What to Do When Someone Dies Read online

  Fergus thought for a moment. ‘Not wanting to be a devil’s advocate, but this woman –’

  ‘Milena Livingstone.’

  ‘She was some sort of businesswoman, no?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Do they tend to hitchhike? In London?’

  ‘Or just some business contact.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘That he was giving a lift to.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So you believe him?’

  ‘Ellie, he’s not here to believe. Your husband – my best friend, the man we both loved and miss like hell – is dead. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? It’s as if by somehow persuading yourself that he wasn’t fucking another woman, he won’t be dead after all. You’ll go mad if you keep on like this.’

  ‘You only think that because you believe I’m wrong, deluding myself, and that Greg was unfaithful to me.’

  ‘You’re never going to find out what happened,’ he said wearily.

  I should have kept a tally of how many times that had been said to me. ‘I trust him,’ I said. ‘That’s enough for me. The toast is burning, by the way.’

  At Sunday lunch with Joe, Alison and one of their three children, Becky, who had her father’s blue stare, her mother’s pallor and reticence, I repeated what I’d said to Fergus. It was harder in front of three people. I sounded forced and over-insistent. I saw Joe’s shoulders sag, and I saw him throw a helpless glance at Alison before he turned to me, a lettuce leaf dangling from his fork. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘I know what that means,’ I said. ‘Sweetheart. It means you’re going to tell me very patiently why you think I’m behaving in a wrong-headed and self-destructive way. You’re going to tell me I’ll never find out the truth and must learn to live with that uncertainty and move on. And probably you’ll tell me this is a form of grieving.’

  ‘That’s pretty much it, yes. And that we love you and want to help in any way we can.’

  ‘Do you want to put the kettle on, Becky?’ Alison said, in a mild tone. ‘I’ll get the cheese.’

  ‘You don’t need to be tactful, Alison.’ I smiled at her. ‘We’ve known each other too long and too well for that. It’s fine. I’m fine. Really. I just thought you should know that Greg wasn’t being unfaithful.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It would be better if someone believed me.’

  The man stood on my doorstep, barely visible behind the battered wooden rocking-chair he was holding.

  ‘Terry Long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the chair for you.’ He looked at me expectantly.

  ‘I don’t –’ I began.

  ‘For my wife. It’s her Christmas present. You said you’d repair it for us. It’s a bit of a mess, as you see. It was her grandfather’s, though, so it has sentimental value.’

  ‘There’s been a mistake.’

  ‘I called you at the beginning of September. You said it would be fine.’

  ‘Things have changed,’ I said. ‘I’m not taking on new work.’

  ‘But you said…’ His face had hardened. He put the chair on the ground, and it rocked gently between us, making a clicking sound. One of its runners was badly damaged. ‘You can’t just let people down like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s it? You’re sorry?’

  ‘I’m very sorry. I just can’t. I really can’t. I’m sorry.’ I kept repeating the word: sorry, sorry, sorry. In the end he went, leaving the broken chair behind. Even his back looked angry.

  I picked up the rocking-chair, shut the door, and went through the house and into the garden where I unlocked my shed; the door was reinforced and there had been three padlocks on it since the time a year ago when a gang of youths had broken into it and stolen some of my tools. Inside, there were several ladder-backed chairs, a corner cupboard in dark oak, a lovely little ash cabinet without a back, a carved chest with an ugly gash along its lid and scars where some of its raised designs had been, and a Georgian desk. They were waiting for my attention. I went in, without turning on the light, and ran my finger across the wooden surfaces. Even though I hadn’t been in there for days and days, there was still the wonderful smell of sawdust and wax. Curls of planed wood lay on the floor. I squatted, picked up a pale rind and fingered it for a while, wondering if I’d ever come back to work here again.

