Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps: Saturday, 7th November, 2015

Lilly rarely stayed up past 1AM but she'd been up until the early hours attempting to finish her eulogy. The morning had arrived too quickly, as it always did when you don't want it to, like the first day back at work after a long weekend. Obviously, she hadn't succeeded: the eulogy in question was little more than scribbled out unfinished sentences with doodles dotted about the edges of the paper. As time went on, the black bubbles of ink on the paper had grown restless and began to jump off the page and worm their way in through Lilly's ears, only serving to occlude the passages of her brain further. She'd instead distracted herself by changing her outfit for the service, which had consumed a considerable amount of time. This was on the basis that less than 5% of her wardrobe was actually black, the other 95% taken up by a variety of pinks and pastels. By 3AM she'd resorted to taking pre-written eulogies from the internet and keeping the most appropriate bits of her favourite ones, fearing she'd gone insane when she heard Alice Jenkins tutting at her inside her head. She quickly realised that it was just the subconscious tapping of her tongue against her front teeth. Chewing on her pen as she wrote her final lines, she resolved to call up Tess and Naomi in the morning. She'd been neglecting them lately and she'd already faced Tess' spleen over it once. Tess had just a whiny of a voice as Lilly knew she herself did and therefore, she didn't want to hear any more of those choleric voice mails. In spite of their apparent reconciliation, though, When Tess did arrive the next morning with Naomi, whilst not inimical, she remained faintly aloof. Lilly found herself at her most sycophantic trying to win back Tess' approval, hugging her, complimenting her, offering her drinks and food the second she stepped through the front door. But Tess clearly was not in the mood for aimless conversation; both her and Naomi wanted to hear Lilly's eulogy and who would be in attendance at Cleo's funeral, granting the event an Oscars-worthy level of adulation. They were disappointed to hear it was a private ceremony, in a cemetery about 45 minutes away from St. Edmunds. Even more disappointing than that was the fact that aside from Cleo's family, Lilly, Clara, Alice and Gemma, only Luca Stone would be there along with a select bevy of the King family's friends.

"Well, that's boring." Tess muttered, her mouth obscured by her mug of tea. "Go big or go home, you know."

"For Cleo? It's not like her. Though I suppose she's not the one who planned it so..." Naomi replied whilst Lilly busied herself with her curling tongs.

"Cleo's mum told Clara over the phone that the song they're going to play is actually Cleo's choice. And also that she asked to be buried rather than cremated. Her mum said that It just happened to come up in their conversation one day." She told them as she wrapped a lock of hair around the barrel. "Bit weird, when you think about it."

"What's the song?" Tess asked.

"Violet Hill by Coldplay. Personally I say you can never go wrong with a bit of Bieber but it was her choice, so."

"Eurgh, that's boring." Tess said again. "Why did she pick such a grim song? Just because she's pissed off that she's dead, doesn't mean everyone else has to be sad about it too. If I was there I'd be cracking open the champagne. Aren't funerals supposed to be a celebration of life or some shit?"

"She's dead, Tess!" Naomi replied, sounding scandalised. Tess ignored her and put her mug down on the table, making her way over to Lilly's open wardrobe and sifting through her clothes.

"Lil, what's with all this puffy shit you've been wearing since we've got back to uni? I can't even remember the last time I saw you in bodycon. Is this what you're wearing to the funeral?" She held up a black maxi dress with floral inserts.

"Yeah, why?" Lilly asked as she finished with her hair and moved on to her makeup, leaning in to her mirror to apply mascara, her own crystalline gaze of concentration rather unsettling up close.

"That's what I was going to ask you. Why don't you wear this instead?" She held up a shorter, lacier number.

"I don't like that anymore."

"Can I have it then? It would look so bomb with this leather jacket I have and those Kurt Geiger heels." The truth was that Lilly adored the dress and planned on wearing it repeatedly once she'd had the baby. But that, of course, was a truth she was not yet ready to disseminate. Having to tell Gemma and consequently, letting Alice and Clara know was bad enough without even thinking of the damage that could be done if she told Tess or Naomi. That was one of the things that she had missed about the others: their capacity for retaining secrets. Although in the end it seemed to have been the secrets that had gouged out a hole in the ground for Cleo, a tractable silence was always reassuring, right up until the second its keeper bit the dust. Maybe even more so once they did.