What to Do When Someone Dies (5 page)

‘Good,’ said Dr Sams. ‘There is obviously no confusion about the identity of the victims and the time and place of their death. If there is no objection, I would like to record a verdict of accidental death in the case of Gregory Wilson Manning and of Milena Livingstone. The deaths can now be registered and the bodies released for burial. Written confirmation will follow in a day or two. Thank you very much.’

‘The court will rise,’ said the court officer, and we all stood.

I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride. It felt so familiar. I looked at Gwen, who managed a brave smile. I felt we should be going out for a lunch to celebrate. We walked out and stood on the pavement in the sunshine.

‘Well,’ said Gwen, ‘in some ways it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.’

Chapter Five

‘Right,’ I said, out loud. I had noticed that I was beginning to talk to myself, like a mad woman, trying to fill the silence of the house with a human voice. I didn’t care. I had a purpose. I was going to take Greg’s life apart and find out what had been going on. He wouldn’t escape me that easily. I was going to track him down.

After the inquest I’d persuaded Gwen and Mary to leave and assured them that, yes, I’d be all right and, no, I really didn’t mind being left alone – in fact I wanted it. Gwen asked if I was starting work again and I said I was thinking about it. Probably it would have been a good idea. It would have been therapeutic. I restore furniture, from valuable antiques, all oak burr, rosewood or gleaming mahogany, to someone’s worthless but beloved piece of junk. I’d taken the kitchen table I sat at now off the top of a skip and mended it; the bed that we–I – slept in. I had done up the bookshelves on the wall. Badly paid though it often was, part-time though it usually was, sometimes over-time, sometimes hysterically so, I loved it. I loved the smell of the wood and the wax, the feel of a chisel in my hand. It was where I’d always gone to escape.

But not now. I started with the tiny mezzanine room. It was next to the bathroom and overlooking the garden, which was small and square, dominated by the rickety shed at the end where I stored the furniture I was working on. This was a study of sorts. There was a filing cabinet full of things like accounts, documents, insurance policies; a bookshelf that mostly held manuals and reference books I used for work, and a table I had found in the junk shop at the end of the road, then sanded and waxed it, on which stood Greg’s laptop. I sat down and opened the lid, pressed the starter button and watched icons spring to the screen.

First, the emails. Before I started, I searched ‘Milena’ and ‘Livingstone’ and came up with nothing. I winced at the unopened messages that had arrived since Greg had died. There were about ninety, mostly junkmail and one sent by Fergus about half an hour before I had rung him and given him the news. He was suggesting they run a half-marathon that weekend before watching the football together. I bit my lip and deleted it.

I went through his mailboxes methodically, missing out none. Even when they had titles like ‘Customer Service’ or ‘70% off in our Clearance Sale’, I read them. There was almost nothing to do with work; he had a separate mailbox for that. Deliveries, house stuff, bookings, confirmations of travel arrangements. Several were from me and I looked at those as well. They had an easy intimacy about them that seemed far away and unfamiliar now. Death had turned Greg into a stranger; I could no longer take him for granted. Dozens were from Fergus, setting up meetings, swapping bits of gossip, sending references to websites they’d been discussing or continuing a conversation. Joe, of course. Other friends – James, Ronan, Will, Laura, Sal, Malcolm. Casual greetings and arrangements to meet. Sometimes I was mentioned: Ellie sends her love; Ellie’s sprained her ankle; Ellie’s a bit down in the dumps (had I been? I couldn’t remember); Ellie’s away and Ellie’s returned. One or two from his brothers, Ian and Simon – usually about some family-related issue, but none from his sister Kate, and none from his parents, who used to communicate with their eldest son by ringing on Friday evening at six o’clock for a fifteen-minute chat. Online articles. Blogs about subjects I hadn’t even known he cared about. When there was anything remotely interesting or curious about the emails he had been sent, I pressed the little arrow beside them to see what he’d written in reply. He was normally quite terse – he always used to say that tone was hard to detect in an email; you should be careful about irony or sarcasm. He was careful and factual, even with me.

One of Greg’s more regular email correspondents was a woman called Christine, the ex of an old friend, who he sometimes met up with; he wasn’t so careful with
her
. I flicked between her messages and his. She lamented approaching her thirty-sixth birthday and he said she was more attractive now than when they’d first met. She thanked him for taking a look at her boiler and he said it was nice to have an excuse to see her again. She said he was a very nice man, did he know that? And he replied that she must bring out the best in him. He was tanned after his holiday; she was radiant after hers. He was looking tired – was he overworking and was everything all right at home? He replied that she, on the other hand, was as fresh as ever and blue suited her.

