It had never once occurred to Sue that she might be right. A raw, painful ache twisted the oxygen out of her lungs. Her mother wasn’t right. She didn’t know the whole story. No one did. Not even her.
Which was why, instead of cleaning out Gary’s office and preparing for the flatmate she knew would be coming, she’d stared and stared at the handle to his office willing herself to take hold of it and twist until, eventually, shaking from the exhaustion of her already overstretched imagination, she took the few short steps to her own room, laid down on the bed and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
This morning when she’d woken up she’d gone through the motions. Alarm off, make the bed, shower, dress, blow dry her hair, then down to the kitchen for a cup of tea. The routine was built into her like breathing. It just happened. It had felt like any other day apart from the fact her husband was still dead, the joint bank account was still mysteriously empty and she had a housemate she’d never properly met moving in without knowing which way she took her tea.
But the mortgage was due shortly and she wouldn’t ask her parents for help (or Katie and Dean for that matter). Not after the fiasco with the refused debit cards and the crematorium. She knew her father wouldn’t press for the money, but she also knew (because he’d told her) that the money had been earmarked for taking her mother on a forty-fifth wedding anniversary cruise round the Mediterranean this November coming in lieu of a sapphire which she would, by her own admission, inevitably lose. He’d need to be putting a deposit down sharpish if it was anything like the cruise Katie and Dean had taken the children on last year. Booked in a matter of minutes. The entire ship. Some five thousand passengers – snap! – planning their holidays months in advance, completely secure in the knowledge that their loved ones would be there.
Forty-five years. Imagine.
Sue would never have a forty-fifth wedding anniversary. Not with Gary anyway. Marrying someone else and constructing an entire, brand-new life seemed completely inconceivable. Particularly if a forty-fifth wedding anniversary was the aim. At her age … well. Forty-two wasn’t that old, but to court, get engaged, marry and live another forty-five years? Right now, getting through the day felt like a triumph.
She wondered if that was how Gary had felt. Exhausted. Too worn out from it all to wait and see if a bit of toad-in-the-hole might perk him up. The community support officer who’d called in to her parents a couple of times said sometimes, when a person had made the decision to kill themselves, they waited until they believed their loved one was happy. She’d been watching Neighbours, which made her happy. Singing along with the theme song, which made her happy. Making her husband his favourite dish. Or maybe least-favourite dish. She’d asked his pillow at least a thousand times which it was and it never answered back. Not when she asked it nicely, cried into it or even the time she punched it. It awed her … the scope of things she didn’t know. Wouldn’t know unless, of course, she went into his office and went hunting for clues.
‘Can I, ummm …’ Raven looked over her shoulder as an ever-increasing stream of employees lumbered in, shoulders hunkered down as if the winter weather bore actual heft. ‘Is there any chance I could cadge a lift to yours after? You have a car, right?’
‘Yes, I—’ She did have a car. A tidy little red two-door sports Ka that Gaz playfully called the basic model runaround. It was full of clothes she’d cleared out of their once over-full wardrobe the day after the funeral. Her one burst of activity. In early January, she’d unsuccessfully tried to get Gary to downsize his Marvel t-shirt collection so, the day after she’d watched her husband’s casket disappear behind a red curtain, she’d weeded out clothes she was unlikely to wear instead.
Widows didn’t wear crop tops. Widows didn’t wear mini skirts. Even that jumper she’d bought just after Christmas in the sales with the bare shoulders seemed inappropriate.
It hadn’t even occurred to her to clear out Gary’s things.
She would. Of course she would, but … had enough time passed? Were there time limits for these things? Mourning periods for threadbare coveralls?
‘So long as you’re sure,’ Raven said.
‘Positive,’ said Sue. Which, of course, was entirely untrue. Where on earth was she going to put the poor girl?
There was only one solution for it. She’d give Raven her room. It made perfect sense.
She always kept it tidy. Had ‘trained’ Gary to keep his things in the spare room. Not that she was a neatnik or anything, but yes, she was house proud. Not in the way Katie was of their sprawling detached house with an acre-long garden that abutted the countryside. Nor was it the ‘contemporary village community’ her parents had moved into a couple of years back. ‘To be closer to the grandchildren,’ had been the party line, but Sue had grown up listening to her mother go on at her father about wanting to live in a modern, brand-new house that someone else hadn’t had their ‘grubby mitts on’ before she’d got a hold of it.
No, Sue and Gary’s home was nothing out of the ordinary. A modest two-up, two-down they’d bought as a ‘starter kit’ en route to another where, one day, they’d hoped to raise a family. The family and the housing upgrade had never come to pass, but she loved the cosy row house almost as much as
