Funeral today for Marion, a regular at the Boar’s Head. People had to stand at the back of the church. She’d been known by half the city, it seemed. Her office colleagues and neighbours in formalwear, a couple of rough sleepers, women from the charity shop, teens from a youth group. The relatives did their best not to break down during their eulogies. She lived a better life than most of us, said the priest. Even towards the end, he said, she was more worried about the woman in the next bed than herself. At the wake in the pub there were sandwiches, crisps, sausage rolls, small cakes, jugs of orange juice. Everyone had a story about her giving something away: money, plants, food, knitwear: she used to sit and knit in the pub. She made rounds to the homeless when she could still walk. She knew who’d disappeared, who’d got housing, who’d died. I approached Henry, a young low-church priest who insists on being called by his first name. He was drinking Guinness. He was with Tim, an…
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