  Greg and I had argued about stupid things. Whose turn it was to empty the rubbish bin. Why he didn’t rinse the basin after he’d shaved. Why I didn’t know how irritating it was when I cleaned up around him, huffing just loudly enough so that he’d hear me. When he interrupted me in the middle of a sentence. When I’d used up all the hot water. We argued about clothes that shrank in the wash, botched arrangements, overcooked pasta and burnt toast, careless words, trivial matters of mess and mismanagement. We never fell out over the big things, like God or war, deceit or jealousy. We hadn’t had long enough together for that.

  ‘So you don’t believe me?’

  Mary and I were walking on the Heath. It was cool and grey, the wind carrying a hint of rain. Our feet shuffled through drifts of damp leaves. Robin, her one-year-old, was in a carrier on her back; he was asleep and his bald, smooth head bobbed and lolled on her neck as we walked. His pouchy body swung with each step Mary took.

  ‘I didn’t say that. Not exactly. I said…’

  ‘You said, “Men are such bastards.”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that men are such bastards. Look, Ellie, Greg was lovely.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But he wasn’t a saint. Most men stray if they get the chance.’

  ‘Stray?’ I said. I was beginning to feel angry and rattled. ‘Like a sheep that’s got out of its field?’

  ‘It’s all about opportunity and temptation. This Milena probably made the first move.’

  ‘This Milena didn’t have anything to do with him. Or him with her.’

  Suddenly Mary stopped. Her cheeks were blotchy in the cold. Over her shoulder Robin’s eyes opened blearily, then closed again. A thread of saliva worked its way down his chin.

  ‘You don’t believe what you’re saying, do you?’ she said. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Though you clearly don’t.’

  ‘Because I don’t agree with you, it doesn’t mean I’m not on your side. Are you trying to push us all away? It’s rotten, what’s happened. Really horrible. I have no idea how I’d be dealing with it in your situation. Listen, though.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘I do have a bit of an understanding of what you’re going through. You know Eric? Well, obviously you know Eric. You know what happened just after Robin was born – and when I say “just after”, that’s what I mean. Three and a half weeks, to be precise.’

  A feeling of dejection settled on me.

  ‘He slept with this woman at work. I was woozy and weepy and tired, my breasts were sore, I’d only just had my stitches out so I could hardly sit down, sex was out of the question – I was a moony, overweight cow. And yet I was happy. I was so happy I thought I’d melt. And it wasn’t just once, a drunken mistake or something, it went on for weeks. He’d come home late, take lots of showers, be over-attentive, over-irritable. It’s such a bloody cliché, isn’t it? Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t realize what was going on. It’s not as if the signs weren’t there. But I was blind, in my own little bubble of contentment. I had to practically see them together before I knew.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I remembered again the conversation with Greg, in which I had insisted I would have known if Eric had been unfaithful to Mary.

  ‘Because I felt humiliated. And stupid.’ She glared at me. ‘So fat and ugly and useless and ashamed. You must understand that feeling now, after what’s happened to you. That’s why I’m telling you.’

  ‘Mary,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I wish we’d talked about it before. But it’s not the same.’

  ‘What makes you and
Greg so different?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have behaved like that.’

  ‘That’s what I used to say about Eric.’

  ‘I have an instinct.’

  ‘You can’t face the truth. I’m your friend. Remember? We can tell the truth to each other, even if it hurts.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt because it’s not true.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that maybe he was sick of having sex to get pregnant?’

  I couldn’t stop myself: I flinched in pain, as if Mary had slapped me across the face.

  ‘Oh, Ellie.’ Her face softened; I saw there were tears in her eyes, whether from the cold or emotion I couldn’t tell.

  WPC Darby showed me into a small room. There were red and pink plastic flowers in a jug on the desk, and more flowers – yellow this time, a copy of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers – in a framed picture on the wall. I sat down and she sat opposite me, folding her hands on the desk. They were broad and strong, with bitten nails. No rings on her fingers. I looked at her face, weathered, shrewd and pleasantly plain under her severely cut hair, and was satisfied that she was the right person to tell. There was some meaningless chat and then I stopped.

