Page 7 of The Book of Heartbreak

Rule number one: no tears shall fall. Rule number two: channel sorrow into rage. Rule number three: death is not an option.

Sare’s Rulebook for Survival

In stark contrast to her turbulent life, Daphne’s funeral is an eventless affair. No drunk cheers, no tempestuous ex-lovers causing chaos or puking among the ivy-covered tombstones. No weeping, no sobs. Certainly not mine.

The service takes place in the pointy church a mile from our middle-class street in Cambridge. I stand amid the graves in the sprawling, untamed cemetery, wearing a black velvet dress that gives me an itchy neck.

‘Sare-eh.’ Fiona leans over as we wait for the pallbearers to bear the coffin from the church.

I’ve never been a people person, but I swear every time she calls my name like that, it’s as if one hundred abandoned kittens are simultaneously scratching a blackboard.

Imagine being told your mother had passed away by that voice.

She places her hand on my shoulder and I recoil from her touch. ‘Don’t hunch, darling. Chin up.’

‘Don’t hold back your tears, sweetie,’ another woman, whose name I can’t remember, advises me.

Tears are a gift of vulnerability for those who can afford it, but I can’t let myself plummet into sorrow.

I have to be strong. Still, it’s hard among this crowd: the selfish ex-boyfriends who used Daphne like an emotional – and on rare occasions, physical – punchbag, the neighbours and friends who assumed we were doing okay because we had money.

It’s hard to watch them pretending they’re sad.

They didn’t care about her when she was alive – why would they now?

My heart flutters, a delicate warning. I have one chance left and I can’t blow it.

I need to go numb, feel nothing. I want to close my eyes and ears until this ceremony ends.

Instinctively, I clasp my pendant. The metal is cold but comforting inside my palm as I wonder why Munu still hasn’t shown up.

I can try to summon her, signalling my need, but instead, I concentrate on how proud she’ll be when she learns how I handled the funeral on my own, and let it drop from my fingers.

I slip my hand into my jacket pocket to fish out a fruit bonbon.

The plastic crinkles as I unwrap it, attracting disapproving glances, and Daphne’s friends shake their heads with contempt when I offer them one.

I have an increasing suspicion that these people kept Mum close to make them feel better about themselves.

I bet they sank to their knees to chant Hail Marys after meeting Daphne, grateful they weren’t losing at life as disastrously as she was.

‘Can you not wait until the service ends to eat?’ one asks.

‘It’s almost noon.’ I look up at the sky hanging over us, without a hint of blue in the expanse.

Not for the first time in my life – or even in the past week – I wonder what the Otherside is like.

Did my mother visit an Inbetween, like I do?

Munu says she doesn’t know, swearing she hasn’t seen Daphne.

I have no clue if she is up there, if she’s sober, or if she knows how much anger and devastation she left me with.

Still, I like to imagine someone guiding her safely to peace, unable to bear another scenario.

Knowing Daphne, she’s probably nodding off in heaven at this hour.

I bet the wine up there is top shelf. I snort at the thought.

Masking my pain with humour is the only way I can survive today.

I hear a passive-aggressive murmur about manners, then someone calls my name from behind.

‘Sare.’ The foreign, resonant voice of a man, and he says my name exactly as Daphne did. ‘Sare?’

I crush the sweet between my teeth as I turn to look at the stranger, and the waft of lemon and sugar works like a pacifier.

He is tall and slender, his age difficult to pin down, though he seems over sixty.

Under a blazer, he wears a waistcoat, jeans and leather boots.

His face is cleanly shaved, grey hair tied back in a ponytail, and he peers at me over wire-framed glasses.

Shock registers in his expression as our eyes meet, and for a moment we’re two circling swordsmen, our weapons testing the air between us, each waiting for their opponent to strike.

I initiate the attack. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No – excuse me.’ He detaches himself from a group of women to approach me. It’s then that I notice his walking stick. ‘We’ve never met.’

‘Sorry, who are you?’ I can’t eliminate the possibility of him being an ex-boyfriend, even though he looks far too old for Daphne.

‘I—’ His gaze drops to where our feet point at each other. ‘I’m your grandfather.’

I step back, and the sugary taste of the fruit bonbon sours in my mouth.

