Two men, both in their thirties, I’d say. They introduce themselves as Steve and Mark. One tall and slim, one short and stocky, like a comedy double act. They are polite, respectful. They tell me how sorry they are. This is their job, and they do it well. But I can’t imagine why anyone would choose it. How it would come up on anyone’s list of desired occupations. Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s more the kind of job you find yourself in, that you fall into.
I busy myself, making them tea though they tell me not to worry. I find some Hobnobs in the cupboard. When they are ready to take him, they ask if I’d like to say goodbye, and stay downstairs to drink the tea to give me a bit of privacy.
Climbing the stairs feels like a gargantuan effort, but I haul myself up. Go back into the room. Will I ever walk in here without thinking of his body lying here? Will I ever just think of it as our bedroom – or my bedroom – again? I don’t want to move house, but I don’t want to be haunted by this memory either.
‘It’s time,’ I say. ‘They’re going to take care of you. You’d like them. They’re smartly dressed and clean shaven.’
It all feels too quick, after the slow eking out of the years we’ve lived together. To be saying goodbye, like this, when just yesterday we were shopping for fruit. In the kitchen, in the fruit bowl, there’s a mango that will never be eaten. I will let it sit there, and rot, and then I’ll throw it away. Will we have buried him, by then? Will I be coping? I lean down, kiss his forehead.
‘They were good days,’ I whisper, echoing our last conversation. ‘So many good days.’
I go back down and tell them I’m ready, and I stay at the back of the house, in the kitchen, while they carry him out. One of them has taken a Hobnob and there are a few crumbs on the side, so I get a cloth and wipe it down. There are things to do, and they leave me with a little folder with various forms and leaflets in it, but I can’t think about that yet. I can only think two things, two separate thoughts, one and then the other, then back to the first.
I should never have married him.
I am on my own.
4
It is quiet after they’ve gone, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel jumpy, unable to sit down. Is that adrenaline? I open his drawers, look at his underpants and socks, neatly paired. See him standing here, right where I am, choosing socks from the drawer and resting his right hand on the chest while he pulls on the left one, before switching over. How is it possible that I’ll never see him do that again?
I’m still in my nightdress and slippers, and I’m tempted to slip back beneath the covers but part of me is frightened of getting into the bed where he died. I don’t believe in curses or ghosts or anything of that nature, but the thought of lying where he died makes me shiver, so I go through to the spare room, the room we made nice for the guests who never really came after it was clear there would be no nursery. But no. That isn’t right either. I take a deep breath and return to our bedroom, stand at the end of the bed. Shortly after we got married, we had a conversation about the ‘what’s mine is yours’ part of the vows. Arthur said he wanted us to share everything, that he didn’t want us to have anything that was just his or mine. I said that was silly, that there were always going to be things we each had, and when he asked me for an example, I said sides of the bed.
‘Let’s swap,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Every few weeks, or months, we’ll swap which side we sleep on.’
We did it, too. Every six months, we turned the mattress over, because it’s something my mother had always done, and Arthur would take my book and my night cream from the bedside table and swap them with his bits and pieces. I wonder whether I’ll always sleep on the same side, now that he died on the other one. I get into bed, and fall into a sleep so deep that coming up out of it a few hours later feels like a kind of rebirth. I didn’t dream of him. That sleep was a black hole, and that’s a comfort.
It’s when I go back downstairs that I spot it. A scrap of paper on the floor next to the dining table. I reach to pick it up, and seeing Arthur’s handwriting is a jolt. The paper is torn from the spiral notepad we kept on the go for his endless lists, and on the top line, in pencil, he’s written ‘Find D’. Is it new, this note? Arthur’s final list. I almost laugh. Then I pull out a chair and sit down. Find D. What does it mean?
Find D. It could be a note for me, or something he was writing for himself. Is D a person, or a thing? And if it’s a thing, why the capital letter?
Olly’s getting under my feet, almost tripping me up, so I take hold of his face between my hands. He doesn’t like it, tries to shake me off.
‘It’s about Arthur,’ I say, and he tilts his head to one side. ‘He’s gone, for good. I’m sorry. I know how you loved him.’
There’s no knowing what he understands, but he slinks away from me and into the corner of the room. Curls up there, like he needs to be alone. Today might be the first day we’ve had him that he won’t get a walk. Arthur would go out in all weathers, even if he wasn’t feeling good.
‘He relies on us,’ he said once. ‘We’re all he’s got.’
And now, he only has me. The one he was never all that keen on.
I’m standing by the kettle, waiting for the low roar of its boil, when I think of Dot. Could he have meant Find Dot? And if he did, why did he leave me guessing by not writing her whole name? Or was he interrupted while writing? I run through the people we know for other names starting with D, but there are none. Find D. I repeat it in my head, over and over, as if with enough repetition the meaning will emerge like the sun from behind a cloud.
He mentioned Dot, at the market and then again last night, for the first time in years. Reminisced about the days we spent together, as a four. Could she have been on his mind? Could he have known he was dying, and wanted to suggest that I find my friend after he’d gone? Was he giving me permission? Although really, why did I need it?
In my mind, I sometimes get muddled about Dot leaving. I think it was just after Bill’s death, but the reality was that there was almost a year in between. I lost most of it to grief, but she was there, visiting the house, checking in on me and on Mother. Mother saw her as a daughter, so convinced was she that Dot and Bill would have married. Sometimes she brought flowers. Tulips, or carnations. Mother would stand at the kitchen counter, cutting off the ends and arranging them in a vase, saying how thoughtful Dot was, how much she appreciated her.