What to Do When Someone Dies (17 page)

‘When I married,’ she said, ‘I made promises, but I didn’t really think about what they meant, not properly. And David and I – Well, you’ve seen us together. It’s not great. It hasn’t been for some time. He was busy, I was busy, we had separate lives. Bit by bit we drifted apart without realizing it. And bit by bit I became lonely – but I didn’t realize that either. It happened too gradually. And one day I knew I was unhappy. My life felt all wrong but I was stuck in it. And then…’ She stopped and turned her gaze on me briefly. ‘It’s such a fucking cliché, isn’t it? I met a man. A very special man. He made me feel good about myself. It was as if he recognized me, saw someone precious behind the façade I’d built up.’

She rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘It was such a mess, though. Not just because I was married – for a bit that hardly bothered me. He’d had a thing with Milena first.’

I managed to make a small sound. My heart felt large and painful.

‘Just a fling, really, but you know what Milena was like. She didn’t take it well that he preferred me. That was putting it mildly. She hated me, really hated me. I felt her hatred would literally scorch me when I walked into the room.’ Frances shuddered. ‘And then she died.’

‘So this man,’ I said, ‘she knew you were with him?’

‘Oh, yes. Milena always knew everything.’

‘Was he married as well?’ I barely recognized my own voice.

‘What do you think, Gwen? Yes, he was married.’

‘Who was he?’

Her expression hardened. ‘That’s not what it’s about,’ she said, in a tone almost of distaste. ‘What does that matter?’

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s over, that’s all that matters.’ She gave a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all, closer to a sob. ‘Something happened. I still can’t make sense of it, Gwen. It’s tormenting me. That was why I had to tell someone – otherwise I’ll go mad.’

She leaned forward, and at that moment there was a ring at the front door. She straightened. ‘That’ll be my cab.’ She gave me a rueful smile. ‘To be continued,’ she said, and with that she was gone, tossing her gorgeous coat over her shoulders, picking up her bag, throwing me a pleading smile, running up the stairs. I heard the front door slam.

After she had gone I stayed where I was. I was trying to breathe. I felt as though I had knives in my chest and each small inhalation hurt. It was several minutes before I felt able to get up, but even then I stood in the middle of the room, not sure what to do next. Thoughts hissed in my brain. Everything was murky and confused.

But I had come here to work and work I did: I went through the brochure very carefully and marked it up for the printers. When Beth arrived, I gave it to her to check. I had worried that she might be resentful, but Beth never resented anything that made her workload even lighter than it was already. While she leafed through it and talked on the phone and made tea, I filed the few remaining invoices and receipts; I answered calls when they came in; I even tidied the room a bit. And all the time the phone was in my pocket with its single missed call. The more I tried to put it out of my mind, the more it occupied it, so that by the middle of the day it was all I could think about. That, and Frances’s secret, the one that had been rotting away inside her and was now out in the open.

I couldn’t call the number because what would I say? Yet if I didn’t call, what had been the point of going to all that effort? Maybe I should try and match the number with one in Milena’s various address books. I started and quickly gave it up as impossible.

I went out to the deli down the road and bought lunch for the two of us: paninis stuffed with roasted vegetables, green pesto and melted mozzarella. While we ate, Beth asked me about my life and quickly shifted the conversation back to hers. We were both more comfortable with that and she told me about the failings of her current boyfriend.

Afterwards I shuffled pieces of paper. I put books back on shelves. I took the phone out of my pocket and laid it on the desk. I put it away again: out of sight, out of mind, I instructed myself sternly. I made more coffee, very strong this time, which I drank while it was still too hot so it burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I took the phone out once more, stared at it as if it could talk. I fed unwanted mail through the shredder and watered the plants on the window-sill. When Beth left for the day, I couldn’t stop myself. I took my phone, pulled up the missed-call window and pressed call, then cancelled it immediately.

I pressed the number again and this time I held my nerve. I could hear it ringing now and closed my eyes, swallowing hard, trying to breathe normally in spite of the rushing in my head and the pounding in my ears.

‘Hello?’ said a male voice down the phone. And ‘Hello?’ it said, outside the door.

‘Who…?’ I began in confusion, before realization flooded through me. I jabbed end call and slammed the phone on the desk. It skittered along the shiny surface and clattered to the floor.

