Read Online What to Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French - Free Book Online
Authors: Nicci French
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Suspense fiction, Crime, Political, Widows, Traffic Accident Investigation
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them, the names blurring. I looked at the A–Z and my head buzzed with tiredness and a despairing frustration. Anything was better than not knowing. For how could I say goodbye to Greg when I no longer knew who he was? How could I get him back?
Chapter Six
It was while the undertaker was going through the price options that I descended into a form of mental illness. I experienced the feeling I had once had as a teenager – probably all teenagers have it – that I was the only real person in the world and that everyone else was an actor playing a part. The undertaker’s in Kentish Town was much like any other shop in the high street offering a service, an estate agent or a white-goods supplier. But this one had been made over in shades of grey with fake pillars supporting the reception desk and white lilies in vases, so that it looked a bit like a mausoleum. Sombre new-agey music, something on Pan pipes, was playing in the background. Of course, Mr Collingwood, the funeral director, was dressed in a navy suit with a white carnation and, of course, he offered me his condolences in a subdued voice as he pushed the price list across his desk towards me.
In the same subdued voice, he talked about the services they offered, the collection and care of the deceased, the arrangements for visiting the chapel of rest. He murmured that there were decisions to be made: religious or secular, burial, cremation or special facilities, and then there were the extras. As I looked through the section of the brochure devoted to coffins – chipboard lined with plastic, wood veneer, solid wood, cardboard, woven willow – I began to think of Mr Collingwood as an actor. I wasn’t angry about this, or bitter. I didn’t want him to dress like an ice-cream salesman or to grin as if he was trying to sell me a new car. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was almost four thirty. He might have been at a funeral that morning and he must have had lunch, perhaps in one of the new cafés that had opened in the high street in the last two years. He would have seen at least a couple of people before me, and now it wasn’t long until the end of the day. Perhaps he was also thinking about the evening, dinner, seeing his children. Maybe one of them was having trouble at school and he would have to sit with them as they did their homework. For all I knew it was his wedding anniversary or his birthday, and he was going out for dinner. He might have been diagnosed with a fatal disease or he might have won the lottery, but now he was playing the role of the undertaker, with the right note of dignity, competence and concern.
He couldn’t really care about me. In fact, I didn’t want him to. He hadn’t known Greg and he didn’t know me, and if I suspected he was feeling real emotion about my loss, it would be creepy, as if I had caught him breaking into my house. So he was giving a performance, just well enough, and as I paged numbly through the brochure, it struck me that everyone I had dealt with had been performing as well. The coroner had been respectful and serious but he had finished in time for lunch; he might have gone straight to his club and laughed about the ridiculous case he had just heard or he might have forgotten about it and told dirty jokes, or gone back to his office alone and drunk whisky from a half-bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk. It didn’t matter. While sitting in the court he had played the role of coroner in the presence of a grieving widow. The policewomen had acted the way you act when you tell a wife that her husband has died. If they had been returning a lost cat to a little girl, they would have acted in the appropriate style for that. The registrar at the hospital had performed in the way you perform when a relative comes to view a body.
It couldn’t just be a matter of behaving according to their emotions because they couldn’t feel those emotions any more, not when they had done it a hundred times. And why
Chapter Six
It was while the undertaker was going through the price options that I descended into a form of mental illness. I experienced the feeling I had once had as a teenager – probably all teenagers have it – that I was the only real person in the world and that everyone else was an actor playing a part. The undertaker’s in Kentish Town was much like any other shop in the high street offering a service, an estate agent or a white-goods supplier. But this one had been made over in shades of grey with fake pillars supporting the reception desk and white lilies in vases, so that it looked a bit like a mausoleum. Sombre new-agey music, something on Pan pipes, was playing in the background. Of course, Mr Collingwood, the funeral director, was dressed in a navy suit with a white carnation and, of course, he offered me his condolences in a subdued voice as he pushed the price list across his desk towards me.
In the same subdued voice, he talked about the services they offered, the collection and care of the deceased, the arrangements for visiting the chapel of rest. He murmured that there were decisions to be made: religious or secular, burial, cremation or special facilities, and then there were the extras. As I looked through the section of the brochure devoted to coffins – chipboard lined with plastic, wood veneer, solid wood, cardboard, woven willow – I began to think of Mr Collingwood as an actor. I wasn’t angry about this, or bitter. I didn’t want him to dress like an ice-cream salesman or to grin as if he was trying to sell me a new car. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was almost four thirty. He might have been at a funeral that morning and he must have had lunch, perhaps in one of the new cafés that had opened in the high street in the last two years. He would have seen at least a couple of people before me, and now it wasn’t long until the end of the day. Perhaps he was also thinking about the evening, dinner, seeing his children. Maybe one of them was having trouble at school and he would have to sit with them as they did their homework. For all I knew it was his wedding anniversary or his birthday, and he was going out for dinner. He might have been diagnosed with a fatal disease or he might have won the lottery, but now he was playing the role of the undertaker, with the right note of dignity, competence and concern.
He couldn’t really care about me. In fact, I didn’t want him to. He hadn’t known Greg and he didn’t know me, and if I suspected he was feeling real emotion about my loss, it would be creepy, as if I had caught him breaking into my house. So he was giving a performance, just well enough, and as I paged numbly through the brochure, it struck me that everyone I had dealt with had been performing as well. The coroner had been respectful and serious but he had finished in time for lunch; he might have gone straight to his club and laughed about the ridiculous case he had just heard or he might have forgotten about it and told dirty jokes, or gone back to his office alone and drunk whisky from a half-bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk. It didn’t matter. While sitting in the court he had played the role of coroner in the presence of a grieving widow. The policewomen had acted the way you act when you tell a wife that her husband has died. If they had been returning a lost cat to a little girl, they would have acted in the appropriate style for that. The registrar at the hospital had performed in the way you perform when a relative comes to view a body.
It couldn’t just be a matter of behaving according to their emotions because they couldn’t feel those emotions any more, not when they had done it a hundred times. And why
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