Nicci French - What to do When Someone Dies

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

I made myself laugh. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m working here because Frances is an old friend of my mum’s. It doesn’t pay much but the job’s good for making contacts. And it’s Frances’s life. But I don’t understand what’s in it for you.’

I couldn’t tell whether Beth was teasing, curious or suspicious. Had she picked up on some mistake? I tried to change the subject. ‘What about Milena? What was she in it for?’

‘Why are you so curious about her? It’s like an obsession with you – Milena this, Milena that.’

‘It’s strange her not being here,’ I said. ‘It’s like going to a play that’s missing the star.’

‘It’s funny,’ said Beth. ‘I’d never really known anyone before who died. There was a girl at university who was killed in a car crash but she wasn’t really a friend. I worked with Milena for a year and I’d never met anyone like her and I still wake up in the morning and suddenly remember she’s dead and it comes as a shock each time.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, although I wasn’t thinking of Milena any more.

When we’d finished our coffee, and Beth had taken my mug away, I told myself I mustn’t look at Milena’s emails, that it was too risky while Beth was there, but I couldn’t help myself. I arranged the screen so that she couldn’t see it and opened a notebook, so that I appeared to be doing accounts, and returned to it with dread and overpowering curiosity.

First – or first in this computer’s memory, going back two years and nine months – there was Donald Blanchard, barrister and colleague of Hugo’s, who called Milena ‘Panther’ and suffered from bursts of anxiety about betraying his friend, not to mention his own wife, which hadn’t stopped him taking Milena to Venice for a weekend.

I was able to follow one of the affairs, with a man who signed himself J, as if it was a piece of music. It began, as several did, with memories of ‘last night’ and anticipation of the next time. It wasn’t like reading love letters, more like a series of diary entries, times and places. Then it gradually petered out, although there was a sudden flurry at the end, as the affair finished. The last message consisted of the single ominous sentence: ‘Well, I can just phone her up, then.’ Milena clearly didn’t like being left.

This overlapped a more drawn-out affair with Harvey, who was visiting from the States. He went home and Richard arrived on the scene. During her time with Richard, Milena had a couple of flings: one was with a man much younger than herself, whom she referred to as her ‘toy boy’ and sent packing when he became too insistent. After Richard there had been Johnny. And after Johnny, in the crucial month before Greg and Milena had died together, there was only one other significant player: he never used a name, simply put a couple of crosses at the end of a message. I wrote his address in my notebook.

I stared at the screen until my eyes hurt. Was the anonymous lover Greg? He signed off with kisses and his hotmail address was ‘gonefishing’ – there were dozens of messages from him, spaced out over three months. They were love letters: they commented on her hair, her eyes, her hands, the way she looked when she smiled at him, the way he felt when he saw her before she lifted her head and saw him too. For a moment I had to stop reading. There was a lump in my throat and my vision blurred. If this was Greg, he had never written to me in that way. And if this was Greg, he was writing to a Milena no one else had known: someone more tender and lovable than the bright, glittering, heartless woman everyone else seemed to remember. And that made horrible sense to me: I couldn’t imagine Greg having a cold-hearted affair, but I could imagine him falling in love with a woman, and by his love transforming her into someone different, better. I used to think he had done that to me – discovered a version of myself that only existed when I was with him and that had disappeared when he had died.

Gradually the pain in my chest eased and I could look at the screen again. I put away the messages from the anonymous lovers for the moment and browsed through the in-box to see if anything relevant cropped up. There were various messages from ‘S’, cranky and intemperate. I looked at a couple of messages from her to him and recognized the flirtatious tone she reserved for certain men, very different from the brisker style she adopted with Frances, Beth or female clients. It seemed a very particular sort of betrayal to be reading Beth’s mail while she was sitting in the same room but, then, I was becoming something of a connoisseur of betrayal.

I was about to open a message from Milena’s husband when I heard the front door open and Frances hurried down the stairs, looking flushed. ‘Hi!’ she said, tossing her coat on to the sofa and coming over to kiss my cheek, which felt hot with shame and anxiety. ‘Sorry I was away so long.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Just clearing things up a bit,’ I mumbled. Couldn’t she tell that everything was exactly as it had been when she had left, not a single piece of paper moved or dealt with?

‘Good,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t work too hard, though.’

‘No, no, I didn’t.’

She looked at Beth. ‘Could you make us some tea, darling?’

Beth pulled a face, got up and left the room with obvious reluctance.

Frances came over and stood close by me. ‘It’s been good having you here,’ she said, in a subdued tone. ‘I haven’t said this to you – well, I haven’t said it to anyone – but when Milena died I thought I might give up the business.’

‘Really?’

‘To be honest, even before that things hadn’t been going well. Milena had…’ Frances paused. ‘Let’s just say that a lot of what brought me into the business seemed to have gone away.’

‘So things were bad before she died?’

There was another long pause, in which Frances’s face took on a troubled expression I hadn’t seen before. ‘It’s all in the past now,’ she said finally, ‘and it’s not what I wanted to talk about. Maybe another time. We could go out for lunch – or dinner, even.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said.

‘You’re easy to talk to and, to be honest, I need advice. There are things I need to say out loud.’

I didn’t know how to respond; I felt my deceit must be written across my face. I made an indeterminate sound and stared at my hands, my ringless finger.

‘What I was going to say,’ Frances continued, ‘is that I know David was talking to you but I wanted to ask you formally if you’d think of staying on.’

‘Here?’ I asked stupidly.

‘That was the general idea.’

‘I’ve given you the wrong impression,’ I said. ‘I’m just a teacher taking a bit of time out.’

‘I like having you around. Most people irritate me. You don’t.’

‘Thank you.’ I couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘But I don’t think it’s possible.’

‘Don’t say no at once. Think it over at least. Are you in tomorrow?’

‘There are things I need to do.’

‘I’d be grateful if you could manage an hour or so in the morning. I’ve got to go out.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now I ought to leave. Things to do.’

‘But before you go, I think I should pay you for the last few days.’

‘Later.’

‘Gwen! Anyone would think you were doing this for nothing.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not a saint.’

‘Johnny seems to think you’re pretty perfect.’ My face burned. l heard myself mutter something unintelligible. ‘Don’t worry. He hasn’t said anything to me. He’s pretty discreet. I’ve just seen the way he looks at you.’