  ‘It’s not the way it seemed,’ I said.

  She leaned towards me slightly, her grey eyes on my face.

  ‘I don’t believe he was having an affair with Milena Livingstone.’

  Her expression didn’t waver. She just went on looking at me and waiting for me to speak.

  ‘Actually I don’t think they even knew each other.’

  She gave a nervous smile and when she spoke it was clearly and slowly, as if I was a small child. ‘They were in the same car.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘It’s a mystery. I think you ought to look at it again.’

  In the silence, I could hear the voices in the corridor outside. WPC Darby steepled her fingers and took a deep breath. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  ‘Ms Falkner, your husband died in a car crash.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt – but Greg always wore it. You have to investigate further.’

  ‘The coroner was perfectly satisfied that it was a tragic accident and that no other vehicle was involved. I understand that the fact he was with another woman is unsettling and upsetting for you. As a matter of evidence, how they knew each other doesn’t matter.’

  ‘There’s no evidence at all, of any kind,’ I said. ‘Nothing to show that he knew her.’

  Again, I anticipated what she was going to say. ‘If he was having an affair and keeping it secret, then perhaps that’s not surprising.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he didn’t know her.’

  ‘No. You’re telling me you don’t believe he knew her.’

  ‘It amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘With all due respect, it does not. What you believe and what is true are not necessarily the same thing.’

  ‘So you’re just going to let things lie?’

  ‘Yes. And I would advise you to do the same. You might consider seeing someone about –’

  ‘You think I need bereavement counselling? Professional help?’

  ‘I think you’ve had a terrible shock and are having difficulty in coming to terms with it.’

  ‘If anyone says “coming to terms” to me again, I think I’ll scream.’

  Chapter Ten

  I read through Greg’s emails so often that I almost knew them by heart. I thought they might give me a sense of his mood in the days and weeks leading up to his death. Was there a hint of anxiety? Anger? Apprehension? I couldn’t find anything and gradually they became familiar, like songs you’ve played so often you don’t hear them any more. Then I noticed something blindingly obvious, something that everybody in the developed world apart from me must already have known. Every email showed the exact time he had pressed the send button. Each email, whether from his home or his office computer, was a fairly accurate guide as to where Greg had been at a particular moment.

  Within half an hour I was back from the stationer’s with two bulky carrier-bags. I tipped their contents on to the carpet. There was a large roll of poster-sized sheets of card, rulers, different-coloured pens and Magic Markers, highlighters, and sheets and sheets of little stickers – circles, squares and stars. It looked like the raw materials for a nursery-school art project.

  I spread four of the cards in a row on the floor, using heavy books to hold the corners down. Then, using a ruler and a fine architect’s pen, I started to rule grids across them, each representing a week in the last month of Greg’s life. I traced seven columns, then drew horizontal lines cutting them into halves, then quarters, then eighths and so on, until I had chopped each column into a hundred and twenty rectangles, each representing ten minutes in a day starting at eight and finishing at midnight. I didn’t bother about the nights because we hadn’t spent a night apart in the last month.

  Just from memory, I was able to cross out entire evenings I knew we had spent together. On the weekends there were whole days I eliminated with a bold stroke of black: the Saturday we had taken the train to Brighton, walked on the beach, eaten some awful fish and chips, bought a secondhand book of poetry and I’d fallen asleep on his shoulder on the journey back; the day we walked along the Regent’s Canal from Kentish Town all the way to the river. Those were two days when he hadn’t been having sex with Milena Livingstone.

  Then I started on the emails. At work, Greg had written twenty or thirty a day, sometimes more. Based on each one, I wrote ‘O’ for office in the appropriate slot on the card. Some were in clusters. He had a habit of sending a flurry of messages as soon as he arrived at work, another just before one o’clock and another at around five, but others were dotted through the day. It didn’t take me much more than an hour to work my way through the emails, and when I was done, I stood back and surveyed the result. The chart was already satisfyingly shaded in, and there was still so much to do.

