‘I really, really hate it,’ he added, ‘but there’s no doubt that it suits you.’
—and much too soon.
‘Pretty much like the beard, then,’ she said. And, since the food hadn’t actually choked her, she took another mouthful.
‘Grow your hair again and I’ll shave it off.’
It was an update of the arguments they’d used to have about the clothes she’d worn. The girls he’d dated. The music she’d listened to.
‘If you hold shares in a razor-blade company, sell them now,’ she advised.
Perhaps recognising that step back to a happier time in their relationship, he looked up, smiled.
And it was as if he’d never been gone.
For a moment they allowed the comfortable silence to continue, but finally Josh shifted, said, ‘Do you want to tell me about the funeral?’
She sketched a shrug. ‘Michael and Phoebe had left instructions…’ She swallowed. ‘How could they do that? They were much too young to be thinking about things like that.’
‘I imagine they did it for one another. So that whoever went first wouldn’t be faced with making decisions. What did they want?’
‘A simple funeral service in the local church, then a woodland burial with just a tree as a marker for their grave. I imagine that was Phoebe’s choice. Your father wasn’t impressed, but there was nothing he or your mother could do.’
‘One more reason for Michael to lay it all out in words of one syllable.’
‘Josh… He was their son,’ she said helplessly.
‘Not in any way that matters. His mother is living in Japan with someone she isn’t married to. His father is in Strasbourg, raising his second family. He hadn’t spoken to either of them in years.’
‘You’re their son, too. Have you spoken to them?’
‘We have nothing to talk about.’
She said nothing. What could she say? That they had both been dealt rubbish hands when it came to parents?
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