What to do When Someone Dies

by Nicci French

  ‘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.

  It occurred to me that since he had died I’d barely cooked beyond making toast. Gwen had made me a vegetable lasagne, Mary had produced salmon fillet with baked tomatoes and watched me as I failed to eat it, and Fergus had brought round a cold roast chicken and garlic bread, which was, I thought, still in the fridge. My neighbour, Annie, had made me too many cakes and soups, as had my mother. Cooking for one is sad when you’re used to cooking for two. I decided to poach myself an egg. Eggs are comforting, I thought, as I waited for the water to boil in the pan, then cracked an egg into it, slid a piece of stale bread into the toaster. The meal took about three minutes to make and three to eat. Now what?

  Throughout that night I worked very hard, stopping only for a mug of tea at ten, a glass of whisky at midnight (I had somehow acquired three bottles of whisky since Greg had died: it’s the drink people think a grieving widow will turn to), a chicken sandwich at two. I sat in the living room and went through his address book again, writing down names I didn’t recognize. I went through his diary, though it wasn’t his work one, just the old book he kept personal appointments in, and didn’t find a single thing that made me suspicious. I went through all of his papers, which had been neatly sorted into categories and then by date. I went through the box of old letters in the junk room that should have been an office. I went through his school reports, his qualifications and diplomas, his photo albums from the years before he met me and before the world had gone digital. He was a sweet, gangly, loose-limbed child; his expectant smile hadn’t changed. I emptied the contents of boxes on to the floor and examined them: old vinyl records, compilation tapes he’d made when he was a teenager, books we hadn’t got round to putting on the shelves, magazines going back years. I pulled out each drawer in our bedroom and went through his clothes, folding them neatly and putting them back in their proper place because I had discovered I wasn’t ready yet to give any away.

  I opened the cupboard under the stairs and took out every object there – bike panniers, a squash racket, two pairs of running shoes, an old tent we hadn’t used since that trip to Scotland when it had rained non-stop and we had eaten fish and chips and listened to the rain hammering on the canvas. He had told me then that wherever I was that was his home. We had both cried.

  At six, because it was too early to go out and I had gone through everything in the house, I started making a list of people I would ask to the funeral. At the end, there were a hundred and twenty names and I gazed at them in despair. How many people would fit into the crematorium chapel, how many into the front room? Should I provide food and drink? Should I ask people to do readings or make little speeches? And what about music? Why wasn’t Greg here to advise me?

  At eight o’clock I made myself a bowl of porridge – half milk, half water, with golden sugar sprinkled liberally over the top – and a large pot of strong coffee. Then I washed and got dressed in an ancient corduroy skirt that came down to my ankles and a dark blue jersey with a hole in the elbow that Greg had given me when we first met. Because it was cold and grey, I put on a duffel coat, and wrapped a red scarf round my neck. Now I was a bundle of wool and itchy layers.

  Kentish Town Road was thick with cars and people on their way to work. I got on to the overcrowded Underground train that took me to Euston, then walked the last few hundred yards to Greg’s workplace. It was on the second floor of a recently renovated office block. They had moved in there a few months earlier; when their firm had expanded they had needed more than three desks, three computers and several filing cabinets. Once it had just been Joe and Greg, now there were people I didn’t recognize. They needed rooms with doors for clients, lavatories, a coffee-machine and a water-cooler. I rang the bell and before long Tania was ushering me in, taking my coat and scarf, pulling out a chair for me, too solicitously offering tea, coffee, biscuits, anything at all, gazing at me with her big brown eyes, shaking her head in horror and sympathy so that her ponytail bounced. She was like a puppy, an eager spaniel trying to please.

  ‘Is Joe here?’

  ‘He’s in his office. I’ll go and fetch him.’

  At that moment Joe came striding across the room towards me, holding his arms out well before he reached me, and Tania seemed to melt away. ‘You should have told me you were coming,’ he said. His eyes narrowed. ‘You look absolutely exhausted.’

  ‘I’ve been up all night. I was looking through Greg’s stuff.’

  ‘Sorting things out?’

  ‘Trying to find out what he’d been up to.’