‘But were things all right at home, Greg?’ I rubbed my eyes with my fists and glared at Christine’s solicitous notes, his flirtatious, evasive responses. ‘Come on, tell me.’

I moved to the sent messages, but the emails still didn’t tell me that. They told me he had ordered woodchip for the garden, grey paint for the kitchen, Omega 3 capsules for both of us; also a book on architecture and a new CD by Howling Bells, which I’d never heard of. Maybe he’d given it to someone as a present. Milena? Christine? I called up his music library and scrolled down, and there it innocently was.

I went downstairs. It was still grey outside, and soon enough it would be getting dark again. The lawn was covered with soggy leaves and the pear tree by the back wall dripped steadily. I hadn’t eaten since the Danish pastries that morning, so I made myself a piece of toast and Marmite and a cup of camomile tea and took it back to the computer. The phone rang and it was Gwen, with the number of their solicitor for me to call. I couldn’t remember the one Greg had used when we’d bought the house. Now there was so much to be sorted out. I wrote it on the notepad I found in the desk drawer and said I’d call her the following day.

Junkmail – but I found nothing apart from advertisements for Viagra, fake Rolex watches, amazing investment opportunities, guaranteed loans, unsecured credit and an invitation to the online casino, where everyone is king.

Trash. Greg was pretty efficient at getting rid of old messages and, anyway, they only went back a few weeks: obviously the ones older than these were deleted at an even deeper level, somewhere in the mysterious circuitry of the computer. I ploughed doggedly through them, feeling I was getting nowhere and simply wasting my time. There was a strange little message from Tania, in which she said she didn’t really understand his query and he should ask Joe about it.

I got the phone from our bedroom – my bedroom – and called Joe on the office number.

‘Yes?’ He sounded unusually curt.

‘It’s me. Is that the way you usually talk to clients?’

‘Ellie.’ His voice softened. ‘It’s one of those days. I was going to call you this evening. Tell me about the inquest. Are you all –’

‘Were there any problems with your business?’

‘How do you mean?’

I repeated the question, mentioning the email I’d found on Greg’s computer.

‘What date did you say?’

‘A week or so ago.’

There was a pause.

‘I’m scrolling through my mail and there’s nothing I can see from Greg about a worry.’

‘So, everything was OK?’

‘Depends what you mean. If you want me to bend your ear about clients who don’t pay up on time, don’t give us proper information and then complain, or dealing with the Revenue and the nightmare of bureaucracy… But that’s just business as usual and you’ve got problems of your own.’

‘All the work Greg had to do late at the office, that wasn’t because there were problems?’

‘Did he often work late?’ His tone was cautious, with an underlying note of sympathy.

I felt the blood flame into my cheeks. ‘That is, he came home late recently. Later than usual anyway.’

‘Did he seem stressed?’

‘No. At least, not really.’

‘Not really?’

‘You know, I keep thinking back and seeing things I didn’t notice at the time – or, at least, thinking I can see things. Maybe he was a bit preoccupied. Or maybe I’m making that up.’

There was a silence at the other end. I knew what Joe was thinking: that perhaps Greg was preoccupied because he was having an affair. I waited for him to say it, but he didn’t. Perhaps he was too respectful of my feelings.

‘If he was worried, though,’ I continued, ‘I think he would have told me. He wouldn’t have protected me. That’s not the kind of marriage we had. That I thought we had. We were in things together; we shared things.’

‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘Greg would have told you.’

‘You mean about everything?’

Another silence.

‘Ellie, I’m finishing up here. Can I come round on my way home? I’ll bring a bottle of wine and we can talk this through.’

‘I won’t be here.’

I found her address in his old address book and decided to walk, even though she lived in Clerkenwell and probably wouldn’t be in anyway, and even though the drizzle outside was turning into a steady downpour. It didn’t feel like something I could express over the phone.

As I arrived, I saw her coming from the other direction, feeling in her bag for her door key. She was wearing a belted mac and a scarf tied round her head, and looked like a fifties film star in one of those classy black-and-white French movies.

‘Hello.’

I stood in front of her and she looked at me with narrowed, suspicious eyes, then gave an exaggerated little start. ‘Ellie? My God. I meant to get in touch. I’m so very, very sorry. He was such a lovely –’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course. You’re soaked.’

