again he paid the bills, worked extremely hard, was faithful, didn’t beat me, loved his children – despite sometimes behaving as if they were annoying relations of mine who’d come to stay: ‘Your daughter thinks it’s a good idea to throw her food on the floor!’ Surely his daughter too? And even though he liked to be in complete control of our little household at all times – even taking the TV remote to the loo with him – I didn’t really hold it against him. Didn’t really want him dead.
It was a shock, therefore, to open the door to the policeman.
‘Mrs Shilling? May I have a word?’
Whilst he’d been cycling along the Dunstable Downs, the ridge of hills above our house, an easyJet plane returning from Lanzarote had simultaneously prepared for its descent at Luton. Dropping from freezing high altitude into warmer air, it had relieved itself: had fall-out. A chunk of ice, eighteen inches in diameter, had broken off from the fuselage and, five thousand feet below, found Phil, pedalling furiously. As my husband strove to render his body a temple, God, it seemed, had had other ideas.
I remember struggling to comprehend this; remember gaping at the policeman as he perched opposite me on my sofa, twisting his hat in his hands.
‘A piece of ice? From where exactly?’
‘From the undercarriage.’ He cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘From the toilet, as a matter of fact.’
‘The toilet?’
‘Yes. Blue Ice is how it’s known. Being as how it’s mixed with detergent.’
‘What is?’
‘The urine.’
I stared. Not in a million years could I have dreamed this up. Fantasized about this in Sainsbury’s. Phil had been killed by a piece of piss. A hefty, frozen block of pee, travelling at spectacular speed and velocity – and which, it later transpired, hadn’t actually claimed him as he’d been cycling but, as bad luck would have it, when he’d stopped at a stile, taken his helmet off to scratch his head and wonder how to get the bike over. A freak accident, but not the first of its kind, the coroner would later inform me sympathetically over his bifocals as I sat at the back of his court in a navy-blue suit, hands clenched. ‘Thirty-five similar instances in the last year alone.’
‘Although in the last forty years, only five fatalities,’ the man from the Civil Aviation Authority had added stiffly. Six, then, with Phil.
‘Right. Thank you so much. I mean – for telling me.’ This, to the policeman in the here and now, in my sitting room. I stood up shakily.
The officer got to his feet, uncertain. He spread his hands helplessly.
‘Do you … want to see him?’
My mind reeled. ‘Where is he?’
‘In the hospital morgue.’
I caught my breath. Oh, God. On a trolley. In a bag. ‘No,’ I gasped instinctively.
‘No, not everyone does.’ He hesitated, unwilling to leave so soon. ‘Well, is there … anyone you’d like to contact? Have with you?’
‘No, no one. I mean, there is. Are. Plenty. But – not now. I’ll be fine, really.’
‘Your mother, perhaps?’
‘No, she’s dead.’
He looked shocked. So many dead.
‘Really, I’ll be fine.’ I was helping him, now. But he was only young.
‘And the children?’
‘Yes, I’ll pick them up from school.’
And pick them up I had. Well, only Clemmie. Archie was asleep in his cot upstairs, and I’d taken him with me and driven very slowly, because I was pretty sure I was in shock. I was a quiet mother at the gates, but not a distraught one, so Clemmie didn’t notice anything, and then I’d driven back and given them tea. Chicken nuggets, I remember, which I only serve in extremis. At the table Clemmie had told me about Miss Perkins, Mummy, who’s an assassin. ‘Assistant?’ Yes, and got a moustache. And later I’d bathed them and put them to bed.
And then I’d walked around the house on that chilly, blustery evening, clutching the tops of my arms, gazing out of the window at the shivering late roses, the clouds rushing through the dark blue sky, flashes of sunshine casting long shadows on the lawn, waiting, waiting for something to happen. For the sluice gate to open. For my hand to clap my mouth as I gasped, ‘Oh, God!’ and fell, like Phil must have fallen, I told myself looking for a trigger, in a terrible heap to the ground. I tried to imagine him lying in the bracken, his bike a tangled mess, his face broken, shattered. Nothing. So I walked round the house some more, the