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and make him supper. She was glad she had a job, a use. Yes, she must find Freddie. Where was he? Peering over the obfuscating hats and feather fascinators in the crowd, she noticed a woman determinedly plowing toward her. “Jenny!”
    She froze. It was the woman who was being eaten by her own hair.
    “Suze Wilson.” An extended purple-gloved hand. The handshake crunched her fingers. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
    “You have?” she said, taken aback.
    “From Sophie,” Suze explained.
    She felt the heat rise on her cheeks. “Yes, of course.”
    Suze moved closer conspiratorially, biscuit breath on Jenny’s cheek. “You were brave speaking off-the-cuff like that, really brave.”
    “Thanks.” She smiled back, not knowing what to say. Sophie’s death had left a smoldering gap in her conversation. Yet it was all anyone wanted to talk about.
    Suze persevered. “You must feel terrible. Being there.” She paused, giving Jenny the space to fill in the gory details. “Seeing the accident and everything,” she added when no details were forthcoming.
    Jenny looked away. She could still see Sophie’s body in the road. Hear the crunch and thump.
    “Look, sorry, anytime you want to talk.”
    “Thank you.” I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to talk to you, she thought. And I don’t like your purple gloves.
    “And if you don’t mind I may get in contact anyway.”
    “Yeah?” Could she perhaps climb up and over Suze’s hill of hair and flee over the shoulders of the crowd?
    “Ollie will need all the help he can get now, won’t he?”
    “Yes, yes, he will.” She smiled, feeling a stab of guilt for her earlier irritation. Suze was clearly a nice, practically minded woman. She was Sophie’s friend. Making a renewed effort to be friendly, she rifled in her handbag and found a curly-edged business card. “Here’s my number.”
    Suze looked down at the white card—
Jenny Vale, copy editor
—with a glint of triumph. “Brill!”
    Jenny sidled away, faking an obligation somewhere else in the crowd.
    Before she could get very far Ollie touched her lightly on the arm. “Hey, Jenny.” His voice was barely audible.
    “I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry, Ollie.” The dark gray cloud had engulfed the steeple. It started to rain suddenly, pinprick-sore against the raw skin around her eyes.
    He glanced at his watch. “We’re going to…” He hesitated for an eternity. He couldn’t say bury. She took Ollie’s hand because it felt like the right thing to do. But once she had it she didn’t know what to do with it. “Go to the cemetery now.”
    “I’ll take Freddie back.”
    They stood for a moment, transfixed by the back of Freddie’stousled blond head, neither of them moving, not wanting to take him away from his mother’s body. And Jenny was still holding Ollie’s hand. She needed to drop it.
    “Jenny, there’s something I need to ask you.”
    “Yes?” She had a bad feeling about what he was about to say next. She dropped his hand.
    He fixed her with sleepless baggy eyes. “Did Sophie talk about us, about me and her, our marriage, the night she died?”
    The bad feeling got badder. What could she say? If she told him the truth he might take the words Sophie had uttered in a drunken, restless mood and hold them against his heart forever. And she’d promised Sophie she wouldn’t repeat them.
    “I need to know if—”
    Colin the rev interrupted them. “Ollie,” he whispered, a pink, beringed hand on the sleeve of Ollie’s black wool suit, “it is time.”

Three
    I can’t bring myself to peek inside the coffin. Not going to be a good look, is it? So I leave my beloved family scattering chocolaty Highgate soil into the hole, soak away past the graves of George Eliot and Henry Moore, the Gothic avenues of tombs, the guarding stone angels, through the damp, dark, ivy-cloaked trees of Highgate woods into the drizzly January morning air. I follow Jenny as she drives back to number