The day was sweltering. There was a distinct smoky smell of baking skin, of salty sweat breaking through layers of carefully applied make-up and deodorant and cologne. It was the first sunny day of summer and by 11AM it had reached peak temperatures, threatening to break records. On the radio they were calling it an Irish Heatwave as it neared the mid-twenties, encouraging everyone to get their sun-cream on and their swim trunks out, and journey to Dun Laoghaire or The Strand for a day of sea and sand, one not to be missed.

I knew the scorching temperatures were no accident – that they would come on this day seemed entirely appropriate, as I drove away from Dublin, early that morning, overwhelmed by the aroma of sweating leather and the sizzle of metal from my seat belt. I hadn’t thought to leave the car in the shade the night before – it had rained solidly for three days previously.

I hated Portadown and part of me resented you for continuing to live there after I’d moved away so many years ago, following a lecturing job I couldn’t possibly refuse, though I knew how unfair this was. You had your whole family there, and I had nothing but an evil sister who I hadn’t spoken to since 1991 and likely never would again, unless she needed a kidney. Another part of me resented you dying there too – I liked to blame the town, convinced that had you been living somewhere else, their hospitals would’ve been better suited to treat you. I suppose deep down I know that’s not true and I knew if you were here, that is certainly what you would tell me.

This was your kind of weather. Often, I thought you’d be better suited living somewhere hotter, like Florida, or Australia, but you’d always been paranoid about your moles. Every time I visited you I checked to see if there was any change to the texture or size of those mutated freckles adorning your back, and I’d always deemed them entirely ordinary, the same as they’d been the previous month. But I didn’t blame you for your paranoia.

Your mother had had melanoma when you were in your early twenties, a few years after both my parents had died of cancer, first my mother, breast, then my father, pancreatic. Your mother had not been so unlucky as mine, but the recovery process was gruelling, and you’d become a bit of a hypochondriac after that. That never stopped you from sitting out anytime the sun broke through clouds, however, whether it was only for an hour after you got home from work, or you bundled the whole family into your dingy Skoda and drove them out to Port Rush.

It was just as beautiful out as I drove past the sign alerting I’d entered Armagh. You would’ve spent the day in the back-garden with Jack and the kids. A paddling pool would be filled, which Poncho would’ve jumped into, splashing both Danielle and Alex with his tail, though neither of them would care. Jack would’ve barbecued, and you would’ve fought over if the meat was cooked enough, or how many sausages Alex could eat – he was a growing boy but no ten-year-old should be eating five sausages in one sitting. At seven o’clock you would’ve called it cocktail hour, and insisted I have a scotch, or two, thereby forcing me to spend the night, and help you wrangle the kids for bed.

Instead, when I pulled up to the house, there was nothing in the front garden except the hearse. It had dragged the stones and created snake-like twists in the gravel, eventually stopped at the door, just behind the Skoda. The front garden was littered with Poncho’s poos – before I went into the house I grabbed the pooper-scooper and discarded them, unsure if my act of altruism was simply that or because I didn’t want to face going inside yet. You must’ve been sitting out only a few days previous, before the random outburst of monsoon rainfall, because the garden chairs were unfolded and lounging, even with no one to occupy them. Miniscule flakes of rust had already begun to eat at the iron arm-rests. I folded those up and shoved them into the shed, no matter that there were a few visitors watching me reproachfully from the kitchen window. I all but considered raking the leaves, few as there were, before deciding to make my way inside, where I was not greeted by your obnoxious “yoohoo-ing” but by a low murmur of loaded small talk.

The first person I saw was Julie Wilson – if you had constructed an invite list of those allowed to be at your funeral, she would not have been on it. She was carrying the Prada bag you had singed a hole into with the end of your cigarette a few years back, when she’d gotten drunk at Jack’s 40^th and tried to kiss him. I’d only barely noticed how you had the cigarette delicately and unassumingly wedged between your fingers, burning into the leather, the lightest of pressure achieving your goal. No doubt she’d brought it with her today as a prop to tell an intimate story about the two of you, proof of how close you were. She raised her spindly figures in a sort of queen’s wave. I gave my first fake smile of the morning, which I only got better at pulling as the day progressed.

Danielle came towards me on a brand-new Barbie scooter your mother had bought her. She was wearing a too tight black blazer, buttoned across her tummy, which was full of puppy fat. It looked eerily adult on her eight-year-old body, like she had been shrunk.  

Beads of sweat began to gather beneath her fringe, so I took the blazer off her, and she showed me where the special silk hanger was for putting it away. It was DKNY, and no doubt bought by your mother especially for the occasion. Alex was later spotted dragging his own fancy blazer across the floor, and I wondered, not for the first time, why your mother insisted on dressing them in such expensive clothing considering, and you must forgive me, because you know I love them, they’re filthy monsters.

I’d once caught them picking the fleas of Poncho’s coat, no doubt believing they were helping the dog, and he the willing recipient, doing anything he could to please. Danielle had given me lice only last year and because she’s my godchild, and was only seven at the time, I’d forgiven her. But they were the kind of children who should be put in the cheapest clothes possible, so they could rip and tear and batter to their heart’s content.

I took Danielle and Alex in my car – they were both hyper from too many cakes. We drove to the church, and they asked were you okay. I said you were, and because I’m an adult, and their Auntie, though not in the family sense, they believed me, though I hadn’t thought I had been that convincing. I caught them both staring at the coffin, as it was placed at the front of the church, a photo of you sitting in a black frame on top. The picture they used was from a trip you’d taken to Amsterdam, a picture you hadn’t particularly liked but one I thought was beautiful. You didn’t normally like smiling with your mouth open – you thought your teeth were yellowed from smoking, and though this was true, it wasn’t noticeable in this photo. You’d barely begun to wrinkle, despite your love of the sun.

