What to do When Someone Dies

by Nicci French

  As a deranged way of trying to tire myself out and force myself into unconsciousness, I went for a journey in my head, as if thinking about something was as tiring as doing it. I walked out of the house, turned left, then left again and went down to the canal, past Camden Lock through Primrose Hill, then out into Regent’s Park, along Euston Road and back through Somers Town, Camden Town and towards home. It was like a feverish dream, except that I was awake and in control of it.

  At first I tried to imagine it as a simple walk through the city but then I had the impression I was being chased, but I couldn’t see who was behind me, couldn’t tell whether I was being pursued by one person or many, or even whether it was a person or a thing. I just had the feeling that people were out there and that they were hostile to me. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I knew that on my imaginary trek I wasn’t being hunted. I was looking for something, following something and I realized it was you. I wasn’t just looking for you but I started talking to you and I wondered whether it made any sense for me to talk to you, whether you existed outside my mind and the minds of people who knew you. Was some remnant of you somewhere in some darker dark than the dark in which I was lying? If I didn’t believe you were out there somewhere – and I didn’t, not really – it didn’t make sense for me here, in the dark, to talk to you, and you were ‘him’ again, Greg, a thing, something past and gone.

  Suddenly the temptation to yield not only to sleep but to death felt irresistible, leaving the harsh noises and bright lights, the jabs, pains and torments of life for the absence, for the nothingness, to join you, to be with you, or at least to share nothingness with you. For a time, as I lay there, listening to sounds from outside, watching the beams of headlights crossing the ceiling, I felt that anyone who killed me would be doing me a favour.

  I lay in bed, peacefully, stolidly awake, for what must have been hours, waiting for the curtain edges to grow light, and then I realized that the shortest day of the year had only just passed and that daylight was still far away. I fumbled for my watch on the bedside table, knocking a lamp over. It was just after five. I got out of the bed, pulled on jeans, a shirt, a sweater, a thicker sweater on top of that, walking boots, then a bulky jacket of the kind you might wear on a trawler and a woolly hat. I left the house and started to walk, not as I had in my waking dream but northwards.

  Remember in the summer when we walked out on Hampstead Heath late at night? It was so warm that we had been in T-shirts and it was never entirely dark. From the top of Kite Hill we watched the glow in the sky over in the far east of London, and the office blocks of the City and Canary Wharf glowed wastefully even after midnight. We saw shadows and silhouettes around us, but we didn’t feel threatened by them. They were out walking like us, or even, some of them, sleeping under the stars, by choice or necessity.

  As I walked up Kentish Town Road I saw a few other pedestrians, stragglers from last night or early birds heading for work. There were taxis and delivery vans and cars, because the traffic never stops, barely even slackens. But once I turned on to the Heath, I felt as safe as we had felt in the summer. It was too dark and cold even for criminals or mad people, except mad people like me who were just looking for one of the few places in London where you could escape. I walked up the hill so that I could look over the lights of London, distant and abstract and glittering, as if I was flying above it. I went further up the hill and to the right, and walked deeper into the Heath on paths lit only by the moon, finding my way by memory on routes I had taken dozens of times before. The early-morning air felt fierce and good on my cheeks.

  Finally I found myself surrounded by the dim skeleton shapes of oak trees. I stopped and listened. There wasn’t even the hum of traffic that you hear everywhere else in the city. I was in the centre of London and yet I was in an ancient forest as old as England. I looked up at the branches. Were they standing out more clearly as the sky turned from black to grey? Was the dawn coming? Sometimes on these winter mornings you couldn’t tell.

  I started to talk to you, not because I thought you were somehow present, not in the wind that was shifting the branches, but because it was a place we had been together and that had somehow become a part of us. I told you the story of my life since you had gone away. I told you about my strange behaviour, my madness, my distrust of you and then my belief in you. How it had been so hard, such an effort, how I had wanted to give up.

  There was a sudden breath of wind that shifted the branches above me and I wondered what you would have said if you had been there, whether you would have teased me or got cross or said something encouraging, or just put your arms around me and said nothing. Then I told you about the strange things that had happened, the disappearing evidence. I know what you would have said about that. You always wanted to know how things worked. When you didn’t know, you found out. Even once when we had been to the Hampstead fair, you had got into conversation with a sinister tattooed man who ran one of the merry-go-rounds and he had shown you the gears and the machinery underneath. And as I told you all that I realized I had to know, even if I died at the moment I knew. It didn’t matter, as long as I knew, as long as I could tell you.