‘Hello?’ said the voice outside the door again, irritable now. ‘Are you there? Hello? Hello?’

I was trembling so much I could barely sit upright. The door swung open.

‘Hi, Gwen,’ said David, pushing his mobile back into his pocket.

I pretended I was so hard at work that I hadn’t heard him properly. I stared at some figures and underlined a few. My hands shook and the pen made incomprehensible scrawls across the page. David, I thought. So it was David.

‘Gwen?’

I felt unable to speak coherently. I could barely manage to breathe. But I made myself say something, as if I were a normal human being. ‘David,’ I said, ‘how are you doing?’

Although he had spoken to me, he didn’t seem to hear my reply. He just wandered restlessly around the office. I stared at the paper, and tried to make sense of what I had just learned. There was so much of it that I could only process it in fragments. David was one of Milena’s lovers. Those tender, effusive emails had been from him – he was usually so ironic and amused. Milena had sat in this office reading his messages, writing to him, while Frances had been in the same room just a few feet away. How could he have done it? With her friend and colleague? Right under her nose? How could she have done it? Or was I reading it the wrong way? Was that part of the excitement? They say that there’s no point in gambling for small amounts of money. It has to hurt when you lose. Maybe it’s the same with infidelity. Anyone can have a one-night stand on a business trip, at a conference in another country. The real thrill is doing it like an illusionist, risking discovery at every moment, witnessing your victim’s lack of knowledge.

When I thought of Milena’s messages, the chill of them, the manipulation, I wondered if she was more interested in the power than in the sex. Was sex for her just a demonstration that she could have any man she wanted? That she could triumph over any woman, in any circumstances? Was it likely that Greg could have held out against that? Was he so different from the others?

I tried to remember what David had said to me about Milena and Frances. In all those conversations when I had been lying to him, he had been lying to me, as he had also been lying – had he? – to Johnny and Frances. Well, if he had, he wasn’t the only liar. There was Frances, with her own infidelity. They had been betraying each other.

‘Is Frances around?’

I felt like someone very, very drunk trying to imitate someone sober and not knowing whether the act was convincing or ludicrous. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, enunciating each word carefully. ‘She’s seeing the printers some time this afternoon.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said David. ‘I can phone her.’

I couldn’t stand this any longer. I stood up and reached for my jacket. David gave me the appraising look I always found so hard to read.

‘I’m not driving you away, am I?’

‘I’ve got a meeting,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’

‘At your school?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said, and stopped myself elaborating. I didn’t want to risk any lies I might trap myself inside. ‘Could you tell Frances I’ll give her a ring?’

I walked to the door. Just as I was opening it, I heard David call my name. What was it? Had I made a mistake?

‘Sorry, Gwen, I forgot.’

‘What?’

‘Do you want to come out to lunch with us tomorrow?’

‘Sure.’

‘Hugo Livingstone’s coming. We thought it would be good if you could join us. What with Milena, Hugo’s in a bad way. It would do him good to meet a friend.’

‘That would be great,’ I said, hearing my voice tremble. ‘Look forward to it.’

All the way home I felt as though I was stained with something. I had turned over a stone and found horrible slimy things, but in the end what did it amount to? What had it really told me? Yet still I felt contaminated by it. When I got home I had a long shower, trying to wash off all the Gwen-ness, all the deceptions and entanglements. I stood there until the tank began to empty and the water turned lukewarm. Afterwards I pulled on a torn pair of jeans and a scraggly old sweater. I went outside into the garden and stood for a while, feeling the cold darkness on my face.

I thought of calling Gwen and asking her to come over, but I knew she was with Daniel tonight. Mary? She was looking after Robin, and I couldn’t abide the thought of talking to her while she held his little body to her chest and cooed into his downy hair. Fergus? He was with Jemma, waiting for the labour pains to begin. Joe? I could call Joe and he’d be over like a shot, with a bottle of whisky and his gruff brand of tenderness, calling me ‘sweetheart’ and making me cry. I almost picked up the phone, but then I had a vision of myself as they must see me: poor Ellie, sucking misery into a room, needy and sad and not moving on, battening on to the lives of others.