  ‘Here, come and tell me.’ He took my arm and led me into his office, which was really no more than a small glass cubicle. On the white wall behind his chaotic desk hung a photograph of hi
s family: his wife, Alison, and his three children, who were teenagers now but in the picture were still small and childish. Alison stood behind them, her arms circling the little group protectively. I saw how the three children were a bit like her and a bit like him, and felt fierce regret and sadness fill me from top to toe.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said, as I sat in the chair he pulled out for me. ‘There wasn’t anything strange.’

  Joe’s brow wrinkled. ‘What were you expecting?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was why I was looking. I need to go through his things here as well.’

  He seemed taken aback. ‘There’s not much personal stuff. I think Tania’s already packed up most of it. I really don’t think there’s anything else except clients’ files and government regulations.’

  ‘It’s his work things I want to go through. His papers, his diary, his appointments.’

  ‘I see.’ He sounded sympathetic but stern, too, and I dropped my eyes under his gaze.

  ‘There must be something to show me he was having an affair with this Milena.’

  ‘Ellie…’

  ‘Because I’m telling you, Joe, there’s nothing at home – I mean nothing – that suggests he was having an affair with her or anyone else. You had no idea, or so you say. Neither did Fergus. Or anyone. And nor did I. Even now I look back and can’t see it.’

  Joe nodded a few times, then got up and stared out at the room beyond. Then he turned back to me. On his face was an expression of kind patience that made me squirm. ‘Maybe he was just good at keeping secrets.’

  ‘He can’t have been that good. Not Greg. He was incapable of lying about anything. If he was having an affair, someone would have known. There would be evidence somewhere.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Ellie? Whatever you do, however much you search, you can’t prove he wasn’t having an affair?’

  ‘He couldn’t have left no trace.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps you’ll turn his whole life upside-down and investigate everything and eventually find something.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But why do you want to?’

  ‘Why? Because I have to. Don’t you understand? I loved him. I thought he loved me…’

  ‘He loved you.’

  ‘I knew him, Joe. I knew our life together. Or I thought I did. And now he’s dead and there’s this mystery and everyone’s pitying me and I look back at our life and I can’t see it any longer, can’t trust it. It’s like the lights have all gone out and everything I trusted I can’t any more. And I can’t ask him. I want to ask him what the hell was going on. I can’t believe he won’t ever be able to tell me, that we won’t be able to talk about it together. If he was dead and that was it, no other woman involved, at least I could miss him and remember him with tenderness and feel good about what we had – but even that’s muddied by this. I can’t even mourn him properly. I feel humiliated, ashamed, tangled up in all these emotions. It’s a mess. I’m a mess.’

  ‘He loved you,’ Joe repeated. His voice was gentle, insistent. ‘Even if he was having an affair, he loved you very much.’

  ‘So you think he was, then!’

  ‘I’m saying if.’

  ‘I don’t want ifs.’

  ‘But, in all likelihood, that’s all you’re going to get.’

  ‘I can’t accept it.’

  ‘Everyone has secrets. Everyone does things they don’t want to be discovered.’

  ‘Have you, then?’

  ‘What? Had an affair?’

  ‘Yes. Have you?’

  ‘Why would you believe my answer? Do you think I’d tell you if I had? And if I had, would it somehow make it more likely that Greg had as well, and if I hadn’t does the same apply?’

  ‘You have, haven’t you?’ Of course he had, I thought. All those women who crowded round him.

  But Joe put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Stop this, Ellie.’

  ‘Sorry. But, Joe, tell me, do you think Greg was being unfaithful?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I… Honestly, I just don’t know. But perhaps he was, yes. And then, of course, you have the circumstances of his death.’

  ‘I see.’ I bit my lip and sat for a while, composing myself. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ellie.’ His voice was painfully sympathetic.

  ‘I still want to look through his things.’

  He shrugged helplessly. ‘If that’s what you need. We didn’t know you were coming so it’s in a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.’

  It was more than a bit of a mess – it was in disarray. There were files lying open on every surface, piles of paper stacked on the desk and floor, thick accounting books pulled off shelves.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Joe.

  He installed me at Greg’s old desk with his computer in front of me, and then his electronic organizer. Tania brought files and folders and I trawled through them as well. I looked at accounts, receipts, letters from clients, recommendations, rules and regulations, lines of figures, application forms, consent forms, VAT forms, tax returns, expenses, queries about trusts and power-of-attorney. There were pink and yellow Post-it notes stuck on some, scrawled with Greg’s slapdash writing. Meaningless. I had no idea what I was searching for and it was quickly apparent to me that I might as well have been reading a hieroglyphic script. I felt my brain throb as I searched for connections I knew I wouldn’t find. Joe put cups of coffee beside me and I let them go cold. Tania brought me a cheese and tomato bap and asked me if there was anything that needed explaining.