  The next day I invited Gwen round. I said it was urgent but she was at work and didn’t reach me until almost six. When she arrived I hustled her through to the kitchen, boiled the kettle and made a pot of coffee.

  ‘Would you like a biscuit?’ I said. ‘Or a slice of ginger cake? I made both this afternoon. I’ve been busy.’

  Gwen looked amused and a bit alarmed. ‘Some cake,’ she said. ‘A tiny slice.’

  I poured the coffee and gave her the cake on a plate. I wasn’t hungry. I’d felt I needed to cook but not to eat.

  ‘So what’s up?’ said Gwen. ‘Did you summon me here to try the cake? It’s great, by the way.’

  ‘Good, have some more. No, it’s nothing to do with that. Drink your coffee and I’ll take you through.’

  ‘Take me through? What is this, a surprise party?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something to show you. I think it’ll interest you.’

  Gwen took a few quick gulps of her coffee and said she was ready. I steered her along the hall and into the living room.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘What do you think of that?’

  Gwen stared down at the four large pieces of card, now covered with marks and stickers, all different shapes and colours. ‘It looks lovely,’ she said. ‘What’s it meant to be?’

  ‘That’s Greg’s life in the month before he died,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I explained to Gwen how the charts represented days and sections of days. I told her about the timed emails and my own memories and how I’d even found receipts from the sandwich bars where Greg had bought his lunch. All the receipts, whether for food or petrol or stationery, gave not just a date but an exact time, to the minute, when the purchase was made. ‘So all these stickers, the yellow circles and the green squares, they show moments when I know exactly where Greg was. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘A couple of times a week Greg drove to visit a client. But I pretended to be Greg
’s assistant, rang up and said that for tax reasons I needed an exact time for when the meeting had taken place. People were very helpful. I’ve marked all those in blue. Even then I was left with the gap between him leaving the office and arriving at the client. But I found a website. If I type in the postcode of the office and the postcode of his client, it gives an exact driving distance and even an estimated journey time. I’ve marked those in red. Obviously, driving in London traffic during the day, it’s not an exact science, but even so it fits pretty well. It took me a day and a half – and look.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Lots of colours,’ said Gwen. ‘Lots of stickers.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s what you don’t see. There’s barely a gap over four weeks when I don’t know where he was and what he was doing.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Look at the chart, Gwen,’ I said. ‘It shows Greg working very hard, travelling, eating, buying stuff, going to the movies with me. But where’s the bit when he’s having an affair? Where’s the space for him even to meet the woman he died with?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Ellie,’ she began, ‘for God’s sake –’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop. Listen for a moment. I talked to Mary about this – not about this,’ I gestured at the charts, ‘I mean my feelings about Greg. She wasn’t sympathetic. She was even angry with me, as if it was some insult to her that I wasn’t immediately accepting that my husband had been having an affair and had had a crash with the woman he really loved.’

  ‘No one’s saying that,’ said Gwen. She looked at my charts almost with an expression of pity. ‘I don’t really know what to make of this.’ She took my hand. ‘I’m not an expert but I’ve heard that there are stages of grief and at the beginning it’s anger and denial. It’s completely understandable that you feel anger. I think the point of mourning is to get through that and reach some kind of acceptance.’

  I pulled my hand away. ‘I know all of that,’ I said. ‘I read a piece about it once in Cosmo. And you know what I was thinking when I was doing all this crazy stuff with coloured stickers and ringing people up under false pretences? What would make it easy would be to find just one deleted email, just one scrap of paper in a pocket, that would show Greg had been having an affair. Or even just one occasion when he wasn’t where he was meant to be, or a missing afternoon when nobody knew where he was. Forget denial. Then I could just get angry and be sad, and my life would continue. There’s no trick to proving somebody’s having an affair. You catch them at it, just once. But how do you prove somebody’s innocent? What do you suggest?’