Sixteen:

The day I buried Lou the heaven's opened up and it rained for the first time in seven weeks, as though the clouds were crying for the loss of an angel. It seemed apt. I've been to a couple of funerals in my life and three of them had occurred on sunny days that somehow seemed at odds with the solemn occasion.

Arriving at the funeral I was shocked to see a couple of reporters- both television and print. Joycey stood there awkwardly and when I walked over to him he said, "Mate, I'm sorry. I know this should be private but Ted insisted."

"It's okay." I said. Though of course this was a lie because nothing was okay, and nothing would ever be okay again, not now.

This being day five Lou had been reduced to a column. This vibrant person who had lived, loved, made a little snorting noise when she really laughed, made up elaborate stories to explain why she was late (one included a giraffe driving along the freeway which ended up being true as a giraffe was moved from a zoo in New South Wales to Werribee Open Range Zoo via a trailer hooked to the back of a car) and loved to find new ways to embarrass me in public (such as licking a tissue and cleaning my face in a cafe once) was just a column in newspapers? This amazing woman who had been brutally murdered was just a column? How could that even be?

"Ted wants to be here. He's flying back from that conference in Canberra today and if his flight was on time he should have landed about an hour ago." Joycey said.

I nodded. I wondered what Lou would think of that- her ex, my petty boss from hell, being at her funeral.

"Have you uh...spoken to any other reporters?" Joycey asked, studying the asphalt at his feet.

For some reason my own eyes drifted downwards and my gaze landed on a cigarette butt. It was only partially smoked- a couple of quick drags to calm someone's nerves before a funeral, someone running late for a funeral but desperate for a smoke before going in, someone trying to seem cool, someone trying to quit smoking being unable to resist the need for a nicotine hit in such a situation, someone sneaking a quick puff on the sly?

"No. Not for their lack of trying. Seems I'm hot property. I've never felt so popular." I said ruefully.

"Vultures." Joycey said, with a shake of his head.

'Hello? Pot calling for kettle.'

"Yeah." I agreed. Then, "Do you know a group of vultures is called a wake? And it's usually reserved for when they are feeding on the carcass of dead animals. Whereas a kettle is when they are in flight together and committee, volt and venue are when they're resting in trees."

"No shit?" Joycey asked.

"I shit you not. One of my foster fathers was into bird watching. And train spotting. And occasionally the two would combine. A helmeted honeyeater- almost extinct- was hit by Puffing Billy one year. My foster father was horrified." I said.

Joycey looked like he was going to say something but wisely chose not to. Instead he said, "See you in there."

"Mm-hm." I said.

No sooner had he walked away when one of the TV journalists came over. "Can we have a word? On camera?" She asked.

"I don't think so. It's too hard. It's hard enough writing in the paper, hard enough getting the words out for the funeral director to read out." I answered.

I thought her name was Stacey or Suzie or Sandy and I had seen her presenting news segments on channel nine's evening and late night bulletins.

"Okay. Sorry for your loss. I don't know about channel seven but I didn't really want to cover this. Your one of us after all." Stacey/Suzie/Sandy said.

"Thank you." I said. As she turned away I said, "Can I ask you something?"

She turned back and waited.

"I know Lou's death is news to me and to the papers but I'm kind of surprised that it's getting TV coverage. Slow news day?" I asked her.

She looked as though she was having an internal debate. Eventually one side won. "It's not a fast news day. Plus a young woman murdered is always going to be news. It just depends on whether its big news or not so big." She admitted.

"Thanks. For being honest with me. Lou was always honest. To a fault. She was the worst liar and I won enough money to buy a BMW playing poker against her. Without her I feel like in the last week nobody's been completely honest with me yet. Not like her." I said.

"It's hard. I know. And it's clichéd to say it does get better." Stacey/Suzie/Sandy said.

I raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Right. And time heals all wounds." I said sarcastically.

"No. That bits bullshit. But day by day it gets easier. Although some things will kind of open up the wound again, like a scab being knocked off." She said.

"Lou said Minnie Mouse bandaids made a person feel better than a normal bandaid." I found myself saying.

"Huh. Makes sense." Stacey/Suzie/Sandy said. "Thing is it's the firsts that suck the most. The first Christmas, birthday, anniversary, Valentine's day, Easter, anniversary of the death. The seconds aren't quite so bad and then the thirds are even less so."

"Well as much as I appreciate your clichéd opinion I can't imagine anything ever getting easier." I said curtly, annoyed at her for some reason.

"I lost my husband three years ago. He was a footballer and he died on a footy trip after being mugged." She said, also curt.

