Bruce could feel his brain swollen in his skull; delicate fronds of pain slithering about as the cranium peeled itself slowly from the lining of his head. He opened one eye tentatively, feeling each increase in light as acutely as a surgeon’s knife. The clock said it was three minutes past ten. Surely the clock lied.

Please God, the clock was lying.

It wasn’t.

He heaved himself upright, still with only one eye daring to brave the morning sun that was streaming through the curtains. He was late, and that was all there was to it; regardless of the protestations of his body. The funeral was starting at eleven. The funeral which was his last chance to say goodbye to the man he had been working with since he was 19. He rolled off the bed and dragged himself into the bathroom and yet brighter light. It was his own fault, after all, and he had promised Hazel he would be there. So he would be. The hangover would have to do its stuff regardless.

He didn’t dare take the car that morning, and the bus was just unreliable enough for him to instinctively call a cab to get him to the chapel. Frank had not been a religious man, but Hazel had always found solace in the drafty spaces between Catholicism and real life , so that seemed to be the final word. His friend was to be interred in a church; spoken about by a man who had not known him since he and Hazel had stepped forward together at their wedding twenty years previously. Frank had lost hair and gained three children since that time, and Bruce shuddered slightly to think of their faces at the service. He made a mental note that he would be there for Hazel, and nothing more. He would sit quietly, absorb as much as he could stand, and then leave. Nothing more. It would kill him.

The cab driver was an almost intolerably cheerful young Asian man, and Bruce worried about his driving skills. (He had failed to take in the sombre suit; the red eyes and the fact that they were headed for the funeral chapel, and process this combination of clues enough to shut up about the Town and their chances of avoiding relegation.) Bruce knew that he could, feasibly, just tell the guy to shut up, but he didn’t feel like pissing anyone off, so he nodded, smiled and chattered back like a wind-up monkey banging away at its little drum all the way there. He felt better about not making a fuss when the young guy turned to him for his fare and wished him all the best at a difficult time. Perhaps he’d simply been trying to cheer me up, thought Bruce. Poor bugger that I am.

If he’d been concerned about the sobriety of the occasion that morning, a look around the chapel allayed some of those fears. Bruce had been to a fair few funerals in his time, but he had never seen so many turn out to pay their respects. Hazel, who he had secretly suspected would be wailing in some black lace veil, wore an elegant tailored suit in the brightest white Bruce had ever seen.

“Frank bought it for me for our anniversary next week” she said as she pressed herself into his chest at the door. When she pulled away, he saw the sadness there in her eyes, but she was smiling at him in such a way that he felt almost comforted. And, regrettably, he thought, in a way that made him feel fairly inappropriate feelings during the funeral of a best friend.

Even the three Anderson children seemed at ease, despite the red look to their eyes. Anne-Marie - the eldest at 21 - had even kissed Bruce on the cheek in greeting with a maturity and elegance that stunned him. Is this what it will be like when I go? He thought. Of course not Bruce, a voice inside told him. No family, not even a bird to speak of… you’ll have a couple of funeral directors and your next-door neighbours – and that’s only because there will be mini sausage rolls at the wake, and those two would run the London Marathon if they thought there was a free pie in it. He shuddered and took some solace in the fact that it was one awkward social situation that he would actually not have to witness. Depressingly, this thought led him on to the idea of being buried alive, and he had a sudden, stupid urge to run up the aisle and prise the lid off the coffin to check his friend wasn’t still breathing. The hangover was in full flow now - he could feel it placing its nasty fingers across his skull and infiltrating his mind with horrifying thoughts.

How could Frank be dead? Fucking dead? Dead was what happened after you’d held your first great-grandchild, and then merrily reverted back to infancy in a man-size nappy and got people in to puree your food for a couple of years. It wasn’t ever designed as a concept for 41 year-old men who could still build patios and play five-aside every Sunday. Not for men who hadn’t even got to see their first kid graduate, or had a chance to go bowling on a weekday when they retired. Death before retirement is one of life’s greatest jokes, he thought, and wished it had been him standing beneath that great, looming, metallic crane as it toppled and finally fell only a week before. Frank had a family. Bruce had never even owned a dog.

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