Nicci French - What to do When Someone Dies

‘I’ve been thinking about it all night,’ she said. ‘I’ve hardly slept. I can’t believe it.’

‘When you get in, could you check who Greg was seeing yesterday?’

‘He just spent the day at the office, then left to go home.’

‘He might have called in on a client on his way, dropped something off. If you could have a look at his diary…’

‘I’ll do anything, Ellie,’ said Tania, ‘but what am I looking for?’

‘Ask Joe if Greg said anything to him yesterday.’

‘Joe wasn’t in the office. He was on a visit.’

‘It was a woman.’

‘Yes, I knew that. I’ll try.’

I thanked her and put the phone down. It rang instantly. Greg’s father had questions he wanted to ask me. He sounded formal and rehearsed, as if he had written them down before speaking to me. I wasn’t able to answer any of them. I had already told him everything I knew. He told me that Kitty hadn’t slept the whole night and I wondered if he was making a point about who was mourning most. When he put the phone down, I felt I had failed a test. I wasn’t being an adequate wife. Widow. The word almost made me laugh. It wasn’t a word for people like me. It was for old women with headscarves, pulling shopping baskets on wheels, women who had expected widowhood, had prepared for and accepted it.

I played over in my mind the exact moment when the policewoman had told me the news, that moment of transition. It was a line drawn across my life and everything after it would be different. I wasn’t at all hungry or thirsty but I decided I ought to have something. I walked into the kitchen and the sight of Greg’s leather jacket draped over one of the chairs hit me so that I could hardly breathe. I used to complain about that. Why couldn’t he hang it on a proper hook, out of the way? Now I leaned down and tried to smell him on it. There would be a lot of moments like that. As I made myself coffee there were more of them. The coffee was Brazilian, a kind he always chose. The mug I took from the cupboard was from the gift shop of a nuclear-power station; Greg had got it as a joke. When I opened the fridge door, I was bombarded with memories, things he had bought, things I had bought for him, his preferences, his aversions.

I realized that the house was still almost as it had been when he had left it, but with every action I took, every door I opened, everything I used or moved, I was eliminating his presence, making him that little bit deader. On the other hand, how did that matter? He was dead. I took his jacket and hung it on the hook in the hall, the way I’d always nagged him to do.

My mobile was on the shelf there and I saw I had a text message – and then that it was from Greg, and for a moment I felt as though someone had taken my heart in their two hands and wrung it out like a flannel. With thick fingers, I called it up. It had been sent yesterday, shortly after I’d got upset with him for staying later at the office than he’d promised, and it wasn’t very long: ‘Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. Im a stupid fool.’ I stared at the message, then pressed the phone against my cheek, as if there was a bit of him left behind in the message that could enter me.

I took the coffee, his address book, my address book and a notebook and started to think of who I should call. I was immediately reminded of the party we had given earlier in the year, halfway between his birthday and mine. Same address books, same table and much the same sort of decisions. Who absolutely had to be invited? Who did we want? Who didn’t we want? If we invited X, we had to invite Y. If we invited A, we mustn’t invite B.

I felt as if my mind wasn’t working properly and that I had to write everything down, so that I didn’t forget someone or ring someone twice. There were close friends I would have to try to reach before they left for work. First of all, though, I rang my parents once more, dreading the call but knowing they would both be there at that time of morning.

My father answered and immediately called my mother so they were both on the line. Then they began telling me about a friend of theirs – did I remember Tony, who had just been diagnosed with diabetes and it was all because he ate too much, wasn’t that a ridiculous thing and why couldn’t people exercise control over their lives? I kept trying to interrupt them and finally managed to insert a loud ‘Please!’ between two sentences and blurted it all out.

There was a sudden outpouring of emotion and then of questions. When had it happened? Was I all right? Did I need any help? Should my mother come over right now? Should they both come over? Had I told my sister or should she do that for me? And what about Aunt Caroline – she had to know? I told them I had to go, I would speak to them later, but right now I had calls to make and things to do. When I put the phone down, I thought about that. What were the things I had to do? There were death certificates to be signed. Wills to be read. A funeral. Did I have to do all that or did it happen automatically?

I needed to speak to Joe, Greg’s partner and his dear friend. But I only got through to his answering-machine, and I couldn’t bear to break the news like that. I imagined his face when he heard, his blazing blue eyes; he would be able to cry the tears I didn’t yet seem able to. Tania would have to tell him for me. I thought she’d want to anyway; she was new to the company and adored Joe, as a schoolgirl adores a movie star.

I went through Greg’s address book and mine and wrote out a list of forty-three people. It was a more select group than had been at our party. Then we had invited plenty of people we hadn’t seen since the previous year’s party, some neighbours, people we were gradually losing touch with. They would find out on the grapevine, or when they got in touch with me, or perhaps some would never find out. They would wonder occasionally what had happened to old Greg and Ellie and then they would think of something else.

I got the phone and started calling the people roughly in the order they had come out of my address book and then out of Greg’s. The first was Gwen Abbott, one of my oldest friends, and the last was Ollie Wilkes, the one cousin Greg had stayed closely in touch with. Making that first call, I could hardly punch out the number, my hands were trembling so much. When I told Gwen and heard her cry of shock and surprise, I felt that I was experiencing it all over again, except that it was worse because the blow was struck on bruised and broken flesh. After I had put the phone down I simply sat, almost gasping for breath, as if I was in thin air at high altitude. I felt I couldn’t go through with it, reliving the moment through other people over and over again.

But it got easier. I found a form of words that worked and practised it before making the calls. ‘Hello, this is Ellie. I’ve got some bad news…’ After a few times, I became quite calm about it. I managed to steer each conversation and bring it to a fairly quick close. I had a few set phrases. ‘I have things to do’; ‘I’m sorry, I can’t really talk about him at the moment’; ‘That’s very kind of you.’ It was worst with his dearest friend Fergus who had loved Greg for much longer than I had. He’d been his running companion, confidant, surrogate brother, best man. He said, ‘What will we do without him, Ellie?’ I heard his dazed, cracked voice and thought, That’s how I’m feeling too; I just don’t know it yet. I felt about grief as if it was crouching out of sight in hiding from me, waiting to spring out and ambush me when I least expected it.

Halfway through the list, there was an urgent knocking at the door and I opened it to find Joe standing there. He was in a suit and carrying the familiar slim briefcase that Greg used to tease him about, saying it was always empty and just for show. But although there were no bruises or injuries on him, he looked like a man who had been in a punch-up and come off worst, reeling, pale and glassy-eyed. Before I could speak, he stepped over the threshold and enveloped me in his embrace. All I could think of was how different he felt from Greg, taller and broader, with a different smell as well, soap and leather.