’
‘Yeah, but-’ I was about to ask her how she’d found me here, but I realised before I got the question out that it was like asking a dog how it had found a bone it had once buried. Juliet was a predator, and she had my scent: she could find me any time, anywhere, without the benefit of my number, my address or my permission. ‘I meant . . . afterwards,’ I finished lamely, conscious of the little priest looking at me with bristling resentment. ‘Could you wait for me outside? I’ll just be another ten minutes or so.
Juliet considered, then nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ she agreed, and she turned and walked out without another word. Again, Juliet walking out is something that stays in your mind for a long time after you’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that I’m obsessive in any way: it’s a side effect of what she is, that’s all. I tore my stare away, apologised to Carla and discovered with wry amusement that she was still staring at Juliet’s departing back.
The bride forgets it is her marriage morn;
The bridegroom too forgets as I go by.
But this wasn’t a wedding, it was a funeral, and I’d disrupted it more than enough. We went back to our seats. I looked across at the coffin, and listened, too – listened on the frequencies that the living don’t use all that much. Nothing. The dead still kept up their cricket-chirping from the garden of remembrance, but from John there wasn’t so much as a tinker’s fart. I had my answer now, at any rate: John’s vengeful ghost had anchored itself in his flesh again and come along with us for the ride.
On the credit side that last attack, if it was an attack, had spent him: as the priest pressed the switch again John Gittings in his sustainable-hardwood casket rolled through the furnace doors into eternity without valediction.
When it was all over I asked Carla if she’d be okay going back without me.