Page 2 of The Girlfriend’s Secret

It’s dark blue.

Not black.

How dare she turn up here in anything other than the official, universally accepted colour for a funeral? How dare she stand out amongst everybody else here, particularly when she is the only one at the service who never met my mother before her death. How dare she do this? Where is the respect? Where is the acknowledgement? Where is the pain on her face? Joel tried to excuse her by saying she doesn’t own any black clothes and in the rush for them both to fly home, there was no time to shop for a more suitable outfit.

I don’t know if I believe that.

There are shops at airports, aren’t there?

But I shouldn’t be surprised. How can this young woman be grieving for the loss of an older woman she had never known? My dear mother, Valerie, had not touched her life in the way she had touched everybody else’s here. No, the only reason Haven is in this church right now is because she is my youngest son’s new girlfriend.

Joel met Haven in Australia, on Bondi Beach apparently, which sounds very glamorous. The photos of them under sunny skies Down Under certainly looked glamorous, especially when contrasted to the grey English sky that I was viewing them beneath. As I watched from afar, eagerly checking social media to see if my adventurous son had updated his account with more photos of his travels, the few images I saw told me that he and Haven were getting closer. His messages to me and his father also indicated that. He told us about her. Said he had met a great girl, told us her name and how they were spending a lot of time together. It sounded like it was going well.

At first, I wondered if Haven was Australian and feared for a moment that my son would marry her, gain residency in that far-flung country and then never come home. Such a thought might have been selfish of me, especially if he was happy, but I am a mother and I love my child, so of course I’ll always be happy when my offspring are near to me as opposed to being far away. But then he told us that she was English and originated from a town only an hour away from ours and I have to say I breathed a sigh of relief.

I hoped that my baby would return to UK shores after his adventures, so that he’d be closer to me again. I prayed that I wouldn’t lose him to Sydney’s sandy shores and skin-soothing sunshine.

Then I got my wish. He has come home and it is far sooner than I ever expected him to. But I never wanted him to come back in these circumstances. I didn’t want it to be like this. So sudden. So shocking. So sad. I didn’t want him to have never said goodbye to his dear grandmother.

Nor did I want this to be the way in which I first met Haven.

We should have met differently. In more pleasant circumstances. Either her and my son returning triumphant from their time overseas and entering my house with smiles on their faces or me and my husband jetting out to Australia to see them first.

Frederik and I had already discussed taking a trip to see how our son was living over there and the fact that we could enjoy their summer while skipping some of our winter was just an added bonus. But neither of those things happened. As it was, it was down to Frederik to make a very difficult phone call to our youngest son to break the news that his grandmother had passed away.

We had no doubt that Joel would want to jump on a plane and make it back here to say his goodbyes to the sweet woman who had fed him buns and biscuits as a young boy. The only thing we doubted was whether Haven would be with him.

We assumed she might stay in Australia and wait for Joel to return to her there. After all, she couldn’t be expected to attend a funeral of someone she had never met, as well as meet her boyfriend’s family in such difficult circumstances.

But here she is.

Now, as the funeral gets under way and the pallbearers take their seats, I notice one other thing about this woman dressed in blue amongst a sea of black.

I notice that she is looking at me.

And then I notice that she is smiling.

TWO

LIANE

I’ve always liked entertaining. I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to host people in my home. It might not be the biggest home in the world, but it has enough space to welcome a number of guests inside of it. And that’s what is happening right now.

I decided to host the wake at my home after my mother’s funeral, preferring a more personal space rather than some local pub or social club. I decided to do it here, surrounded by family photos which feature my mother. So here we all are, all thirty-three mourners from the church who witnessed the sombre but stylish send-off for Valerie, now nibbling on homemade sandwiches and cake and sipping soft drinks or something stronger from plastic cups bought from the local supermarket. Thankfully it’s a sunny autumn day, so we have been able to open the patio doors and allow our guests to spill out into the back garden, reducing the ‘cramped confines’ feeling that could easily have overcome this occasion. But there’s a chill in the air, so I doubt anyone will stay outside for long. Or maybe the chill is coming from somewhere else.

My sense of loss, perhaps.

Or my sense that something is off with my son’s girlfriend.

‘My deepest condolences,’ says a sorrowful woman in her seventies who has approached me to shake my hand and offer her sympathies. ‘Your mother was a wonderful woman. Truly wonderful. We were friends from the bowls club, and she helped me through a difficult time when my husband passed. I am sorry she is gone and I will miss her dearly.’

‘Thank you so much,’ I say in reply, accepting the condolences with the good grace that they were offered to me. ‘I really appreciate that.’

As the woman nods her head ruefully before moving on, I am quickly into another handshake, this time with the president of the chess club that formed just one part of my mother’s surprisingly large social circle. I knew Mum had a lot of friends and plenty to keep her occupied outside of her family but today has shown me just how beloved she was and just how many lives she had touched beyond those of me and our family members. It’s a pleasure to see all these people, but it’s also a sad sight, because the more mourners there are at a funeral, the more sadness there is in a community. Trying to cheer all these people up with a few platefuls of hastily made sandwiches and big bowls of crisps suddenly seems so futile.

‘Thank you,’ I say to the chess president before he moves over to pick up a soft drink from the side table while I turn and accept a hug from my dear husband.

‘You’re doing so well,’ Frederik says as he gives me a tight squeeze, and it’s as if he knew the exact moment when I needed something stronger than just a handshake and a few kind words. I needed companionship, real physical intimacy, and here is my husband right on hand to provide me with it. This is just one of the many reasons why I love him so much. He always knows what’s best for me and, right now, I need him holding me up before I collapse from trying to put on a brave face in front of all these people.