At eight o’clock I made myself a bowl of porridge – half milk, half water, with golden sugar sprinkled liberally over the top – and a large pot of strong coffee. Then I washed and got dressed in an ancient corduroy skirt that came down to my ankles and a dark blue jersey with a hole in the elbow that Greg had given me when we first met. Because it was cold and grey, I put on a duffel coat, and wrapped a red scarf round my neck. Now I was a bundle of wool and itchy layers.
Kentish Town Road was thick with cars and people on their way to work. I got on to the overcrowded Underground train that took me to Euston, then walked the last few hundred yards to Greg’s workplace. It was on the second floor of a recently renovated office block. They had moved in there a few months earlier; when their firm had expanded they had needed more than three desks, three computers and several filing cabinets. Once it had just been Joe and Greg, now there were people I didn’t recognize. They needed rooms with doors for clients, lavatories, a coffee-machine and a water-cooler. I rang the bell and before long Tania was ushering me in, taking my coat and scarf, pulling out a chair for me, too solicitously offering tea, coffee, biscuits, anything at all, gazing at me with her big brown eyes, shaking her head in horror and sympathy so that her ponytail bounced. She was like a puppy, an eager spaniel trying to please.
‘Is Joe here?’
‘He’s in his office. I’ll go and fetch him.’
At that moment Joe came striding across the room towards me, holding his arms out well before he reached me, and Tania seemed to melt away. ‘You should have told me you were coming,’ he said. His eyes narrowed. ‘You look absolutely exhausted.’
‘I’ve been up all night. I was looking through Greg’s stuff.’
‘Sorting things out?’
‘Trying to find out what he’d been up to.’
‘Here, come and tell me.’ He took my arm and led me into his office, which was really no more than a small glass cubicle. On the white wall behind his chaotic desk hung a photograph of his family: his wife, Alison, and his three children, who were teenagers now but in the picture were still small and childish. Alison stood behind them, her arms circling the little group protectively. I saw how the three children were a bit like her and a bit like him, and felt fierce regret and sadness fill me from top to toe.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said, as I sat in the chair he pulled out for me. ‘There wasn’t anything strange.’
Joe’s brow wrinkled. ‘What were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know. That was why I was looking. I need to go through his things here as well.’
He seemed taken aback. ‘There’s not much personal stuff. I think Tania’s already packed up most of it. I really don’t think there’s anything else except clients’ files and government regulations.’
‘It’s his work things I want to go through. His papers, his diary, his appointments.’
‘I see.’ He sounded sympathetic but stern, too, and I dropped my eyes under his gaze.
‘There must be something to show me he was having an affair with this Milena.’
‘Ellie…’
‘Because I’m telling you, Joe, there’s nothing at home – I mean nothing – that suggests he was having an affair with her or anyone else. You had no idea, or so you say. Neither did Fergus. Or anyone. And nor did I. Even now I look back and can’t see it.’
Joe nodded a few times, then got up and stared out at the room beyond. Then he turned back to me. On his face was an expression of kind patience that made me squirm. ‘Maybe he was just good at keeping secrets.’
‘He can’t have been that good. Not Greg. He was incapable of lying about anything. If he was having an affair, someone would have known. There would be evidence somewhere.’
‘But don’t you see, Ellie? Whatever you do, however much you search, you can’t prove he wasn’t having an affair?’
‘He couldn’t have left no trace.’
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps you’ll turn his whole life upside-down and investigate everything and eventually find something.’
‘Well, then.’
‘But why do you want to?’
‘Why? Because I have to. Don’t you understand? I loved him. I thought he loved me…’
‘He loved you.’
‘I knew him, Joe. I knew our life together. Or I thought I did. And now he’s dead and there’s this mystery and everyone’s pitying me and I look back at our life and I can’t see it any longer, can’t trust it. It’s like the lights have all gone out and everything I trusted I can’t any more. And I can’t ask him. I want to ask him what the hell was going on. I can’t believe he won’t ever be able to tell me, that we won’t be able to talk about it together. If he was dead and that was it, no other woman involved, at least I could miss him and remember him with tenderness and feel good about what we had – but even that’s muddied by this. I can’t even mourn him properly. I feel humiliated, ashamed, tangled up in all these emotions. It’s a mess. I’m a mess.’
‘He loved you,’ Joe repeated. His voice was gentle, insistent. ‘Even if he was having an affair, he loved you very much.’
‘So you think he was, then!’
‘I’m saying if.’
‘I don’t want ifs.’
‘But, in all likelihood, that’s all you’re going to get.’
‘I can’t accept it.’
‘Everyone has secrets. Everyone does things they don’t want to be discovered.’
‘Have you, then?’
‘What? Had an affair?’
‘Yes. Have you?’
‘Why would you believe my answer? Do you think I’d tell you if I had? And if I had, would it somehow make it more likely that Greg had as well, and if I hadn’t does the same apply?’
‘You have, haven’t you?’ Of course he had, I thought. All those women who crowded round him.
But Joe put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Stop this, Ellie.’
‘Sorry. But, Joe, tell me, do you think Greg was being unfaithful?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I… Honestly, I just don’t know. But perhaps he was, yes. And then, of course, you have the circumstances of his death.’
‘I see.’ I bit my lip and sat for a while, composing myself. ‘Thank you.’
‘Ellie.’ His voice was painfully sympathetic.
‘I still want to look through his things.’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘If that’s what you need. We didn’t know you were coming so it’s in a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.’
It was more than a bit of a mess – it was in disarray. There were files lying open on every surface, piles of paper stacked on the desk and floor, thick accounting books pulled off shelves.
‘Sorry,’ said Joe.
He installed me at Greg’s old desk with his computer in front of me, and then his electronic organizer. Tania brought files and folders and I trawled through them as well. I looked at accounts, receipts, letters from clients, recommendations, rules and regulations, lines of figures, application forms, consent forms, VAT forms, tax returns, expenses, queries about trusts and power-of-attorney. There were pink and yellow Post-it notes stuck on some, scrawled with Greg’s slapdash writing. Meaningless. I had no idea what I was searching for and it was quickly apparent to me that I might as well have been reading a hieroglyphic script. I felt my brain throb as I searched for connections I knew I wouldn’t find. Joe put cups of coffee beside me and I let them go cold. Tania brought me a cheese and tomato bap and asked me if there was anything that needed explaining.