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Manse. Bread’s cheaper than meat, Mother said. It fills you up and you don’t have to kill it.
    The toast-stack rapidly diminished. Edgar was butter and crumbs from ear to ear. Mother returned our empty mugs and plates to the kitchen when we had done.
    The lamp flickered. Threadbare curtains kept out the bit of Cold that wasn’t already inside. Cooked breakfast smells hung in the air. Father cleared his throat and said to Gregory, in a stern voice, ‘Do you know what you’ve to do?’ God help him if he’d forgotten.
    Gregory said he did, and they left the room.
    We waited quietly for them to return. I waited fidgety, wishing today was over. Sophia whispered to me, ‘What’s he to do?’
    ‘What?’ said Mother, before I got a chance to reply.
    ‘Gregory. What’s he to do?’
    ‘Carry one end of the coffin. The end her feet are at, I dare say.’
    ‘Oh … Why?’
    ‘Your Father can hardly carry it on his own, can he?’
    ‘I mean, why’s he to carry her feet end?’
    ‘I don’t know, child. Just because!’
    We were quiet again.
    Occasionally, one or other of us coughed.
    Father and Gregory didn’t come back – at least, not as soon as I thought they would. Maybe Granny Hazel was too fat and they couldn’t lift her. In case that was the reason, I made a suggestion.
    ‘Mother?’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘If Granny Hazel’s too fat …’
    ‘If she’s too fat, what?’
    ‘They could bury her a bit at a time.’
    Mother made a noise, and covered her face as if she was going to cry, or laugh, I didn’t know which.
    We were quiet … again.
    I whispered to Mother, ‘What are they doing?’
    ‘What needs to be done,’ she whispered back, and, ‘Shhh.’
    Having done what needed doing, Father and Gregory washed and dried their hands at the kitchen sink; I heard the pipes gurgling and water running. I heard their Sunday-best boots on the floor tiles. Then they came to the living room with mud and blades of grass still on their boots even though they wiped them on the doormat.
    Gregory looked flushed and his hair stuck out all over the place. He looked half mad. Father always looked flushed and half mad.
    Father, standing at the door, instructed us to take our places.
    I joined the line behind him, behind Edgar, who stood behind Gregory, who stood behind Mother, who stood behind Father. Sophia, a black bow in her blond hair, joined on the end and gripped my coat-tail. Our line would have been from tallest to smallest if Mother had been taller than Gregory, but Gregory and Edgar were both taller than her. Single file, we followed Father out of the living room, down the hall and through the kitchen.
    Father and Gregory had removed Granny Hazel in her coffin from the table and put her outside, beside her grave.
    Like a train with its six carriages standing on end, we followed the biggest carriage, Father, out the back and across the courtyard to the cemetery. I grew up thinking garden was another word for cemetery, like toilet and privy, potato and spud.
    Poor Mother, a gossamer spectre of willowy grace, might have taken to the clouds if a windy gust had caught her off-guard. If a windy gust caught Sophia, I’d hold her down – unless the windy gust caught me too.
    Father had conscripted Gregory to assist with the ropes.
    Edgar picked his nose.
    Cloud cracked above our heads as though God had a parcel to post through. Sun shone in the gap like a fanfare. We trod over mud and assumed our positions. I looked over my shoulder at the Manse – dark, bleak, with eyes and a mouth. The cloud-crack closed and the sky became the colour of concrete after rain. The Manse’s shadow expanded, embracing the outhouses and green fields beyond.
    I went somewhere else in my mind. I can’t say what dream I took comfort in, or which nightmare I focused upon – perhaps one relating to the words ‘Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me’, because the usage of anything resembling a rod or a staff brought tears and misery,