Page 60 of The Mother-in-Law

I try to imagine the eulogy I would have given Diana had I been the one to speak. I glance up at the framed photo of her on her coffin. Her chin is raised, her eyes guarded, her lips curved into the barest smile. It is just so Diana that I can’t help but feel something. It’s hard to believe that I won’t see that guarded smile again. It’s equally hard to believe that she might have exited this world on anything other than her own terms.

I become aware of a flutter in my body, a niggle at first but slowly it fills my chest like a scream. I put a hand gently to my lips but a sob escapes, excruciatingly loud. The children look at me curiously. Even Ollie pauses in his eulogy and frowns. I want to get it together, but it’s like a train. I double over, all at once consumed by it. The stark emotion. The utter, inexplicable loss.

Ollie and Patrick are pallbearers, along with two friends of Tom’s. The other two positions—apparently there is a requirement for six—are given to the funeral staff. I think briefly that perhaps those roles should have been offered to Nettie and myself, but no one asked me and I assume no one asked Nettie either. And so Diana is taken out and placed in the hearse, and we are forced to endure small talk for another forty-five minutes as my children tear around the lawn like they’re at a garden party. Harriet has climbed a tree and is sitting on a branch with a child I saw in the venue, a grandchild of one of Diana’s friends, perhaps. The hems of their dresses are grubby with dirt.

People disappear in dribbles, most heading to the function room at the Half-Moon Hotel, where we are putting on sandwiches and drinks this afternoon. But a few people who aren’t heading to the wake hang around to give their condolences. Condolence after condolence, in the absence of alcohol, is quite frankly exhausting. Ollie obviously thinks so, judging by his drawn expression, so I tell him to head off and leave me to farewell the final few mourners.

‘What about the kids?’ he says.

‘I’ll handle the kids. Go.’

Finally he does, catching a ride with an old friend of Tom’s.

I am standing there, with Edie hanging off one leg, when another mourner approaches me. She’s young, perhaps five or ten years younger than me. The man beside her looks vaguely familiar.

‘You are Lucy,’ the woman says.

‘Yes,’ I say. My gaze moves back to the woman. I don’t think I’ve met her before, but then again, there have been a lot of people here today that I haven’t recognised. ‘Have we met?’

She smiles. ‘I have seen your picture at Diana’s house.’ She’s wearing a black long-sleeved dress and black boots, with an emerald green headscarf. ‘I am Ghezala. This is my husband, Hakem.’

‘It’s nice to meet you both. How did you know Diana?’

‘I was pregnant when I came to Australia,’ Ghezala says. ‘Diana was wonderful to me. She was there when I gave birth to my son Aarash on my kitchen floor.’

‘That was you?’ I exclaim. ‘I remember hearing about that.’ It’s hard to forget the image of Diana on the floor, let alone delivering a baby.

Ghezala smiles. ‘She was a very good woman.’

‘And what do you do, Lucy?’ Hakem asks.

‘I’m a stay-at-home mum at present,’ I tell him. I’ve been asked this a lot today. (‘What are you up to these days, Lucy? What are you doing with yourself now that you’ve finished having babies?’) Usually I don’t care what other people think of me, but given the extent of our debt, I can’t help but wonder, whatamI doing with myself? I’ve been so determined to be a stay-at-home mum, so keen to do as my own mother did, that I’ve never questioned it. Now, suddenly, I am questioning it.

‘I was a recruiter in a past life—’ I start, but Hakem cuts me off.

‘It must run in the family,’ he says. ‘Diana found me my job, several years ago when I couldn’t get an interview in this country. Now I am an engineer again because of Diana.’

That’s when I realise where I know him from. That day, at Diana’s house. I remember the way he thanked her, the extent of his gratitude. I remember the way Diana brushed it off like it was no big deal.

‘Actually, just yesterday Hakem and I were invited to take seats on the board of Diana’s charity,’ Ghezala says. ‘It was her wish that the board have representation from refugees.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I say. ‘Diana was passionate about that charity.’

‘We will make sure her legacy is carried on. We will make her proud.’

I pause, thinking about how that was all I had wanted for the longest time, to make Diana proud.

Ghezala takes my hand. ‘Diana was in the business of giving people chances,’ she says. ‘But sometimes you can be so busy looking at the problems in the world, you forget to give chances to those right under your nose.’

I smile.

‘I think she might do things differently, given the chance,’ Ghezala says, and the funny thing is, I think she might too.

36

DIANA

The past . . .