He’d been cooking pasta when the doorbell had rung. Pasta! How on earth could he have been doing something as mundane when his wife . . .
He closed his eyes as he thought of the dreadful sight of the two police officers standing in his doorway. A man and a woman with pale, serious faces.
At first, Luke thought they must be lost, because why else would they be knocking at his door? He didn’t imagine for a moment that their arrival and Helen’s lateness were connected.
He remembered the strange expression on the woman’s face, one that he hadn’t been able to read. She’d been talking about the trains from London – the train that his wife was on. It never made it to its destination. Some kind of signal failure, they thought. Not confirmed. Nothing had been confirmed at that stage except that there were two trains involved. And Helen. Helen was dead. That, at least, had been confirmed.
Helen. Was. Dead.
Luke couldn’t remember what had happened after that. Phone calls. Paperwork. Death made a lot of admin. That was a lesson Luke had quickly learned. Luckily, his business partner, Chippy, had been a stalwart, stepping in and stepping up at work, allowing Luke the time and space he needed.
In fact, he was due round any minute now, Luke remembered, glancing out of the living-room window just as Chippy’s van pulled up.
Luke smiled. He liked Chippy. They’d been working together now for four years and Luke believed he couldn’t find a better colleague.
‘Hey,’ Luke said as he greeted him at the door.
‘All right?’ Chippy asked, removing his steel-capped work boots before coming in.
Luke nodded. That was about as deep as it got between them and Luke was glad of it. He instinctively knew that Chippy was there for him, but he felt relieved that his friend and work colleague didn’t expect anything of him.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Great.’
Luke did the honours in the kitchen.
‘You cut your hair?’ he asked.
‘Girlfriend told me it was time,’ Chippy said, self-consciously running a hand through the short fair hair that, up until recently, had hit his shoulders.
‘It suits you,’ Luke told him.
Chippy grinned as he took his mug of tea from Luke and they both sat down together in the dining room.
‘I’ve taken some photos,’ Chippy said, reaching for his phone from his pocket and finding them before handing the phone to Luke.
‘You working okay with Mark?’ Luke asked him.
‘Marcus.’
‘Right.’
‘He’s doing okay, but he’s not up to your standard.’
Luke looked through the photos of the sixteenth-century house. ‘Ah, you found that fireplace!’
‘Yes, and it was just as big as you said it would be. We’ve opened it right up.’
‘Looks great.’
‘The owner’s delighted.’
‘Well, it looks like you’re making good progress,’ Luke said, handing the phone back.
Chippy popped it in his pocket and finished his tea before heading towards the door, where he stopped and turned around.
‘You coming back soon?’
Luke was about to reply when Chippy glanced at the mantelpiece and his expression changed. Luke knew what he’d seen: the wedding photo of him and Helen. It was his favourite one, where they were both laughing as confetti floated down around them.
Chippy quickly averted his gaze, his face flushing red, and Luke instantly felt bad that his friend might be feeling uncomfortable. Death had a way of doing that, he’d learned.
‘Yeah,’ Luke said. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
Chippy nodded and gave an awkward smile and Luke watched as he got into his van and left for a day’s work.
Luke sighed as he closed the door. He missed his work, but he couldn’t face it yet. He couldn’t face normality just yet. He walked towards the mantelpiece, picking up the photo and looking into Helen’s laughing face.
‘Why did you go?’ he whispered, feeling, once again, total disbelief that he wasn’t ever going to see that sweet freckled face of hers again.
It had been several weeks since the accident, but it still all felt so raw. May had arrived along with the first swifts, the apple tree had burst into blossom and the woods had turned hazy with bluebells. Luke cursed it all because Helen wasn’t there to see it. He felt bitter with anger. How could something as simple as a signal failure take a life? He wanted to lash out and punish somebody, but there was nobody to blame. At least, nobody they’d actually named. But somebody must have been in control of that damned signal, and their lapse in judgement or concentration or whatever on earth it was had cost eleven people their lives. It was the worst accident that line had seen in decades and there’d been an outpouring of grief not just locally, but nationally too, with people arriving from all over the country to lay flowers at the scene where the two trains had collided.
Luke hadn’t laid flowers. Helen wasn’t there. It was a strange feeling, but he honestly thought that she was somehow still at home. Every now and then, he’d just feel her, and he’d spin around, sure he’d find her standing behind him. It was the craziest thing, and he genuinely thought he was losing his mind. He felt like that a lot since that dreadful night when the police had knocked on his door.
A few of Helen’s things had been recovered from the accident. Her handbag with the faulty zip, which had contained all the usual things a working woman carried with her throughout
