“Seriously, can you stop planning my funeral?”

THIS evening, we have watched a film about family, love and loss; 90 minutes of bleak human misery which the ending failed to redeem. Now we are in bed.

I lie, eyes smack wide open, staring at the plug-in night-light.

‘You awake?’ I whisper to the silent mound bedside me.

“Heurmpff.”

“You awake?”

“Mmmf.”

“It’s just… I was thinking… we’ve only got four teaspoons…”

“Mmm wha?”

He rolls over, opens one eye. “Christ,” he groans.

“4 teaspoons, not enough crockery and only 10 decent wine glasses — you know — the

Venetian tumblers from mum. That’s the bones of our kitchen. It’s not enough.” ”

“Not enough for what?”

‘Not enough to organise a proper funeral.’

“You don’t have to organise a funeral.”

“But I might.”

“Whose?”

“Yours, for example.”

He opens the other eye, fixes it on me.

“Please,” he says, “your point.”

“Don’t die before I do,” I say.

“Let me get this right. You’re asking me not to die before you, because you don’t feel that you’re up to organising my funeral?”

“Yes, as with a dinner party, I’d need you to be there — to open bottles of wine and put people at their ease etc. You know the sort of thing. You’re good at that.”

“Got it,” he says, “I’ll try not to die before you.”

He scrunches the duvet around his neck and beds down. Silence.

“Just one more thing,” I say.

“Really?”

“Do you remember — after childbirth, how I forgot how to use the coffee percolator?”

“Yes.”

“Well just imagine the effect a funeral would have.”

“Your sisters would be straight down,” he muffles from underneath the duvet, where he has put his head, “and your friends.”

I think of my friends. After due consideration, only three, I decide, are sufficiently unfazed by the workings of my mind and kitchen as to be suited to the role of Funeral Maid of Honour, when the time comes.

“Vanessa would be good,” I say, “and Lou could…”

“Seriously, can you stop planning my funeral?”

Silence.

“Fine. But I think you should keep the triathlons and all that fitness stuff going because I don’t want to be left on my own with four children. Ok?”

“Ok, got it, I’ll keep the fitness up and I won’t die.”

Silence.

“But let’s just say for a minute that you do die,” I posit, “and…”

“I tell you what, let’s just say I don’t,” he says. He puffs up his pillow, flumps into it and mutters, “why don’t you just buy some more teaspoons?”

“I can’t buy teaspoons just in case you die, that would be weird.”

He sits up, taps me on the shoulder and says, “You’re spiralling.”

One of the upsides of long-term cohabitation is the fact that my husband has learnt how to manage this particular quirk, he doesn’t like being pulled along on bizarre night flights whereby my thoughts grow misshapen and fly away. He switches the light on.

“Look at me,” he says. “Shake your head hard.”

I shake my head hard.

“... and think of something else.”

Coming up with something else for me to think about is his job; I’m in my strange horrible place and cannot think at all. He suggests various topics. None of them will do.

“Where you’d go if you won a free holiday… anywhere in the world…”

“Nice one,” I say, “I like that one. That one will keep me busy.”

“All set up?” he says.

“All set-up.”

“Night, you insane f*cking neurotic.”

“Night.”