Bloodline

The whole thing lasted less than ten minutes. There had been no eulogy, no family recollection of childhood, no... love.

I sat there fuming. How could my siblings have allowed this to happen?

I started to get up. Surely someone had to speak.

‘Don’t,’ my brother-in-law Nicholas said while grasping the tail of my jacket to stop me. ‘Trust me. Don’t.’

I turned and looked at him and also at my cousin Brendan sitting next to him.

‘Leave it,’ Nicholas whispered. ‘This is not the time or place.’

‘And not with him here,’ Brendan added, nodding towards Toby Woodley at the back of the church.

‘But this is precisely the time and place, and it’s so wrong,’ I whispered back to them.

‘I know it’s wrong,’ Nicholas said. ‘We have all said so but your father won’t be moved.’

Well, I was moved.

As the minister was starting the committal to conclude the proceedings, rather to his surprise, and mine, I stood up and went forward to stand close to the coffin.

I turned to face the Shillingford family and looked straight at my father. As was so often the case, his face was puce with rage, but I didn’t care. This service was for Clare, not for him.

‘I wish I had prepared a few profound words to say about Clare but I hadn’t expected to be the one speaking here. But now that I am, I suppose I’d better say something.’

In all, I spoke for nearly ten minutes.

I talked at length about our childhood and the bonds of being twins, about our teenage years and us both wanting to be jockeys, about Clare’s success in her career, and how we had all thought she had so much to live for.

My mother sobbed.

Finally, I turned to face the wooden box that contained the broken mortal remains of my dear twin.

‘Clare, we loved you, and we failed you. We should have prevented this and we are so sorry. I hope you are somewhere in a better place and you can forgive us.’

I went back to my seat and sat down with a heavy heart.

Nicholas patted me on the back. He was crying. Brendan next to him was crying. In fact, there was crying going on all around me.

I noticed that even my father was now in tears. Maybe it hadn’t simply been anger but guilt that had made him behave so strangely.

The minister completed the committal and the electrically operated curtains closed around the coffin, masking it from our sight.

‘Well done,’ Nicholas said to me as we stood up. ‘You were right.’

‘But what is wrong with you all?’ I said to him in frustration. ‘Was that really the best the collective minds of the Shillingford family could come up with?’

‘There’s no such thing as collective minds in our family,’ he replied. ‘You should know that by now. The truth is that no one did anything because we were all terrified of upsetting someone else so, in the end, nothing got done at all. This funeral wasn’t planned, it simply drifted into existence.’

Geoff Grubb came over to me. ‘I thought there would have been more people here.’

‘It was for immediate family only,’ I said.

‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize that.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m pleased you came.’

‘She was a nice girl.’ He, too, seemed close to tears. ‘I’ll miss her.’ He turned away from me and wiped his eyes, clearly embarrassed by his crying. ‘She was like immediate family to me. Looked after me, she did, since my Gloria passed away last year. We had no kids of our own.’

I was quite surprised by his show of emotion, as well as by the thought of Clare in any way looking after him. Everyone thought of Geoff Grubb as a training machine, with a heart of stone. But I still didn’t think he could possibly have been the elusive secret boyfriend.

Geoff and I walked out of the crematorium chapel together into the watery sunshine. My father was standing there.

‘Dad,’ I said. ‘This is Geoff Grubb, who Clare rode for. He also owns Stable Cottage where Clare lived.’

My father shook Geoff’s offered hand, and thankfully resisted the urge to ask him why he was here.

‘Well spoken, Mark,’ he said instead, looking me in the eye.

‘Thank you, Dad,’ I said, looking straight back at him.

It was the first time I could remember, in my whole life, that my father had praised me for anything. He held out his hand to me and I shook it warmly.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice on my right, breaking the moment.

I turned to find the elderly couple who had been standing at the back. My father meanwhile faced the opposite direction, away from them, and walked off. I actually thought he was crying again.

‘Hello, Mark,’ said the man, holding out his hand.

‘Hello.’ I shook his hand. ‘And you are?’

‘You must remember us,’ the lady said.

I looked at them more closely.

‘Mr and Mrs Yates,’ I said, smiling broadly. ‘How lovely to see you again.’

‘Fred and Emma,’ Mr Yates said. ‘It is good to see you again too, Mark, but it’s a shame about the circumstances. Clare was such a sweet girl.’

Fred and Emma Yates had been our regular babysitters when Clare and I had been kids, always coming to the house together, and even staying over if our parents were away. I hadn’t seen them for nearly twenty years.