“That’s right . . . there will,” said Constable Wright.
Tilda looked up, her anger giving way to despair. “I won’t believe it until I see him,” she said. Then she flopped down again into my lap, and I held her to me, while Sergeant Nokes told us that the American police would inform Felix’s parents. Then she made us all tea.
The police left at about the same time as the reporters arrived. I’d gone out to buy bread and milk, and on my return found three scruffy male photographers leaning against the wall by the front door, and I overheard snatches of their conversation. Her career’s pretty fucked isn’t it? . . . The desk is only interested because she’ll look like shit. . . . Celebrity meltdown . . . I pressed the buzzer, calling out, “Have some respect! Leave her alone!” which prompted them to grab their cameras and to take pictures of me. I felt like shouting abuse, but Tilda buzzed me in, and I escaped before I could do any harm.
She wasn’t in the sitting room or the kitchen space, so I looked in the bedroom, and found her lying facedown on the bed, covered with piles of Felix’s clothes—random white, pink and blue shirts, dark suits and cashmere sweaters. I dropped the shopping and crawled under, to be with her, and she turned to me, her skin mottled and red, her eyes bloodshot. “I’m trying to find his smell, and I can’t! Everything smells of fucking washing powder . . . I can’t bear it.”
Like her, I couldn’t smell anything of Felix, I could smell only Tilda, and as she rolled away from me I buried my face in her back, and we breathed together. I wanted to fall asleep, and I had to resist sinking into unconsciousness.
“Oh . . . I’m so sorry . . . ,” I said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”
And in that moment, I was truly, deeply sorry that I had spied on Tilda, had been paranoid about Felix, had become so obsessed with Controlling Men. It seemed like I had made this happen, had caused Felix’s death.
But then Tilda got out of bed to go to the bathroom and I saw fresh bruises, yellow-purple stains next to each other, bleeding into each other, on her upper left arm—and I was jolted into remembering the reality of Felix. And although I was sad for my distraught sister, I also felt profound relief.
She said, “Callie . . . will you come to the hospital with me, to see Felix’s body?”
“Of course I will.”
She came out of the bathroom and sat on the side of the bed, picking up a white shirt and holding it to her face. Then she pulled off her T-shirt, and put on Felix’s shirt, struggling with the buttons because of her trembling hands. “I want to go tomorrow,” she said. “I phoned Sergeant Nokes while you were out—and she said we need to go to Reading; he’s at the hospital. She’s arranging for us to be there at eleven.”
“I’ll stay here tonight,” I said, “so you’re not alone.” She was at the dressing table now, and she said, “That’s sweet of you” as she looked at herself in the mirror. “I need to speak to the reporters downstairs. . . . I was going to make my face look respectable, but I don’t think I will. It’s better that they see my distress. It’s the truth after all.”
I went with her to the front door. As she opened it, the photographers scrambled away from their position by the wall and took pictures. Tilda stood silently, then said, “As you know, my husband, Felix Nordberg, died today. We had been married only a few weeks and I’m not sure I will ever come to terms with this tragedy. I ask you please to respect my privacy.” Then she came back inside and shut the door, and as she did so, she slid down against it, and became a little ball of grief on the wooden floor.
“Let me help you,” I said, feeling suddenly happier inside than I had been for months. It was so good to be of use to my troubled sister, so reassuring. And as I guided her up the stairs, I scarcely noticed the guilt that I felt.
31
I’d thought Felix would be in a refrigerated drawer, in a stack of cavities filled with the recently dead. But he wasn’t. Instead he’d been wheeled into a small white room in the basement and covered with thick sheets. A policewoman introduced herself as Melody Sykes, asked Tilda if she was ready, and pulled the sheet down so that we could see his face. His eyes were closed so that we would never again see their grayness, or that aloof gaze; and his desiccated lips were dark, and parted, as though he was about to say something as he died, words that were now lost for all eternity. I felt nothing other than repulsion as I looked at him—a ghastly, yellowing waxwork. Tilda was practically hysterical. She laid her face on his chest, stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, then turned into me, nestling her face into my shoulder, saying, “I can’t bear it. . . . I can’t bear it.”
Afterwards, in the parking lot, Melody Sykes said she belonged to Reading police station and explained that there would most likely be no more police involvement. The postmortem would take place, and then we’d be free to have the funeral. She had a strong, rich voice and an accent from somewhere north of Newcastle; and after she drove off in her red Peugeot I said to Tilda, “If she were a tree, it would be an oak tree.” But she wasn’t really listening, and said, “I want to see where he died.” She had cleaned up her face and was looking presentable, and as she spoke it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. So we phoned for a minicab to take us to the Ashleigh House Hotel.
In the taxi, I had my arm through hers and, looking out the window, she said, “When people see a dead body they say, Oh, it wasn’t him, that it’s obvious the spirit has left. But it wasn’t like that. To me, that was Felix, it’s what he’s become. . . . Forever alone.”
The car took us along a wooded lane, then turned into the driveway of the hotel, a straight gravel path cutting through long lawns, arriving at a white building with a Georgian-style facade. The reception area was large, with leather comfy chairs arranged on one side, the reception desk on the other, and straight ahead a wide staircase up to the bedrooms. Felix’s last steps would have taken him up that staircase, I thought. Behind the desk, a young woman was working at her computer; she looked up and asked if she could help. Her name badge read Agnes, and her accent suggested she was Eastern European, maybe Polish.
“My name is Callie Farrow, and this is my sister, Tilda. Her husband was staying here, for the London–New York conference. And he died here. Just yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry. Yes, it was terrible. I was here, and I saw him go for his run. He looked so well! I’m really very sorry.”
Tilda turned away, like the words were hurting her.
“We were wondering if we might look around,” I said. “Maybe see the room where he died. We think it might help.”