'Do you you want me there?' want me there?'

'I don't care. As long as you don't expect me to hold your hand.'

'Is Ray going?'

'No, Ray's not going.'

'Why not?'

'Because he hasn't been invited, OK?'

'I don't mind, you know, if that's what you want.'

'Oh, that's so sweet of you, Rob. It's your day, after all.'

Jesus.

'Look, are you coming or not?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Liz'll give you a lift. She knows where to go and everything.'

'Fine. How are you?'

'I haven't got time to chat, Rob. I've got too much to do.'

'Sure. I'll see you Friday.' I put the phone down before she can say anything, to let her know I'm hurt, and then I want to phone her back and apologize, but I know I mustn't. It's like you can never do the right thing by someone if you've stopped sleeping with them. You can't see a way back, or through, or round, however hard you try.

There aren't really any pop songs about death - not good ones, anyway. Maybe that's why I like pop music, and why I find cla.s.sical music a bit creepy. There was that Elton John instrumental, 'Song for Guy,' but, you know, it was just a plinky-plonky piano thing that would serve you just as well at the airport as at your funeral.

'OK, guys, best five pop songs about death.' 'Magic,' says Barry. 'A Laura's Dad Tribute List. OK, OK. 'Leader of the Pack,' The bloke dies on his motorbike, doesn't he? And then there's 'Dead Man's Curve' by Jan and Dean, and 'Terry,' by Twinkle. Ummm . . . that Bobby Goldsboro one, you know, 'And Honey, I Miss You . . . ' ' He sings it off-key, even more so than he would have done normally, and d.i.c.k laughs. 'And what about 'Tell Laura I Love Her.' That'd bring the house down.' I'm glad that Laura isn't here to see how much amus.e.m.e.nt her father's death has afforded us.

'I was trying to think of serious songs. You know, something that shows a bit of respect.'

'What, you're doing the DJ-ing at the funeral, are you? Ouch. Bad job. Still, the Bobby Goldsboro could be one of the smoochers. You know, when people need a breather. Laura's mum could sing it.' He sings the same line, off-key again, but this time in a falsetto voice to show that the singer is a woman.

'f.u.c.k off, Barry.'

'I've already worked out what I'm having at mine. 'One Step Beyond,' by Madness. 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.' '

'Just 'cause it's in The Big Chill. The Big Chill.'

'I haven't seen he Big Chill, he Big Chill, have I?' have I?'

'You lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You saw it in a Lawrence Kasdan double bill with Body Heat.' Body Heat.'

'Oh, yeah. But I'd forgotten about that, honestly. I wasn't just nicking the idea.'

'Not much.'

And so on.

I try again later.

' 'Abraham, Martin, and John,' ' says d.i.c.k.

'That's quite a nice one.'

'What was Laura's dad's name?'

'Ken.'

' 'Abraham, Martin, John, and Ken.' Nah, I can't see'

'f.u.c.k off.'

'Black Sabbath? Nirvana? They're all into death.'

Thus is Ken's pa.s.sing mourned at Championship Vinyl.

I have thought about the stuff I want played at my funeral, although I could never list it to anyone, because they'd die laughing. 'One Love' by Bob Marley; 'Many Rivers to Cross' by Jimmy Cliff; 'Angel' by Aretha Franklin. And I've always had this fantasy that someone beautiful and tearful will insist on 'You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me' by Gladys Knight, but I can't imagine who that beautiful, tearful person will be. But that's my funeral, as they say, and I can afford to be generous and sentimental about it. It doesn't alter the point that Barry made, even if he didn't know he was making it: we have about seven squillion hours' worth of recorded music in here, and there's hardly a minute of it that describes the way Laura's feeling now.

I've got one suit, dark gray, last worn at a wedding three years ago. It doesn't fit too well now, in all the obvious places, but it'll have to do. I iron my white shirt and find a tie that isn't made of leather and doesn't have saxophones all over it, and wait for Liz to come and pick me up. I haven't got anything to take with me - the cards in the newsagent's were all vile. They looked like the sort of thing the Addams Family would send to each other on their birthdays. I wish I'd been to a funeral before. One of my grandfathers died before I was born, and the other when I was very little; both my grandmothers are still alive, if you can call it that, but I never see them. One lives in a home, the other lives with Aunty Eileen, my dad's sister. And when they do die it will hardly be the end of the world. Just, you know, wow, stop press, extremely ancient person dies. And though I've got friends who have friends who've died - a gay guy that Laura was at college with got Aids, a mate of my mate Paul was killed in a motorbike crash, and loads of them have lost parents - it's something I've always managed to put off. Now I can see that it's something I'll be doing for the rest of my life. Two grans, Mum and Dad, aunts and uncles, and, unless I'm the first person in my immediate circle to go, loads of people my age, eventually - maybe even sooner than eventually, given that one or two of them are bound to cop it before they're supposed to. Once I start to think about it, it seems terribly oppressive, as though I'll be going to three or four a week for the next forty years, and I won't have the time or the inclination to do anything else. How do people cope? Do you have to go? What happens if you refuse on the grounds of it being just too f.u.c.king grim? ('I'm sorry for you and everything, Laura, but it's not really my scene, you know?') I don't think I can bear to get any older than I already am, and I begin to develop a grudging admiration for my parents, just because they've been to scores of funerals and have never really moaned about it, not to me, anyway. Perhaps they just don't have the imagination to see that funerals are actually even more depressing than they look.

If I'm honest, I'm only going because it might do me some good in the long run. Can you get off with your ex-girlfriend at her father's funeral? I wouldn't have thought so. But you never know.

