(2013) Four Widows

by Helen MacArthur

  I read the bullet spray of words scrawled, scratched across the surface: murdered; evil; killer; you are dead; time is running out; Dr Murderer.

  I remember holding one photo for what seemed like an unimaginable amount of time before letting it fall to the floor, seemingly guileless. Hate had been passed down from Harrison to me. Personal debt; a score to settle.

  Damn you, Harrison, I raged. What did you do?

  It is effortless to relive fear: it worked its way through me, cold sensation drilling through my veins like analgesic drugs, although it had absolutely no effect on me. I still felt excruciating pain but couldn’t raise my hand to make the procedure stop. Whatever the truth, it wasn’t good or honourable. I started to believe in ghosts–I needed to make a connection and ask questions. Harrison would never cheat on me, I told myself. He loved me.

  Now I know I could have spared myself immeasurable amounts of angst if someone had reminded me this: dead people don’t answer questions.

  Sleep was not to be. Insomnia reached Trump-tower size; I had more to think about, more than ever. This was the usual run of events. Is Harrison’s murderer out there and where? Did he sleep with Vivienne Roberts? This made me think about the letters addressed to Harrison and redirected to me. Then there was The Watcher. Ted Holmes got airtime too. Now, I was affected by gun-toting Kate and hoped she wasn’t going off the rails; off the bridge.

  The incident had shaken me more than I let on to Cece and Suzanne. I closed my eyes and could see Kate standing there, shooting her husband; one, two, three, four. It was a savage scene; so furious and controlled. This is what I couldn’t explain to the others. Neil might be dead but she still shot him. Blasted a loved one through the grass into oblivion. Forced him down through the ground into hell. It was a horrible violation, an attack on someone defenceless on the ground; albeit six feet under.

  What did you do, Neil Moritz? What the hell did you do to deserve this?

  Then I remember what Cece had told me. “She found him, you know. She. Found. Him.”

  Cece put Kate’s behaviour down to a moment of significant hormonal upheaval but I had my doubts. Kate lived a controlled life with no surprises. I’d already established that she had a logical, unneurotic brain. She wasn’t a spontaneous person who’d grab a gun and let loose. Battle-tested and brave, she had strategies and even organised time to cry; whenever the children weren’t around. I could picture her writing the date in her desktop diary at work: Morningside Cemetery 11am, shoot dead feckless husband. Four times. I imagined her making notes, ticking off her list. One for each year since you’ve been gone. That should do it.

  Mostly, of course, I would lie awake and think about Harrison, attempting to work out what happened that night. How could he have been so senseless? That’s what I asked myself over and over. We are here because of a heartbeat. His job was to sustain life, save lives, not throw it away through drink. Or overdose.

  I never thought his recklessness would derail him, fatally. I definitely didn’t think he would risk killing others, which is what would have happened had the car collided with another vehicle. Harrison saved people. That’s what he did. He rescued them from disease. From themselves.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Watch, Wallet, Wedding Ring

  Much of what happened around the time of Harrison’s death is vague but it is coming back to me now. Three new friends trigger a cure for six-month amnesia.

  I remember the phone ringing just after 6am, lunging at it, thinking it was the alarm. I had been to see Jim’s band Malt the night before; had drunk too much as usual and didn’t get in until 2am. Jim was forever pestering me to go to his gigs and I went willingly, the entire office did. He had a great falsetto and used it to his advantage. He frequently liked to remind us that: I can hit a soprano high C, maybe even F sharp above that.

  I don’t remember getting home other than Jim dropping me off. He didn’t drink on the job and insisted I wait for him to pack up his gear so he could drive me home. He fussed like that, which, I reminded him, did nothing to enhance his playboy slash rock-star image.

  Earlier I had listened to a voice message from Harrison, who said he planned to stay over at the hospital. He’d sounded okay, surprisingly perky for someone who had volunteered to do an extra shift.