I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my inquest clothes and had forgotten to put on a jacket. It was true that I was cold and wet. I must have looked dreadful.

I followed Christine up the stairs and into a spacious kitchen-living room. She took off her mac and hung it over the back of a chair, pulled the scarf off her head and shook out her chestnut hair.

‘Do you live alone?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Just at the moment.’ Then she offered me tea.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Or coffee, or a cold drink?’

‘Is that the boiler Greg fixed?’ I asked. ‘He never managed to get ours sorted.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Christine sat down opposite me, then stood up and filled the kettle but didn’t switch it on. She turned towards me. ‘Is there a particular reason you came?’

‘I wanted to ask you something.’

Her face took on the eager, helpful expression I’d become so familiar with since Greg’s death.

‘You were friendly with Greg.’

‘That’s right,’ said Christine. ‘I was devastated when I heard.’

‘Would you say you were close to him?’

‘It depends what you mean by close.’ Her tone was cautious now.

‘I read your emails to each other.’

‘Yes?’

‘He thought blue suited you.’ Her expression had changed: no longer eager but embarrassed. I pressed on. ‘How close?’

‘You mean…’ She stopped.

‘Yes.’

‘You poor thing,’ she said softly.

I stared at her. Shame flushed through me, leaving me clammy. I gripped the table with both hands. ‘You’re telling me there was nothing between you, then?’

‘We were friends.’

‘Even though you told him he was a very nice man and complimented him on his tan and asked him how things were at home, and he said you looked radiant?’

There was a nasty little silence, and then she said, ‘It didn’t mean anything.’

‘He never tried to make it go further?’ I felt abject, and also disgusted by myself.

She gazed at me with a pity that made me want to crawl under a stone.

‘I heard he was with another woman,’ she said.

‘Who from?’

‘People. I didn’t know who she was. Greg and I were just friends.’

I thought of Christine and nameless other people talking about Greg and the other woman in the car. A wave of nausea assailed me. ‘I ought to go. I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry. About everything.’

It was dark outside, with rain still falling and a stiff wind, so I flagged down a cab and sat with my arms wrapped round myself, feeling wretched. When I reached my front door I discovered I didn’t have enough money to pay the driver so I ran inside, then came back out to pay the driver with odd bits of money I’d discovered in various drawers and pockets. I’d found a five-pound note in Greg’s old leather jacket, which was still hanging in the hall. When was I going to sort out his things? A list of tasks streamed through my mind: contact the lawyer, the bank, the building society, find out about our financial affairs, our mortgage, any life policies, ring up the insurance broker, organize the funeral, answer all the messages I’d received over the past days, learn how to operate the video-recorder, cancel the appointment we’d made together at the fertility clinic, change the message on the answering-machine, which still had Greg’s voice saying hello and please call back later because Greg and Ellie weren’t around just now. Ellie was around, but Greg wasn’t and Greg would never be. Greg with his dark eyes and his wide smile and his strong, warm hands. He used to rub my neck at the end of a long day. He used to wash my hair for me, easing out the tangles. He used to bite his lower lip when he read. He used to walk around the house naked, singing loudly and tunelessly. He used to tell me about his days, or so I had thought. He used to watch me as I got undressed, his arms behind his head and a grave look on his face, waiting. He used to lie on his back in bed and snore gently. He used to wake up and turn to me, smiling in welcome as I struggled out of sleep.

Who else’s neck had he rubbed, hair had he washed? Who else had undressed for him, taking off garments one by one while he looked at them with the gaze I had thought was for me alone? Who had he lain beside in bed, putting out his hand to touch and comfort? All at once, a jealousy so pure and visceral it felt almost like intense physical desire swept through me, leaving me breathless and shaken. I had to sit on the stairs for a few seconds, trying to breathe normally, before I could make it to the bedroom.

I’d been going to have a bath but I’d forgotten to turn on the hot water. I peeled off my wet clothes and put on a pair of jogging pants and a thick sweatshirt that had belonged to Greg and was vast on me. One of its sleeves was frayed and I put it into my mouth and chewed it. He used to wear it when he went running on winter days and it still held his smell. I went downstairs into the kitchen, feeling a bit dazed. I half expected to see him standing at the hob and this would all have been a feverish nightmare. We had shared the cooking, done it together. Our last meal had been pasta with a chilli sauce, nothing special. He only had a few dishes in his repertory: risotto, bean stew, Moroccan lamb, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, and he cooked them with ferocious concentration, as if they were laboratory experiments that might go badly wrong, with dire consequences.