  I looked up at the branches. Yes, they really were standing out more sharply against the greying sky.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I sat on the sofa in Fergus’s living room. Jemma had left the house for the first time since Ruby’s birth to go a few hundred yards down the road for a cup of coffee with a friend, but leaving enough instructions for a week’s absence, and I had come round with croissants and freshly squeezed orange juice for Fergus. There were Babygros over the radiators, congratulation cards and flowers on every surface, and a buggy in the corner. Ruby’s Moses basket lay at my feet, with its downy snuggle of crocheted blankets, but I held Ruby on my lap, her soft head on the crook of my arm, her little bag of body slumped against me. Her eyes were closed and her lips puffed slightly with each sleeping breath she took. I needed to look at her puckered old-woman’s face, smell her musky breath, feel how her hand gripped my middle finger firmly, as if she knew she could trust me.

  We had talked about broken nights, miniature nails, eye colour, stork marks, the shape of her nose, the shell of her ear and upturn of her nose.

  ‘Who does she look like?’ asked Fergus.

  ‘Not you,’ I said, staring at her features. ‘But she’s got Jemma’s nose and mouth.’

  ‘Everyone says that.’

  ‘Maybe your chin,’ I said doubtfully, because he seemed to want me to spot a resemblance.

  ‘No. She’s got Jemma’s father’s chin,’ he said.

  I smiled at him: dear Fergus, Greg’s best friend, father of my goddaughter. ‘This was what I needed,’ I said.

  ‘Are you all right, Ellie? You seem – I don’t know – very thoughtful. A bit subdued.’

  ‘I don’t mean to. I’m fine, Fergus. Weary. I didn’t sleep very well. Actually, I came round to tell you that I think I’m going away for a while. I’ve been a bit mad, haven’t I? I feel more peaceful now.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I think so. The stages of grief.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do…’

  ‘You already have.’

  ‘What a ghastly time this has been for you.’

  I smiled at him and looked down at the baby in my arms. ‘There’s been one light in all the darkness. A new life among the deaths.’

  It would soon be dark again. So much darkness and so little light. I went to Gwen’s house and she let me in. Daniel was there, too, wearing Gwen’s stripy apron and covered in flour. ‘He’s decided to make pasta,’ said Gwen, proudly.

  He led the way into the kitchen. There was flour on the floor, the work surfaces and the table. Bowls sticky with dough were piled in the sink and clothes-hangers draped with long strips of gunk hung from the backs of chairs. Two large pans of water were boiling on the hob, filling the room with steam.

  ‘Do you want to eat it with us?’ Gwen asked.r />
  ‘I don’t think so. I’m sure it’ll be delicious.’

  ‘Have a cup of tea at least.’

  ‘One cup and then I must go.’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘Busy in my head.’

  Daniel picked up one sagging strip of pasta dough and dropped it into the boiling water.

  ‘Are you using your car at the moment, Gwen?’

  ‘Not that I know of. I never use it if I can help it. It stands there from one week to the next. I’m thinking of selling it.’

  ‘If she does need it, she can use mine instead,’ said Daniel, hurling another strip into the pan and jumping back as water splashed over the rim. ‘This isn’t looking quite the way I imagined it would. They’re disintegrating.’

  ‘Can I borrow it? I’m insured to drive any car. I was thinking of going away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just for a few days.’

  ‘But it’s Christmas.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Don’t go away on your own. Come and stay here, Ellie.’ Gwen seemed close to tears.

  ‘That’s really lovely of you but I need to go right away. Not for long. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘As long as you know that there’s always…’

  ‘I do know. I’ve always known.’

  ‘Of course you can take the car. Take it now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘I’ll be very careful of it.’

  I drove Gwen’s car home and parked it outside the gate, then let myself into the house. It was so empty, so silent, so cheerless. I wandered from room to room, picking up objects and putting them down again, running my finger along shelves to collect dust. Perhaps I would move. After I came back from wherever I was going, I would put the house on the market.

  I came to a halt in the chilly living room where I closed the curtains. I decided I’d light a fire to brighten it up. The basket already contained pieces of kindling and some tightly screwed up pieces of paper. We’d got into the habit of doing it with used envelopes, letters we didn’t need, scraps of paper. Greg used to talk about identity theft and that it was better than buying a shredder.

  I collected a bag of coal from my work shed, then set to work, although I’d rarely lit a fire before – that had always been Greg’s task. I made meals, he made fires. I laid several of the homemade fire-lighters in the grate, then arranged kindling in a wigwam over the top before striking a match and holding the flame against one of the twists of paper. It caught quickly on the dry kindling and I immediately felt the comforting warmth on my face. I sat cross-legged in front of the fire and began to toss the little screwed-up pieces into the flames and watched as they were consumed. Some I unrolled and read. Articles in six-month-old newspapers seem more interesting when you’re about to throw them on the fire. Mostly there were useless old envelopes and letters offering to lend us money or telling us we’d won some in a competition. It struck me that these were the last traces of Greg’s ordinary daily life that were left in the house, the rubbish that surrounds all of us. I was about to toss another into the flames when something caught my eye.

  It was just a fragment of handwriting scrawled on the edge of the paper but it looked familiar and I couldn’t think why. I untwisted the paper and smoothed it out.

