LITMIR.BIZ

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       A year later: Cait

      ‘Matt, Matt. Are you OK? Matt.’

      No response. I’d just got home from work to find Matt, stretched out and snoring softly on the sofa in the sitting room. He’d taken off his suit jacket, tie and shoes and cast them onto the nearest chair. An empty bottle of red wine and glass were on the coffee table in front of him, together with an open dictionary. Something must have happened. Matt was never here on a weekday, he was in Bristol, working, usually back on the train which got in around 8.30 p.m. He wasn’t a big drinker, either.

      Maybe I shouldn’t wake him, I thought. Should leave him to sleep it off. But … he’s never home in the day. What’s happened? I gave him a gentle shove, then a more persistent one, but he was dead to the world. I checked he was still breathing. He’d been snoring a moment ago – of course he was.

      Reassured that Matt was still in the land of the living, I tiptoed out and into the kitchen to search for my mobile to see if it offered any clues. I’d forgotten to take it out with me, so didn’t know if he’d been trying to reach me. I found the phone in the fruit bowl and turned it on to see if there were any messages. There were four missed calls and one text. All from Matt. The text said: When r u back? Need 2 talk.

      Two minutes later, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to my two closest friends, Lorna and Debs. They had said they’d drop in on their way back from a trip to the garden centre.

      ‘Spring flowers,’ said Debs, and handed me a bunch of white tulips.

      ‘Thanks, but shh, Matt’s home, asleep on the sofa,’ I said as I ushered them through the hall and into the kitchen diner, where I shut the door after them. They made an odd pair. Debs, a curvaceous bohemian, forty-seven years old, with a mop of dark hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with a chopstick, was wearing a kingfisher blue silk top, green harem trousers and a big emerald amulet fit for an Egyptian high priestess. Although British born and bred, with her olive skin and brown eyes she looked Spanish, a throwback to her Andalusian great-grandmother, she’d told us. Next to her, Lorna was small and slim, in her fifties, and was in jeans and a blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, her silver-white hair cut neatly to her shoulders. I was the oldest of the three of us, but often felt like the youngest, a twenty year old trapped in an old body. Matt called my friends the S and S, the silly and the sensible, Debs being the first, Lorna the latter; he said that each of them represented a different side of my nature. ‘There’s more to me than that,’ I’d told him. ‘I have many sides – I’m multifaceted, like a diamond.’ He’d laughed. Cheek.

      ‘Matt? What’s going on?’ asked Debs, and was about to go barging in to see him but I pulled her back.

      ‘I don’t know, but he’s clearly had a skinful. Best leave him for now.’

      ‘Not like him,’ said Lorna as she settled on a stool at the island.

      ‘Why don’t you wake him?’ asked Debs. ‘Find out?’

      ‘I thought I’d let him sleep whatever it is off first.’

      ‘Wise,’ said Lorna and stood up. ‘Should we go?’

      ‘I … maybe. In case … I don’t know, something’s clearly happened and, until I know what, I don’t … Probably best you’re not here to see him in whatever state he wakes up in.’

      ‘No clues at all?’ asked Debs.

      ‘No, apart from a dictionary on the table. He must have been working on something.’ He always had his nose in a book, researching something or other for his job as a TV programme developer.

      Lorna handed me a pot; in it was a wild geranium, its white flowers tinged with the faintest pink blush. ‘It’s a Kashmir White. If you like it, we can get more,’ she said as she headed for the front door, where she pulled out a leaflet and handed it to me. ‘And this lists the gardening classes on locally. We could go together, but we can talk about that another time. Come on, Debs. Call us if you need.’

      ‘Call us anyway,’ said Debs.

      ‘I will,’ I said, and saw them back out. I was sorry to see them go. I’d been looking forward to an hour catching up with them with a bottle of rosé on the decking outside in the warm May sunshine, plus Lorna had promised to help me make a start on the long overdue task of designing the garden borders. ‘And thanks for the plant, Lorna. It’s lovely.’

      Lorna stepped forward and hugged

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