I felt about an centimetre tall. What kind of journalist was I that I couldn't remember the big news headline about the celebrated Grand final medallist's tragic death and the grieving wife who couldn't even grieve in public because as a journalist on TV she was the news? "I'm so sorry Stacey." I said, taking a stab at her name.

"It's not Stacey. But thanks." Suzie/Sandy said.

"Suzie?" I guessed.

"Bam-boom." Sandy replied. She looked a bit miffed that I couldn't remember her name.

A wise man might well stop at two strikes, might prefer not to dig themselves into a deeper hole. But then a wise man might also have never suggested his girlfriend's jeans did in fact make her look fat, or that her heels looked like hooker heels or that when his girlfriend said it was okay that he wasn't going to her mother's birthday because he wanted to watch the AFL grand final and nothing was wrong that it didn't actually mean it was okay and nothing was wrong. (Who'd have thunk it? Female's weren't just from another planet, they were from another galaxy, another universe.)

"Of course. It's Sandy. Sorry. I'm not so good with names." I said.

"That's patently obvious given my name's not Sandy. It's Lacey." Lacey said.

"Oh." Was my clearly witty reply.

Lacey walked away and the reporter from channel seven came up, this one a man. Once again I said no comment but I didn't get into any platitudes with him or any conversation. I was sure he had been watching the conversation between Lacey and myself and was no doubt thinking I preferred channel nine to seven, when in actual fact I was more a channel ten kind of guy.

In the next thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds (yes, I was counting which no doubt seems odd as it was counting up to the time I walked into that chapel and farewelled the love of my life- sorry, the love of this life and the next) I had a number of awkward conversations. "I'm sorry" was said twelve times, "How are you holding up?" was asked ten times and "I'm going to miss her" seven times.

Jordy and Amanda arrived. "I liked your article." Amanda told me.

Jordy gave her a frown and nudge.

"I'm sorry." She said, though I was unsure of whether she was apologising to me or to her partner. "I meant I liked what you said about her when you were pleading for information. Have the cops spoken to you again? Have they got any leads?"

"Amanda. Fuck." Jordy hissed.

"I'm sorry." She said. Again.

I was not offended. "It's okay. Yes they've rang me a couple of times with questions. I don't know much about where their investigation is headed because they're not sharing anything with me but they wanted to know whether there was any chance that Lou was in Napier Street Collingwood shortly before she died because they had a phone call from someone who saw someone matching Lou's description there and he ID'd Lou from a photo. The cops are going through CCTV footage in the area trying to see whether they can find Lou anywhere." I replied.

Ruth arrived. I hadn't seen her in almost ten months but she came up, hugged me, and it felt like it had been yesterday. We weren't blood, obviously, but I felt like it sometimes. Ruth was the only family member I had and she wasn't even my true sister and we'd only lived together for eight months. How sad is that? Lou was my family. "It's fucked up Day." She said, using the nickname only she used.

"Yeah." I agreed.

Ted arrived with literally two minutes to spare, looking puffed, sweaty and harassed. He gave me a nod, which I returned, and then he hurried inside rather than speak to me. I knew he was privately reconciling himself with saying his own goodbyes to a woman he had loved. I knew perfectly well how bad that felt.

Jordy and Amanda, Ruth, Aileen and Cassandra and I walked in together. At the sympathetic looks and sad smiles I got from meeting the eyes of people in the last two rows as we started that long walk I instead chose to focus my eyes on the blue carpet with flecks of gold and my polished shoes instead.

During the ceremony I found myself drifting away. I felt like I was floating above, looking down, listening to the funeral director talk about Lou and what she'd meant to so many people, hearing sniffs or tissues being pulled from the box's on the shelf in front of each pew along with copies of the bible and hearing laughs when he told about how she got sick of losing at "Words with Friends" and "Hanging with friends" so she downloaded cheating apps onto her phone and after awhile everyone stopped playing against her because of her sudden ability to put down 120 point words that if anybody had bothered to ask her the definition of she wouldn't have known or how on our trip over to New Zealand she'd been about to write down "doctor" as her occupation on the immigration form until I'd said she better not in case someone had a heart attack or went into labour on the plane and the flight attendants said it's okay we've got a doctor on board. (She'd written down journalist instead thinking it might score her a free upgrade to business class. It didn't.)

As I was sitting there, perhaps trying to pretend I wasn't saying goodbye to the love of my life, my soul mate, I had a very strange feeling. All of a sudden I was back in that alley, back to where Lou was found, but it wasn't Lou lying there. She looked similar though with the same coloured hair, coloured eyes, build, but there were subtle differences; her lips were fuller, her cheekbones more defined, her skin a darker shade than Lou's. I shook my head and the image was gone but I felt incredibly cold. Was my brain playing tricks on me, was I so grief-stricken at Lou's death I was imagining things, or was there something more to this little vision?