What To Do When Someone Dies - By Nicci French Page 0,2

throat.

Burst into flames. Burst into flames.

I tried not to see his face on fire, his body consumed. I pressed the palms of my hands into the sockets of my eyes and the smallest sound escaped me. It was so quiet in the house. All the noises came from outside: the wind in the trees, the sound of cars passing, doors slamming, people getting on with their normal lives.

I don’t know how long I stood there like that, but at last I went up the stairs, gripping the banisters and hauling my weight from step to step like an old woman. I was a widow. Who was going to set the video for me, who was going to help me fail to do the crossword on Sunday, who was going to keep me warm at night, to hold me tight and keep me safe? I thought these things, but did not feel them. I stood in our bedroom for several minutes, gazing around me, then sat heavily on the bed – on my side, careful not to disturb Greg’s space. He was reading a travel book: he wanted us to go to India together. There was a bookmark a third of the way through. His dressing-gown – grey and blue stripes – hung on the hook on the door. There were slippers with their heels turned down under the old wooden chair, and on top of it a pair of jeans he’d worn yesterday with an old blue jumper. I went and picked it up, burying my face in the familiar sawdusty smell. Then I took off my own and pulled Greg’s over my head. There was a bald patch in one elbow and the hem was fraying.

I wandered into the small room next door to our bedroom, which, for the time being, served as a junk room, although we had plans for it. It was full of boxes of books and stray objects we’d never got round to unpacking, though we had moved to this house well over a year ago, as well as an old-fashioned bath with claw feet and cracked brass taps that I had picked up from a reclamation centre and had planned to install in our bathroom once I had done something about the taps. We had got stuck carrying it up the stairs, I remembered, unable to go backwards or forwards and giggling helplessly, while his mother had shouted useless instructions at us from the hallway.

His mother. I had to call his mother and father. I had to tell them that their eldest son was dead. I felt breathless and had to lean against the door jamb. How do you break that kind of news? I returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed once more, picking up the phone that was on my bedside table. For a moment, I couldn’t remember their number, and when I did, I found it hard to press the buttons. My fingers weren’t working properly.

I hoped she wouldn’t answer, but she did. Her high voice sounded aggrieved to be called at this late hour.

‘Kitty.’ I pressed the receiver to my ear and closed my eyes. ‘It’s me, Ellie.’

‘Ellie, how –’

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ I said. And then, before she could draw breath to say anything: ‘Greg’s dead.’ There was complete silence from the other end, as if she had hung up. ‘Kitty?’

‘Hello,’ she said. Her voice had dwindled; she sounded very far away. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

‘Greg’s dead,’ I persisted. ‘He died in a car crash. I’ve only just heard.’

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Can you hold on a moment?’

I waited and then another voice came on the line, in a kind of gruff, no-nonsense bark. ‘Ellie. Paul here. What’s this?’

I repeated what I’d said. The words were becoming more and more unreal.

Paul Manning gave a short, nervous cough. ‘Dead, you say?’ In the background I could hear sobbing.

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s only thirty-eight.’

‘It was a road accident.’

‘A crash?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know if they told me; maybe they did. It was hard to take everything in.’

He asked me more questions, detailed questions, none of which I could answer. It was as if information would give him some kind of control.

Then I dialled my parents’ number. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Even though you may not be close to them, that’s the right order. His parents, then my parents. Chief mourners. But there was no reply and I remembered that Monday was quiz night at the pub. They