So I went back into the kitchen, and first of all I made a phone call to Party Animals, knowing Frances would not be there so all I had to do was leave a message saying I wasn’t coming back and wishing her luck with the future. That done, I opened the small drawer in the table, where I pushed miscellaneous leaflets, flyers, bills, and took out the list that had been given to me all those weeks ago by the police-woman, the leaflet with helpful phone numbers for victims, for the stricken, the harmed, the bereaved, the helpless.

Chapter Twenty-two

Judy Cummings was a short, stocky woman in early middle age. She had abundant coarse dark-brown hair with occasional strands of grey, thick brows over bright brown eyes, and was wrapped in a long, bulky cardigan. Her handshake was firm and brief. I had been dreading the kind of handshake that a grief counsellor might give, which goes on for too long and tries to turn into a condolence, a fake intimacy that would have had me running for the door. But she was almost businesslike. ‘Take a seat, Ellie,’ she said.

The room was small and warm, empty except for three low chairs and a low table on which, I noticed, there was a discreet box of tissues.

‘Thanks.’ I felt awkward, tongue-tied. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’ve no idea what to say.’

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning,’ she said, ‘and see where that takes you?’

So I began with the knock at the door, on that Monday evening in October. I didn’t look at Judy as I spoke but bent over in my chair and put my hand across my eyes. I didn’t tell her about my amateur-detective work, or about my disbelief that Greg had had an affair. I just talked about losing him: that seemed to take up all the time.

‘I feel so bleak and empty,’ I said at last. ‘I wish I could cry.’

‘I’m sure you will in time.’ Her voice was softer and lower now; the room felt darker, as if the light had faded while I was there and we were in some twilit world. ‘There are so many things going on, aren’t there?’ she continued. ‘Grief, anger, shame, loneliness, fear of the future.’

‘Yes.’

‘And having to see the past differently.’

‘My happiness. I thought I was happy.’

‘Indeed. Even that must seem unreliable. But by coming here you have taken an important step in your journey.’

I took my hand away from my eyes and met her brown gaze.

‘It hurts so badly,’ I said. ‘The journey.’

We arranged to meet the following week, and I went from her to the shops. I had made myself a promise that I would start looking after myself. No more empty cupboards and midnight snacks, eaten standing up, of cheese and handfuls of dry cereal. Regular meals; regular work;
honest
work. I put pasta, green pesto, rice, Parmesan, olive oil, six eggs, tins of tuna and sardines, lettuce, cucumber and an avocado into my trolley. Muesli. Chicken breasts, salmon fillets – it’s hard to buy for one; everything comes in couple sizes. ‘For sharing’, it said, on the flat bread I added to the rest. Tonight, I thought, I would make myself a simple supper. I would sit at the table and eat it, with a glass of wine. Followed by – I tested it with my thumb for ripeness and put it in the trolley – a mango. I would read a book and go to bed at eleven, turn out the light.

It didn’t happen quite like that, although I started well. I listened to my answering-machine, called Greg’s parents and arranged to see them the following weekend. I checked my mobile and saw that there were three messages and two texts from Frances. Basically, they all said the same thing. I need you. Beth’s away. I’m alone. Please come back. I turned on my new pay-as-you-go mobile and saw that there were three missed calls from the person I now knew to be David. I put on a CD of jazz music, washed the dishes lying in the sink, then marinated one of the chicken breasts in coriander and lemon and put the other in the freezer with the salmon fillets. I got as far as opening the bottle of wine, laying a plate, a knife and a fork on the table, and setting a pan on the hob to heat the oil. But I was interrupted by a knock, so I took the pan off and went to answer.

As the door swung open and I saw who was standing there, I considered slamming it, putting on the chain, running upstairs and pulling the duvet over my head, jamming my fingers in my ears, blocking out the world and all its mess. But even as I thought it, there we stood, face to face, and there was nothing I could do except fix an inane smile in place and hope he couldn’t see the panic behind it.

‘Gwen?’

‘Johnny!’

‘Don’t look so surprised – you didn’t think I was just going to let you disappear, did you? You can’t get away as easily as that.’

‘But how did you know where I lived?’

‘Is it a problem?’

‘No – it’s just I don’t remember telling you.’

‘I heard you give your address to the taxi driver that night. Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

‘Everything’s a mess. Maybe we should go out for a drink instead,’ I said wildly.

‘You’ve seen how I live. Now I’m going to see how you live,’ he said, and stepped over the threshold. ‘It doesn’t look that messy.’

‘I was about to go out.’

‘It looks to me,’ he said, entering the kitchen as if he owned it, ‘as if you were about to make a nice little supper for one. Shall I pour us some wine?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Or yes – yes. Why not? Just half a glass.’

‘So, you like jazz, do you?’

There were envelopes lying on the table with my name on them and I clutched them, crumpling them in my fist. And, oh, God, there was a photograph of me and Greg attached to the fridge by a magnet. I lurched across the room and stood in front of it. Or maybe it didn’t matter if Johnny saw it – did it? I couldn’t think. My brain fizzed and sweat prickled on my forehead. ‘Jazz?’ I said stupidly. ‘Yes.’

My eyes flicked nervously around. There were so many things in this room that could give me away. For instance, lying on the window-sill, and pushed into the frame, were several postcards bearing my name, or even my name and Greg’s. Lying on the floor, just beyond Johnny’s left foot, there was the bit of paper that had been pushed through my door: ‘Where are you, what are you doing and why aren’t you answering my calls? RING ME NOW! Gwenxxxx.’

And then, suddenly, there was the sound of the telephone ringing – and if the answering-machine picked it up someone would be saying loudly and insistently, ‘Ellie, Ellie? Pick up, Ellie.’

‘Just a minute,’ I croaked, and dashed into the hall to pick up the phone.

‘Yes?’ I said. From where I stood, I could see Johnny examining the photo of me and Greg on the fridge.

‘Ellie, it’s me, Gwen.’

‘Gwen,’ I said idiotically. Then, to cover up, I said it again, neutrally, as if I was explaining my identity to the caller: ‘Gwen here.’

‘What? This is Gwen.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Can I come over?’

‘What? Now?’

‘The thing is, it’s Daniel, and I wasn’t going to confide in you because of, you know, everything, but then I thought it wasn’t fair on you or me, because after all –’

‘Hang on. Sorry. Listen. You have to come over, of course you do, but give me half an hour.’

‘If it’s a problem…’

‘It’s not.’ Fuck, was he going to look at the postcards now? ‘Half an hour, my dearest friend. Got to go. ’Bye.’

I slammed down the phone, but picked it up again and left it off the hook so nobody else could call. Then I tore back to the kitchen.

‘I can’t be long,’ I said to Johnny, putting my hand on his shoulder so he turned away from the postcards on the window-sill. ‘Come and sit in the living room to finish your wine.’

‘Who’s the guy you were with in that photo?’ he asked, as we sat down – he on the sofa and me in the chair, and oh, no, no, no, the chart on the table just beyond him. Couldn’t he see? Even from here, Milena’s name, in capitals and neatly underlined, throbbed in my field of vision.

‘Someone I used to know.’

‘He looks familiar. Could I have met him?’

‘No.’

‘Is he why you’re so evasive?’

No point in beating round the bush. ‘Yes. I’m sorry, Johnny. The thing is – and I should have said this before – I’m not ready for another relationship.’

‘So that’s it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You think you can behave like that and get away with it?’

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘You’re all the same,’ he said, standing up. Now he was even nearer the chart. I willed him to look my way and he did, resentment burning in his eyes.

‘I’m not coming back to work,’ I said. ‘It was all a mistake. So you won’t have to see me again.’

‘I felt sorry for you. You seemed so sad.’

‘Johnny…’

‘I thought you liked me.’

‘I do.’

‘Women are so good at pretending. Like her. Milena.’

‘I don’t think I’m like Milena in any way,’ I said. ‘We’re opposites.’

‘That’s what I thought, too, when I met you,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why I liked you – you seemed calm and kind. But I was wrong. You’re both actresses. You take on roles.’ I stared at him, panic flowing through my veins. ‘I’ve seen the way you are with Frances – Ms Capable. You led her on and made her depend on you; she thinks you’re her friend. Milena could do that too, be all things to all people. Everything was a mask. You thought you’d got a glimpse of the real Milena and all of a sudden you understood it was just another mask. I’ve never forgotten one time when she was talking to a very nice Muslim man about Ramadan, which had begun that very evening, and he was explaining how he couldn’t eat after sunrise or before sunset. She was so sympathetic and intelligent about it that I thought I was seeing a new side to her. Then an hour or so later, when we were together at my flat, she went on this extraordinary rant against Islam and its believers. She was so witheringly contemptuous of the man she’d been so sweet to. It was like a window into her soul.’