You had every cream on the market and through some secret concoction they worked – it never mattered what combination of the same creams I used, my wrinkles seemed to appear deeper with every passing day.

The church was packed. Everyone in Portadown was there, as well as some bronze looking people who you’d made friends with on your many trips. They stood out awkwardly and exotic amongst the pale Northern Irish. There had been about thirty people in your house alone, before the removal, and there was easily another one hundred sitting in the wooden pews. Some were crying before the service even began, and I can say with my extensive experience with funerals, this was quite unusual.

The priest, a jolly fellow – you would’ve liked him – spoke openly and honestly about you. I was unsure who told him – it hadn’t been me – but he was able to give a full account of the London incident of ‘97, where you had nearly been arrested for trying to make the sentries smile at Buckingham Palace, and I’d spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to convince them to let you go with a firm warning, all while you hooted with laughter.

He went on to talk about what a good mother, wife and daughter you were; he didn’t mention what kind of friend you’d been, though there were more friends at the funeral than family. I guess I didn’t mind – there were something things that needed to be kept strictly between us.

He didn’t talk about the time you’d driven two hours in the middle of the night to come to my house in Dublin when my first marriage fell apart. He didn’t talk about how you’d gotten into the bath with me, fully-clothed, when the water was long past tepid, after my miscarriage, my only pregnancy, which subsequently ended my second marriage. He didn’t talk about how you’d been present at both of my parent’s funerals, and how you’d helped me arrange them when my sister was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t stay for the afters. I couldn’t bear it, and I’m ashamed of this – later, I would apologise to Alex and Danielle for not being strong enough. Later, I would sit at your grave, when the headstone had been installed, and flowers could be laid, and I would apologise to you too. Portadown was a ghost-town for me, and I longed to get back to Dublin; being surrounded by so many people that I had grown up with, and their broods, made me feel claustrophobic. It like I was stuck at the bottom of a ball-pit, like one in an indoors play area that the kids would run around in, and no matter how many hollow plastic balls I battered away, I could not escape them. I needed to be amongst people who did not know my whole life history, my failed marriages, my failed pregnancy, especially without you by my side, telepathically screaming “fuck them all.”

My impaired vision was probably what stopped me seeing the Garda car, that was parked on the hard shoulder of the M50. I was barrelling down the tarmac, in the fast-lane for once, and when I saw the flashing lights behind me, I realised I was going 140MPH.

I slowed gradually, not wanting to cause an accident, as I was pulled over, and waited, with not an overwhelming amount of anxiety for the consequences. Tears had begun to fall rapidly, and an uncontrollable strangled noise was coming out of the base of my throat.

He was maybe ten years older than me. My mascara had begun to run and proved “water-proof” was simply false advertising, but the Garda didn’t comment on it.

He went through the motions, and I, being me, cooperated with swiftness, and not being you, didn’t try to charm my way out of it.

But there was part of me that had remained locked up during the day, in the presence of your children, and your husband, who I’m sorry to say wasn’t doing so good, that when confronted with an absolute stranger, I felt an urge to vent.

“My best friend’s funeral was today,” I said, and though I had been there, and experienced the whole thing, hearing myself say the words consolidated a fact that I had been desperately trying not to think of – you were gone and though I’d been faced with death many times in my forty-three years of life, it had never felt so deserting as it did today.

The Garda didn’t really reply; he made a noise that might’ve been construed as mildly sympathetic, but he might also have just been clearing his throat. It was nearly five o’clock now – he’d spent all day probably sitting in his car, watching the blueness of the sky only getting more saturated with colour, undecorated with clouds. It would surely rain tomorrow, probably his day off, and this knowledge, I told myself, was what made him hand me the ticket, and explain what I was to do with not so much as an apology for my loss. After he’d left I stayed where I was for maybe ten minutes, before I took up driving once more, falling easily into the motion of changing gears.

I rehearsed what I would say to the policeman over and over in my head all the way back to my little corner of Dundrum, which was alive with the sound of twittering birds and children laughing, altogether unaware of the terrible thing that had happened three days ago. I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. Instead, the laughter had prompted a memory so vivid, I was forced to sit and recall it.

It was the same trip that you’d tried to make the sentries laugh – you told me we were flying to the UK. I was afraid of the sea, not so much by the unknown beneath the metres of blackness, but because I would be chronically sick anytime I was on a boat.

Yet that morning, you drove us to the harbour, before asserting that we were, indeed, going to be taking a ferry, for some strange reason. I spilled my guts up overboard for the next two hours, and made you swear to me that on the way home, in a week’s time, we’d get a flight instead. You agreed, but then when that day arrived, we were back at the harbour, something I spectacularly didn’t see coming because you’d forgotten to get around to changing our arrangements. And so, I chucked up all the fine wine and fancy meals we’d have on our mini excursion of the UK, and thought, for the first time ever, I had lost weight on holidays.

And though I didn’t speak to you for a week afterwards, and I still can’t eat scallops, because that had been our final meal before boarding the ferry, this was the memory I came back to, sitting in the car, speeding ticket in hand and thought, I was mad to ever think you were really gone, my stomach doing somersaults at the mere memory of you. You were as obvious and present as being blinded by an unexpected sunny day.  

– Katy Thornton