  Falling into an empty bed, I crashed into an exhaustive sleep, ears ringing from audio speakers the size of cars. My hearing was still fuzzy when I took the call and a moment passed before I realised someone was asking to speak to me, Lorien Walker, repeating the name. “Mrs Lorien Walker. Is this Lorien Walker I’m talking to? Dr Harrison Warner’s wife?” It was a firm authoritative voice.

  The conversation comes back to me in vivid detail. I think the speaker paused just a fraction before she said, “There has been an accident.” Part truth.

  At this point, I’m sitting up in bed, surprisingly calm, expecting to hear that Harrison had lost someone on the operating table, perhaps a straightforward procedure had gone wrong. There are different kinds of accidents.

  I called my sister first but it rang out to voicemail. I tried again, the landline this time, but no answer. People with a two-year-old child had to be awake at 6am, it was a given, surely, but I had no success.

  I tried Jim next. He answered his mobile on two rings with a grunt.

  “I won’t make it into work,” I said, controlled and quiet. There was a small silence and I volunteered more information, repeating carefully what I’d been told: there has been an accident.

  I’m standing at the kerbside holding my handbag tight to me; riot shield. Jim picks me up from outside my front door and we drive to Perth, racing up the M90 motorway at such breakneck speed it’s a miracle we didn’t add our names to the accident sheet.

  The world was not quite awake. Just commuter cars zipping onward to beat the morning rush. Jim didn’t speak. I didn’t talk. To think that a few hours earlier he was delivering an encore to a lively crowd in a bar on Leith Street. Now this. All because of one phone call and unfortunate fact: there has been an accident.

  Harrison was pronounced dead on arrival. His arrival, not mine, which explained the pause on the phone. I had an extra 45 minutes believing he was still in the world with me; the time it took me to race from Edinburgh to Perth. Now there was no pretending and the words carried an electric surge. Your husband is dead. High-voltage news.

  Jim was pacing the corridor. I could see him through glass swing doors walking back and forth, rubbing his unshaven chin. I felt the sympathetic hand on my shoulder from the doctor who broke the news, he looked worse than I did. Christ, I even managed to sign some paperwork.

  It was the weirdest feeling, as though I was wide awake during a nine-hour operation. I could see the surgical scalpel remove my heart. I watched the intricate skill and methodical manner involved, but the procedure didn’t hurt me. Arguments and absence, the silences in our marriage had caused me more pain than this.

  Your husband is dead. Feel something, anything, a voice whispered inside my head.

  The doctor stood with me. My only symptoms: a dry mouth and cold fingertips. There was no rapid heartbeat or chest pain. I was simply in a state of daze and complete detachment.

  “He’s dead,” I told Jim when I pushed through the swing doors into the corridor. “I can see him now.”

  Jim looked absolutely floored, as though he was the bereaved spouse, not me. I don’t remember what he said other than he had better luck contacting my sister. “Shocked, I think,” said Jim. “She can’t make it to the hospital, but you’ve got to call her.”

  Damn downers, I thought, feeling a pierce of panic hit me. I’m not strong.

  “Let me make the calls, paperwork, whatever needs to be done,” said Jim, pulling himself together.

  “I’m not sure I can do this.” First wobble.

  Jim gripped me by the elbow, pinching skin as he steered me towards the nearest vending machine. “I’m here,” he said, ferociously. “I’m not leaving y
ou.” I watched his mouth move. It looked like he was speaking through glass.

  There was muffled silence as I struggled to take in further instruction from another doctor. Fortunately, Jim acted as interpreter: I could see my husband now.

  I found him in a ward where I would sit with him before he was wheeled to the hospital morgue. He looked unscathed but inside was a different story. Crushed, including a broken neck. Quick and painless death, so someone said. I love you, I thought. From the first.

  I didn’t fall apart or sob as I sat there. I just looked at the face of the person I loved the most in the world, the stillness of him startling. This was my second dead body experience in a short space of time; first my father, now Harrison. His lips were icy cold when I kissed them. I was aware of the murmur of nurses, hand on my shoulder and a glass of water for me on the table by the bed.