‘Johnny…’

‘I said to myself then that I should kick her out, that she would only bring me grief. Of course I didn’t, though: she stayed all evening and all night and I made her eggs Benedict for brunch.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Never believe women. Especially when they’re being nice to you.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I began. But I didn’t have time to argue with him. Gwen was on her way, the real Gwen. ‘You should go,’ I said.

‘I haven’t finished my wine.’

‘I really think you should go.’

‘Let me cook that meal for you.’

‘No.’

‘You’re lonely and I’m lonely and at least we can give each other –’

‘
No
,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been fair. We can’t give each other anything.’

‘Dumping me, dumping Frances, moving on. That it?’

‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘We weren’t married. We slept with each other twice. It was a mistake. I apologize. Now you have to go.’

He put his glass down on top of the chart. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right.’ He stared at me. ‘You’re not how I thought you’d be.’

Three minutes after Johnny had left, Gwen arrived. She burst into tears on the doorstep and I pulled her into the house, shut the door and hugged her until her sobs subsided. ‘I’m such an idiot,’ she said.

‘What’s he done?’

‘Nothing.’ And she gave a long, disconsolate sniff.

‘Come and tell me about this nothing. I’ll make us supper, unless you’ve eaten already. Wine? I’ve got an open bottle.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘He was with this woman for ages and she went off with one of his mates. It took him ages to get over it. You’ve met him – he’s such a big softie. Anyway, she got in touch with him because that relationship’s over. He’s with her now, “comforting” her. I think she wants him back.’

‘He told you all this?’

‘Not the last bit.’

‘Does he want to go back to her?’

‘He swears it’s me he wants. But I don’t know whether to believe him. You know my luck with men. Can I have a tissue?’

‘Help yourself. Here’s your wine.’

‘Am I being an idiot?’

‘Who am I to say? All I’m sure of is that he’d be an idiot to leave you – and by the sound of it he’s being totally straightforward with you. Plus he seems pretty devoted to you.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘All I know is what he looked like to me: kind, honourable, besotted.’

‘Yes. Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I was sitting alone in my flat and suddenly I couldn’t bear it.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s been so nice, being in a couple.’

Gwen gave me a hug. We chinked glasses. I cooked the chicken and divided it between us with a bag of salad leaves. It was rather a tiny meal for two emotionally drained and ravenous women, but we finished off with the mango and lots of chocolate bourbons, then sat on the sofa together with my duvet over us and watched a DVD before I called a cab to take her home.

I woke with a start and looked at the clock beside me. It was just past three. I must have been dreaming about Greg, because I had an image of him throwing grapes into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth but they spun everywhere. Perhaps what Johnny had said about fasting at Ramadan had prompted it. It had been a comic dream, but happy. I lay in the dark and tried to hold the picture in my mind.

I woke again at five. Something was bothering me, a wisp of a thought I couldn’t get a hold of. Something I had seen? Something someone had said? And just as I stopped trying to remember, and sleep was pulling me down again, it came to me.

I got out of bed and pulled on my dressing-gown. It was very cold in the house. I went to the computer and turned it on, and when it came to life, I Googled ‘Ramadan’. I knew it always took place during the ninth month of the year; this year it had begun on 12 September.

How long did I sit there, staring at the date? I don’t know, perhaps not so long. Time seemed to slow right down. At last I went into the living room and stood in front of my chart. Johnny’s empty wine glass was still on top of it. I took it off and looked very carefully at all the grids. My breath sounded loud in the silent room. I went to the drawer of my desk and pulled out the menu card Fergus had given me, stared at the date at the top and at the scrawled message: ‘Darling G, you were wonderful this evening. Next time stay the night and I can show you more new tricks!’

The evening of 12 September was the one and only time that I knew for sure Greg had been with Milena. But now I also knew he hadn’t, because she had been with Johnny.