Basorexia - J.MAGUIRE

[2.37] high

 "Can we come in?" Clare whispered as they leant into the door to where both Orla and Erin were standing, hiding away from all the adults at the wake of the woman who had collapsed at the wedding previous. 

Erin, who had looked up from the body with a frown, asked, "Why are you whispering?"

"I don't know," Clare muttered in response before they all filtered into the room. Chip saw the pale complexion of Bridie and instantly was taken back to both her brothers and her fathers funerals, a certain nausea crept up the back of her throat. She looked everywhere but the body, her gaze focused instead on the pattern of James' jacket as it was the closest thing next to her at the time.

"Thanks for coming guys. It's nice to have a bit of support at this very difficult time," Erin spoke softly as they all crowd around the casket.

"You thought she was a dick," Chelle scoffed, instantly noting how Chip had paled. Being the person that had stuck closest to her for both of those funerals, she knew how Chip did everything to avoid the open casket thing that her Mammy had insisted on from the beginning. She didn't like to see the dead, she preferred to keep the perfect image of the person alive as the last thing she remembered. She did not like to think of Cal or her Da in the way that first came to her mind. She preferred the memories over that.

"I never said that!"

"You did Erin," Orla nodded, saying the one thing on everyone else's mind.

"Ok, can I just check something?" James paused, his gaze sporadically changing as if to check he did in fact have everyone's attention. He frowned, "Everyone else can see the dead body, right?"

"It's just Bridie."

James did not seem convinced and quite frankly looked quite flabbergasted by how casual the rest of them were being. "It's Bridie's corpse. It's Bridie's dead corpse."

"It's her wake, what were you expecting?" Michelle asked with a hint of hilarity in her voice, not quite understanding her cousin's very valid reaction to the sight of a dead body.

"Haven't you seen a dead body before?" Chip asked softly, edging forward ever so slightly. She took James hand in her own, asking if he was okay as they had conducted on the eve of the wedding. He squeezed once then let go, giving her the information that she did not need to somehow figure out a way to get him out of the situation as he did for her at the wedding after Birdie had initially collapsed.

"Of course not!"

"Christ, but the English are weird," Chelle half laughed, half scoffed at his response.

"You can touch her if you want," Orla commented while cupping Bridie's face with her hands.

"Why the hell would I want to touch her?" James responded, his voice becoming dangerously close to being a screech as his brows were raised in surprise. In addition, he looked repulsed by Orla's act of touching her face, so much so that he actually moved backwards ever so slightly. Chip only noticed because she had to reposition where her gaze fell as his shoulder had moved.

"It's nice," Orla shrugged, feeling as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Stop it!"

"It's just a dead body, James. We're all going to be one someday."

"Oh, thanks for that Clare. Yeah, that's really helped!"

Michelle saw her opportunity and quickly interjected, "It really makes you think, doesn't it? Death. Just makes you want to... Do everything, just try everything..."

Clare saw through her instantly and asked, "What's going on?"

Michelle proceeded to pull her bag from her feet. She tugged a box full of scones out of the bag and opened the container. The second that Chip caught a whiff of the scones she pieced everything together and caught on instantly. A brief grin tugged on her lips whilst the others were left in confusion. "You get this shit from Macca?" Chip asked softly, wanting to make sure that Chelle hadn't been dealt something dodgy by one of the other blokes that dealt laced things to younger people who just wanted to experiment. She knew Macca did not partake in such dodgy dealings.