Dead Romantic by C. J. Skuse Page A

about it, Zoe,’ I told her. ‘So cold. You’ve just cut a man’s head off.’
    â€˜No, I’ve just cut a corpse’s head off. It’s dead meat, Camille. It has no nerve endings. No feelings anymore. Once you accept that, it’s mind over matter. It’s easy.’
    I still couldn’t quite accept that but, as it turned out, cutting Luke’s head off had been the easy part of the process. Getting the body out of the coffin was major diffs, and getting it out quietly was even more diffs. Because the coffin was on a stand, we had to get it on the floor before we could lift him out of it. And I never realised just how heavy a coffin was.
    â€˜Come on, heave!’ Zoe whispered. ‘Bend your knees, one, two, three, LIFT!’
    â€˜I am. I’m trying as hard as I . . . can. It’s not going to . . . budge!’ We both let go and stood back. The dinghy coffin had shifted on the stand, but only slightly.
    â€˜Dead weight,’ said Zoe. ‘Blast.’
    â€˜Well, it moves on the stand, so it must be able to move off the stand as well,’ I whispered. I rounded on it, standing at the head end, opposite where Zoe had spread a black curtain out on the floor.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ said Zoe.
    â€˜Tipping him out. We’re not going to get him out of it otherwise, are we? If we can’t lift it, we’ll have to tip it.’
    â€˜No! The force will bruise him!’ she said. ‘Help me slide it back.’
    We both took the foot end of the coffin, pulled it backwards with all our might. With an almighty THUD the stand collapsed.
    Kerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumph!
    We both stood absolutely still and silent, listening out for signs of Louis or a nosey neighbour or the police, but there came nothing. Baywatch still tinkled along on the speaker.
    â€˜Well, that’s one way of doing it I suppose,’ I said when the dust had settled.
    â€˜Okay, quickly, help me pull him upright,’ said Zoe and we grabbed hold of the body by its arms and pulled it into a sitting position. As we did, the head rolled back off the shoulders and plonked into the coffin.
    We dragged the body out and lay it on the curtain, where we wrapped it up and tied both ends with curtain cord. Then we put the coffin back on the stand and filled it with the two heavy potato sacks, plus a spare water-cooler bottle we found in the corridor to weigh it down more. Once we’d wrapped the potatoes and the bottle in the Chelsea flag, it kind of looked like it had been before, except a bit more lumpy, with just his head on show.
    â€˜There. That wasn’t too taxing, was it?’ she said, then stopped. She sighed and banged her eyes shut like she’d just remembered the answer to the million-dollar question when it was a second too late.
    â€˜What? Zoe, what is it?’
    She turned to me, coming back to life and posting the cleaver back into her waistband. ‘Right, when Louis comes back, I need you to get him to do something.’
    â€˜What?’ I frowned, dreading what she was going to get me to do next.
    â€˜Nail the lid down.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Louis must nail the coffin lid down, otherwise when they nail it down tomorrow morning for the funeral, they are going to know someone has tampered with thecontents. It looks all right in this dimmed lighting, but in broad daylight it is not going to look like a body.’
    â€˜Well how am I going to get him to do that?’ I cried. ‘I’m only supposed to be saying goodbye.’
    â€˜Use your feminine charms on him. Cry again if you have to. You can do it.’
    So I did it. When Louis came back, Zoe waited behind the altar with the headless body and I turned on the water-works. I got myself in a state, producing real tears, saying I was afraid Luke’s ex was going to visit the funeral parlour the next day and put a lock of her hair in with Luke (I’d seen that on a film once)