A Little Love by Amanda Prowse Page B

spent the afternoon. Pru knew he had been due to arrive last night, but she hadn’t seen him. He was probably with Isabel, who she had seen. William’s mother was barely able to converse. Grief sat like a stopper in her throat. The two women had hugged briefly and parted immediately, as though their combined sadness might overwhelm everybody. Isabel had been supported by a friend and she seemed to have shrunk in stature, her eyes hollow and staring, features pinched, movements stilted. It tore at Pru to see the hurt in William’s mother so visibly manifested. She barely acknowledged anyone; it took all of her strength to remain calm, centred.
    Pru lay on the bed and closed her eyes. She had spent many of her waking moments this way over the last ten days, hovering between the oblivion of sleep and the dark pit of sadness that threatened to pull her in.
    Milly knocked on the door and entered. ‘It’s nearly time to leave.’
    ‘I’ll be five minutes.’
    ‘I’ll wait here for you.’
    ‘No, I’m okay, Mills,’ Pru answered without opening her eyes or turning her head. ‘Just give me a mo.’
    Milly left as Pru clambered from the bed and pulled on her navy jacket, applying neither make-up nor a comb to her slightly ratty hair.
    ‘Right then, Alfie, I’m as set as I’ll ever be. You stay close and we’ll get through this together.’ She smoothed her skirt and left the room, to find Milly standing outside her door.
    A crowd had gathered in the opulent square hallway. With her eyes lowered, Pru couldn’t easily distinguish individuals, but she was aware of a mass of black cloth, repeated sharp intakes of breath and a sea of sad faces.
    The front door opened to reveal a line of black shiny cars that looked grand, oddly celebratory as they sat on the gravel. William and Bobby were to have a joint funeral in the church where they were to have been married. Pru agreed with Milly, it was right that the service should be conducted in a place that had meant something to both of them.
    Pru watched as Isabel stepped through the door and on to the gravel. Her body bucked as she saw the hearses. ‘Oh my God!’ she screeched. ‘Please no! Oh my God! No! No! Someone needs to get him out of there! He can’t be in there. Please, Chris, please! Tell me he’s not in there! My baby, my boy!’ Isabel’s knees gave way and Christopher and another man caught her and kept her upright. She could barely walk, just managing a shuffle as her feet dragged along beneath her.
    The two men escorted her back inside. It was best that she lie down and let the day wash over her. There was no need to put her through the torture of watching her son’s coffin being lowered into the ground. It would serve no purpose. Pru was sympathetic to her distress but she envied her the escape.
    She returned her attention to the shiny black hearses and the coffins within them, transfixed. Despite being early May, the day was cloaked in a dull grey blanket of rain. She and Milly slid on to the back seat of one of the cars and her eyes never left the wooden box set out behind them. Flower arrangements in a riot of colour were grouped in clusters around the coffin. Her own, a cascade of lilies interwoven with fresh ivy, sat on the top. ‘I can see it now: white lilies with ivy trailing through them, like they’ve been grabbed from the wild and bunched together. It will be haphazard but beautiful!’
    Feeling quite detached, Pru didn’t register the well-wishers that had lined the route to the church. Some were there out of respect, some through morbid curiosity – it was big news in a small place. A double funeral was rare and the couple’s youth made it extra newsworthy. Plus the fact that it was the son of that posh woman with the really big house.
    Pru sat at the front of the church, next to Milly, their arms touching, giving mutual comfort with this simple gesture. Music began to filter through the little Norman church, not overly sombre, but