the end

Stephen told me to phone Marnie. He said she would really like that. I couldn’t do it – I tried – I tried so hard but I just couldn’t. I had absolutely no idea what to say. I was still so shy with her – even at twenty-one, she was still a distant adult to me. I didn’t have a clue about what you are supposed to say to someone when there’s a death. The only people I’d known up until then who’d died had been ancient aunts etc, and the aftermath of those deaths had all been taken care of for me – my name added to the family letter, the flowers and so on. I don’t think I’d ever been to a funeral before.

The only things I could think of to say, I was sure she wouldn’t have wanted to hear. I wanted to shout about how you are not supposed to die when you are twenty. I wanted to ask how anyone could have let this happen. How could all those doctors have fucked up so badly? Mostly I wanted to ask what I was supposed to do now. I needed someone to tell me what you are meant to do when your best friend dies. So I didn’t call her in the end.

Stephen was easier to talk to. He was maybe five years older than me and we’d always been friends. He tried to explain about the aorta – the big vein that went into the heart, and how Joel’s had had a weakness in the wall that they hadn’t known about. He said the headache had been when the wall had burst open. I still didn’t really understand why someone couldn’t have fixed it. I was so angry about that. All those doctors – why hadn’t they known? It was so unfair. Stephen was so patient with me. He was a very gentle person, and he listened to my questions and complaints quietly. He never made me feel bad about my inability to think about him, or that I hadn’t once asked how he was. I was too angry and puzzled to think about anyone except myself.

There was an inquest, and then an announcement in all the broadsheets. There was to be a memorial service in May, to which we would all be invited once the details had been finalised. There was something about giving to a charity for Marfan’s Syndrome, which I didn’t really understand. Marnie went away very soon afterwards. She escaped to the States, all on tick of course, where she visited T. I remembered her telling me long ago how she’d run away to France after Joel’s father had died, when she had been pregnant with Joel.

Suddenly I couldn’t sit still. I had to go out. I didn’t know where – just out. I spent days walking around London. I didn’t care that I was still supposed to be taking it easy. Getting better didn’t matter anymore. I walked all over, through the City, with all its odd little alleyways with strange names, all along the Embankment, past the sphinxes, past all the bridges. I walked so fast my feet got sore. I had no idea why I was doing it. I think I realised that in a way I was trying to escape but of course it never worked. It didn’t matter how tired I was, or how sore my feet were – at the end of each day I was just as angry and I still didn’t know how I was supposed to cope without him.

I was pissed off with T also, for being so far away. Stephen was lovely and kind and he had done all he could, but he wasn’t one of us. I missed T badly then – even though I still hated him. I also wanted him to be there because somehow I felt as if he would have understood. I thought he might have been able to make it better – that together we might have been able to come up with some scheme for how to get through this – we’d been so good at schemes. I think I also wanted to put my arms around him and just be close

Lots of my friends tried to help – they were all very kind, but they were pretty clueless too – we were all so young. Camilla took me to a fashion show. We sat on little red chairs and applauded the models as they came down the catwalk. I tried to be grateful - I knew she meant well – but I remember thinking, “how can these people look so ordinary? Don’t they realise what’s just happened?”

Susannah phoned me. She’d been a good friend from school. I’d spent days at her comfortable house in Hampstead Garden Suburb – her family were lovely, conventional people – I knew them quite well. She told me that for years they had been holding séances – they could talk to dead people – not directly – you had to have an intermediary dead person who would ask other dead people things and pass on the answers. Their intermediary was the poet William Blake, and so anyway, she was just calling to tell me that he’d said Joel had been in touch and he wanted me to know it had hurt, but he was ok now, and I wasn’t to worry. That floored me a bit. They’d been so deeply normal and now, suddenly, they were so very weird. I understood that she was probably full of crap, but at the same time I wished it were true – I wanted so badly for him to be ok somewhere.

The only person who came halfway to helping was Ben. I think I met him at Stephen’s, or maybe he called me. I can’t remember. He had stopped doing smack a few years before. He had come up to London – just to be there. He was as lost and as confused as me. Marnie had let him stay in the flat while they were away. Past her bedroom, she had a huge walk-in dressing room. It was a massive cupboard really, lined with shelves and hanging rails. There was a thick door separating it from the bedroom and it had no windows. Maybe it had originally been a panic room for the Governor of the Bank of England. There was just enough space inside for a double mattress and a small television on a little table at the end.

I moved in there with him. We had a pile of dope, some cigarettes, rizlas, and some alcohol. We must have had some food sometime because we were there for about ten days but I can’t remember eating anything . We didn’t talk about Joel much – there wasn’t much to say really. We were both angry and confused and distraught and lost but talking didn’t really help. Instead of that we got wrecked and stayed that way until we left, just before Marnie came home. We had a lot of sex, and in between we watched a test match on the TV and Ben explained the rules of cricket to me. I think it was our way of blotting out the anger, and it made us both feel a little better somehow.

The memorial service was at St. Paul’s in Covent Garden – the actors’ church, of course. It was like watching the last five years of my life parade past me. I think we’d been asked not to wear black. Most of the girls wore white. One came in her jodhpurs – she’d been riding. A small boy called Che, who’d been at the villa with us, and who’d followed Joel around like a little shadow until we had told him to get lost, came on his roller skates, with a pair of angel wings strapped to his back. There were lots of well-known people. Joel’s godfather was a famous actor, and there were others I recognized from all over the place. A lot of the girls were crying. It was very hot outside. The cameras were there, clicking away as we walked up the path to the entrance. I think Marnie put all the pictures in a book afterwards

Inside it was dark and cool, and the wooden pews were hard and shiny and uncomfortable. I can’t remember who I sat next to and I can’t remember much of what was said. A girl who’d been on the island with us, who’d just released her first album, sang “Yesterday”. She wore a black beret. It was horrible. I just sat there hating everyone, scowling at each person in turn as they got up and went to say their piece. I did cry, but not because it was sad or touching. I cried because I still couldn’t understand how someone could be there one minute and then just suddenly stop existing. I missed T. He should have been there next to me - he would have felt the same. I was in the middle of all my friends but I have never forgotten how lonely I felt.

Afterwards, we all went to a bar in Soho, and I hugged Marnie and I told her how sad I was. She said they were moving to Soho – they’d bought a house, and they would keep a room there for any of Joel’s friends who needed it. Then I got very drunk with some other girls, huddled in a corner, and when the bar shut, we went off to carry on drinking somewhere else.