"During the funeral service mourners were told: "Sheila found no physical security against distress but eternal security may still be hers". Unfortunately these clergymen failed to make any attempt to say or ask why she found no physical security. The congregation was then called upon to show forgiveness to her and told: "Love does not keep a family record of wrongs." I thought I could detect just a hint of compassion, but when the elderly canon said: "We pray for God's mercy for Sheila, sadly and tragically deranged.." I felt like screaming out at their self-righteousness: they couldn't even recognize the sickness within their own congregation. The only time they came anywhere near mentioning the twins was when the vicar said: "Sheila was a mother and I understand she knew her Gospel." But that was all that was said of Daniel and Nicholas;their actual names were never mentioned.
It seemed that because of her recent appointment to the post of church warden, the entire service was geared to singing the praises of June Bamber, and one might have been mistaken for thinking she had been the only one to die.
By the time we were eventually allowed into the cars and the doors were closed we all breathed a sigh of relief, but as we followed the three hearses out of the village, with the undertaker walking slowly in front, Jeremy started cracking jokes and laughing. To some extent I could accept it as an understandable release of tension but his joking became unnecessarily smutty, making all sorts of remarks about what he would like to be doing to Julie later that afternoon.
The thought of cremating Bambs had never felt right to me,but even more so as the curtains were drawn across the coffins than at any other time. I wanted to scream out: "No,stop! I don't want her burnt, I want to bury her with the twins as she is." I began to feel that once again she had been cheated-by both Church and family; cheated in death as she had been in life. I wanted her placed in the ground, together with the sons she loved, as she was, whole. But there was nothing I could say or do; the curtains closed and that was that. Her body and beautiful face were gone for ever."