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also arrogant, confident that I had done everything possible to make
02
that impossible. Instead, I was afraid of her reaction. Terrified, if I’m 03
honest, of what might come next.
04
“I don’t need dinner,” I said. “But I . . . I just wanted to talk.”
05
I was still holding my book and it was swinging awkwardly from my
06
hand and bouncing against my thigh.
07
Marnie sighed. “I love that book,” she said. “Have you reached the
08
part where— ”
09
“Spoilers!” I shouted, and it was a relief to make a loud noise, to
10
expel some of the chaos burning within me.
11
Marnie jolted backward, shocked.
12
“Jesus,” she said. “Calm down.”
13
I took a deep breath— in, hold, out. This was not the time to lose my
14
shit. I laughed and it sounded strange, sort of insincere.
15
“Look,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to talk. But you can come
16
in and we can try. But Charles is ill and in bed and he’s been sleeping
17
all day and I absolutely do not want to disturb him. It’s one of those
18
migraines and loud noises are the worst, so if you . . . if I ask you to 19
leave, you leave, okay?”
20
I nodded.
21
Marnie turned back to the door and lifted her key into the lock. I
22
heard it scratching there, finding its way into the hollows, the grooves.
23
“It is nice to see you,” she said. “I am glad you came. I just— ”
24
“It’s fine,” I said. “I understand. It’s complicated.”
25
“Yes,” she said, and she looked at me and smiled. “That’s exactly it.
26
It’s complicated.”
27
She pushed the door open, just an inch or two. “And you’re wel-
28
come to have some dinner— of course you are. I want everything to be
29
normal again. You’re my best friend.” She grinned. “So, yes. I’ll pour us 30
some wine and I’ll put on some pasta and we can talk.”
31S
“Perfect,” I said, and I smiled, too, ignoring the burn of acid at the
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back of my throat. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m really glad to be here. I
01
want it to be normal again, too.”
02
She pushed against the door again and I closed my eyes.
03
Isn’t that cowardly? I squeezed them shut as soon as her back was
04
turned, entirely involuntarily, because I was gutless. I was petrified of 05
her reaction. I knew exactly what she was about to experience— I know
06
how it feels to see your husband lying dead on the ground in front of
07
you— and I know what that sort of shock could do to a person. I know
08
how it builds within you, relentlessly, until you have no choice but to
09
believe it. I know how it evolves into grief, the incessant, terminal na-
10
ture of the thing. I knew that her heart would break.
11
“Charles?” she said. “Charles!” she screamed.
12
I heard her footsteps as she darted across the wood, the crash of her
13
shopping as it fell, her knees slamming against the floor.
14
I opened my eyes. I followed her in; I paused briefly in the doorway.
15
He was most definitely dead. His skin had changed. It was no longer
16
pink and peachy, but sort of yellow, gray. She was hunched over his
17
body, her hands against his shoulders, shaking him. If he had been alive, 18
he would have been in agony, her grabbing him like that, what with his
19
dislocated shoulder. But he was dead, so I guessed it didn’t really matter 20
anymore.
21
“What the . . .” I cried. I spotted a hairpin lying beneath their
22
radiator— I recognized it as one of my own— and so I emptied my hand-
23
bag onto the floor, my things rolling everywhere, my book landing with
24
a thud, my phone beside it. I reached down for my phone, dialed the
25
emergency services, pressed it against my ear. “Ambulance!” I yelled, as
26
soon as I heard a voice on the other end, before they’d had a chance to
27
say anything at all. “I need an ambulance.”
28
“Where to, please?”
29
I reeled off the address. “Quickly,” I added at the end. “You need to
30
come quickly.”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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Marnie was sobbing, her head buried against Charles’s chest. “He’s
02
dead!” she screamed. “Jane! He’s dead.”
03
“We think he’s dead,” I cried to the person on the other end of the
04
phone line, because I had no idea what else to say or what to do and I was 05
becoming more authentically hysterical with each of Marnie’s screams.
06
“And what makes you think that? Give me as much information as
07
you can. The paramedics are on their way.”
08
“Marnie, how do you— He’s a funny color,” I said. “Yellow and his
09
body’s twisted. He’s fallen down the stairs.”
10
Marnie screamed again and then looked straight at me, her eyes wild
11
and unfocused, and then she shouted, “Tell them we can get him back,”
12
and she lifted herself above him, placed her hands at the center of his
13
chest and began pumping.
14
“We’re doing CPR,” I said. “There’s a doorman— Jeremy— he can—
15
there’s a lift— they’ll need to get the lift.”
16
“They’re on their way now. They’ll be with you very soon.”
17
“Keep going, Marn,” I said. “Are you . . . If you get tired, I can . . . I 18
can do it too.” I was panting and adrenaline was pouring through me,
19
flooding my body.
20
“Is he breathing?” the operator asked. “Can you tell me if he’s
21
breathing?”
22
“Is he breathing?” I shouted. “No,�
�� I said. “No, I don’t think so.”
23
“They’re on their way.”
24
“They need to come quicker!” I shouted, and I really believed it. I
25
really wanted them to hurry, to drive fast, to be here, even though I
26
knew that there was nothing they could do, even though I knew that it
27
was already too late.
28
“They’ll be with you very soon,” said the voice at the end of the
29
phone. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing great.”
30
We heard the sirens screaming and Marnie was sobbing, sweating in
31S
her raincoat, and I was standing, the phone still held against my ear,
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listening to empty platitudes and frantically pacing.
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“They’re here,” I said to her. “That’s them. They’re nearly here.”
01
Marnie stopped driving her hands into Charles’s chest and collapsed
02
on top of him, wailing into him. She knew, I think, that he had gone.