My heart races, pulsing in my throat. Once I was mature enough to ask questions, my curiosity about Daphne’s past was insatiable, but it hadn’t taken long to drain my mother of the facts.

And I knew without doubt that the reason she won a battle against the Home Office to remain in the UK had been the loss of her father right before I was born.

‘I stayed because of you,’ she used to say.

‘You can’t be,’ I respond at last.

‘I’m Muzaffer, your mother’s father,’ he insists, in an elegant accent.

Hearing the Turkish name makes me wince.

I envision Daphne’s face next to his. The nose is familiar.

The cheekbones. The cup of his chin. I clutch at the faint shadow of my dead mother in his features, clear proof of who he claims to be. Still, I shake my head in protest.

‘There must be a mistake.’ The slate-grey July sky sighs with a cool breeze, as if things would be more tolerable if it was November and raining.

The coffin appears before he can respond.

No one will find solace in the sight of their mother’s coffin, but I welcome it so long as its arrival causes the man beside me to stop talking.

As if on cue, rain starts spitting, like I needed more misery.

In the drum of my irregular heartbeats, I watch the pallbearers lower Daphne into the ground.

Standing next to me, Muzaffer remains as still as a lamp-post. I close my eyes and wonder where the fuck he’s been all this time, and why my mother lied to me.

A raven caws, hidden in the tangle of the branches above us. At least these true inhabitants of the church grounds – unlike a few of Daphne’s exes who turned up with dry eyes – are dignified enough to remain unseen as the final goodbye is about to be spoken.

Farewells were a common occurrence in Daphne’s life. All my life I’ve watched people arrive and depart, as if they were passengers and she always missed the train. No one stayed.

A few of her former lovers fling clods of dirt into the hole that’s swallowed her. They cover her with mud and I cover my eyes with my hands, wishing I had the guts – or the heart – to cry.

Later, in a pub that sits in the fenlands like a stranded ship, Muzaffer and I sit in silence at a table by the window while Daphne’s friends celebrate her life – whatever there is to celebrate about it.

She was miserable on a good day and wasted on a bad one.

Or vice versa, depending on your perspective.

‘Do you want anything else?’ Muzaffer points at my ginger beer.

He looks uncomfortable in the wooden chair.

Perhaps my company makes him unsettled. He doesn’t fit into the image of a typical grandfather with his cold, hardened stare.

As if he’s here to meet his duty and not his granddaughter. ‘Food?’

Doves flap inside my ribs. Shit . I’m fluttering. I really need to calm down.

‘I’m not here to eat.’ I fold my arms, reciting the second rule.

Channel sorrow into rage . Does this man have no manners?

He offered no proper introduction, no explanation, no condolences.

Who does he think he is, showing up here, as if I had a clue that he was alive?

‘Your full name would be nice,’ I say flatly.

He leans back on his chair, one hand on his walking stick. ‘Muzaffer Hamdi Gümüshus.’

I cradle the bottle in my hands and wonder how on earth that name is spelled.

‘I know this isn’t an ideal way to meet.’ Muzaffer stirs across the sticky table. ‘But your mother and I weren’t on speaking terms.’

The pub smells like wet dogs and booze. The fog in my head thickens. I wonder what Daphne’s life would have been like if they had been on speaking terms, if he’d showed up a few years earlier. Might she still be alive now? I shake my head to clear such thoughts, but the fluttering won’t stop.

Where is Munu when I need her? She’d know what to say to this man. How to protect myself against his claim. In her absence, I decide to do a countdown, twenty to zero, taking a deep breath every two beats, since it always proves to be the best way to simmer down.

Twenty, nineteen, breathe.

‘She told me you died in a car accident.’ My voice is a whistle amid the din of tipsy revellers. ‘Why would she say that if you were alive?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was more comfortable for her.’ He makes it sound so trivial, as if Daphne had merely chosen to wear joggers instead of jeans.

‘Or perhaps I don’t have a grandfather.’ I twirl the chilled bottle between my fingers, the glass slick with specks of condensation. ‘My mother isn’t a liar.’ I swallow a sob.

No tears shall fall, Sare, I tell myself.

Eighteen, seventeen, breathe.

He looks frightened now. The surrounding murmur and clinking glasses rise above our silence. He digs in his jacket and extracts a laminated card, pushing it across the table with his index finger.