  No concept of time. I could have been sitting by his bedside for minutes or months but when I left the ward the world was back on its time axel and people continued about their business as before. I couldn’t pretend there had been some mistake.

  I also remember Jim standing in a whitewashed corridor lined with orange tip-up chairs and a drinks vending machine, looking more devastated than before. The truth had hit home, sledgehammer hard.

  He was clutching a plastic bag holding Harrison’s belongings: watch, wallet, wedding ring.

  More memories return; catching a flight and falling into a cab, which took me to my mother’s house in Kent. She accompanied me to north London for the funeral but there would be no headstone because Harrison was cremated on his wishes after a thorough and extensive episode of organ and tissue donation.

  Gee missed her flight, which meant she missed the funeral. No surprise there. To be honest, though, I expected some excuse, such as a risk of deep-veined thrombosis from air travel. But the reality was, she couldn’t put the time in, although she did show up for the memorial service in Edinburgh. In her profession, she was used to broken people who couldn’t be put back together again. Well, Hell’s bells, I wasn’t.

  Harrison’s mother and father, although insanely distraught, took care of business. Like a good doctor, Harrison had a meticulous plan. He was cremated and his parents shook him out on the wind and into the world, meaning he was everywhere and nowhere. There was no anchor for me. My mother meanwhile questioned whether it was a good idea to return to Edinburgh when I could stay with her until I recovered. I never did say, like when? In 10 years’ time? Another lifetime?

  I wanted to get back to work. I medicated pain with alcohol to help me bulldoze through this acute personal crisis while the weight fell off until I was a size zero of designer-dressed corners: heartbreak diet at its worse.

  Once the initial emotional shrapnel settled, I ran for cover in the office in Edinburgh despite being weighed down with an exhaustion I never knew could exist. Jim didn’t talk to anyone or let on that he accompanied me to the hospital. We had a silent, unspoken pack never to relive the many horrors of that day.

  What would I do without Jim? He helped me at work, rescued me in chaos. While some people take 10 to 15 years to truly form the bond of friendship, we were there in six seconds: the time it took to make one short phone call: there has been an accident.

  I didn’t want to talk to anyone after the funeral, which was just as well because, after the initial flood of phone calls, no one wanted to talk to me. Friends whom I’d known for years did a disappearing act and left me to suffer in silence, although I can’t say I blame them. Who in their right mind would want to spend too long in someone else’s excruciatingly personal painful moments?

  Even Harrison’s colleagues, men and women trained to switch off life support machines and diagnose diseases on cells past repair, couldn’t talk about his death.

  It became clear within a matter of weeks I was on my own. No one fought hard enough to remain a friend. Not even a BlackBerry bulging with hundreds of contacts could save me. Wasn’t much for over 2,000 Facebook friends to Like either. But when I walked into the Art Bar and found Cece, Suzanne and Kate sitting at the table I sensed a sliver of hope. I might get through this.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Are You Lonesome Tonight?

  We don’t just talk about death. Or who murdered my husband. Food, Cece is obsessed with food. Port and orange reduction, she tinkered with this recipe for about a week–spooning the stuff into us until we were convinced it was running through our veins.

  Questions and more tasting: did we think her homemade ravioli should be stuffed with rabbit or aubergine; should she hold macaroon-making classes to boost profits; coffee-infused ganache or salted caramel in chocolate cake? We also got much mileage out of the freak heat and whether Cece should stick to contact lenses over eye-corrective surgery. Kate steered us onto politics whenever possible, including the latest bicycle fundraising for the denizens of Rwanda, while Suzanne and I took it back to basics with our desert-island dilemmas: Clairns Flash Balm or Touche Eclat. Rodarte or The Row.

  It took, oh, about two weeks when Kate surprised us by moving on from the graveside shooting incident lighter and brighter, incredible I know. We’d been left shaken, but she seemed transformed. “Seems somehow sparklier,” whispered Suzanne. Just when you think someone is set to go to pieces, the opposite happens. Cathartic, Kate called it. What’s more, we saw glimpses of a wicked sense of humour, teasing and keeping Cece in check.

