Finn ran the knuckle of his thumb under his chin, a habitual gesture when something was worrying him. ‘What does Katie think?’
‘I haven’t told her.’
She could see Finn’s surprise and sensed he wanted to say more, but Mia turned to the window, ending the conversation.
She willed her thoughts to drift away with the clouds, knowing it wasn’t the only thing she was keeping from her sister.
Cornwall/London, March
Katie sat pin straight on the church pew, her feet pressed together. Biting sea air crept through the cracks in the stained-glass windows and twisted beneath the heavy oak door. Her fingers were curled around a damp tissue, Ed’s hand resting on top. Eighteen months earlier had seen her seated in this same pew when they buried her mother, only then it had been Mia’s fingers linked through her own.
Her gaze was fixed on the coffin. Everything about it – the polished shine to the elm wood, the brass clasps keeping it sealed, the white lilies arranged on top – suddenly looked wrong. Why had she chosen to bury Mia beside their mother, when her sister had never once visited the grave? Wouldn’t cremation have been more suitable, her ashes dispersing on a breeze over a wild sea? Why don’t I know what you’d have wanted?
It would have been almost impossible to conceive that Mia was inside the coffin had Katie not decided, two days ago, that she needed to see the body. Ed had been cautious on her behalf. ‘Are you sure? We don’t know how she may look after the fall.’ That’s what people were referring to it as: the fall, as if Mia had no more than slipped in the shower, or toppled off a stool.
She wouldn’t be dissuaded. Seeing Mia’s body would be agony, but to not see it would leave her with the smallest fraction of doubt – and if she allowed that doubt to grow over time to hope, she’d be in danger of deluding herself.
When Katie had stepped behind the heavy purple drape in the funeral parlour, she could have fooled herself that Mia was merely sleeping. Her willowy figure, the sweep of dark hair, the curve of her lips, looked as they always had. Yet the proof of death lay in Mia’s skin. After months of travelling she would have been deeply tanned, but death had left behind its ghostly pallor so that her skin appeared a strange insipid shade, like milk spilt over a dark floor.
The funeral director had asked if Katie wished to choose an outfit for Mia to be buried in, but she had said no. It had seemed presumptuous to dress Mia, for whom fashion was something indefinable. She fell in love with clothes for their story, choosing a loose shift dress in a deep blue that reminded her of the sea, or picking a second-hand pair of heels because she liked to imagine the places they’d already walked.
On the night Mia died she had been wearing a pair of teal shorts. They had been arranged too high up her waist, not slung low over her hips as she would have worn them. Her feet were bare, a silver toe ring on each foot, her nails unpainted. On her top half she was wearing a cream vest over a turquoise string bikini. A delicate necklace strung with tiny white shells rested at her throat, a single pearl at its centre. She looked too casual for death.
Katie had reached out and placed her hand on Mia’s forearm. It felt cold and leaden beneath her fingertips. Slowly, she traced her fingers towards Mia’s inner elbow where thin blue veins criss-crossed, no longer carrying blood around her body. She drew her hand over the ridge of Mia’s bicep, across her shoulder and along the smooth skin at the nape of her neck. She brushed the faint scar on her temple, a silver crescent, and then her palm rested finally against Mia’s cheek. She knew the back of Mia’s skull had been cracked open on impact, but there were no other marks on her body. Katie was disappointed: she had been hoping for a clue, something the authorities had missed that would prove Mia had died for a reason more bearable than suicide.
Carefully, she untucked Mia’s vest and rearranged her shorts so they rested on her hip bones. Then she leant close to her ear. Her sister’s skin smelt unfamiliar: antiseptic and embalming lotion. She closed her eyes as she whispered, ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Katie?’ Ed was squeezing her hand, pulling her thoughts back to the funeral. ‘It’s you, now.’
He moved his hand to her elbow and helped her stand. Her legs felt light and insubstantial as she left the pew and drifted towards the lectern like a spectre. She tucked her tissue into her coat pocket and pulled from the other a square piece of card on which she’d noted a few sentences.
She glanced up. The church was full. People were standing three deep at the back. She saw old neighbours, friends of Mia’s from her schooldays, a group of Katie’s girlfriends who’d made the long journey from London. There were many people she didn’t recognize, too. A girl in a black woollen hat sobbed quietly, her shoulders shaking. Two rows back, a thin young man blew his nose into a yellow handkerchief and then tucked it beneath his order of service. She knew that the circumstances of Mia’s death would be lingering in everyone’s thoughts, but she didn’t have the answers to address their questions. How could she when she didn’t know what to believe herself?
Katie gripped the lectern, cleared her throat twice, and then began. ‘While the authorities have made a grey area of Mia’s death, her life was a rainbow of colour. As a sister, Mia was dazzling indigo, challenging me to look at the world from new perspectives and see its different shades. She was also the deep violet that drove all her actions straight from her heart, which made her passionate, spontaneous and brave. As a friend she was vibrant orange, spirited, plucky and on the lookout for adventure. As a daughter, I think our mum—’ she struggled on that last word. Closing her eyes, she focused on swallowing the rising lump of emotion.
When she opened them, she could see Ed nodding at her, encouraging her on. She took a deep breath and began the sentence again. ‘As a daughter, I think our mum would have said Mia was love red, as she filled her with happiness, warmth and laughter. She was also the sea green of the ocean, in which she spent her childhood splashing and tumbling through waves. Her laughter – infectious, giddy and frequent – was brilliant yellow, a beam of sunlight falling on whoever she laughed with. And now that Mia has gone, for me only cool, empty blue remains in the space where her rainbow once danced.’
Katie left the card on the lectern and somehow her legs carried her back to Ed’s side.
*
The coffin had been lowered into the ground and the funeral party were returning to their cars when Katie saw him.
Finn looked different from the man she’d said goodbye to at the airport. His usually fair skin was bronzed, his hair lightened by the sun to a golden brown, and he looked older, too, having lost the boyish softness in his cheeks. Finn’s family had been unable to get in contact with him until three days ago. He had boarded the first flight back to London and arrived yesterday. Flanked by two of his brothers, he glanced up and saw her. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin around his nose was red raw. He moved towards her warily.
‘Katie—’ he said, but faltered when he saw her expression.
Her voice came out as cold and flat as the sky. ‘You left her, Finn.’
He closed his eyes and swallowed. She saw that his lashes were damp. Beyond them a car door slammed and an engine started.
Katie was standing with her back to the stone archway at the rear of the church. She thrust her hands deep into her coat pockets. ‘You were supposed