Free Dead of Light by Chaz Brenchley

glimpses through the crowd. It all felt woefully familiar. I’d lived most of my life at the fringes, acknowledged and tolerated, but always too weak to be truly welcomed even before I turned traitor and fled.
    Besides, it was safer for Laura. Hamish could take it, Hamish could stand in a tight circle of Macallans and feel nothing, seemingly; but I wouldn’t chance Laura’s more tender flesh among the strange currents and contrary fields that would be warring around that grave now. Mortal girl wasn’t made to keep that kind of company. I’d once seen four cousins pack around a punter in a pub, just for the joke of it; he’d done them no harm, only a man trying to get served at the bar. Marty’s idea, and no surprise there: “Let’s show Ben,” he’d said. “Come on, all of us, make it better that way.”
    The others had grinned, and gone with him. They’d crowded the poor guy without even touching him, just making a wall of their bodies around him. Briefly, I lost sight of him; but then there he was, thrusting them heedlessly apart and reeling towards the door like a man long gone in drink when he’d only just come in, he hadn’t had one yet. I saw his face good and close, saw the sweat standing out on his pale skin, saw the tremble under his skin. And then his mouth opened and a thin vomit gushed out, and he doubled up around his voiding stomach; and they hadn’t even touched him, he’d only stood a few seconds too close to too many Macallans.
    Some of these civics weren’t looking too good even now, even with fresh air at their backs and my family’s eyes and minds turned altogether the other way. Those who’d gone to the wake, I thought, would have had a dreadful time of it; and no, I wasn’t exposing Laura to the least risk of that. Shouldn’t have brought her in the first place, in all honesty. Here despite that, I had a duty to keep her safe, as well as an overmastering wish. I’d keep her physically as far as possible from any congregation of my family, and hurry her away at the slightest sign of distress.
    o0o
    I couldn’t see the grave now, for the mass of people between it and us; but Hamish’s rich voice came rolling out to us quite undiminished. Solemn and heartfelt, it talked of sure and certain hope. The only thing that I was sure and certain of was that Marty was dead and gone, far beyond hope, but still I couldn’t call Hamish a liar even in the most private recesses of my mind. Hamish believed ; you had to give credence to that, whatever else you knew about the guy.
    The old, traditional service, sonorous and potent; prayers and hymns, and my sister’s acid voice cutting through the mumbles all around me, high and clear and doing properly whatever was there to be done, be it singing the soprano line or simply saying ‘Amen’.
    The surprise was Laura at my side, warmly contralto and equally loud. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised; I knew she could sing, from sessions at the Irish Centre and kitchen ceilidhs and walks home from the pub. And I knew too that she had as little patience as Hazel with tasks skimped. Of course she would sing out, now that I thought about it, too late. Perhaps I could only legitimately be surprised that she knew the words; but then, a country doctor’s daughter, she’d probably been hauled along to church every Sunday, as much as I had.
    I loved her voice, as I loved everything about her, but just that day I could have lived without it. Most people go to funerals to be seen by the living, by the relatives, to have their sorrow duly observed and registered; but not I, not that day. Arrive late and leave early, straight after the last ‘Amen’, that was the plan. Be there for Marty, but not at all for any other of my blood. What I wanted was to come and go entirely unnoticed, except for the cousins on the gate.
    With Laura’s rich voice