The kitchen is about more than just his cookbooks being lined up neatly next to the knife block, and a line of herbs on the window sill, or the selection of pans and utensils he’d assembled. It is about him being there, at the table, at the sink, at the stove, at the window, at the back door about to go out. I remember how he was everywhere in this house, but mostly in here. In this space that was his.
I idly leaf through the mail. A lot of them are white or brown window envelopes containing demands for money and I can ignore them for now. These days, bills don’t cause my stomach to clench with the sheer terror of not being able to afford them, but I still don’t open them straight away. After Joel died and I spent all those months trying to sort out his ‘affairs’, I promised myself I wouldn’t let things become so disjointed and disorganised ever again. I’d keep on top of things so whoever had to sort out my ‘affairs’ had an easier time of it. I’ve let that slip. Again. I must get back on top of it, I must sort things out.
Among the bills and leaflets and circulars one letter stands out. It is in a cream envelope without a postmark or stamp but addressed to Saffron Mackleroy with my full address. I turn it over in my hands, considering it. The formal nature of fully addressing it suggests the person was going to post it to but changed their mind and came all this way to deliver it from wherever they were. I assume they live a way away because otherwise, why write to me in the first place?
The writing in blue ink is uniform but not neat, considered but a little wild. It is written in straight lines, perfectly centred on the envelope. I don’t recognise it, and very few people I know would write to me. My mother is one, but that’s rare these days and she wouldn’t travel from London to post it by hand. I slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and rip it open.
That Day (26 October, 2011)
‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this,’ the she one says. She stops speaking and looks to the man beside her for help.
‘Your husband has been involved in an incident,’ the he one continues.
Incident. ‘Incident’ not ‘accident’. What happened was on purpose.
‘Is he all right? Where is he? Can I see him?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the she one says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
My fingers are numb, my body is numb, my entire being is suddenly without air. There are a dozen little splattering thuds of blackberries falling onto the ground, there’s a crash of a white ceramic bowl hitting a white ceramic tile.
I knock over the chair as I push myself away from the table, away from the letter I’ve opened and started to read.
I stand in the centre of the room, trembling as I stare at two sheets of cream A4 writing paper, folded carefully into thirds that are splayed open like an upturned hand on the table.
Suddenly, I’m not here any more. I’m back there.
*
It’s light in the kitchen. It’s just after two o’clock. I have answered the door with a bowl of blackberries in my hand, but I have to hurry the callers in because I have left the tap running on full. They follow me into the kitchen and as I reach to switch off the tap, it clicks in my mind who they are, why I didn’t think twice about asking them in.
I shut off the chrome faucet and turn slowly, warily to them.
I see myself as clearly as anything. And I watch myself hear the news, I spy on Saffron Mackleroy as she finds out that her husband has been stolen right from under her ever-vigilant gaze.
I watch the words sink in, I see myself drop the bowl, I understand what makes me stagger back against the counter.
I know that I am thinking: I shouldn’t have chosen blackberries. And in a second, I’m going to look up at the he and the she police officers who stand still and silent in front of me, and I’m going to say:
‘Where are my children?’
*
I’m back there, that letter has ripped me from the present, catapulted me back through time to eighteen months ago. To that day. These are not like the potholes that set off memories of my life that can comfort or confuse me, this has dragged me back there. I am there. I am trapped, living it all over again.
That’s why I try not to think about that day. That’s why I try to not think about that time at all. That’s why I keep myself numb and safe; if I think about it, I’ll have to relive it all over again.
III
VIII
That Day (26 October, 2011)
‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this,’ the she one says. She stops speaking and looks to the man beside her for help.
‘Your husband has been involved in an incident,’ the he one continues.
Incident. ‘Incident’ not ‘accident’. What happened was on purpose.
‘Is he all right? Where is he? Can I see him?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the she one says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
My fingers are numb, my body is numb, my entire being is suddenly without air. There are a dozen little splattering thuds of blackberries falling onto the ground, there’s a crash of a white ceramic bowl hitting a white ceramic tile.
That Day
‘Where are my children?’ I ask them. My eyes, wide and wild, stare at them in turn. A him and a her. Two strangers who are standing in my house when I don’t even know where my children are.
They look at each other, puzzled, confused, and then return their gazes to me.
‘Where are my children?’ I ask again, this time my voice on the crest of panic.
The she one says, ‘I think they’re probably at school.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘That’s not right, they can’t be. I wouldn’t let them go to school at a time like this. I’d keep them here with me. I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t.’
‘I’ll radio the station and have someone contact their schools and check,’ the he one says. ‘What schools do they go to?’
‘St Caroline’s round the corner, and St Allison, Hove.’
‘I’ll be right back.’
‘No, I’ll go to St Caroline’s, it’s only around the corner. It’ll be quicker if I check.’
