Afterwards, his mother had a go at me.

‘It’s not a lot to ask is it? His own flesh and blood. His son and heir. It’s not expecting too much for him to stand still for half an hour and pay his respects.’

‘Is he his heir? Did he leave him anything?’

‘Never you mind about that. I was relying on you, Tony, and you let me down badly.’

She jerks her head towards a mob of McKintyres surrounding the food. ‘You’ve shown me up in front of them.’

‘Look, it’s not my fault,’ I say. ‘I don’t keep him on a lead. He has a mind of his own.’ She shakes her head.

‘No, I’m serious. You of all people. I expected better. If you can’t control him who can?’

She takes an unhappy pull on her cigarette and waves the smoke out of her face. Her hair’s been re-dyed for the funeral, the tight ginger curls gripping the top of her forehead. I can see lines cut deep around her mouth and where the powder’s dried and flaking on her nose. Poor woman, she can’t be much older than my mother.

I try to explain about Frank and me. I’m only his friend, his pal. We’re not lovers. There’s no emotional hold. But it means nothing to her. As far she’s concerned every man he’s ever met has taken him to bed, and really she isn’t that far wrong.

She keeps shaking her head and I tell myself the tears in her eyes are from the smoke.

‘Can I have a sandwich, Auntie Margaret?’ And she glances sadly over at the table in her lounge covered with her best tablecloth, the starch creamy-coloured one with the pattern of daisies. You must be a monster, her look says, to be thinking of your stomach at a time like this.

Of course, she’s not really my auntie, I’m not related to a one of them here. But I lived down the road as a kid and Frank and me have been mates ever since we were eight years old and he showed me his bum down in Bates’s wood. Even then I knew it didn’t mean a thing. He’d been showing it off to everyone.

‘Where is he now?’ she says, catching at my arm. ‘What’s he up to?’

‘He’s gone up to the bathroom.’

‘If he’s sick up there…’ she says, ‘…I’ve scrubbed that floor.’

‘He’s gone to take his pills,’ I tell her. ‘Leave him be.’

I go over and grab a plate of sandwiches and a glass of wine. There’s a big trifle. Marks and Spencers.

She’s been splashing out. There’s a ham too, crumbly and crimson, it’s back lathered with breadcrumbs, but the McKintyres are standing guard over it. This is for family only. They’re sharing nothing.

I don’t see Frank in any of them. They’re a mean lot, belched out of the Emerald Isle decades ago after some famine or feud. Cropped hair, brick red faces, tattooed knuckles and the beer-bellies swaying softly. They’re bouncing on their toes, looking for a fight. The men aren't much cop either.

‘Where’s that boy of theirs then? Couldn’t show his face?’ This is some old man, hovering at my elbow.

‘He was there,’ I say. ‘He turned up.’

‘I heard he was as sick as dog. They say he’s got AIDS. I heard he was in the hospital himself, that one.’

‘Well he isn’t, so you can just fuck off.’

I take my drink upstairs and look in the bathroom, but it’s clean, stinking of disinfectant.

He’s in his old room, lying down on the bed.

‘How you doing, Franco?’

He’s got a can of beer on the wobbly bedside table. ‘Taking my pills.’

‘Good man.’

‘You done yours?’

I sit on the bed and count them out, laying them in a row on the table. We swallow them down together.

Another gulp of life.

‘All done,’ he says. He reaches over, sips a mouthful of my wine and shrivels his face up. ‘The mean cow.’

The room seems tinier than ever. The hard single bed with that plate blue spread, faded and bald from the wash. It must be older than God. This was his refuge, his cell. Here he laid his plans and made his escape attempts. After he turned fourteen the police stopped bringing him back and he went off to whatever man would take him.

His eyes are wet like his mother’s.

‘Bad memories?’

‘Beatings and wanking,’ he says. ‘That’s all that ever went on in here. Beatings and wanking. The old bastard.’

He shifts over and I squeeze onto the bed beside him. He puts his head on my arm. I can see what they all see in him – the little bulled head with the old white scars on his forehead, the thin neck and that fleshy body, a tough boy, short and dopey, with chewed down fingernails and a big moist mouth.

‘’You know,’ he says, ‘they were the only ones still stuck around here. All the others we knew as moved out. Like you. They all improved themselves, sold up, moved on. It was just them still here in this shithole. Did they care? Did they fuck. They just festered.

‘You’d think I’d be glad,’ he says. ‘Seeing the old bastard out. It’s the only reason I came back. I thought it would be a laugh. But when I was sitting there, waiting for them to bring the coffin in, I though, what a life. What a bloody miserable life. This poxy little house they don’t even own, the bookies and the boozer, lung cancer, and fuck off mister, that’s your lot. I mean, you and me, look at the life we’ve had. Look at the things we’ve seen. What haven’t we had, what haven’t we done? Poor, miserable bastard.’

‘And it’s not right, is it, Tone? People like you and me. It’s the one thing you never expect you’re going to have to do, bury your own father. It’s not natural. That’s why I walked out when they brought the coffin in. I couldn’t stay and watch that.’

‘I know. I followed you out.’

‘I went and sat behind one of those big tombstones. I wanted some peace and quiet.’

‘I know. I could see your cigarette smoke. I sat on the steps and kept an eye on you.’

He squeezes my hand.

‘Don’t go and die before me, Tone, mate.’

I kiss his ear.

‘They’ve been waiting to bury us for years, Franco. They’ll have to go on waiting.’

‘Tell me about it. Oh, I’ve missed my funeral half a dozen times. I might never turn up at all. You hear that, you bastards,’ he shouts through the floor at his family, ‘this boy’s gonna outlive the lot of you.’

He talks like living is something we’ve got control of, as if staying alive we’re done for ourselves, as if it isn’t all down to the pills.

I know what he means though. They’ve been waiting for us with fire and spade and we’ve never shown up yet. We’re years later for our own funerals – unfashionably late, annoying late, wonderfully, ludicrously, inexplicably late.

Steve Cook was born and lives in London. He is working on a novel and short stories. He has had a story The Blue Man published in Uncut Diamonds (Maiapress 2003), an anthology of new London writers, and is a member of the Gay Author's Workshop.