Ronnie’s family has been in the same line of work since the 1880s. His office is next door to a flint church which can trace its origins back even further. The churchyard has turned the colour of straw this year but Ronnie’s premises are cool. I’ve come to see him on the unthinkable errand of choosing a coffin for my younger brother. It helps that Ronnie’s exactly what you’re looking for at a time like this, beginning with his name. He doesn’t stay seated behind his desk but rises to clasp my hand in both of his; the same with my brother’s son, who is accompanying me, and for whom this is an even more unconscionable shopping trip. Ronnie is in his sixties, though he has younger-looking teeth, and is thinning a bit on top. He is wearing traditional undertaker duds (“the stripes”).
I tell him, “We’re glad that Mike is with you now and not the coroner.”
“We could walk outside, past our mortuary. Your dad would be on the other side of the wall from us…?”
Ronnie nods gravely. “A hundred per cent.”
Michael died suddenly in hospital in high summer, part of the spike in morbidity this scorching season. There were getting on for 3,000 ‘heat-associated deaths’ in England and Wales in May and June as a result of the heatwaves, according to the UK Health Security Agency, and perhaps the toll will be much the same when the numbers are in for July – when Mike died – and August. He was 63, never smoked and rarely drank, and made his living as a personal trainer. He went to hospital complaining of breathing difficulties. He went into cardiac arrest almost immediately and never recovered. The cause of death was eventually given as a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs. It was a month before the coroner released his body, though an investigation into his death continues.