The she one, in full uniform, stands in my way, physically blocking me from leaving the room, the house. From tearing into the street and into Zane’s school, screaming his name to make sure he’s all right. ‘No, no, Mrs Mack-el-roy, it’s best if you leave that to us. You’ll scare him if you turn up like that.’ She says this as the he one leaves the room, walks out the front door before he starts to use his radio.
‘You think something’s happened to them as well, don’t you?’ I say, hysterically, straining to hear what the he one is saying.
‘No, of course not,’ the she one says, unconvincing and therefore terrifying.
That Day
He’s so still. Quiet.
I need to wake him up, to remind him this is no time to be sleeping, and no place to be doing it, either. And why is he wearing clothes under a sheet? He always sleeps naked, he hates the thought of being restricted by clothes when he’s asleep.
What does he think he’s doing, sleeping at a time like this, anyway? He’s got a wife to press his cold lips against, he’s got children waiting for his rough-and-tumble messing. He’s got a best friend who’ll be trying to coax him out for a pint or six. He’s got parents who haven’t openly disapproved of his wife and his life choices in … oh, about a week. He’s got an aunt he needs to buy a bottle of expensive port for. He’s got a life, he should be living it. This is no time for sleeping, for resting, for stillness.
‘Is this your husband?’ the he one asks from his place beside me.
I should say no because this isn’t who he is – he is bouncy, and boisterous, annoyingly always on the go – he is not this. I don’t say no. Instead, I nod. I whisper, ‘Yes.’
My fingers automatically reach out to stroke across his brow, to retwist a mini-dreadlock that is starting to unravel itself, to cup his face with my hand. All the things I do to touch him, to connect to him a dozen times a day.
; ‘I’m sorry,’ the he one says, his hand a vice-like grip around my forearm that prevents me from making contact. ‘You can’t do that.’
My face distorts in incomprehension. I look at him, then my gaze darts to the petite mortuary assistant, who immediately averts her eyes while sorrowfully curling her lips into her mouth. I stare again at the he one.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, with much more compassion and sympathy. ‘It’s … He’s a crime scene now. If you touch him, you might destroy evidence and contaminate part of the crime scene.’
He’s not a crime scene, he’s not evidence, my closed-over throat replies. He’s my husband. He’s the father of my children. He’s my Joel.
5 days after That Day (October, 2011)
‘Is there anything you can tell us about your husband that might make it easier to find out who did this to him?’ the he one asks. He’s the one who came to break the news, he’s the one who took me to the hospital mortuary. I think he’s been assigned to me as my FLO – family liaison officer – from the police because when he told me that Phoebe and Zane were safe in school, I forgot myself and threw my arms around him, sobbing a grateful thank you. I think they think we have a rapport, a connection. So he’s always around. When the other officers come, he comes to sit with me, to try to be a comfort. Sometimes, like now, he asks me questions on their behalf.
‘Is there anything you can tell us about your husband that might make it easier to find out who did this to him?’ The question is inscribed in the air between us. I consider it over and over.
I can tell them a lot about my husband, but not right now. I can’t remember a single thing about him. Am I meant to? I have all these sensations about him, these things in my head that make me smile, how can I describe them, though? His warmth? How do you describe someone’s ability to draw people to them because they were as warming as the sun? How do you describe the wattage of his smile? How do I tell that he made me feel perfect? How can I do that? If I can’t describe that, if there aren’t enough words in the universe to describe that, then what’s the point of talking about him? Anything else isn’t important; everything else is stupid and meaningless.
‘I don’t know who did this,’ I say. I’ve told them this before. In the last five days I’ve told them this. They aren’t listening.
‘Is there anything he might have said, might have told you? Was there anyone who might have had a grudge against him? Was he worried about anything? It could be the smallest thing, something you don’t think is important but it could be the clue we need.’
I’m using the wrong words. I’m not saying it right. ‘I don’t know anyone who could do this,’ I say. That’s what I mean. ‘I don’t know anyone who could do what they did. I don’t know what to tell you.’
The other he one, the one who isn’t the FLO, looks sympathetic. As if he has finally heard what I am saying he nods, before saying: ‘Tell me about his friends? His work colleagues? Anyone you’ve had a funny feeling about, maybe?’
He doesn’t understand. No one understands. ‘I don’t know anyone who is capable of this. Please stop asking me. I don’t know. I want to know, I want to help. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’
The first he one, the one who is always here, drinking my tea, always standing near me whenever I turn around, suddenly understands. ‘It’s the shock,’ he says carefully. ‘It’ll become easier as it starts to wear off. Unfortunately, this is the most critical time in helping us to find the monster who did this.’
‘It wasn’t a monster,’ I say to him. ‘Monsters aren’t real. If a monster did this, Joel wouldn’t be … Monsters aren’t real.’ That’s the shock talking, of course. Monsters are real. They are very, very real.
2 weeks after That Day (November, 2011)
‘We’d like you to take part in a television appeal to see if we can urge anyone to come forward with any information relating to your husband’s death,’ the he one who is my FLO says. He is concerned, quiet, slightly protective in the way he sits so close on the sofa, while the other officer stands beside the fireplace.
