What to Do When Someone Dies Read Free Page A

‘Please!’ between two sentences and blurted it all out.
    There was a sudden outpouring of emotion and then of questions. When had it happened? Was I all right? Did I need any help? Should my mother come over right now? Should they both come over? Had I told my sister or should she do that for me? And what about Aunt Caroline – she had to know? I told them I had to go, I would speak to them later, but right now I had calls to make and things to do. When I put the phone down, I thought about that. What were the things I had to do? There were death certificates to be signed. Wills to be read. A funeral. Did I have to do all that or did it happen automatically?
    I needed to speak to Joe, Greg’s partner and his dear friend. But I only got through to his answering-machine, and I couldn’t bear to break the news like that. I imagined his face when he heard, his blazing blue eyes; he would be able to cry the tears I didn’t yet seem able to. Tania would have to tell him for me. I thought she’d want to anyway; she was new to the company and adored Joe, as a schoolgirl adores a movie star.
    I went through Greg’s address book and mine and wrote out a list of forty-three people. It was a more select group than had been at our party. Then we had invited plenty of people we hadn’t seen since the previous year’s party, some neighbours, people we were gradually losing touch with. They would find out on the grapevine, or when they got in touch with me, or perhaps some would never find out. They would wonder occasionally what had happened to old Greg and Ellie and then they would think of something else.
    I got the phone and started calling the people roughly in the order they had come out of my address book and then out of Greg’s. The first was Gwen Abbott, one of my oldest friends, and the last was Ollie Wilkes, the one cousin Greg had stayed closely in touch with. Making that first call, I could hardly punch out the number, my hands were trembling so much. When I told Gwen and heard her cry of shock and surprise, I felt that I was experiencing it all over again, except that it was worse because the blow was struck on bruised and broken flesh. After I had put the phone down I simply sat, almost gasping for breath, as if I was in thin air at high altitude. I felt I couldn’t go through with it, reliving the moment through other people over and over again.
    But it got easier. I found a form of words that worked and practised it before making the calls. ‘Hello, this is Ellie. I’ve got some bad news…’ After a few times, I became quite calm about it. I managed to steer each conversation and bring it to a fairly quick close. I had a few set phrases. ‘I have things to do’; ‘I’m sorry, I can’t really talk about him at the moment’; ‘That’s very kind of you.’ It was worst with his dearest friend Fergus who had loved Greg for much longer than I had. He’d been his running companion, confidant, surrogate brother, best man. He said, ‘What will we do without him, Ellie?’ I heard his dazed, cracked voice and thought, That’s how I’m feeling too; I just don’t know it yet. I felt about grief as if it was crouching out of sight in hiding from me, waiting to spring out and ambush me when I least expected it.
    Halfway through the list, there was an urgent knocking at the door and I opened it to find Joe standing there. He was in a suit and carrying the familiar slim briefcase that Greg used to tease him about, saying it was always empty and just for show. But although there were no bruises or injuries on him, he looked like a man who had been in a punch-up and come off worst, reeling, pale and glassy-eyed. Before I could speak, he stepped over the threshold and enveloped me in his embrace. All I could think of was how different he felt from Greg, taller and broader, with a different smell as well, soap and leather.
    I wanted so badly to break down and cry in his arms, but somehow I couldn’t. Instead Joe