They say that there are five stages of grief, that things get worse before they get better, and in the end time does indeed heal all wounds. But what about the wounds you do not know you do not know about, and the course of which you cannot predict? I know that one thing is certain: if Christopher were still alive, I would now be married to Yvan. There would be no regular visits to see Isabella and Mark, no meetings about the setting up of a foundation in Christopher’s name (despite her misgivings, Isabella decided that in the end she would like to see a foundation established), no prospective publication of Christopher’s second and final book.
There would not be this, or the many e-mails and telephone calls relating to this. There would be no sleepless nights, no reservoir of emotion both unexamined and unknown, which only gathers and grows, a black and nameless pool that petrifies me, on the precipice of which I seem to lie, and of which I speak to no one. Against which my relationship with Yvan—the current relationship, the one that matters, whose details are entirely sunlit, in fact too well lit for my taste, it hurts to look at them, there is nothing I cannot see—is forced to contend.
Sometimes Yvan jokes that it is rotten luck that Christopher was killed and I have to agree, it is terrible luck, for all involved. Yvan said only last week that he did not know how much longer he could wait. And although I could have said, For what?—after all, wasn’t I here, in his home, in his bed, and weren’t we engaged—I knew exactly what he meant, and I could only say that I was sorry, and that I agreed—although what we were waiting for, what exactly it was, neither of us could say.