  Cece, said Kate, loved being in the spotlight because she had been jaundiced at birth and spent the first nine days of her life in a glass box under strong lights. She didn’t pursue a career on stage but in the kitchen, which was theatrical in itself if you believed some of the stories she told us. She had met her calling.

  It’s true, Cece loved attention and needed an entourage to keep her buoyant. If she wasn’t at the restaurant with the staff, she was with us; never home alone. When it came to mastering the art of putting on a brave face and a big laugh, Cece wrote the handbook. She was also great at keeping us together. After the Graveside Shooting, she rounded us up regularly to meet and eat cake. No one was going off the rail again on her watch.

  Cece liked to say, “There’s nothing like a widow to make a woman hang onto her husband in a room.” She repeated it more than once whenever she felt sharked by the sisterhood. Her words, not mine. She had first-hand experience, apparently, whenever she worked the room in Ribbons to check diners were satisfied with food and service. Ladies didn’t like her circling their tables like an orbiting sun.

  Cece sighed. “You can see painted nails scratch across the white linen with spider-like speed to claim the arm of their man. Then I get the look; the back-off-bitch look.”

  Suzanne looked alarmed. “You think?”

  “I know.”

  Kate snorted and shook her head. “And the Oscar goes to…”

  Cece was quick to chastise her. We were sitting in Ribbons on a Saturday morning having iced coffees and cake while Kate’s kids were on play dates. I had put Harrison on hold and welcomed the distraction.

  “Kate, women think we are dangerous, while men think we need to be rescued. Widows are considered vulnerable and in need of too much attention, which doesn’t go down well with our sisters or singletons who are still lookin’ for love first time round.” She stirred her coffee vigorously. “We had our chance and blew it.”

  “You’ve given this too much thought.”

  “It is a fact.”

  “I’m not looking for love,” said Suzanne, smoothing down a fold on her dress very definitely. “Count me out.”

  I felt my stomach muscles spasm as I thought about my brief encounter with McCarthy, sincerely glad now that I hadn’t confessed to the girls.

  Kate helped herself to more cake, cutting it into precise squares. “Actually, I’ve met someone. We should all get together so I can introduce him.”

  There it was. Capital-M Major news dropped into conversation.

  Our heads swivelled in her direction. “
Someone?” Cece said.

  She placed enormous emphasis on someone as though Kate had said something nonsensical, such as “unicorn ate my pony.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she answered. “His name is Fraser Davies.”

  She avoided eye contact.

  We were instantly on high alert.

  Cece look confused. “Fraser who? Do we know him?”

  “No. That’s why I want you to meet him,” Kate explained with exaggerated patience between small mouthfuls of cake.

  It was an understatement to say we were thrown. It seemed so recent, so raw since she fired bullets into her dead husband at a Morningside cemetery.

  “Gosh,” was all that came out of Suzanne’s mouth.

  “Broadbent is bringing another partner?” Cece said this quite deliberately as though this could be the only possible explanation.

  “No, he’s not work related.”

  I was intrigued. We all were. “Tell us more,” I encouraged.

  “I’ve known him for a couple of months.” She kept her tone carelessly casual while our mouths fell open, unpretty.

  She rolled out another surprise too. Not only had Kate met someone, she had met him online, through a dating agency called Are You Lonesome Tonight?

  Cece squawked, sounding not dissimilar to a plane’s radio sending out a transponder code denoting a highjacking. “Are you… you…what tonight?”

  “Are You Lonesome Tonight? It is a website for widows and widowers.”

  “You met someone on a website for widows and widowers?” Cece put down her plate of cake and looked round the table at all of us. “Tell me this is a joke?”

  Kate’s face was the picture of innocence. “No joke.”

  Suzanne and I were fascinated while Cece was struggling for oxygen and quick to point out why. “Love isn’t about ticking boxes, Kate. Love is spontaneous. It blindsides you when you least expect it.”