LITMIR.BIZ

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go through Michael’s bedside drawer, looking for his wallet. He has a travel one – currently with him in Berlin – and the one he carries at home, stuffed with loyalty cards. I find it and borrow forty pounds. As I put it back, I can’t help but notice the framed photo of his wife, dead now just over five years, smiling up at me in her perfect pose of windswept black hair and sultry smile, forever young. He says he doesn’t keep it on display out of consideration for me, despite the fact that I’ve no problem sharing my life with her picture. I never met Emma, she’s dead; so why should I feel bad? It would be healthier to have her out in the open. Instead, I’ve had to put up with the knowledge that she’s snuggled down next to us at night. He usually lies on his side, turned towards her, presenting his back to me.

      The lovely Emma. I’ve begun to call her that in my mind, sometimes chatting to her when I’m on my own. Was Michael such a bully to you too? Were you ‘an ironing sort of person’? You don’t look it. I bet you made him do his own shirts. He might’ve even done yours. Did he nag you about forgetting to put the sharp knives away at night? He has this hang-up about preventing someone breaking in and using them on us. It’s all that reading about psychopaths. Michael has such dark expectations that even a kitchen is first and foremost a potential crime scene.

      I rarely delve beyond the photo as Michael has snapped at me several times for prying but I decide to have a proper root through the bedside shrine. You know how it works, while the cat’s away…

      A little blue box with a wedding ring. I’ve opened that up before. You clearly had something I don’t, Emma, if you brought him to the point where he got down on one knee. Only way I’d get him there would be if I set a trip wire for him to fall over and that wouldn’t end in a proposal.

      There’s a bundle of cards tied with a ribbon. Variations on ‘Happy Anniversary, darling’ followed by a row of big kisses. Her writing is a surprise – large loopy words in turquoise ink. A risk taker on the pen front. I conclude that she felt confident about covering more space than most of us do. Some photos. Emma at work. A couple of nice studio ones in the little album from their wedding in the US. I approve of her dress. She looks so glamorous. Very very sexy. No wonder I don’t measure up.

      Right at the bottom there’s a new addition to the shrine: a Moleskine notebook. I wonder where that’s come from? I have a soft spot for that brand myself, a hangover from the teenage diary days, and I usually have several on the go at the same time, one for work, one for my random thoughts. I flick open the cover and find that it is filled with Emma’s, rather than Michael’s, handwriting. Unlike my notebooks, hers is meticulously kept – dates, neat little anecdotes, not my jottings, highlighting and underlinings. I read a couple of sentences. ‘Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day.’

      Romantic Venice? I should be so lucky.

      Before I have time to quash my own impulse, I’ve pulled out my phone and begun capturing any page that takes my fancy, just snapping, not taking time to read. I can’t remove something so personal to Michael, even for a day, but I have to know more about this woman – this wife – who haunts our relationship. If I understand her, then maybe I’d get a better handle on what she was to him and I’d know where I’ve been going wrong?

      At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m just plain nosy and what I’m doing is way out of line? It’s a bit like grave-robbing, isn’t it? My jury is out and decided to go for a long lunch break while I carry on taking photos.

      I make myself stop at twenty images. More would be obsessive, wouldn’t it? I bite my lip, seeing another entry that appeals. OK, now that really is the last. No more. Step away from the diary, Jessica.

      The last page, handwriting no longer so exuberant, some of the words illegible, I see that she mentions getting a cat to cheer Michael up. It was a nice thought, to give him something to live for afterwards. My mind takes another swallow dive off the top board. The cat. I’ve forgotten the cat. Lizzy had fed her while we were away, but Michael will not be pleased if I abandon his beloved Colette to fish her dinner out of food recycle bins. Pocketing my phone after a last photo, I hurriedly put the Emma shrine back exactly as I think I found it. I then make sure I walk on Michael’s dirty boxers on my way out of the bedroom.

      I fill up the kibble bowl and change the water. Radar ears alert for the rattle of food, the cat flap slaps and Colette winds round my ankles, a black-and-white silk scarf of a creature. I stroke her. I am a cat kind of person, one of my few remaining plus points as far as Michael is concerned. I wonder if that’s the only reason he’s not evicted me. Who could he get to feed Colette at such short notice? He can’t keep asking Lizzy. She has her own life to lead and we can’t expect her always to pick up the loose threads of ours. The old lady next door, Mrs Jessop, is grounded with a bad hip, waiting for the op. The rest of the street are nodding acquaintances only.

      ‘I’ll be back, Colly. Don’t eat it all at once. And don’t answer the door to strangers.’ I grab my bag and head out, leaving her in regal charge of the house. She does it so much better than me.

       Chapter 4

      There’s really only one place I want to go. The undertaker’s. It’s not as desperate as it sounds. My best friend works there, responsible for fulfilling the weirdest contract in the world. Payne and Bullock, a family concern, is paid to deal with the dead who fly into Heathrow. There are more of them than you might think. Some are already dead and are being repatriated – one sangria too many and lights out in the Costa Brava. Others join the exclusive mile-high-die club, less popular than its sexual equivalent. If it’s a busy long haul over the Atlantic, they are strapped in as discretely as possible and covered by a blanket. Mr So-and-so is not feeling well. Please respect his privacy. Why have you put the blanket over his face then? Madam, can I offer you any duty-free? A stiff drink next to the stiff?

      My mind runs through what it would be like to be the passenger in the seat next to the body. I suspect I’d be tempted to behave badly and would want to touch it. I’ve never felt what death is like and this would be the perfect opportunity. I would only do it if no one was watching, of course. We are all interested in death; some of us are just more ready to admit to it.

      That’s what kicked off my friendship with Drew Payne. We met at a local bar when Lizzy and I were out on a girls’ night with colleagues from her school – her attempt to cheer me up and my first venture into public after my breakdown. At the start, it felt like an awkward evening with her staffroom friends all trying so hard not to talk about the fact that I’d recently been given the push from my teaching position at Eastfields. I suspect Lizzy had banned the topic but it was the equivalent of the instruction ‘don’t think of a blue elephant’ – these nice primary-school teachers, unsullied by the experience of tutoring hormonal teenagers, couldn’t help but feel the holes in the conversation were forming the big-elephant shape of my disgrace.

      ‘Let me get the next round,’ I announced, in part so I could flee the niceness. Lizzy followed me to the bar as I attempted to order. As usual, I failed to attract the attention of the server.

      ‘I’m sorry. I can feel I’m making the whole evening a disaster,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to go so you and your friends can enjoy yourselves?’

      Pretty, confident, blessed with a swatch of honey-blonde hair that I had seen make straight guys weak at the knees, Lizzy merely rolled her eyes and took the crumpled twenty from my fingers. She elbowed her way past the shirt-sleeved businessmen blocking the counter.

      ‘You really don’t want me to leave?’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Jessica. Just give it time – and a few more drinks. They’ll all loosen up after that.’

      ‘Hey, it’s Lizzy, isn’t it?’ The man next to her at the bar, who had been nursing a pint, turned on hearing her voice.

      Lizzy frowned, ready to deter all boarders, but then her expression cleared. ‘I know you, don’t I? Let me guess:

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