‘You want me to go?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘Would you like me to smarten you up first? Jeans and a T-shirt isn’t exactly typical funeral attire.’
‘What does it matter? No one can see me. I don’t need your help.’
‘Very well, but if you change your mind, give me a shout. I know this is a difficult day for you.’
‘Please go,’ I said, turning away from her.
‘Okay. One last thing. I was going to wait until afterwards, but now will have to do. The deadline for your grace period has been set at two months from today, which is actually very generous. Remember, if you don’t cross over by then, you’ll never be able to, so please give it some careful thought. I’m on your side, William, whatever you might think. I hope it goes smoothly today.’
With that, she was gone. Seconds later, everyone was putting their coats on and heading out of the door. I’d assumed that they’d be going in two cars, hopefully leaving room for me to slip in somewhere. Then I saw them all piling into Dad’s silver BMW and I realized that I had a problem. With him and Xander in the front and Ella on her booster seat in the back, next to Mum and Lauren, there was nowhere for me to squeeze in. The doors slammed shut.
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, trying desperately to bang my hand down on the car roof, but feeling and hearing nothing. ‘What about me? It’s my funeral. You can’t leave me here.’
‘Shit!’ I shouted at the top of my lungs. ‘Bollocks! What the hell do I do now?’
The funeral was being held in the village where I’d grown up – and my parents still lived – about twelve miles further out from the city. They’d decided against holding it here, on the grounds that I had no ties with any local churches. Like many of my generation, I’d drifted away from organized religion after leaving home. And yet the core belief that had been ingrained in my younger self had never entirely left me, so a church send-off felt right. The village church I’d attended as a boy, and where Mum and Dad remained regulars, was the obvious choice.
The big problem now was how to get there. There was no way I’d make it on time by foot. I feared for a moment that I’d have to eat humble pie with Lizzie and ask for her help. Then I heard the answer to my problem trundle past on the main road a couple of streets away; I raced to the bus stop.
The service I needed ran every ten minutes and would drop me just a short walk away from the church. I missed the first one to pass, as I was alone in the shelter and the driver didn’t stop. Luckily, the next bus pulled up to let a passenger off. I jumped on just as the door jerked shut, and found myself a seat near the back of the empty top deck.
As the bus wound its way out of the suburbs and into the countryside, the landscape opened up into an autumnal spread of glorious reds, yellows and golden browns. My mind started to drift. How will it feel to attend my own funeral? I wondered. What if hardly anyone turns up? All of a sudden I felt incredibly nervous.
I moved downstairs once the bus entered my parents’ village. Someone rang the bell for the stop prior to mine, so I got off with them in case the driver skipped the next one. I jogged to the church in five minutes and was relieved to see the front door open and people still making their way inside.
The scene that awaited me when I entered the church came as a shock. It was jam-packed with more family, friends and colleagues than I’d ever dreamed would come. There were faces from throughout my whole life: primary and secondary school, university, the various stages of my journalistic career, and everything else along the way. It jolted my mind back for an instant to my wife Alice’s funeral. There had also been a huge attendance that day, although I’d hardly acknowledged anyone. I’d been a mess, thanks to the combination of my grief and the terrible guilt I felt for what I’d done to her. Everything had been a blur.
Back in the moment, standing at the rear of this church, panic got its claws into me. This is wrong, I thought. I shouldn’t be here. My plan had been to find Ella, who was no doubt somewhere near the front with Mum and Dad, and to stay with her throughout the service. But it was all too much. Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself outside once more, watching the last few stragglers make their way into the church, the door shutting behind them.
What am I doing? I thought. I’ve just travelled all the way over here by bus so that I can hang around in the churchyard and miss the service. But it was too late now. Unless someone opened the door, I couldn’t go back inside even if I wanted to.
I took a seat on a green bench that overlooked the sprawling graveyard. I could hear the muffled sound of voices singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ behind me as I stared into the distance.
‘Are you on the lookout for other spirits?’ a croaky voice said, startling me.
I looked to my right and a friendly face I’d not seen since childhood was beaming at me. ‘I was wondering where you were, William. Mind if I join you?’
‘Huh?’ I was utterly confused.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he chuckled. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Arthur,’ I replied.
‘Ah, you remember me.’
‘Of course. But … what’s going on? How are you here? You died when I was a boy.’
‘All in good time, lad. Let’s focus on you for now. It’s your funeral.’
Arthur had been caretaker at the village primary school, which was a hundred yards down the road from the church. When I was a pupil, I’d thought of him with his white hair and wrinkles as being pretty ancient. Now, still as I remembered him but viewed from an adult’s perspective, he looked to be in his early sixties.
I’d always been fond of Arthur. All the kids had. He was a lovely chap – almost like an adopted grandad to us all. He took care of much more than the school premises, fixing cuts and grazes with his tin pot of plasters and magic tube of antiseptic cream, and mending broken smiles with his endless supply of jokes and tall tales. Officially we were supposed to call him Mr Brown, but he’d laugh at us if we said that, refusing to answer to anything other than Arthur. We’d all been so shocked and upset when he’d died halfway through my final year.
I looked at him, sitting next to me in the maroon cardigan I remembered and the thick brown glasses with a plaster around the bridge, and I couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s good to see you, Arthur.’
‘You too, lad. Sorry about … you know, the whole dying thing. It takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah, you could say that. But I don’t understand how you can be here. Lizzie, my guide, says you can only stay for a certain amount of time before you have to move on. Otherwise you—’
‘Like I said, William, let’s not get into that right now. You’re the one with a funeral going on in there. Which brings me to a rather important question: what are you doing out here?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I panicked. I walked inside and … seeing all those people there because of me, it was too much.’
‘You should be proud. I’ve seen a lot of funerals at this church over the years – I was churchwarden at one time – and I can tell you that not everyone gets such a big turnout. You must have done something right over the years.’
I