from the Schubert Sonata that the pianist performed begin to play in Emily’s head. She and Greg both thoroughly enjoyed themselves. When they arrived home, Emily recalls, Greg wanted to make love, but Emily pretended to be too tired. She regrets that now.
She wraps the towel around her head, pinning up her shoulder-length hair, and walks over to the wooden armchair to pick up his jumper. She buries her face in it and inhales deeply. She feels weak as she breathes in Greg’s cologne mixed with the faint scent of the laundry detergent that he liked her to use to wash his woollen jumpers. There’s also the odour of beeswax and polish that permeated all of Greg’s clothing. It’s a smell Emily would usually find comforting, but in this instant it symbolises everything she has just lost. Her legs give way beneath her and she sinks onto the worn, unwelcoming cushion of the chair.
In spite of herself, Emily presses the jumper harder against her face and breathes in again. This time she can detect the hint of a more floral fragrance. She stiffens as a memory hovers at the back of her mind, but it stays stubbornly out of reach. The smell is vaguely familiar, but disturbing at the same time. As the towel slips from her hair, releasing her chestnut curls, she tells herself it’s just her conditioner, her own smell mixing with that of her husband. Her late husband. Tears start to stream down her cheeks as she clings to the jumper, rocking her body backwards and forwards.
Emily doesn’t remember getting up from the chair, but when she wakes up an hour or so later, she finds she’s lying in her dressing gown on Greg’s side of the bed, still clutching his sweater. She gingerly raises herself to a sitting position, grimacing. She stays on the bed, in a daze, gently rubbing the faded scars on her right forearm with the fingertips of her left hand. It’s an unconscious gesture and as soon as she realises she’s doing it, she stops and tugs her sleeve down. She can hear the muffled noises her mother is making in the kitchen downstairs, but she doesn’t want to join her just yet.
Scanning her bedroom, she notices that most of the things in it are hers. Her paintings are displayed on the walls; her perfume bottles, hairbrushes and make-up are on the dressing table; her ornaments are lined up neatly on the shelves. The antique armchair, on which Greg’s clothes were always strewn, was his. She has always found it ugly and uncomfortable, but suddenly she feels fond of it.
Her eyes fall on her MacBook Pro on top of the chest of drawers. Greg bought it for her because she wasn’t very computer-literate and he said it was user-friendly. But really Josh, the computer whizz she’s employing to set up a website for her artwork, uses her laptop more than she does.
Emily remembers how much Greg had loved new technology. He and his friend Charles would sometimes talk about computers for hours on end, which she found intensely annoying. Thinking how much she would love to listen in on one of those conversations now, a lump comes to her throat. She remembers spending evenings sitting next to her husband, losing herself in the novels on her Kindle while Greg, who had never been much of a reader, was on his laptop or smartphone replying to emails or searching for antiques on the Internet or catching up with friends on Facebook. She makes an effort not to start crying again.
It dawns on her that although all of Greg’s close friends and family know he has lost his life in a car crash, several of his old classmates from school won’t have heard about it. Now she comes to think of it, many of his work contacts won’t know either. She decides to type a short message on Facebook to tell them. She brings her laptop over to the bed, props up the pillows behind her and, sitting with her legs out straight and the computer on her thighs, she boots it up. She knows Greg’s password, so she brings up his account. She mulls over each sentence, but in the end she’s satisfied with her announcement.
It is with deep sadness that I inform you that my husband Greg passed away on 1st August following a road accident. His funeral was held last week. I’m very grateful for the support I’ve received at this tragic time. Emily Klein.
Although she doesn’t go on Facebook much, Emily does have an account, and she tags herself so that the message will appear on her Timeline, too. Wondering if some people will find an obituary on Facebook distasteful, she hesitates briefly. Then she posts her comment, logs out of Greg’s account and connects to her own to check that the message has appeared on her Facebook wall.
Just as she has logged in, she hears the four notes of the message notification sound. She clicks to open the message. The first time, she reads it without fully taking in the meaning, staring uncomprehendingly at the screen. As she rereads the words more carefully, she feels dizzy and struggles to breathe.
Alice, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
The blue and white bar at the top of the Facebook page seems to flash as if in warning. Then the message becomes an illegible blur. Emily pushes the computer off her lap and jumps up from the bed. The pain in her side is excruciating. The room begins to spin so fast that she feels herself falling. It can’t be. That’s impossible. That’s the last thing that goes through her mind before she faints.
Even if the sender’s name hadn’t appeared in bold at the top of the message, Emily would have known it was from him. Only one person has ever called her by her middle name.
~
Devon, May 1996
‘We’ve got a lot to get through today,’ Lucinda Sharpe began, bursting into the meeting room at the secure accommodation. Emily was being detained in this facility. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lucinda added, ‘How are you holding up?’ She was out of breath.
‘I’m all right,’ Emily said. It didn’t sound very convincing, even to Emily.
There was a ball of nerves in her stomach that just wouldn’t go away. She’d been trying hard not to think about the ordeal she would have to face over the next few days.
‘Really?’
Emily looked at her solicitor. Lucinda was blessed with flawless olive skin, beautiful dark eyes and shiny black hair, but cursed with a rather large bottom and a lousy sense of fashion. Emily thought she must be aiming for smart casual, but didn’t think she’d succeeded in pulling it off on any of the occasions they’d met so far.
Today, she was dressed more casually and less smartly than usual, Emily noticed, her buttocks squeezed into unflattering black leggings, and her hair held back with a neon yellow headscarf. She was wearing a denim shirt with too many buttons undone, and, somewhat ironically, court shoes.
Lucinda had often arrived late for appointments and police interviews with Emily, but she was punctual on this particular morning. It was to be their last meeting before Emily’s trial began the following day.
Emily was very fond of Lucy, as her lawyer insisted on being called. Lucy talked about her children a lot, and whenever she did, a proud smile lit up her face. She complained that she was always cutting corners, doing her kids’ homework for them because explaining would take longer, or heating up frozen pizza when she didn’t have time to cook, or putting on a video instead of reading a bedtime story so that they wouldn’t squabble while she got some urgent work done.
Listening to Lucy stirred up mixed emotions in Emily. Lucy was a single mother of four, and yet Emily found her accounts of family life attractive simply because they struck her as ordinary. She thought Lucy must be an excellent mum. Emily didn’t have any stories to tell Lucy about her family.
What Emily liked best about her solicitor was that she wasn’t patronising. She talked in legalese, using
