Her eyes filled and so, to my distress, did mine. ‘Thank you,’ I managed.
‘We’ll miss him.’ She was weeping openly now. ‘We really loved him.’
The tears were rolling down my cheeks and I lashed out, ‘But not enough to recognize me, which would have made him happy?’
The idea clearly took her by surprise. ‘Yes. Well,’ she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve, ‘we all do things we regret. Anyway, the leaflets. I’m a counsellor, trained for these circumstances. In fact, I run the operation. If you like – if you feel you need help… If you need -’
‘Closure?’ I offered.
‘- a listening ear, just ring this number.’
Scenes from our married life… summoned to help me counter the torture of sleeplessness.
…‘These are for the bride.’ Nathan returned from his first day back at work after our honeymoon, and presented me with a bouquet of such beauty that I cried out with pleasure. ‘This is to make up for no flowers at the wedding.’
…‘Broccoli needs butter.’ Nathan stared at the plate when I served him broccoli mixed with pine nuts and raisins. ‘Why do we have to gussy-up vegetables?’
‘Because,’ I said, ‘it’s to make sticks-in-the-mud like you sit up a little. Things are changing, including broccoli.’
Nathan dropped his head into his hands and groaned. ‘Nothing’s sacred.’
… In the bedroom, I drew the bustier out of the elegant carrier-bag in which it was packed. From the bed, Nathan’s eyes flicked over it. ‘Put it on, Minty. I want to see you in it.’
I looked down at it: such a pretty, sexy thing. Into it I would insert a body altered by childbirth but pretend it wasn’t.
‘Minty!’ Nathan was impatient. ‘Put it on. It’ll be like – it used to be.’
That was what Nathan wanted. He craved the heightened excitement of our affair, the novelty of his willing, inventive mistress.
I gave a tiny sigh and did as he asked. Thus accoutred, I joined my husband on the bed – but I was no longer willing or inventive for I carried a tally of the past, of routine and regret. No bustier would ever mask those.
‘Oh, we’re absolutely fine,’ I heard myself say into the phone to Mrs Jenkins, who had rung up to ask if I needed extra help with the boys. Or ‘That would be such fun’ when Millie’s mother rang up to invite us to a picnic on the common, giving the impression that the boys and I were thoroughly enjoying Nathan being dead.
I never found Nathan’s diary although I searched his drawers and files. I went through the car, his pockets, the bookshelves. At the finish, I was forced to concede that I had lost the tussle between us. Nathan had decided to deny me the intimacies revealed on its pages and I grieved for that, too.
Yet there was a curious beauty to grief, a haunting, solitary beauty that was hard to describe and more than a little alarming. It was almost a pleasure.
Meanwhile I worked steadily through the letters in the study, determined to reply to them all.
When I got round to sorting out the piles of newspapers that had accumulated since Nathan’s death, which I had never read, I came across an advertisement in one of the supplements for the Shiftaka exhibition that Gisela had taken me to see. I examined the painting. A series of free brushstrokes created a forest glade, a mixture of deciduous and pine. Imposed on the mesh of foliage were the lines of trunks and branches so rigid and black they added an air of menace to what should have been a tranquil vista. I showed this to Felix, who said, ‘Ugh.’
Why “ugh”, Felix?’
‘Because there are nasty things. Look, Mummy.’
The leaves on the trees were withered, and the outcrops on the trunks were clumps of insects, not natural growths. Printed at the bottom of the painting was the legend: ‘Only beetles survive the nuclear winter…’
The following Saturday, I cooked sausages and mash for lunch, which the boys and I ate together. Afterwards they demanded to go into the garden and I retreated into Nathan’s study. I gave it a good hard appraisal. When it came to his study, Nathan had a tendency to behave like a bear in its den. Don’t touch anything. It was very much his room, masculine and utilitarian, cluttered with papers and now a little dusty. Don’t touch anything.
But in getting through a situation such as this – my personal nuclear winter – I must dare to look over the parapet. ‘Good girl,’ I heard Paige say.
I put my shoulder to the desk and heaved it, panting with the effort, from its position. Why did you leave us, Nathan? Why didn’t you take more care? Yes, I am angry with you. I shoved it over to the window and the chair followed. If I sat here, I could see the garden where the twins were chasing a squirrel.
Wrong, I thought, rubbing my shoulder. You’re wrong, Rose. Anger makes you strong.
The study seemed bigger, and unfamiliar, a friendly area on which I would imprint what I wished. Moving the desk had let loose a snowstorm of papers: a directory of key Vistemax employees, which went straight into the bin, invitations, a timetable, and an out-of-date list of golfing fixtures at a club I had never heard of. They went into the bin too.
The doorbell rang. The silence in the house was so pleasant, rather reassuring, in fact, that I was tempted to ignore it. It rang a second time, and I went to see who it was.
Rose was on the doorstep, clasping a long brown-paper package. She was wearing jeans and a short, tight jacket. She seemed strained and harassed. Instinctively I made to shut the door, but she placed a foot on the step and prevented me. ‘Don’t, Minty.’
‘I’m not sure I can take this,’ I said, a sour taste rising in my throat. ‘But thank you for your letter.’
‘You look awful.’ She peered at me. ‘Are you taking care of yourself? You should, you know. Have you seen the doctor?’
‘There’s no point, Rose. Go away, and don’t come back. You’ve been very kind but we’re not friends any more.’
‘That’s true.’ She nodded reflectively. ‘But you still need someone to check up on you.’ She added, ‘I know what it’s like.’
‘Don’t you think that’s what makes it impossible?’
‘In normal circumstances, but these aren’t. So… here I am.’
Several cars roared down the street, followed by a lumbering white van from which blared heavy rock music. Opposite, Mrs Austen glanced up from her pots. Fork in hand, she stared openly at us.
‘Be kind, if only to a dog. Is that it?’
‘That’s it.’
The sourness turned into humiliation. ‘Kindness to canines apart, there must be some other reason.’
She held out the package. ‘I think this is meant for you. I’ve opened it. It’s from Nathan.’
I examined the label. It was addressed to Minty Lloyd but the address was Rose’s. ‘The wrong wife.’
She smiled wryly. ‘Maybe Nathan had fallen into the habit of thinking of us as a composite. He always was thrifty.’
I thrust the package back at her. ‘Go away. Don’t come back.’
Rose should have obeyed. Any reasonable person would have done so. A reasonable person would have seen where the line had been drawn, and that the old loyalties were finally dead.
But she was not prepared to give up. ‘It’s a plant for the garden. He must have ordered it months ago.’
‘A plant? What on earth for? He rarely went into the garden.’
‘Did he not tell you? He was thinking of redoing it. In fact, he was quite excited at the idea.’ She pointed to the package. ‘It deserves a chance, don’t you think?’
‘Why?’
‘Lots of reasons. Not least that Nathan obviously wanted a rose.’
‘It’s a rose?’