Human Remains

The third one I tried – Co-operative Funeralcare – had a live person on the other end of the phone.
    ‘My mother died,’ I said, by way of introduction.
    The woman who answered was very professional and calm. She told me she was deeply sorry to hear that, and that the best way forward was for them to come and see me to discuss possible options for the funeral.
    I looked around the living room, at the state of it. ‘Can I come to your office?’ I asked. ‘I could do with the fresh air.’
    I felt dazed by all this, the suddenness of it, and all my routines had been profoundly disturbed. I’d hardly slept, hadn’t really eaten, for what must be days. Last night I had gone to bed early and after two hours of restlessness got up and watched television until four o’clock. Then I’d gone back to bed and the next time I woke up it was ten to eleven. I felt adrift, as if I lacked any sort of plan or purpose, feeding the cat – who wasn’t interested – then making toast which I never got around to eating. I decided to get my act together, starting with planning Mum’s funeral.
    As the day dwindled I drove to the small shopping centre on the outskirts of town, a concrete walkway lined with shops, at the end of it the Co-op where I used to stop on the way home from work to get groceries for Mum. Next door to it, to my surprise although it must have been there for years upon years, was the Co-operative Funeralcare.
    I stood outside for a minute as I was early, window-shopping for headstones. Most of them were sculptures of Mary, her hands out in welcome, or Jesus pointing to his heart. Or an angel looking sad. At the edge, a plain headstone made out of red granite, the only words carved upon it, in a garish gold lettering, ‘In Loving Memory’. Not, as I would almost have expected, ‘Your Loved One’s Name Here’.
    I went inside.
    ‘Ms Hayer?’ The woman behind the desk was soberly dressed in a white blouse and dark grey skirt, a bleached-blonde bob tucked neatly behind ears that sported a single diamond stud. She regarded me with sympathetic blue eyes, head tilted to one side.
    I’m not going to start crying, I wanted to say. You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to cave in.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘You must be Jackie?’
    She took me through into an office next door that was decorated like a living room, comfy but upright sofas, a coffee table which held several leather-bound albums and a box of tissues. On the wall, a large framed print of a woodland shrouded in mist. A big, solid-looking Swiss cheese plant dominated one corner. The window looked out over the car park at the back, people coming and going with their shopping.
    Jackie talked me through the options for running a funeral. They could do the whole lot for me, she said, from the coffin to the cars, taking care of the deceased, planning the service in conjunction with the crematorium or the church of my choice. Or, if I preferred, and some people did nowadays, they could do a very nice Humanist service and arrange a natural burial in a wood specially designated for the purpose. And it could all be done for one simple cost, with interest-free payment options if need be.
    I wanted to sign up, get it over with. She glanced up at the clock on the wall above my head and said I could probably do with thinking about it, and if I wanted to go ahead she could see me the next day. She gave me a brochure with the different coffin designs and wood colours in it, a brochure about woodland burials, and a sheaf of other bits of paper.
    When I got back out into the shopping arcade, it was chilly and nearly dark. Most of the shops were closing. I stood there for a moment, disorientated, wondering what had happened to the day.
    ‘Are you alright?’
    I looked round, surprised, to find a man standing next to me. He was tall, in a brown jacket with a scarf around his neck, and although his head was shaved he was younger than he looked. He wasn’t smiling and yet he seemed to know me.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m OK.’
    ‘Very well,’ he said.
    He hesitated next to me for a moment. Did I know him? I felt as if I should have known his name and I tried some out, experimentally, in my head. Ian? No, that wasn’t it… Dave? Simon? The trouble with recognising people unexpectedly was that it was possible that I knew him from work – not as a colleague, but rather as a subject – someone I’d worked on, some nominal whose face was