The Reunion

outside, most of which she didn’t eat. At night he sat with her until she fell asleep, then went inside, where he lay awake, his heart heavy in his chest like a stone. The heat persisted, draping itself over the house like a thick woollen blanket, stifling, suffocating.
    On the fourth day, they scattered Lilah’s ashes in the wood. She hadn’t been clear, in the end, about what she wanted, whether it was to be taken back to England or to stay here. Zac took the decision that she should stay in France. It was, after all, the place she’d chosen to come to spend her last days. The cremation was organised and carried out within seventy-two hours: it was quick and hassle-free, not at all what Andrew would have expected of French bureaucracy. They invited no one else. They told no one else.
    ‘There’s no one else she would have wanted,’ Zac said.
    The sun shone brightly as the breeze took what was left of her, and they stood in perfect silence, even Isabelle falling mute. It wasn’t much of a ceremony. Lilah might well have preferred a smart London funeral with everyone in black tie and a raucous wake afterwards.
    ‘Funerals aren’t really for the dead though, are they?’ Zac said. ‘They’re for the living.’
    Zac stayed up in the woods for a while after everyone else had come back to the house. After an hour or two, Andrew went to find him. He was sitting on a fallen tree, calm and apparently perfectly serene, just listening to the forest. He smiled at Andrew when he saw him.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Andrew asked him.
    He shrugged. ‘I suppose. I don’t know what I’m doing, really. I don’t know what to do.’ Andrew sat down at his side. The forest canopy softened the sunlight, the trees were still. ‘It’s just been the two of us, you know, for a long time. We became quite insular. She became everything to me.’ He shook his head a little, a futile attempt to shake off grief. ‘And it was good,’ he said, raising his head, his eyes up to the forest canopy, ‘to have a part of her. For a while. You understand, don’t you?’ Andrew nodded. He could feel Zac’s eyes on him, searching his face. ‘She’s special. It was something to love her.’ He fell silent.
    After a long time, he said: ‘I know about what happened at Christmas.’
    Andrew’s mouth went dry, his heart felt small and hard, a peach pit.
    ‘It doesn’t matter. I mean… It doesn’t matter. Fidelity was never her strong suit.’
    ‘Zac, Jesus, I am so sorry,’ Andrew said, the words sounding hollow and inadequate as they came out of his mouth.
    Zac shook his head. ‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter. She only told me about it when she was trying to get me to leave her. She didn’t want me…’ He stopped and took a deep breath. ‘To have to watch, you know? To have to be there…’
    ‘But you stayed anyway,’ Andrew said, and for a horrible moment he thought he might cry; he could feel his throat constrict, his voice starting to catch. Zac put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder.
    ‘I’m not telling you this because I wanted to make you feel bad. I know it seems like I am, but it isn’t that.’
    Andrew couldn’t quite believe that Zac was consoling him, that he was letting Zac console him. He got to his feet. ‘Please, please don’t say anything more. I feel terrible about what happened, I wasn’t thinking then, it was such an awful day…’
    ‘I know all that, and I know why she did it, and why you did it. That isn’t the point. That’s not why I’m telling you this. She talked to me, she told me things, about everything that’s been going on here, with you, Natalie, Jen and Dan. I just…’ He broke off, shook his head a little, looked up at Andrew, gave him a small, sad smile. ‘It meant something to her, that night you spent together…’
    Andrew’s chin was almost on his chest, he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt so ashamed. And then Zac reached out and touched his arm, and the shame deepened.
    ‘It was a good thing for her,’ Zac said. ‘It… gave her something, something I couldn’t, some comfort, it went some way to healing a very old wound, one I didn’t even know about, one I could never help her with. And I’m glad of that, I really am. I mean it, Andrew,’ he said, and Andrew stood there, limp, wordless, taken aback by the depth of Zac’s selflessness. All that mattered to him was Lilah. ‘I’m glad that you loved her. I’m glad that she knew that, in the