'So the vicar says nice things, and then, what, we all troop outside and they bury him?'

Liz is talking me through it.

'It's at a crematorium.'

'You're having me on.'

'Of course I'm not having you on, you fool.'

'A crematorium? Jesus.'

'What difference does it make?'

'Well, none, but . . . Jesus.' I wasn't prepared for this.

'What's the matter?'

'I don't know, but . . . b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.'

She sighs. 'Do you want me to drop you off at a tube station?'

'No, of course not.'

'Shut up, then.'

'I just don't want to pa.s.s out, that's all. If I pa.s.s out because of lack of preparation, it'll be your fault.'

'What a pathetic specimen you are. You know that n.o.body actively enjoys these things, don't you? You know that we're all going to find this morning terribly upsetting? It's not just you. I've been to one cremation in my life and I hated it. And even if I'd been to a hundred it wouldn't be any easier. Stop being such a baby.'

'Why isn't Ray going, do you think?'

'Wasn't invited. n.o.body in the family knows him. Ken was fond of you, and Jo thinks you're great.' Jo is Laura's sister, and I think she's great. She's like Laura to look at, but she hasn't got the sharp suits, or the sharp tongue, or any of the 'A' levels and degrees.

'Nothing more than that?'

'Ken didn't die for your benefit, you know. It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the film of your life story.'

Of course. Isn't that how it works for everybody?

'Your dad died, didn't he?'

'Yes. A long time ago. When I was eighteen.'

'Did it affect you?' Terrible. Stupid. 'For ages?' Saved. Just.

'It still does.'

'How?'

'I don't know. I still miss him, and think about him. Talk to him, sometimes.'

'What do you say?'

'That's between me and him.' But she says it gently, with a little smile. 'He knows more about me now that he's dead than he ever did when he was alive.'

'And whose fault's that?'

'His. He was Stereotype Dad, you know, too busy, too tired. I used to feel bad about it, after he'd gone, but in the end I realized that I was just a little girl, and quite a good little girl, too. It was up to him, not me.'

This is great. I'm going to cultivate friendships with people who have dead parents, or dead friends, or dead partners. They're the most interesting people in the world. And they're accessible, too! They're all around us! Even if astronauts or former Beatles or shipwreck survivors did have more to offer - which I doubt - you never get to meet them anyway. People who know dead people, as Barbra Streisand might have sung but didn't, are the luckiest people in the world.

'Was he he cremated?' cremated?'

'Why does it matter?'

'I dunno. Just interested. Because you said you'd been to one cremation, and I was wondering, you know . . . '

'I'd give Laura a couple of days before you start pumping her with questions like this. It's not the kind of life experience that lends itself to idle chatter.'

'That's your way of telling me to shut up, right?'

'Right.'

Fair enough.

The crematorium is in the middle of nowhere, and we leave the car in a huge, almost empty car park and walk over to the buildings, which are new and horrible, too bright, not serious enough. You can't imagine that they're going to burn people in here; you can imagine, however, some iffy happy-clappy new religious group meeting for a sing-song once a week. I wouldn't have my old man buried here. I reckon I'd need some help from the atmosphere to get a really good head of grief going, and I wouldn't get it from all this exposed brickwork and stripped pine.

It's a three-chapel multiplex. There is even a sign on the wall telling you what's on in each, and at what time:

CHAPEL 1. 11:30 MR E BARKERCHAPEL 2. 12:00 MR K LYDONCHAPEL 3. 12:00 -

Good news in Chapel 3, at least. Cremation canceled. Reports of death exaggerated, ha ha. We sit down in the reception area and wait while the place starts to fill up. Liz nods to a couple of people, but I don't know them; I try to think of men's names beginning with 'E.' I'm hoping that an old person is getting the treatment in Chapel 1, because if and when we see the mourners come out, I don't want them to be too distressed. Eric. Ernie. Ebenezer. Ethelred. Ezra. We're all right. We're laughing. Well, not laughing, exactly, but whoever it is is at least four hundred years old, and no one will be grieving too much in those circ.u.mstances, will they? Ewan. Edmund. Edward. b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. Could be any age.

No one's crying in the reception area yet, but there are a few people on the edge, and you can see they're going to go over it before the morning is over. They are all middle-aged, and they know the ropes. They talk quietly, shake hands, give wan smiles, kiss, sometimes; and then, for no reason I can see, and I feel hopelessly out of my depth, lost, ignorant, they stand, and troop through the door marked CHAPEL 2.

It's dark in there, at least, so it's easier to get into the mood. The coffin is up at the front, slightly raised off the floor, but I can't work out what it's resting on; Laura, Jo, and Janet Lydon are in the first row, standing very close, with a couple of men I don't know beside them. We sing a hymn, pray, there's a brief and unsatisfactory address from the vicar, some stuff from his book, and another hymn, and then there's this sudden, heart-stopping clanking of machinery and the coffin disappears slowly through the floor. And as it does so, there's a howl from in front of us, a terrible, terrible noise that I don't want to hear: I can only just tell that it's Laura's voice, but I know that it is, and at that moment I want to go to her and offer to become a different person, to remove all trace of what is me, as long as she will let me look after her and try to make her feel better.

When we get out into the light, people crowd around Laura and Jo and Janet, and hug them; I want to do the same, but I don't see how I can. But Laura sees Liz and me hovering on the fringe of the group, and comes to us, and thanks us for coming, and holds us both for a long time, and when she lets go of me I feel that I don't need to offer to become a different person: it has happened already.

Twenty-six