Excerpt from After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Lulu protested indignantly. —Why not?

—Because then Nanna will adopt us and we'll have to live with her.

This was a sobering prospect even for Lulu.


Once the excitement of the funeral was over, the girls took in the solemnity of their loss. It was shocking, for instance, when Uncle Richard's wife, Hilary, came round, with their other aunt Deirdre, to deal with Philip's clothes. They were sorting out what his brothers could use and what had to go to the Salvation Army; this felt like a violation to Marlene and she couldn't watch, only sat seeping tears in the living room, unable to shake off a dread that Philip would hold her accountable. He'd never been able to stand his brothers' wives, and hated anyone poking around in his wardrobe. There was something unseemly and even gloating in how Hilary and Deirdre were holding up his suits now for judgement, sniffing the armpits of his shirts and even the crotch of his trousers. After a while the aunts forgot to use their subdued voices, and Marlene and the girls overheard Deirdre saying suggestively, Well, at least he wasn't alone when he died, although that was the first they'd heard of it. They looked wide-eyed at one another, but didn't dare ask.

Even though their father had so often been absent, a fixed idea of him had given the girls' daily life its particular flavour, they realised now, and they paid anxious tribute to him in retrospect. He may not have wanted them under his feet all the time when he was home, but sometimes he'd tickled them and thrown them in the air, and also he'd brought them costume dolls for their collection, from all over the world. Some of their treats—supper in front of the TV, jumping from the kitchen roof onto a mattress they'd dragged outside, eating condensed milk from the tin—seemed less pleasurable now that they didn't fear his disapproval. They were haunted, too, by imagining the actual scene of his death, whose details were kept hidden from them, like something behind a curtain in a horror film. At least he wasn't alone. Whatever beast had felled their father, so fearless and bursting with his life, must have been potent in ways that were also shaming and disgusting. For a while Lulu had to sleep in Charlotte's bed at night, because she could see Daddy's picture when she closed her eyes.

Excerpted from After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley. Copyright © 2023 by Tessa Hadley. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.