lips sting with the wind chill as she stares out into the endless darkness. ‘How cold is it?’ she asks quietly. ‘The sea?’
He sucks in his breath. ‘I’d say it’s about eight or nine degrees at the moment.’
‘How long could someone survive in it for?’
‘Hard to say.’ He pauses. ‘But I’d think a couple of hours at best.’
There’s silence save for the creak of the boat and the slap of waves against the hull.
He’s dead, she thinks. My husband is dead.
We only had two years together, Eva. It wasn’t long enough.
There were still things I was only just beginning to discover about you; that your toes wriggle when you’re nervous; that your standards for cleanliness are bordering on slovenly; that smell is your strongest sense and you sniff everything you buy – books, a new dress, the cellophane wrap of a DVD.
I only recently found the ticklish spot behind your knees that makes you crumple to the ground with gulps of laughter. And I love that my friends think you’re so level-headed and pragmatic – yet you cannot get ready for an evening out without hurtling around the flat performing a circus routine of cleaning your teeth while having a wee, or putting on your make-up in between mouthfuls of dinner.
When we met for the first time and you focused your wide, hazel eyes on me, I felt like I did as a boy – light, hopeful, free.
Like I said, Eva, two years with you wasn’t long enough.
But it was two years more than I deserved.
Eva sits on the edge of the bed gazing numbly at the phone in her hand. She’s still in her pyjamas, yet she has the feeling it is nearing evening again. Her mother keeps popping upstairs to encourage her to do things: Take a shower. Get some fresh air. Call Callie. But everything feels so utterly pointless that Eva doesn’t even answer. Instead, she stays in her room waiting for Jackson to walk back in, kiss her on the mouth, and say in his beautiful, lilting accent, Don’t worry, darl. I’m here now.
It’s been four days. The coastguard tells them it is possible his body will wash up further down the coast, towards Lyme Regis or Plymouth, because of the strong north-easterlies. But she’s not ready to think about a body, her husband’s body …
The red woollen hat Jackson had been wearing was recovered. An apologetic policewoman brought it around sealed inside a clear plastic bag. Eva had stared at the condensation forming against the polythene, thinking it looked as if the hat were breathing.
Downstairs she hears the low voices of her mother greeting someone. Her name is spoken and then Jackson’s. She catches the word tragic.
The house has been awash with visitors and Eva finds it odd how similar death can be to birth: the cards propped on windowsills, the bunches of flowers perfuming each room, the food in plastic containers stacked in the fridge. Then the hushed voices, broken sleeps, and the knowledge that life will never be the same again.
She blinks, her focus returning to the phone. She must speak to Dirk, Jackson’s father. She feels guilty that it was the police, rather than she herself, who informed him of what happened. But Eva couldn’t. She just couldn’t find the words.
She glances at the long number written in pen across the back of her hand, then dials. Pressing the phone to her ear, she listens to the foreign ringtone, thinking about the physical distance between them. They are on opposite sides of the earth; there it is morning, here evening; there it is summer, here winter.
She has only spoken to Dirk once and that was before she and Jackson were married. They kept in light contact by writing and she took pleasure in composing those letters on quiet evenings curled up on the sofa. She loved receiving Dirk’s replies, which were written in a spidery hand on airmail stationery and gave her a glimpse of Jackson’s life in Tasmania.
‘Yeah?’ a gruff voice answers.
‘Dirk?’ She clears her throat. ‘It’s Eva. Jackson’s wife.’
There is silence at the other end.
She waits, wondering if it’s a bad connection. She runs her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth feels dry and somehow swollen.
‘Right,’ he says eventually.
‘I … I’ve been wanting to call … but, well.’ She pushes a hand through her matted hair, rubbing her scalp. ‘I know the police have spoken to you.’
‘He drowned. That’s what they told me.’ His voice wavers as he says, ‘Drowned while fishing.’
‘He was swept in by a wave.’ She pauses. ‘The water here – it’s cold. Freezing. A lifeboat came. And a helicopter, too. They searched all day …’
‘Have they found his body?’
‘No. No, not yet. I’m sorry.’
There is silence.
‘They found the hat he was wearing,’ she offers, although she knows this isn’t enough. Nothing – other than Jackson – can be enough.
‘I see,’ he says slowly.
‘I’m sorry. I should’ve called you sooner, not let the police do it, but … I just … I can’t seem to get my head straight.’ She feels tears blocking up her throat. She takes a breath. ‘None of it feels … real.’
Dirk says nothing.
She swallows back her tears and takes a moment to gather herself. Then she says, ‘There’ll need to be a funeral … or memorial service.’ These are words her mother keeps on saying to her. ‘I don’t know when it’ll be yet … after Christmas, I suppose. Maybe you’d like to come over for it?’
‘Right.’ She hears a chair being scraped across a floor, then a clink of glass. She waits a moment.
When Dirk doesn’t say anything, she finds herself filling the silence. ‘I know you don’t like to fly, but if you did want to come you’d be welcome. You could stay at our place … my place,’ she corrects herself. She squeezes the roots of her hair, feeling herself coming undone. Everything she has wanted to say seems to have been tipped out of her brain. ‘Jackson’s brother is welcome. I know things between them were …’ She fumbles for a word, but only comes up with ‘strained’.
‘No, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’d work.’
Her throat thickens. She wants Dirk to say he’ll come. She may not know her father-in-law, but they are connected by their shared love of Jackson, their shared loss. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Think about it.’
*
Somehow,