‘No,’ I reply with a shake of my head.
‘No, Mrs Mack-el-roy?’ he says.
‘I’ve told you before, it’s Mack-le-roy,’ I say tiredly. ‘And no, I’m not doing it. I’m not sitting in front of TV cameras appealing to the better nature of a killer.’
‘You wouldn’t be, you would be trying to jog the memory of anyone who might have seen something and didn’t realise what they were seeing. Also, we want to drive home to anyone who might know something the continued suffering behind not knowing who did this. We want anyone who has any information to realise that they can’t not come forward.’
He’s probably right, people out there do need reminding that Joel isn’t simply some man whose picture they see on the news, who was most likely in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was real, he was human, he was mine. ‘Ask his parents to do it,’ I offer as a compromise.
‘We really think it’d be better if you – the grieving widow – did it,’ the other one says.
People need to know, but I’m not sharing him with anyone out there any more. I’ve lost him physically, and I only have snatches of time – in between the form filling, taking care of the children, going to work, organising my life – to think about him. About him, not his death, not the investigation, but him as the person who went through life with me. I’m not sharing one precious moment of that with anyone else, not people I know, not the television cameras. No one.
‘Ask his parents,’ I repeat. ‘They knew him for longer than me. And they’ll be more sympathetic than me.’
They might not mind giving away the memories encapsulated in the droplets of time they have to think about him.
17 days after That Day (November, 2011)
‘You look awful,’ Fynn says to me as he follows me from the front door to the kitchen then takes a seat opposite me at the kitchen table.
‘Thank you very much, it’s always great to get updates from the talking mirror.’ I do look awful. I do look strange. I’ve taken to wearing my jeans and T-shirt, then slipping on one of Joel’s jumpers or hooded tops as well. I’m always cold, the chill lives in my bones, so I need to wear something of his to warm me, to comfort me. My hair is in a ponytail and it’ll probably stay that way until a time when washing my hair seems important again.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean anything by it,’ Fynn says. ‘I worry that you’re not taking care of yourself.’
‘I know, I know. Just don’t, all right?’ I rub at my tired eyes with my forefinger and thumb. ‘I can’t cope with comments like that on top of everything else.’
‘When was the last time you slept?’ I don’t need to look at him to know his navy blue eyes are overloaded with concern. I could ask him the same question and would probably get a reply to match mine.
‘Who needs sleep when you’re facing financial ruin?’
‘Is it that bad?’ he asks.
‘It’s worse. I can’t do anything until I get a death certificate. I can’t access any of the money in his account, I can’t claim on his life insurance, I can’t ask to defer payments because I haven’t got a death certificate. And I can’t get a death certificate because I haven’t got his …’ My voice snags in my distress-lined throat, my eyes are suddenly awash with tears I have to blink away. I don’t have time to cry. ‘I can’t get a death certificate because he’s still “evidence”. I can’t even organise a funeral because I haven’t got him back and I don’t know when I will get him back.’
‘They haven’t said when it might be?’
‘About three months, maybe longer.’
‘Three months?’ Fynn’s outrage – acute but raw, like sharp nails clawed across a tangle of exposed nerves – is enough for both of us. Like most things, I can’t feel that indignation because it burns up energy, sucks away the reserves of spirit I need to make it from one end of the day to the other. Being numb is the only way I’m sur
viving right now. ‘What? Why?’
‘People keep telling me that’s just the way it is with a death that’s a crime.’ With a murder. I can’t say the word most of the time. It’s too much, too unreal, too ‘stuff that I see on TV’. My life doesn’t include ‘murder’.
I can’t feel my face as I run my hands over it, I know my nose is still there at the centre, I know my cheeks flank my nose, that my eyes are above it, that above them is my forehead, my lips are below my nose and below my lips is my chin, but these are things I sense from memory, I can’t believe I am actually touching any of them right now. I am numb, shut off from the sensory world.
‘How much money do you need?’ Fynn says.
‘No, thank you, but no.’ I remove my hands from my face and stare into the face of the man who knew Joel first. ‘You don’t have the kind of money we need right now. And I couldn’t take it from you even if you did have it. I’ve gone through everything, all the figures, what savings I can access, and to keep going for three months I have to …’ I sigh. ‘I have to sell the beach hut.’
‘What? No, surely not.’
‘Yes. I’ve done that crunching numbers thing that you hear people talking about, which is just adding up everything you’ve got and then taking away everything you owe or are going to owe and seeing what you’ve got left. Or in my case, what you haven’t got left. I have to sell stuff. The only things I can sell that will give me a big hit of cash to tide us over are the children, my car or the beach hut. Even if I was allowed to sell the children before all the probate was settled seeing as Joel did contribute towards making them, I think I’d miss them too much.’
This curls the edges of Fynn’s lips in the vague conjuring of a smile. Seeing his face relax like that reminds me that one day it might be possible to joke again, to feel unburdened again.
‘All that’s left is the beach hut,’ I say.