Читать книгу The Perfect Widow - A.M. Castle - Страница 8

Looking back on that night, I see the whole thing playing out like one of those jerky black-and-white newsreels. Some bits speeded up, some in slow motion. That policewoman moving towards me, breezing down my hall as though she owned the place – this part was fast, much too fast. Then, when we’d all reached the kitchen, time got stuck, snagging on her brutal words. Patrick. Dead.

Then my mouth was open in a big, round O. Was that right? I didn’t know what to do, how to be. Where to put myself, even in my own home. There I was, backed up against a unit, the handle pressing into me. And wearing Lycra, of all things. I was suddenly horrified. I should have been in black, a proper widow’s weeds, but instead, I stood there in my least favourite yoga pants, with the waistband going and the colours clashing.

The kids had no such qualms, they just did what came naturally, both running to me. Giles slamming into my side so that the bruise was visible the next day, Em trying to crawl almost up into my arms like the baby she’d so recently been. They knew what to do, what was necessary, without being told. The three of us, then, clinging together as though we were on a raft and too much motion would pitch us off into the deepest, darkest sea. A little clump of sorrow. That felt right at least.

Even if you are ready for the news – if someone’s being dying of cancer for years, say – there is still no preparing you for the actual moment when you hear. The gulf between your acceptance of the way things must soon be, and the bald fact itself, is as big as the divide between the living and the dead. That last goodbye, the final slam of the door. Patrick gone, already?

Now time was moving like treacle, as I tried to compute it all, get my head round it. Patrick was beyond explanations, apologies, reproaches. All the opportunities I’d had over the years to sort things out, call a truce, make things better, or even just to enjoy life with him, were just ashes now.

Of course I asked, I had to. I forced the mask that was now my face to frame the question. Whispered it over their heads. ‘What happened?’ I didn’t want the kids to hear, but I knew it had to be done.

‘A fire. At the office.’

The heads that had been buried into my side lifted at that, both of them. ‘Dad hates fires,’ said Giles. We were the only house that didn’t have a big shiny barbecue in the garden. No scented candles. And the fireplace by the sofas was gas, flicking on and off with a remote control.

I couldn’t quite see Giles’s face from the angle he had found, but I could imagine it crumpling, like all the times he’d cried as a small child. The mouth suddenly shifting sideways, the rest of his face creasing over it as though to hide the shame of giving in to tears. Em cried differently, so much more openly. Her face now was as wet as though she’d been under the shower. She held it up to me, my beautiful broken-hearted girl. I pressed a kiss onto the top of her hair, with its summer holiday scent, the coconut shampoo she loved. Which I would now forever associate with this moment. I wrapped my arms tighter round the two of them.

‘There were smoke alarms …’

‘Yeah. Didn’t work, did they?’ This was the stocky little policewoman, her head on one side as she looked up at me, face as shuttered as an off-licence after closing time. ‘Or no one heard. Inhalation.’

Did she want a reaction of some sort? I could do nothing but stare back at her, feeling these two smaller hearts beating against mine. It made me think of all those months when I’d carried them inside me, long ago. I didn’t have time to appease her, too. Things were going fast again.

‘Do I need to …?’ I tailed off. Swallowed. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Someone had to identify him, didn’t they? Go to the mortuary, give that nod so they’d pull back the sheet. I felt nauseous at the thought.

‘No, that’s being taken care of.’ The policewoman looked at her notebook briefly. ‘His mother.’ There was a stab of pity for my mother-in-law, but also a wave of relief. The building?’ She looked back at me. Her eyes, dark as currants, were narrowed, expectant. Had there been a question?

‘Sorry?’

‘The building.’ She tapped the notebook with her pencil. ‘It would have been insured?’ she persisted. This time she was shushed by her colleague. A big, kindly man. Now he apologised, put a hand very briefly on my arm. His knees creaked slightly as he bent forward, almost like a toy policeman. He had the kind of pale skin that mottles with the sun, hair that would have been ginger once but was now the colour of a British beach. His eyes were a watery blue. Patrick had had a polo shirt that exact shade. My sight blurred suddenly. At last. ‘So sorry for your loss. Anyone we can call?’

I shook off all offers of help, even their suggestion that they make me tea or coffee, though later I realised that had no doubt come over as churlish. The widow should accept things gratefully, graciously, after all. Pity is her lot. And the woman officer was probably dying for a cuppa, not to mention a biscuit or three. Never mind. I had very little faith in the ability of that great cure-all, hot sweet tea, to improve this mess. I just wanted these two out, away, gone, with their platitudes and darting eyes. I wanted the doors shut, I wanted to sit and comfort my babies. To push all this horror far away. As far away as my dead husband now was.

So the three of us could start living again.