03
She had known since she opened the door and saw him lying there, his
04
ankle twisted, and his shoulder dislocated, and his neck snapped.
05
I crouched down and rubbed her back— small circular motions that
06
I hoped would convey that I was here for her, here for her always, what-
07
ever she needed— until finally we heard the lift clanking up to this floor 08
and the doors scraping open.
09
I jumped up and leaned out the door. “We’re here,” I called. “Over
10
here.”
11
Three paramedics ran toward me. An older man, overweight with
12
no neck whatsoever. A younger man, faster and fitter and quickly in
13
front of me. And a young woman, who hung back, nervous, new per-
14
haps, and said nothing at all and never entered the flat.
15
“Can you tell us his name?” shouted the younger man.
16
“He’s my husband,” said Marnie, crawling away from Charles’s dead
17
body so that the paramedics could reach him. “Charles,” she said. “His
18
name’s Charles. He’s thirty- three. He has a migraine.”
19
We laughed about that a few weeks later. “I still can’t believe I said
20
that,” she said. “That he had a migraine. I mean, Jesus. A migraine.”
21
Here is something you learn as you get older, as you start to live
22
alongside death in its many guises, as it becomes an ever present part of 23
your world. Death becomes softer in the months and years that follow.
24
It loses its sharp edges; they don’t cut quite so deep and make you bleed 25
in quite the same way. Sometimes you are laughing at something that
26
made you cry just a few days before. But soft edges are still edges, and
27
they are sharpened unexpectedly, by an ill- considered comment or an
28
anniversary, or are filed to a point at the memory of a happy moment.
29
There is no logic to grief, no well- worn path that we all must follow;
30
there are simply the times when it is bearable and the times when
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it is not.
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I heard her say those words— “a migraine”— and I saw the humor in
02
them even then. I knew that it was so much worse than a migraine and
03
yet they were the words that broke me. I had seen her see him, watched
04
her desperately trying to revive him, heard her screaming, and felt only
05
a strange— again, giddy— excitement. I had been caught somewhere
06
between panic and hysteria, only ever a second away from doubling
07
over and laughing like that little girl at the beach.
08
But those words changed everything.
09
Suddenly it wasn’t about Charles anymore. It wasn’t about his rigid
10
body lying concertinaed on the floor. It wasn’t about his behavior or my
11
hatred or the tension that had lived between us. It wasn’t about the fact 12
that he was dead or the fact of his dying. It wasn’t about Charles at all.
13
It was all about Marnie.
14
I had done to her what the world had done to me.
15
You were meant to ask me if I regretted it. This was the moment I
16
first felt any kind of regret.
17
The fruit from the shopping bag had rolled down the corridor, to-
18
ward the kitchen, and the chicken, still wrapped in plastic, was swelter-
19
ing on the wooden floor, my hairpin glittering beneath the radiator. But
20
none of that mattered. All I could think about was Marnie. The para-
21
medics were working in my peripheral vision, doing something that was
22
probably nothing. And we all knew that soon they would stand up and
23
step back and clear their throats.
24
Marnie was curled up on the bottom step of the stairs. Her raincoat
25
had fallen from her shoulders and it hung around her waist, strapped
26
around her arms. She wasn’t crying anymore. But she was trembling,
27
shivering, almost violently, like there was something within her that
28
needed to escape. Her jaw was slack and her eyes were swollen and red
29
and she kept making these terrible little noises, tiny retching sounds,
30
like an infant choking. She was small, her knees bent up against her
31S
shoulders and enveloped in her own arms.
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I had broken her. I knew then that I had broken her.
01
And don’t start now with any nonsensical platitudes. Those people,
02
the ones who say they understand when they don’t, are the worst. And
03
you are not one of them.
04
I knew then that it was all my fault. I had driven her to this moment.
05
It was my words, my lies. And, to you, I cannot deny that I was the one
06
who turned his head, who snapped his neck.
07
The remorse was unexpected. And perhaps it would have been so
08
intense as to m
ake me regret my actions had it not been tempered by a
09
seed of hope. Marnie and I had been separated by romantic love. Those
10
openings were now empty, cracks that could be refilled and repaired,
11
until it might seem that they had never existed. I had created that op-
12
portunity. I felt sadness for her suffering and for what she would go on
13
to experience. But I didn’t feel guilt. I mainly felt relief.
14
Thing have changed substantially since that day; you know that bet-
15
ter than anyone. It must be about a year ago now, I suppose. You make
16
it feel so much longer.
17
18
19
Later that night— after the police and the doctor and the undertakers—
20
we returned to my flat.
21
I was very aware as we rode up in the lift and stepped into the cor-
22
ridor that my building wasn’t in any way luxurious. There were none of
23
those symbols of success here: no polished floors or mirrored walls. But
24
I had known this woman as an eleven- year- old girl, and she had never
25
been impressed by wealth or success then. And I knew that she was still
26
that same person. Those were the proclivities of her late husband; he
27
liked money and indulgences and extravagance. But we both knew—
28
had always known— that they were simply façades, trimmings that
29
decorated but didn’t change the substance of a thing.
30
Marnie had never spent much time in my flat and it was nice to have
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her there with me. I offered her a pair of my pajamas— my favorite
02
pair— and she had a long bath and I made her a cup of milky, sugared tea.
03
I lay in bed and waited for her and I heard the plug being pulled and
04
the gurgle of water as it descended through the pipes. I heard the bath-
05
room door opening as she stepped into the corridor to collect the paja-
06
mas from the radiator. The light was off, but I heard her enter my room
07
and then she climbed into bed beside me. The sun was beginning to
08
rise, peeping over the horizon and brightening the edges of my blinds.
09
I couldn’t sleep knowing that she was there. She was on her side,
10
facing away from me, toward the window, and her breathing was calm
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