Devlin's Secret

Unfamiliar

Rebecca - Present Day

"Don't you ever feel like Mum might've, y'know, said something?" 

The day was a hot one. Completely the wrong kind of day to be dressed all in black. I had actually opted to wear a two piece skirt and top set rather than the outfit Mama had planned. She hadn't even disputed it. She herself had gone for the sunhat look, and had hastily thrown on a dark coloured swing dress just before we left the house. I felt sorry for Hugo, standing beside me, who'd had no choice but to wear a black shirt with long sleeves - the only funeral-appropriate clothing he owned. 

"I've been thinking the same," he said quietly, so as not to inerrupt the preist in the midst of a speech which linked everything back to God. Mum hadn't believed in God. "It's put me about. I thought it would go to trial."

Across from us, Mama made eye contact with me and tilted her head slightly to one side: a warning to shut up. No more was said. 

It had been strange when it all happened. Hugo had been the first to tell me. A very unexpected voicemail because I had been at work and unable to answer my phone. I could tell at the time that he was still in the initial recovery from having been told himself.

"Just letting you know. Mama's going to tell you something pretty big when you get back. Not sure if I fully understand yet but the police are saying Mum killed herself."

His tone of voice had been so full of questions, it had almost sounded casual.

And neither of us had yet cried. It had been two months since it happened; Mama had put off the funeral for weeks until Grandpa talked her round. Grandpa, who didn't even really like our mum, also found the whole situation unnerving. It was like it wasn't even real. She'd been away on business and wasn't due back for another week or so at least. Hugo and I had been bluntly banned from seeing her body, which made it very difficult for us to process her death. I had needed visual cues my whole life in order to understand things properly. Hugo, newly diagnosed with paranoid anxiety, had not been given the proof he required to move on to any kind of acceptance stage. 

Something about the way it had all turned out didn't sit right. Even that atmosphere at this, her funeral, was all wrong. 

Mum had been open and honest as long as we'd known her. But now we were being kept in the dark like toddlers who didn't understand the concept of death yet. 

As the gathering robotically took their turns dropping handfuls of dirt on the coffin, Grandpa sighed. I looked at him in question.

"I may not have liked her, Becky, but I also know what she wouldn't like herself." He nodded towards the open grave and the small pile of earth forming atop the lid of the coffin. "Who organised this? Andrea definitely didn't." 

"I think it was Grandad and Uncle Colin," said Hugo, before Mama gave us another silencing glare. The truth was, that was only a guess. The organisation of this event was another thing on a seemingly long list of things we'd been left out of. 

After a couple of seconds, I realised that the preist was addressing us directly. I assumed, by the angle of his arm, that he was offering to let us throw dirt on the casket. Grandpa, Hugo and I all politely declined with a short nod and a headshake. Hopefully it would come across that we were too upset to do so. I think Mama knew why we didn't because she also opted not to take part in the tradition. 

Mama was a pretty crier. She'd let tears make trails down her face quietly, her lips pursed and her eyes looking absently ahead. She looked like something out of a film with her sunhat casting a dark shadow over the upper half of her face. 

Mama had always been the prettier of the two.