The Love of My Afterlife(33)

Cooper’s nostrils flare. He drains his glass of water as if it’s the prosecco he was offered but turned down on account of driving. “It’s fine,” I say to the table. “You absolutely don’t need to tell me anything! I’ve only known Cooper a few weeks after all.”

“Em is Cooper’s twin sister,” Malcolm says softly. “Was. She passed away in 2018.”

My heart sinks for Cooper. For all of them. “It sounds like she had a great sense of humour.”

“Oh, she did. She was absolutely crackers.” Amy’s eyes water slightly. “Smart as all heck too. Top of her class in grammar school just like her brother and then a full scholarship to Trinity College. This one here went to Oxford.” She thumbs at Cooper.

“As I’m sure he mentioned within two seconds of meeting you,” Lester adds.

“When I say I was a proud mother…” Amy raises her voice to drown out Lester.

Cooper went to grammar school and Oxford? That explains the blue-blooded tones of a man whose family is pure North London.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” I say directly to Cooper.

I’ve lost a few people over the years, but never anyone to death. I can’t begin to imagine how painful that would be.

“Thick as thieves, they were,” Malcom sighs, putting a hand on his son’s arm. “Em and Cooper, Cooper and Em.”

Cooper clears his throat, gently moving his arm away from Malcolm’s touch. “Let’s not talk about Em,” he says brightly. “We’re here for you to meet Delphie.”

“Of course, you’re right, love. Delphie. Tell us all about you!” Amy rubs my shoulder. I flinch because I’m not used to people touching me. But flinching looks bonkers, so I style it out with a little shimmy.

Cooper’s eyes widen. He’s clearly nervous about me taking centre stage.

Screw him. I can be delightful. I set my jaw.

“I work at a pharmacy in West London. I love running in Kensington Gardens. I’m part of a club there in fact. I also like…” What else do delightful women do? I get a vision of period dramas in which all the women are trained to be cultured and well-rounded. It’s a stupid, outdated reference, but it’s all my mind can glom on to in the moment. “I read poetry and, um, often partake in…crochet?”

“You don’t sound so sure about that,” Lester grunts, his words already melting into one another.

Malcolm, though, seems delighted with my answer and leans forward, his chin in his hands.

“I adore poetry. Lester read Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’ at mine and Amy’s wedding. Oh, do recite us something, won’t you, Delphie?”

Ah shit. Why did I say poetry? I know no poems. None. I’m going to be immediately outed as a fraud. Cooper was right to worry about me.

He clears his throat. “Ah, let’s not put Delphie on the spot!” he says faux cheerily.

“Delphie doesn’t mind!” Amy says, patting me again. “I too would love to hear a poem. It’s so romantic. A poetry reading in our living room!”

I can’t feel my face. I slurp down the rest of my prosecco and then in a state of acute panic stand up onto suddenly trembling legs. I take a deep breath.

A poem. A poem…Think of something that rhymes at least, for fuck’s sake, Delphie.

“Lo, back up now and give a woman room. The fuse is…alit and I’m about to go boom.”

I have started. I have started this way and now I cannot stop.

“Mercy, mercy, oh mercy me, my whole life feels like a cage. Yet onstage…I am free.”

I hear a snort. Cooper’s eyes are wide, and he’s covering his mouth, though I can see that his shoulders are shaking. His parents and Lester throw him a curious look, but don’t seem to have realised that I am on the spot adapting “Boom! Shake the Room” so that it sounds less like a bop and more poet-y.

When I’m done, they give a slightly bewildered round of applause. Cooper joins in. He’s managed to stop laughing, but his face is still a little flushed from it, his eyes glittering in a way I haven’t seen since the first few weeks he lived in the building.

“How interesting,” Amy says. “That’s a new one to me.”

“Who’s the poet?”

“I believe he’s called William Smith,” Cooper answers, expression serious. “A modern poet with a very important oeuvre of work. ‘Wild Wild West’ is a favourite of mine.”

“Gosh,” Malcom says. “Thank you for introducing him to us, Delphie.”

“Most of Cooper’s old girlfriends wouldn’t know Keats if he bit them on the behind.”

I laugh heartily, also not knowing anything about Keats.

“I didn’t come here to get bloody read to.” Uncle Lester pours himself another glass from the bottle. “Let’s play, damn it.”

“You can choose the game, Delphie,” Cooper says, to which his mum awws as if he just offered me a kidney.

I nod and look up and down the pile, eventually pointing at my selection. “I choose Pictionary.”



* * *





It might have been many years since I last played Pictionary, but I’m as competitive about it as I ever was. Amy has set up an easel in the middle of the room and, of course, I’ve been paired with Cooper, who, as it happens, is shite at Pictionary. We’re getting annihilated by Amy, Lester, and Malcom. It doesn’t help that Cooper’s sketches are thoughtless, the lines lax and unfocused.