The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends by Helen Garner

Author:Helen Garner [Garner, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2016-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

JIM (hesitates): Whereabouts is the…um…wake?

GIRL: Up there. Turn right at the top.

The couple head for the stairs.

GIRL: Who’s it for?

WOMAN: Some girl.

GIRL: I didn’t see anything in the paper.

WOMAN: It’s not news any more, that kind of thing. Poor kid.

GIRL: What is a wake, anyway?

Jenny and Jim enter a soulless convention room. A table is set with casks of wine, glasses, cups, an urn, plates of sandwiches; formal flower arrangements, a visitors’ book. People are standing around, the kind of people who don’t look comfortable dressed up. Greetings are quiet, emotional, but people are smiling. Several teenagers lean against a wall, smoking in a tearing, amateurish way.

A couple, obviously parents of the dead girl, are receiving people at the centre of the room. They have the odd, swollen, glowing eyes of people in an extreme emotional state barely controlled. The mother has a gold chain round one ankle, under her stocking; otherwise they are conservatively dressed.

Jenny and Jim get themselves a drink. They are awkward, standing about. People they know greet them: people who are clearly no longer their close friends.

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