‘I heard he was with another woman,’ she said.
‘Who from?’
‘People. I didn’t know who she was. Greg and I were just friends.’
I thought of Christine and nameless other people talking about Greg and the other woman in the car. A wave of nausea assailed me. ‘I ought to go. I shouldn’t have come.’
‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. About everything.’
It was dark outside, with rain still falling and a stiff wind, so I flagged down a cab and sat with my arms wrapped round myself, feeling wretched. When I reached my front door I discovered I didn’t have enough money to pay the driver so I ran inside, then came back out to pay the driver with odd bits of money I’d discovered in various drawers and pockets. I’d found a five-pound note in Greg’s old leather jacket, which was still hanging in the hall. When was I going to sort out his things? A list of tasks streamed through my mind: contact the lawyer, the bank, the building society, find out about our financial affairs, our mortgage, any life policies, ring up the insurance broker, organize the funeral, answer all the messages I’d received over the past days, learn how to operate the video-recorder, cancel the appointment we’d made together at the fertility clinic, change the message on the answering-machine, which still had Greg’s voice saying hello and please call back later because Greg and Ellie weren’t around just now. Ellie was around, but Greg wasn’t and Greg would never be. Greg with his dark eyes and his wide smile and his strong, warm hands. He used to rub my neck at the end of a long day. He used to wash my hair for me, easing out the tangles. He used to bite his lower lip when he read. He used to walk around the house naked, singing loudly and tunelessly. He used to tell me about his days, or so I had thought. He used to watch me as I got undressed, his arms behind his head and a grave look on his face, waiting. He used to lie on his back in bed and snore gently. He used to wake up and turn to me, smiling in welcome as I struggled out of sleep.
Who else’s neck had he rubbed, hair had he washed? Who else had undressed for him, taking off garments one by one while he looked at them with the gaze I had thought was for me alone? Who had he lain beside in bed, putting out his hand to touch and comfort? All at once, a jealousy so pure and visceral it felt almost like intense physical desire swept through me, leaving me breathless and shaken. I had to sit on the stairs for a few seconds, trying to breathe normally, before I could make it to the bedroom.
I’d been going to have a bath but I’d forgotten to turn on the hot water. I peeled off my wet clothes and put on a pair of jogging pants and a thick sweatshirt that had belonged to Greg and was vast on me. One of its sleeves was frayed and I put it into my mouth and chewed it. He used to wear it when he went running on winter days and it still held his smell. I went downstairs into the kitchen, feeling a bit dazed. I half expected to see him standing at the hob and this would all have been a feverish nightmare. We had shared the cooking, done it together. Our last meal had been pasta with a chilli sauce, nothing special. He only had a few dishes in his repertory: risotto, bean stew, Moroccan lamb, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, and he cooked them with ferocious concentration, as if they were laboratory experiments that might go badly wrong, with dire consequences.
It occurred to me that since he had died I’d barely cooked beyond making toast. Gwen had made me a vegetable lasagne, Mary had produced salmon fillet with baked tomatoes and watched me as I failed to eat it, and Fergus had brought round a cold roast chicken and garlic bread, which was, I thought, still in the fridge. My neighbour, Annie, had made me too many cakes and soups, as had my mother. Cooking for one is sad when you’re used to cooking for two. I decided to poach myself an egg. Eggs are comforting, I thought, as I waited for the water to boil in the pan, then cracked an egg into it, slid a piece of stale bread into the toaster. The meal took about three minutes to make and three to eat. Now what?
Throughout that night I worked very hard, stopping only for a mug of tea at ten, a glass of whisky at midnight (I had somehow acquired three bottles of whisky since Greg had died: it’s the drink people think a grieving widow will turn to), a chicken sandwich at two. I sat in the living room and went through his address book again, writing down names I didn’t recognize. I went through his diary, though it wasn’t his work one, just the old book he kept personal appointments in, and didn’t find a single thing that made me suspicious. I went through all of his papers, which had been neatly sorted into categories and then by date. I went through the box of old letters in the junk room that should have been an office. I went through his school reports, his qualifications and diplomas, his photo albums from the years before he met me and before the world had gone digital. He was a sweet, gangly, loose-limbed child; his expectant smile hadn’t changed. I emptied the contents of boxes on to the floor and examined them: old vinyl records, compilation tapes he’d made when he was a teenager, books we hadn’t got round to putting on the shelves, magazines going back years. I pulled out each drawer in our bedroom and went through his clothes, folding them neatly and putting them back in their proper place because I had discovered I wasn’t ready yet to give any away.
I opened the cupboard under the stairs and took out every object there – bike panniers, a squash racket, two pairs of running shoes, an old tent we hadn’t used since that trip to Scotland when it had rained non-stop and we had eaten fish and chips and listened to the rain hammering on the canvas. He had told me then that wherever I was that was his home. We had both cried.
At six, because it was too early to go out and I had gone through everything in the house, I started making a list of people I would ask to the funeral. At the end, there were a hundred and twenty names and I gazed at them in despair. How many people would fit into the crematorium chapel, how many into the front room? Should I provide food and drink? Should I ask people to do readings or make little speeches? And what about music? Why wasn’t Greg here to advise me?
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.’