LITMIR.BIZ

       3

      Eva slots the key into the door lock, then hesitates. She hasn’t been back to their flat since Jackson’s death. She’s been staying with her mother, as she wanted to get through Christmas and then the memorial service before she could even think of returning. Perhaps it was a mistake to refuse her mother’s offer of coming to the flat with her. She’d insisted on doing it alone, but now the idea of going inside fills her with dread.

      She takes a deep breath, then pushes open the door, putting the weight of her shoulder behind it to force it over the mound of post on top of the doormat. With her foot, she moves aside junk mail, Christmas cards and bills, and squeezes into the hallway. The air smells musty and stale, and there’s an undertone of leather from Jackson’s coat that hangs on a hook behind the door.

      She puts down her bag and moves silently along the hall, peering into each room. She has the strangest sensation that if she moves slowly enough, she may catch Jackson lounging on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, or see his long back in the shower as water streams down his body.

      But, of course, the flat is empty. A deep wave of loneliness storms her. It is so intense and so absolute that it steals the breath from her lungs and the floor seems to lurch beneath her. She leans against the wall for balance, breathing deeply till the sensation passes. She must hold it together. Jackson has gone and she is alone. These are the facts and she needs to get used to them.

      After a moment or two, she swallows, lifts her chin, then propels herself towards the kitchen. In a rush of movement, she throws the windows wide open, hearing traffic, voices, the scuffling of a pigeon on the roof. Then she flicks on the central heating and hurries through the flat switching on lamps, radios and the TV. Noise and light and fresh air swirl through the rooms.

      Eva keeps her coat on and returns to the kitchen. She will make tea, and then unpack. Kettle. Fill it with water, she tells herself. She curls her fingers around the handle, glancing away from her reflection which is distorted in the curve of aluminium. She carries it over to the sink – and then freezes.

      A used tea bag lies there, bloated and dried out, the basin stained rust brown around it. It’s Jackson’s. He had the infuriating habit of dropping his tea bags in the sink, not the bin. Seeing it is such a tiny, inconsequential detail of his life, but somehow the mundaneness of it is what chokes her.

      She stands there staring with the kettle poised in her hand, thinking that right now she would give anything to watch Jackson walk into this kitchen, make a cup of tea, and drop the tea bag into the sink with a wet thud.

      Eva puts the kettle back and drifts into the bedroom, where the radio is blasting out a tinny pop tune. The electronic beat is like an itch in her head and she snaps it off. She stares at their unmade double bed, biting on her lip as memories filled with warmth and comfort float towards her. Before she can stop herself, she climbs into the bed in her coat and pulls the covers up to her chin.

      Grief is physical, she thinks. It feels like something corrosive is burning through her insides, dissolving layers of herself, leaving her raw. She buries her face in Jackson’s pillow, breathing in the faint musk of his skin through her sobs.

      *

      Eva must have fallen asleep because, when she opens her eyes, the room is in darkness. Her head throbs and her skin feels clammy and hot. She shakes herself free of her coat and sits up, switching on Jackson’s bedside lamp.

      His drawer beneath it is ajar and she pulls it wider, her gaze wandering over bundles of receipts, a pair of broken binoculars, a pack of cards, condoms, a book about Henry VIII that he’d never finished reading, two AA batteries, and some loose change.

      She slips out a photo of them that had been taken in Paris, where they’re standing overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. Just after this photo was taken, the rain had come down and they’d run into a café, the floor soaked from dripping coats and shaken umbrellas. They’d dried off eating pastries and drinking coffee, and by the time they’d left, the sun was glaring off rain-slick pavements.

      As she leafs through the rest of the items in the drawer, she sees an envelope addressed in her handwriting. She tugs it free and finds it is a letter to Dirk. It was her most recent one about a surprise trip to Wales that Jackson had arranged. She’d thought they were going to see her mother, but he managed to distract her so completely that it was half an hour into the journey before she realized they weren’t heading to Dorset at all. He’d booked them into a cosy B&B in the Brecon Beacons and they’d spent the weekend strolling through damp bracken-lined mountains and making love by the open fire in their room.

      At the bottom of the letter she sees that Jackson had added his own message asking if his dad had seen many Wallabies games. Jackson always liked to include a personal note and he sent the letters from the post room at work, but he must’ve forgotten this one.

      As she returns it to the drawer her fingers meet a second letter, which she slips out. It is another one of hers to Dirk, the date showing the end of August. She scans the contents, which are innocuous: an account of a summer picnic on Clapham Common; a trip to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream; a photo of them at a gig.

      She smoothes both letters out on her lap, an uneasy sensation stirring in her stomach as she wonders why neither was sent. She checks through the drawer again but doesn’t find any more. Logic tells her it must have been a simple oversight, yet she can’t help wondering if there was another reason why Jackson hadn’t sent them.

      *

      A week later, Eva is sitting in a bar with Callie, a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket between them. Callie pours generously and slides a glass across the wooden table to Eva. ‘Drink.’

      Eva obeys, taking a large gulp. She had called Callie in tears after her first shift back at the hospital.

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘I … I just couldn’t handle it. I left. Ran out.’

      ‘It was your first day.’

      ‘I thought I was ready. I delivered the baby and everything was fine – I was focused. I barely thought about Jackson. But, afterwards …’ She shakes her head.

      Eva had lifted the baby from the birthing pool and handed it carefully to its mother, a Polish woman called Anka, who looked worn out. The new father had gazed at his son in wonderment, placing the backs of his fingers gently to the boy’s cheek. Then his eyes lifted to meet his wife’s. There was a moment when the room went still. He had said something in a choked voice, the words floating to his wife whose lower lip trembled as she smiled.

      Eva hadn’t needed to speak Polish to understand what he was saying. He was telling his wife that she was incredible, that he was so proud of her, that he loved her deeply. It was this look, the intensely intimate moment between husband and wife that followed the strain and exhaustion of labour, that had always made Eva love what she did.

      But today, she had felt paralysed by it. She had stared at the couple – who were only a year or two older than her and Jackson – as she realized with silent horror that she would never know what it would be to hold Jackson’s baby in her arms, or to have him look at her in that way, to be loved like this man loved the mother

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