  It had the office letterhead – Foreman and Manning Accountants – but above that, in her flamboyant calligraphy, was written: ‘I’ll ring you about this – Milena Livingstone.’ And underneath the letterhead, in a different ink, a name was written over and over again. Marjorie Sutton, Marjorie Sutton, Marjorie Sutton… About twenty signatures running down the page.

  I sat on the floor and held the paper in both hands, staring at it. What did it mean? The message was in Milena’s handwriting. There was no doubt about that. After my days in the office, I knew it as well as my own. And it was on a piece of paper from Greg’s office with Milena’s name on it. It was the thing I had been looking for all this time, the connection. And I was more confused than ever. Why was Marjorie Sutton’s name written on it over and over again? And what was it doing here?

  I tried to remember. I thought so hard it hurt. I looked at one of the newspapers. It was from the day that Greg had died. Yes, that was it. These were the scraps from the tidying I had done that day, just before the knock on the door, before my life changed. The connection between Greg and Milena had been in my hands on the day he had died, before I knew, perhaps while he was still alive. Before I had heard of Marjorie Sutton, before I had heard of Milena, or had known her handwriting. I looked down at the crumpled sheet of paper. Suddenly it seemed fragile, as if it might crumble away and the connection would be lost for ever.

  I found her number and dialled it. She seemed confused to hear from me again. She said she had told me everything she remembered.

  ‘Did you know a woman called Milena Livingstone?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘You might have forgotten.’

  ‘It’s a funny, foreign sort of name,’ she said. ‘I would have remembered it.’

  I described the piece of paper I’d found. ‘Were they your signatures?’

  ‘I don’t see the importance of this,’ she said, with a touch of impatience. I felt as if I was talking to a small child whose attention was wavering.

  ‘I think it’s very important,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take the paper to the police. They may want to ask you about it.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t sign any piece of paper in that way.’

  ‘What exactly do Greg’s company… I mean Foreman and Manning, what do they do for you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s your concern,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose they do your accounts.’

  ‘Since my husband died…’ she began.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was twelve years ago, thirteen almost. They handle the money side of things for me, the things my husband used to look after. I couldn’t do it myself.’

  ‘But there’s something about that piece of paper,’ I said. ‘It must have been connected with why Greg wanted to see you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

  ‘But have you had any trouble with the firm? Have they behaved strangely in some way? Were you having problems with them? Had you complained?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t. Really, Ms Falkner, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘But there must be something,’ I said, in desperation. ‘I’ve found this piece of paper, Greg wanted to see you urgently, just at the time he died. You must try to think.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t help you any more.’

  ‘But don’t you see -’ I realized the line was dead. I couldn’t believe it. She’d actually hung up on me.

  Almost in a dream, I walked through to the kitchen. I laid the paper on the table. I boiled the kettle, made coffee and stared at it as if it was a mathematical problem that would yield an answer if I thought about it hard enough. Those signatures. I was sure I’d seen something like it before, but I couldn’t think where. It was like a fragment of a story and I tried to piece it together. I’ll ring you about this. Milena Livingstone. You? Greg? Milena calls Greg? Greg calls Marjorie Sutton? Had he seen something in the note that I couldn’t? Had Milena told him something?

  I looked at the coffee mug. It was empty. I refilled it. It didn’t matter now. I would take it to Ramsay. Finally it was the connection I’d been looking for. The professionals could deal with it. I found an old envelope and slipped the piece of paper inside. I put the envelope into my shoulder bag. As I was pulling on my jacket, the doorbell rang. It was Joe. I must have looked almost comically puzzled. He smiled.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was worried about you,’ he said.

  ‘Everybody’s worried about me. I’m fine.’

  ‘One of our clients phoned the office.
She’s in a state. She said a woman had been ringing her and asking her strange questions.’

  ‘Marjorie Sutton. But you don’t need to concern yourself about me,’ I said, pulling the door shut behind me and walking towards Gwen’s car. ‘I was on my way out.’

  ‘The way that woman was talking, I thought you might be having some sort of breakdown. You can’t go disturbing old ladies like that.’

  ‘There are things I need to know.’

  ‘What things?’

  I unlocked the car door. ‘I can’t talk,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go. One of my regular visits to the police.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said, and then stopped myself. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Could you at least drop me at a station? I let my cab go.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘So long as you behave yourself.’

  As I drove off, I half expected to feel Joe’s hand on my knee.

  ‘What are you seeing them about?’

  I told him about the piece of paper and where I’d found it.

  ‘Isn’t that just a scrap of paper?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a scrap of paper from Greg’s work with Milena Livingstone’s handwriting on it.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it feels like the thing I’ve been looking for.’

  We drove for a couple of minutes in silence and then I thought, He’ll suggest going somewhere else. We continued in silence for several minutes.

  ‘I could drop you over there.’

  ‘It’s probably nothing, but why not come back to the office? We could look through Mrs Sutton’s file and see if your piece of paper refers to anything.’