Danuta Reah - Strangers

She worked hard on the house. It was the first home of their marriage, and she wanted it to be comfortable and welcoming. Most of all, she wanted it to be theirs. They’d rented it furnished, so she tried to add some personal touches. She framed some of her Newcastle photographs and hung them on the wall. She bought a red glass vase on one of her trips into town and put it on a low table where it made a splash of colour against the neutral walls.

The kitchen alone was probably as big as her flat in London had been. Their pots, pans and crockery huddled in forlorn isolation in the cupboards, and Roisin’s shopping from the commissary barely filled half the shelves of the massive ice box that dominated one corner of the room.

She spent a lot of time alone. Joe was working long hours. His department in the hospital had been without a senior pathologist for several weeks, and he had a massive backload of work to catch up on. He left the house at six each morning, and was rarely home before nine. By the end of her fortnight of enforced idleness, Roisin had had enough.

It was Wednesday afternoon. The weekends ran from Thursday to Saturday, and Roisin was due to start work the following week. Joe had promised to be home early, and they planned to spend the evening together. Roisin had hoped that they might be able to go into the city on Thursday or Friday and do some more exploring, but Joe said he would probably have to work.

‘You haven’t had a day off since you got here,’ Roisin had protested.

‘What do you think they pay these salaries for?’ he’d said as he disappeared upstairs to shower. The subject hadn’t come up again.

She looked at the clock: four thirty. The hands barely seemed to have shifted since she’d last looked. Joe should be back in half an hour. It would be their first proper evening together for a fortnight, and she’d planned a small celebration. She’d bought a chicken and it was simmering on the stove in coconut milk and spices, filling the house with its fragrance.

She went upstairs to shower–she was going to surprise Joe with the new dress she’d bought just before they’d left the UK and hadn’t had a chance to wear. She’d lived in jeans for the past week. She was drying herself when the phone rang and she went into the study to answer it, catching her shin on the last unopened packing case. It was Joe’s and it contained his medical books and notes. He’d said that he would unpack it himself, but it was still there, sitting uncompromisingly in the middle of the floor.

She swore and grabbed at her leg as she picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Sweetheart, it’s me.’

Her heart sank. ‘Joe.’ She could hear the flatness in her voice–she knew what was coming.

‘I’ve got to stay late again. I’m sorry. I can’t do anything about it. You wouldn’t believe the chaos here.’

He sounded tired. She swallowed her disappointment. ‘OK. I’ll be fine. The chicken will be a bit dried out.’

‘Did you do something special? I’m sorry, sweetheart.’

She bit her tongue on a sharp comment. They’d discussed their plans before he’d left that morning. ‘It’s OK. I’ve got things to do.’

She finished drying her hair, and pulled on some jeans. The smell of spiced chicken that had been making her feel hungry seemed unpleasant now, rich and cloying. She went downstairs to switch off the stove, then stood in the vast empty kitchen wondering what to do with her evening.

Her leg was hurting where she’d caught it on the packing case. She rubbed it, wincing as her fingers touched the tender spot where a bruise was starting to form. It was OK for Joe to say, I’ll do it , but he was never here. And it wasn’t him hacking his shins on it every time he tried to get into the room. She went back up the stairs to the office and tried to push the box into the corner where it wouldn’t be such an obstruction, but she couldn’t get enough grip to get any traction. It was too heavy to lift. She decided to take all the stuff out, put it somewhere where Joe could sort through it, and get the box put away.

It was filled to the top with books. No wonder it was too heavy to move. She knelt on the floor and began taking them out, big medical tomes with dark covers and forbidding titles: The Pathology of the Foetus and the Infant; Foetal and Neonatal Pathology …

Underneath the books, Joe had stacked various papers and journals, which she moved carefully on to separate shelves, and right at the bottom of the case was a folder full of personal miscellany. She spent a happy ten minutes flicking through old magazines, looking at a postcard she’d had made of one of her photographs with a message she’d scrawled on the back in the early days of their relationship. And there was a photograph, slightly creased, of their wedding.

She sat on the floor, looking at it, remembering how, when they had come out of the register office, someone had thrown petals that came down in a shower and clung to her hair and to her dress. The photographer had caught them in that moment, laughing in a cloud of brilliant colours.

The phone rang. She made a long arm and picked it up, her eyes still on the photograph. ‘Roisin Massey.’

‘Oh, Mrs Massey. Could I speak to Dr Massey please?’

‘He isn’t here. Do you want to leave a message?’

‘It’s Mike Alport, his technician.’

‘Hi, Mike.’ She had talked to Mike on the phone but she hadn’t met him yet.

‘Sorry to disturb you. I thought he’d be back by now. Could you ask him to give me a ring when he gets in? Tell him it’s about those results he wanted. They came in just after he left.’

Roisin stared at the phone.

‘Mrs Massey?’

‘Yes. I’m here. Sorry. When did you say he left?’

‘About an hour ago.’

‘Yes. Of course. He said he might stop at the shops.’ Her voice sounded odd and artificial. ‘I’ll ask him to call you, OK?’

She sat looking at the phone after Mike had rung off. Joe must have…He was probably still in his office, dealing with a backlog of admin. He wouldn’t necessarily have told Mike that. He’d want to be left alone to get on with it.

Her fingers reached for the phone, pulled back, then reached again. She dialled Joe’s direct line, the one that went straight to his office, or to his pager if he was on duty and away from his desk. She listened to the phone ringing, then to the automated answering service that told her he wasn’t available and invited her to leave a message.

He wasn’t there.

She stacked his books carelessly on the shelves. One of them toppled off and fell open on to the floor with a heavy thud that resonated through the silent house. A dog barked in the distance. She picked up the book, trying to avert her eyes from the pictures, afraid she would see photographs of dead babies, babies with terrible diseases, but instead the infants looked normal: tiny, wrinkled, newborn, their minuscule fingers clenched, their eyes dark and curious.

One day…She and Joe had married in a hurry, but one thing they both knew was that they wanted children. Roisin, at thirty-two, didn’t want to wait much longer and they had a tentative plan to try for a family after his contract in Riyadh ended. But, in the back of her mind, she could see his face, suddenly cold, turned away from her, and she could hear her mother’s voice: Rosie, you hardly know him!

She made herself focus on the task in hand. The packing case was just about empty. She dug down to the bottom and found a page from a newspaper. It was tucked into a plastic pocket to preserve it, and it had been folded, leaving a photograph on display. It was a picture of a young man with a carefree smile. She unfolded the paper carefully, looking at the date. It was from April that year, and she wondered why Joe had kept it. Underneath the photograph, there was an article: