know?’ She folded her arms and leaned on an imaginary garden fence, broadening her accent: ‘There's a father. Oh, aye, 'e's finally cum out the woodwork. Didn't want to know 'er when she was a bairn, but now she's going to college, now she's proving herself to be an asset…’ She rolled her eyes meaningfully. I laughed.
And actually, we had a few laughs that day, which made it a very different wake to the only other one I'd been to, my father's. But then Dad had died so suddenly, no one had been in any way prepared. Whereas Bella's death, although at a much younger age, so therefore more tragic, had been foreseen, so that now people were moving about her house remembering her fondly, picking up photographs, reminiscing about the good times, whereas at Dad's we'd all been white-faced and stricken. I remembered the shock, the pain. Knowing surely took the shock away? Although, I realized, looking at Ted, who was chatting away gamely but there was no disguising the grief in his eyes, it didn't do much for the pain.
Despite Stacey's brave words, it was surely the