“Shall we track down the other husband?” I said, and Joni jumped like she’d been electrified. She prattled about how poor Julian must be desperate for news.
“We don’t even know if poor Julian is at home,” I said, and waved her toward the car so we could set off again. We looped back to the main road and turned uphill for a mile until we entered the next district, but the deli and bakery and florist were empty of the usual Bugaboo crew. At the park, I turned onto my road, where long blank windows of double-fronted houses surveyed the green with doleful spaniel eyes. There were two permit-protected spaces right outside my front door, and we both pulled in and switched off the engines, climbing out onto the pavement.
The chunky thud of my car door echoed across the park. A rope on the kids’ climbing wall slapped in the wind. On the far side of the common, a pair of foxes stopped to watch us before trotting on their way. Joni said she would watch the sleeping kids; we agreed she would take them over to the playground if they woke up. I stepped up the box-bordered path and scratched the key into the lock.
The heavy door opened with a dry suck of air and swung back to reveal the hallway and its curving mahogany staircase. The scene perfectly resembled my house: everything in the right place, but too quiet, too shiny. A facsimile of home. An elaborate trick. My keys clattered onto their hook, the sound magnified by silence, and I trailed my fingers over the back of my silver Burmese Nat, a figurine of a spirit that writhed across the console with sword in hand to protect the household. I stroked his smooth back, tarnished from years of devotion, and the habit brought me home again.
“Julian?”
My voice didn’t carry far, the heavy curtains and rugs doing their job. All I could make out was a buzzing, like the inside of my head when I wore earplugs to get to sleep. I called again, but it was obvious Julian wasn’t home. I opened the cupboard under the stairs, and there were his boots and shoes, lined up on his red shelf above my yellow one, and the kids’ stuff arranged on their painted shelves: blue for Charlie, pink for Maggie, and green for Billy. Julian’s coats were still there, too, although the suitcases were gone. Curiouser and curiouser.
I moved down the hall toward the kitchen, noticing there was no post in the tray. The buzzing seemed to be getting louder, like a metallic humming. The door to the kids’ playroom was open, revealing the devastation of a toy bomb. Either the cleaner had not come on Friday, or I would find in the kitchen one of her terse Eastern European notes: House too dirty to clean. I pushed on into the kitchen. The buzz was loudest here, and I wondered for a moment if it was the fridge, but it couldn’t be—the light switch and the stench of rotten food told me there was no power. I hardly needed lights anyway as the room was greenhouse warm from the sun glaring through the glass roof, illuminating the island workspace and the family area in front of the foldaway doors that led to the garden.
My eyes settled on the sofa. It seemed to be covered with a shiny-black blanket that I couldn’t place. On the rug, a jumble of fallen cushions and Julian’s Converse shoes. On the arm of the sofa, a mobile phone with a leather cover; it was his, Julian’s. I took a step toward it, but the strange onyx blanket that stretched along the seat caught my attention again. It shimmered and seemed to heave slightly, like an oil spill. The buzz was intense now; I could feel it as well as hear it. I took another step forward, and just as I realized that the blanket was not a single entity but a writhing mass of living creatures, the flies broke away from the body beneath and rose up, meaty bluebottles engulfing me in a roiling bombardment of filth that enveloped my head even as I ran from the room and fell face down onto the hallway rug with my hands clamped over my mouth and nose to keep them out. The furious cloud lifted away, and the buzz faded back into the kitchen, leaving a couple of languid stragglers to fly a torpid circuit of the stairwell before heading back to the feast.
I drew myself into the recovery position and then onto my hands and knees. The buzz. My guts kicked once, and I vomited onto the rug. I waited to see if there was any more: had an irrelevant thought about staining the sisal. I spat out bits and sat back on my heels. I could still hear the buzz. I forced myself to my feet and dashed across the tiles to pull closed the kitchen door. It had to be Julian in there. His shoes on the floor. His phone on the sofa. His body covered in flies. The source of that sickeningly sweet smell.
He’d never left. Or maybe he’d died before he had the chance. Either way, that was my husband. Hidden under that . . . filth. That buzz.
A dry heave caught me unawares, bending me double like a fist in the belly. I stayed down for a long moment. I had to make sure Joni kept the kids away, from the horror and—I looked at the brass doorknob I had just turned—the contamination. I turned back to the console table, opening and closing drawers to find my stash of disinfectant wipes. I scrubbed my hands, working a cloth under the nails, and threw the dirty wipe away. Then I grabbed another and wiped it over my face, across the back of my neck, in my ears, inside my mouth. That buzz was everywhere, on my skin, inside my skin. I wiped and wiped until the packet was empty and my mouth was stinging with chemicals.
In the cupboard under the stairs, I rooted out some giant plastic boxes, looking for heavy boots. In the last one, I found them: snow boots that Julian had made me buy for one of our extravagant “date weekends” in the Alps, which he had organized in the belief that hedonism could be a substitute for actual pleasure. I don’t think I ever wore the boots. It had been too late in the season for snow.
I kicked away my tennis shoes and hauled the boots on. Then I picked my keys off the hook and strode out the front door, slamming it so hard the knocker cackled behind me.
Chapter Five
The green refuse bin lay flat on its back in our front garden, offering its “No Hot Ashes” warning to the sky. I crossed the road to the park. The kids had dispersed around the playground. Even Lola was swinging, lying back to let her long hair ripple behind her.
Joni turned to me with pursed lips. “Has he gone?”
I waggled my head from side to side. “Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s there in body, but not in spirit.”
Joni blinked at me.