The coffin wobbled as it went down into the ground, the nervous bearers failing to find a mutual rhythm as they let the cords play out, hand over hand. There was a nasty moment when one of the corners at the head end dipped several inches below the others, and a muted gasp went up from the family but was hastily swallowed back, embarrassment as ever the most dominant of English emotions, even amid the stew of shock and grief and anger that was swirling around this small country graveyard.

The chief undertaker, in position at the head of the grave, took an urgent step forward, but his hands did not even need to leave the brim of the black top hat he was gripping: a quiet word of instruction was enough to restore decorum around the graveside. The bearer responsible, an older woman, one of two aunts who had been recruited for the job at the last minute, was bright scarlet, her forehead sheened with perspiration, but she managed to complete her duties without any further disaster. As she and her companions laid down the cords on the freshly cut turf and stepped back from the grave’s edge, the young man to her left, the only one who had looked definitely physically fit for the task they had just completed, stepped over and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. She dissolved into his chest in a flood of tears.

‘There’s some good strong men over here could have done the job for you,’ muttered a voice to Ryan’s right.

‘Alright, leave it, lads,’ Ryan murmured as a ripple of disgruntled agreement ran through the group. ‘We’re here, at least.’ His soft Belfast accent somehow both soothing and authoritative enough to keep a lid on the fractious situation that was developing in this corner of the graveyard. It must be a policeman thing. An ex-policeman thing.

The group was too far away to hear the words of the vicar as he stepped forward, bible in hand, so Olly provided his own version: ‘Ashes to ashes, funk to funky.’

‘If you tell us again how you could have been in that video if you hadn’t overslept, I will actually shove you into that grave myself,’ muttered Gary, and the whole group bit their lips, clenched their fists and tried desperately not to dissolve into the most inappropriate fit of giggles ever. It was a lovely moment. It felt like what the deceased would have wanted.

As the formalities ended and the group around the grave broke away from their positions to reform into a ragged queue beside the neat pile of earth left out for scattering purposes, our own group also shifted from our regimented stances. Ryan took the opportunity to slip an arm around me and give the small of my back a comforting rub. ‘How are you doing, Tommy?’

‘I’m OK,’ I told him, my voice sounding steadier than I had expected. ‘Going to too many of these; that’s all.’

‘Tell me about it.’ The funerals were getting closer together now. Clarrie, the first of my friends to succumb to Aids, had been dead three years now. Ivan, who I’d only really got close to at the very end of his life, died the following year, not that long after news came that his partner Paolo had passed away in Italy, his furious family keeping the pair of them apart right to the end. Three other friends from the Icebreakers group where I had met Ivan were gone, including Mark Ashton, the man who had seemed the most radiantly alive of all of us. We’d buried him last February. Daniel, the partner of Dougie who was here with us, in April. And now Marcus. And it was still only October.

I snuck a glance at Dougie to see how he was bearing up. He was pale and leaning heavily on his walking stick, but our friends Gary and Brian had stationed themselves on either side of him for support, both emotional and, if necessary, physical. He caught me looking and gave me a nod and his best attempt at a reassuring smile, but it came out more like a grimace. The long dangling earring he wore in his right ear only served to accentuate the hollowness of his cheeks and the pale paperiness of his skin.

He had already been diagnosed with Aids-Related Complex when we had been saying goodbye to Daniel, the love of his life, and he’d been informed he’d progressed to the full-blown disease not long afterwards. He’d told us this morning he was fighting a fungal infection in his lungs, and he’d started to lose the sight in his right eye , thanks to something called cytomegolavirus, a suitably monstrous name. It was impossible to say how long he might have left. And still he was raging against the dying of the light.

A loud, attention-demanding ahem floated over from beside the graveside. Most of the ceremony might have been inaudible from where we were standing, but the young pallbearer, Marcus’s older brother, was clearly determined we should hear this bit.

‘My mother and father have asked me to say that there will be drinks and refreshments back at the church hall, for friends of the family only.’ Just in case we didn’t get this, he fired a furious glance in the direction of our group.

