I Was the Funeral's Only Real Guest

How it begins

I was the only person at the funeral who had not been told to cry.

That should have been my first warning.

The woman beside me began at the opening hymn, discreetly, with a folded handkerchief. The man across the aisle waited until the second verse. Good timing. Different intensities. Whoever had booked them understood the work.

I had been paid to sit in the third row and look as though I had known the deceased from somewhere difficult to explain.

No name had been supplied.

Sometimes families preferred that.

At the front, the coffin stood open beneath a spray of white flowers. I could not see inside from my seat.

The officiant welcomed us as friends.

Nobody met anyone else's eyes.

When we rose for the reading, the woman beside me brushed my sleeve.

"You're early," she whispered.

"For what?"

She stared at me, then looked toward the back of the chapel.

The sound technician shook his head.

I knew him. Not well, but enough to recognize the scar beside his mouth. He usually worked product launches.

I walked forward before anyone invited me.

The coffin was empty.

Inside the lid, where a lining should have been, someone had pinned a small yellow card.

HELLO, LITTLE LARK.

My knees softened.

Only one person had called me that. She had taught me how to stand beside a grieving stranger without pretending I could fix anything. She had vanished six weeks earlier.

Behind me, a chair scraped.

The officiant stopped reading.

I took a photograph of the card.

Then I turned around.

"Who hired you?" I asked.

Nobody answered.

At the back of the chapel, the technician reached for the door.

I knew then that the service had not been arranged for someone dead.

It had been arranged for me to do something while I believed she was.