Nicci French - What to do When Someone Dies

‘How do you take your coffee?’ David asked.

I looked round. He was wearing a fawn-coloured suit made of a peculiar material that was probably rare, expensive and enormously desirable. ‘No milk, no sugar,’ I said.

‘That’s easy, then,’ he said, and handed me the mug he was holding.

I expected him to join the others but he pulled up a chair and sat next to me. I sipped the coffee while he leaned over my desk. He picked up a piece of paper. It was just a summary of invoices with details of what had been received and not, paid and not, but he scrutinized it with a frown. He replaced it with a grunt I couldn’t interpret.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.

‘Far from it,’ he said. ‘Looking at this, I can’t imagine what Frances and Milena were up to. But you’re in danger of turning this company into a going concern.’

‘I’m just tidying up.’

He gave a languid smile. ‘That’s about ninety-nine per cent of what it takes to run a business.’ He looked across at his wife who was huddled in conversation with Johnny. ‘You’re wasted here,’ he continued. ‘I could use someone who can do work like this.’

‘It isn’t what I do for a living,’ I said.

‘You mean you want to get back to teaching a class of young hoodlums? Let me tell you, they’re not worth it.’

I felt I ought to leap to the defence of those kids, even if they didn’t exist; even if the person who was defending them didn’t really exist. ‘I don’t agree,’ I said.

‘You like teaching logarithms and trigonometry year after year?’

‘Um – yes!’ I replied wildly, praying he wouldn’t ask me anything technical. I knew about addition, subtraction, simple multiplication and even simpler division, and that, more or less, was it.

He ran his fingers through his thick, greying hair as if it was an architectural feature he was quietly proud of.

‘Johnny was talking about you at lunch. No, don’t worry,’ he said quickly. Perhaps he noticed an expression of alarm on my face. ‘He’s very impressed with you. He says you’ve got a flair for the job and that Frances was lucky to find you.’

I didn’t reply. Like so many conversations I was having in that office, I didn’t want it to go any further, any deeper. I did worry and, more than that, I didn’t like the idea of being discussed over lunch by those two men, as if I was a specimen. And I didn’t like the way that Johnny had brought David back to the office, as if they were going to look me over together, or so that Johnny could show off his latest conquest.

‘You’re an enigma. That’s what Johnny says. We lose Milena suddenly and tragically, and you appear like a white knight. It’s Fate.’

I snatched at the opportunity to push the conversation in a different direction. ‘It’s strange for me,’ I said. ‘Milena feels so present here, and absent as well. What did you make of her?’

‘You knew her, didn’t you?’ His tone was curt.

‘Not well,’ I said. ‘Were you close to her?’

I expected David to smile and make a joke but his face took on a stony expression.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t say I was close to her.’

‘But she was a remarkable character, wasn’t she?’

He allowed himself a very small, very forced smile. ‘In some ways, yes.’

‘You don’t sound as if you liked her very much.’

“‘Liked” is rather a tepid word when talking about someone like Milena. People either found her whole act appealing and attractive, or… well, they didn’t.’ He looked at me more closely. ‘It’s funny to think of you as connected to Milena because you’re as opposite from her as it’s possible to be.’

And yet, I thought, she’d been involved with my husband. Perhaps that was what he had been looking for: someone as different from me as it was possible to find.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘You’ve got me changing the subject. You’ve got me talking about Milena, when what I want to talk about is you. Milena would have liked that. She wanted to be the centre of attention. She would have liked the idea of us talking about her even after she was dead and buried. Or dead and scattered, in her case. To get back to you, what Johnny said is that he thought very highly of you – as I’ve said – but he couldn’t make you out. Reserved, mysterious, those were the words he used about you.’

I tried to force a laugh. I felt I was being backed into a corner. ‘There’s nothing mysterious about me,’ I said. ‘I wish there was. I’m really just a glorified cleaner here. I wanted to help Frances, that’s all.’

‘Why?’ said David. ‘Why did you want to help her? From a general love of humanity? A religious calling? Do we have a Good Samaritan here?’

‘It’s nothing complicated,’ I said. ‘When I was little I used to like clearing up my room, putting things in piles and arranging them. When I saw the mess this office was in, I wanted to sort it out. When the job’s done I’ll return to my old life.’

David glanced at me more sharply. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’ll find it harder to walk out on this than you think.’

He had used a silky, detached tone that made it difficult for me to decide whether he was paying me a compliment or threatening me. He moved away and I tried to continue working but he poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to my side. He looked at the receipts, letters and invoices with me, made comments and suggestions. He was helping but it felt as if he was assessing me at the same time for a test I didn’t know how to pass because I didn’t know what the questions meant.

After a few minutes I felt a hand on my shoulder and Johnny pulled up a chair. I muttered a greeting without meeting his eye. I needn’t have worried about looking awkward because the two men chatted casually as if I wasn’t there. They were talking about another restaurant they were planning to revamp. Then they wandered around the room, making phone calls, drinking coffee, chatting until it was five o’clock. As I stood up to go, David said, ‘Do you fancy coming for a drink with us?’

‘I can’t,’ I said, deliberately not making an excuse, something that could be argued with.

Johnny stepped forward. ‘I’m about to drive in your direction,’ he said. ‘I could drop you.’

I shrugged, and he led me outside. We sat in his car.

‘I thought you needed rescuing from their clutches,’ he said.

‘I can look after myself,’ I said.

‘That’s probably true.’ There was a pause. ‘I meant it about driving you, though. Where shall we go? My place or yours? I’d like to see where you live. I’d like to learn something about you.’

The idea of Johnny prowling round my house trying to learn about me, about the real Gwen who wasn’t Gwen, was unbearable.

‘Let’s go to your place,’ I said.

He watched me as I undressed, as if seeing me naked was a way of seeing me as I really was. But even with my clothes off, even when we were entangled in his bed, I tried to make myself believe I wasn’t really there.

Afterwards, I lay with my back to him and felt his fingers running through my hair, down my spine.

‘This doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?’ he said.

I turned to face him. Suddenly I felt hard and cruel. I had spent too long trapped in my own misery, behaving as if I was the only one who was real and everybody else just a supporting actor in my drama. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But – well, I am in the wrong place. Wrong place, wrong time. Working for Frances was meant to be an interlude. I need to stop it and get back to my own life.’

Johnny raised his hand and ran a finger down my nose, my cheek, the side of my jaw. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘What’s this if it’s not your life?’