  ‘One thing,’ I said. ‘You sent an email to Greg at home, saying he should ask Joe about whatever it was that was worrying him. Do you remember what it was about?’

  Tania wrinkled her button nose and furrowed her smooth brow. ‘No,’ she replied eventually, ‘so it can’t have been important, can it? Do you want me to look out the original email he sent?’

  ‘If it’s not too much bother.’

  ‘I might have deleted it if it was dealt with.’

  I wished I’d brought Fergus with me – he was some kind of computer whiz and he’d done freelance work for the firm several times. He’d even been here on Greg’s last day. He’d have been able to guide me through.

  I made a list of all the clients Greg had visited over the last three weeks, with their phone numbers and addresses, and stared at them, the names blurring. I looked at the A-Z and my head buzzed with tiredness and a despairing frustration. Anything was better than not knowing. For how could I say goodbye to Greg when I no longer knew who he was? How could I get him back?

  Chapter Six

  It was while the undertaker was going through the price options that I descended into a form of mental illness. I experienced the feeling I had once had as a teenager – probably all teenagers have it – that I was the only real person in the world and that everyone else was an actor playing a part. The undertaker’s in Kentish Town was much like any other shop in the high street offering a service, an estate agent or a white-goods supplier. But this one had been made over in shades of grey with fake pillars supporting the reception desk and white lilies in vases, so that it looked a bit like a mausoleum. Sombre new-agey music, something on Pan pipes, was playing in the background. Of course, Mr Collingwood, the funeral director, was dressed in a navy suit with a white carnation and, of course, he offered me his condolences in a subdued voice as he pushed the price list across his desk towards me.

  In the same subdued voice, he talked about the services they offered, the collection and care of the deceased, the arrangements for visiting the chapel of rest. He murmured that there were decisions to be made: religious or secular, burial, cremation or special facilities, and then there were the extras. As I looked through the section of the brochure devoted to coffins – chipboard lined with plastic, wood veneer, solid wood, cardboard, woven willow – I began to think of Mr Collingwood as an actor. I wasn’t angry about this, or bitter. I didn’t want him to dress
like an ice-cream salesman or to grin as if he was trying to sell me a new car. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was almost four thirty. He might have been at a funeral that morning and he must have had lunch, perhaps in one of the new cafés that had opened in the high street in the last two years. He would have seen at least a couple of people before me, and now it wasn’t long until the end of the day. Perhaps he was also thinking about the evening, dinner, seeing his children. Maybe one of them was having trouble at school and he would have to sit with them as they did their homework. For all I knew it was his wedding anniversary or his birthday, and he was going out for dinner. He might have been diagnosed with a fatal disease or he might have won the lottery, but now he was playing the role of the undertaker, with the right note of dignity, competence and concern.

  He couldn’t really care about me. In fact, I didn’t want him to. He hadn’t known Greg and he didn’t know me, and if I suspected he was feeling real emotion about my loss, it would be creepy, as if I had caught him breaking into my house. So he was giving a performance, just well enough, and as I paged numbly through the brochure, it struck me that everyone I had dealt with had been performing as well. The coroner had been respectful and serious but he had finished in time for lunch; he might have gone straight to his club and laughed about the ridiculous case he had just heard or he might have forgotten about it and told dirty jokes, or gone back to his office alone and drunk whisky from a half-bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk. It didn’t matter. While sitting in the court he had played the role of coroner in the presence of a grieving widow. The policewomen had acted the way you act when you tell a wife that her husband has died. If they had been returning a lost cat to a little girl, they would have acted in the appropriate style for that. The registrar at the hospital had performed in the way you perform when a relative comes to view a body.

  It couldn’t just be a matter of behaving according to their emotions because they couldn’t feel those emotions any more, not when they had done it a hundred times. And why should the hundredth grieving family member not get the same treatment as the first? In reality, the hundredth probably gets better treatment than the first. When the emotion is real, you can’t handle it: it overflows and comes out in the wrong way. When it’s real, you’re not dignified and sombre: you grin inappropriately and say the wrong thing and make awkward gestures.