‘Oh, and they’d made us so welcome up until now,’ commented Gary, in a voice that was also meant to be heard.

‘Alright,’ said his partner Brian, reaching out an admonishing hand to his chest. ‘Leave it.’

‘Ach,’ said Ryan, ever the peacemaker. ‘At least we made it in to the service. That’s more than we sometimes manage.’

A man we knew from our local gay bar had been telling us just the other weekend about how he and a group of other gay men had been physically barred from going in to a friend’s funeral. The family had actually hired bouncers to stand outside the crematorium.

‘Arseholes,’ Gary muttered, but he turned away and, taking Dougie’s arm, started to lead him towards a bench in the shadow of a big yew tree while we waited for the other mourners to disperse.

‘We can find a pub or something, can’t we?’ I suggested to the rest of the group. ‘Be good to toast Marcus’s memory and have a catch-up while we’ve got the chance.’ I looked at Olly, who, absurdly, was wearing dark glasses despite the grey autumn sky. ‘That’s if our celebrity friend can spare the time from his busy schedule?’

‘Oh, piss off, Tommy,’ he said affectionately. ‘I’m fine, I’m not due on set till tomorrow.’

Olly’s got a part in this new hospital thing on the BBC. It’s filmed in Bristol, so this – Marcus’s funeral in his home village in Hampshire – was the first time any of us had seen him in ages. ‘How’s it going, anyway?’

‘It’s good. Hard work. But they’ve signed me up for another series, so I know I’ve got a regular wage coming in for the first time in God knows how long. And they’re a nice bunch. We have fun. D’you watch it?’

I shook my head. ‘Saturday nights, you know. Better things to do.’

He looked momentarily crestfallen before Ryan chipped in to reassure him. ‘He’s lying. We never miss an episode.’ That wasn’t entirely true, either, but it was Ryan all over to pretend it was, and it set Olly beaming. ‘Tell us, are they setting you up to have an affair with that young nurse, the one with the red hair?’

Olly shook his head gleefully. ‘I’m not allowed to tell you. State secrets. She’s lovely though, Cathy, the actress who plays her. We have a right laugh together.’

When he was in his twenties and even prettier than he was now, Olly used to boast that he could seduce any man, gay or straight, within twenty minutes of meeting them. His specialism back in our days on the Dilly was what he called the double dip: him and a friend both doing oral sex on a client at the same time. I’d been the friend on many of those occasions. ‘Is it not weird?’ I asked him. ‘Doing love scenes with women?’

‘It’s called acting, dear,’ he camped, then added in an undertone: ‘Anyway, don’t tell me you don’t know how to put a show on for someone you don’t fancy. Present company excepted, of course.’

I conceded the point with a grimace. ‘Speaking of which…you seen Lee recently? I wasn’t exactly expecting to see him here, but…’

‘Why not?’ Ryan asked.

I sometimes forgot he was a late entrant to the gang. Most of us had known each other from way back in our days on the Dilly. ‘He and Marcus never got on,’ I explained. ‘Personality clash.’

‘Really?’ Ryan looked surprised. He liked Lee. But then, everyone liked Lee. He was a born charmer. Most of the time.

I turned back to Olly. ‘But is he OK, d’you know? We haven’t seen him in ages.’

Olly shrugged. ‘I’ve not heard from him in a while. But you know what he’s like; he’s flaky as fuck.’

Lee had continued ducking and diving right through his twenties: none of us were ever quite sure what he was up to.

‘He’ll turn up, he always does. Probably at the least convenient moment for everyone.’ It wasn’t said unaffectionately, but I had the impression he was hiding his true feelings behind those sunglasses as he looked around the almost empty graveyard and changed the subject. ‘Looks like the coast’s clearing. What’s our plan?’

‘We passed a pub on the way in to the village that didn’t look too terrifying,’ suggested Brian. ‘D’you want to follow us? We’ll take Dougie.’

