‘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.
‘One thing,’ I said. ‘You sent an email to Greg at home, saying he should ask Joe about whatever it was that was worrying him. Do you remember what it was about?’
Tania wrinkled her button nose and furrowed her smooth brow. ‘No,’ she replied eventually, ‘so it can’t have been important, can it? Do you want me to look out the original email he sent?’
‘If it’s not too much bother.’
‘I might have deleted it if it was dealt with.’
I wished I’d brought Fergus with me – he was some kind of computer whiz and he’d done freelance work for the firm several times. He’d even been here on Greg’s last day. He’d have been able to guide me through.
I made a list of all the clients Greg had visited over the last three weeks, with their phone numbers and addresses, and stared at them, the names blurring. I looked at the A-Z and my head buzzed with tiredness and a despairing frustration. Anything was better than not knowing. For how could I say goodbye to Greg when I no longer knew who he was? How could I get him back?
Chapter Six
It was while the undertaker was going through the price options that I descended into a form of mental illness. I experienced the feeling I had once had as a teenager – probably all teenagers have it – that I was the only real person in the world and that everyone else was an actor playing a part. The undertaker’s in Kentish Town was much like any other shop in the high street offering a service, an estate agent or a white-goods supplier. But this one had been made over in shades of grey with fake pillars supporting the reception desk and white lilies in vases, so that it looked a bit like a mausoleum. Sombre new-agey music, something on Pan pipes, was playing in the background. Of course, Mr Collingwood, the funeral director, was dressed in a navy suit with a white carnation and, of course, he offered me his condolences in a subdued voice as he pushed the price list across his desk towards me.
In the same subdued voice, he talked about the services they offered, the collection and care of the deceased, the arrangements for visiting the chapel of rest. He murmured that there were decisions to be made: religious or secular, burial, cremation or special facilities, and then there were the extras. As I looked through the section of the brochure devoted to coffins – chipboard lined with plastic, wood veneer, solid wood, cardboard, woven willow – I began to think of Mr Collingwood as an actor. I wasn’t angry about this, or bitter. I didn’t want him to dress like an ice-cream salesman or to grin as if he was trying to sell me a new car. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was almost four thirty. He might have been at a funeral that morning and he must have had lunch, perhaps in one of the new cafés that had opened in the high street in the last two years. He would have seen at least a couple of people before me, and now it wasn’t long until the end of the day. Perhaps he was also thinking about the evening, dinner, seeing his children. Maybe one of them was having trouble at school and he would have to sit with them as they did their homework. For all I knew it was his wedding anniversary or his birthday, and he was going out for dinner. He might have been diagnosed with a fatal disease or he might have won the lottery, but now he was playing the role of the undertaker, with the right note of dignity, competence and concern.