A Dark Matter Episode 51

She looked around the chaos of the room. Just the chest of drawers left. She pulled all three drawers out and threw them on the floor. Tights and bras, T-shirts and pyjamas, hoodies, leggings and jumpers, nothing unusual or out of place.

All of it dumped behind her in the mound with bedding and other clothes, trainers and heels, everything Mel owned in a pile of pointless nothing.

Hannah sat on the edge of the pile and imagined turning it into a funeral pyre, placing a lit match against the flimsiest blouse, lighting up all of Mel’s life and burning down the flat in the process.

She stared around her for a long time, thinking. Then she spotted something, a small piece of paper poking from underneath the empty suitcase that had been under the bed.

She closed her eyes, breathed, opened them and reached for the paper. She unfolded it carefully. It was a receipt for a pay-as-you-go phone, purchased from a shop on Princes Street two months ago.

Hannah looked at the paper then around at the mess.

The force is strong in this one, she thought.

DOROTHY

Jim always told her that sun-drenched funerals didn’t feel right, especially in Scotland, but any chance to have warmth on her skin was bliss for Dorothy.

Craigmillar Castle Park Cemetery was the newest in the city, a languorous spread of gentle slopes hiding between the Inch Park football pitches and the 14th Century castle at the top of the hill.

It was neatly mown with some fenced-off tree nurseries, the sapling beech trees already bent over from the wind that ripped over the hill most days.

Today was breezy and warm, bees sniffing at the flowers on the graves, a pair of rabbits with their tails bobbing in the long grass of the adjacent field.

At the bottom of the slope was the area set aside for children’s graves, including those who were stillborn or died soon after birth.

Dorothy had done a few of those funerals, heartbreaking for everyone, and she never felt she managed to help the bereaved parents.

One grave down there had a scan photo pinned to the gravestone next to a cuddly duck that the kid never got to cuddle.

But they were up the hill today, halfway along a new row of plots, for Ursula Bonetti’s send-off.

Her brother arranged the funeral, and by his account she was a terrific lady – full of vitality, from the deli she ran in the west end to the amateur opera and musical theatre, a long line of lovers into her elderly years, but never settled down.

So what? Dorothy had the opposite life and where had it got her?

The open grave was surrounded by more than a hundred people, mostly Italian Scots but others too, and many of the women wore brightly coloured dresses.

Ursula had requested it, refusing to make this a downbeat affair, and she left money for a huge party later at The Balmoral, pricey at the best of times.

Detachment

She’d lived with cancer without treatment for just two months before giving up in her sleep. It was a brave way to live and die, and Dorothy had a pang of envy.

Archie organised the Bonetti brother and the rest of the pallbearers. He was keeping an eye on Dorothy after the incident at Seafield, but she was fine. She felt a kind of detachment.

This wasn’t her grief, it was Gianluca Bonetti’s and the rest of Ursula’s family and friends.

The priest intoned over the hole in the ground, the ornate white coffin sitting alongside on the carpet of fake grass the council provided. People rarely did open burials with everyone invited these days, but Dorothy liked it.

It was more real, the smell of the earth, the gulls flapping overhead, gusts of wind making a couple of older ladies hold on to their hats.

People had been honouring their dead this way for thousands of years, and that thread connected all of humanity.

Dorothy was the driver today, so she let Archie orchestrate the service. Not that anything really needed taking care of, if they did their preparation a funeral almost ran itself on the day.

She turned her face towards the sun, thin wisps of cotton clouds straggling across the sky.

She thought about Melanie. She wondered if the Chengs would bring the funeral to her. She would be honoured to handle it even though it would be difficult. Dorothy thought about the secrets Melanie’s body might hold for forensics and the pathologist at the Cowgate mortuary.

She wondered if she would give anything up or if she would be buried with those secrets. Because sometimes we don’t get answers, sometimes we never see the connections that lie under the surface.

She looked at Ursula’s coffin surrounded by people. What secrets did Ursula die with? Everyone has an interior life that’s winked out when they die. Where does that knowledge go?

Information

What secrets went up in smoke with Jim’s body? She thought about DNA, just molecules bound together, yet they hold so much information, so much that connects us. Or doesn’t, in the case of Jim, Rebecca and Natalie.

But just because Natalie wasn’t related to Jim, didn’t mean Jim and Rebecca weren’t lovers.

And she thought about Jacob Glassman alone in his big house. Wondered if there were secrets hidden in the camera footage, if he would ever have an answer.

The priest stopped talking and Ursula was lowered into the ground. Gianluca Bonetti threw a handful of damp dirt on to the white wood, followed by others, each standing for a moment then moving on.

Archie watched them reverently, hands together in front of him. He had secrets, secrets that weren’t buried forever or burned.

People had been honouring their dead this way for thousands of years, and that thread connected all of humanity.

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone is published by Orenda Books, as is Black Hearts, his latest in the same series. orendabooks.co.uk