‘You sure we’re not going to get driven out by yokels with pitchforks?’ asked Olly, only half joking.

‘I’m not guaranteeing anything,’ said Brian. ‘But there’s strength in numbers.’ He and Gary live down in Brighton where they run their own antiques business: it’s just about the gayest place in Britain, although even that doesn’t guarantee anyone’s safety these days.

‘You know we’ve got our own local gay club these days?’ I told Brian as we waited for Dougie to hobble back from the bench with Gary and join us. ‘In Forest Hill?’

Ryan and I went south of the river when we moved in together a couple of years ago. He needed to get far away from anyone in North London who might recognise him from his former life. We’d briefly considered Brixton, which at least has the advantage of being on the Tube, but there were people round there I wasn’t desperate to run into again. What can I say?We both brought our fair share of baggage to the relationship.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, Frolics it’s called; terrible name. Don’t know how long it’s going to last, though. It got raided last month. Police in the full gear, rubber gloves on, saying there had been complaints from the neighbours. They took away all the membership books, all the cash in the till. Then they followed the landlord, Philippe, when he went out in his car the next day and stopped him. Guess what for?’

‘Go on.’

‘’Driving a vehicle in a potentially dangerous condition.’ They said his car had rust on it.’

‘You’re joking!’

I shook my head. ‘I know. I’ve seen his car: it’s in a way better state than our old banger. Now he’s got police cars sitting outside every night the place is open. Just sat there watching the punters go in and out. We give them a wave every time we go by.’

Ryan and I had been going to Frolics on principle every weekend since the raid. We didn’t even like the place that much.

‘They’ve told Philippe people like us belong in the West End, not the suburbs, and they’re not going to stop till they’ve sent us back there.’

‘Christ,’ said Brian with feeling as Dougie and Gary joined us and we started off after the others towards the church gate. ‘You and Ryan should move down to Brighton. Honestly, life’s so much easier down there; you’d love it.’

I pulled a face. The place held some dodgy memories for both of us. And besides, why should we have to corral ourselves into a gay ghetto just to be treated like decent human beings? ‘Maybe one day. Anyway, the school where I’m working is a fifteen-minute bus ride away. That’s enough of a commute for me, thanks!’

‘How’s the job going, Tommy?’ asked Dougie.

‘Good! Good. Well, I think so. I’ve made it past half-term at least.’

‘I still can’t quite picture you as a teacher,’ said Brian.

‘Course you can. He’s always been dead clever.’ Gary is unfailingly, touchingly loyal, although we both knew it wasn’t my brains, but my background his boyfriend was referring to. ‘D’you remember we used to call him the Bookworm back in the day?’

Brian chuckled. ‘I’d forgotten that. No, I think it’s brilliant, don’t get me wrong. I’m just… it’s not what I’d have predicted, that’s all.’

‘You and me both,’ I told him.

I’d only signed on for teacher training because I could get a grant for it and put off having to get a job for another couple of years. I’d been shocked by how much I actually enjoyed the course, especially the practical side of it. If you’d asked me five years ago how I’d feel standing in front of a class full of teenagers, I’d have told you I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying. That wouldn’t necessarily have been wrong: there were definite moments of terror involved. But it turned out that when you knew what you were talking about (and I did: the passion for books that earned me my own teenage nickname has never left me), and you were able, like Olly, to fake like you knew what you were doing, it somehow all worked out.

I’d even started adding little innovations of my own to the syllabus: I chose a word of the day and put it up on the blackboard each morning, then got each class to discuss what they thought it meant: things like escutcheon, rambunctious or horripilation that everyone from the first years to the sixth form could have a go at guessing. Some of the ideas they came up with were way more interesting and imaginative than the reality, and those five minutes at the start of the lesson often ended up teaching them way more about language than plodding through Macbeth or I Am David. Lych-gate, I thought, as we passed through one of those and out onto the lane where the cars were parked. That would be good to add to the list.

They would probably think it had something to do with lynch mobs. Quite a lot of those about these days.