Diamond Dust

7

He descended into limbo – or grief – drifting through the days without any sense of what else was happening in the world. He kept strange hours, often sleeping in snatches through the day and sitting up most of the night. Nothing seemed to matter. When friends called he told them he was all right and didn't want help. He rarely answered the phone and didn't open letters or look at the newspaper or listen to music or the radio.

It was a call from the coroner's office that ended this hiatus. All the forensic tests had been completed and the coroner was ready to release Steph's body for disposal. They needed to know which undertaker was in charge of the funeral arrangements.

Shocked out of his zombie state, he remembered his conversation with Julie Hargreaves, about putting his energy into giving Steph the sort of send-off she would have wanted.

'What day is it?'

'Wednesday.'

'The date, I mean.'

'March the tenth.'

'March? More than two weeks had drifted by and he'd done nothing about it.

'I'll get back to you shortly.'

He snatched up the Yellow Pages and looked under Funeral Directors. The process took over. The same afternoon, clean-shaven and showered, wearing a suit, he went into Bath, from the undertaker's to the Abbey to the Francis Hotel, making decisions about black Daimlers and brass handles and orders of service and bridge rolls and chicken wings. He was functioning again.