How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  What if he was not who she thought he was – what if she had never known him?

  His massive, oak desk was quietly returning her gaze with the self-satisfied reserve of a pirate’s treasure chest. It was diagonally opposite her own – which was a flimsier, cheaper affair altogether, a mere Ikea to his family heirloom – and it nestled against bookshelves that reached right up to the ceiling. This had been their dream, as penniless young professionals: to have a library with towers of books and a general air of turn-of-the-century Vienna. In an ideal scenario, they would each have had their own study, as well – or at least, in her ideal scenario. Adam had laughed at her when she’d suggested it: what was wrong with them sharing a study? She’d have it to herself most of the time anyway, while he was out at work. She had thought of trying to explain to him that it was not so much whether there was someone else in the room with her that made a difference, as the not having a space that was entirely hers; but they couldn’t afford it.

  Now the room was all hers if she wanted it. All she had to do was clear it of Adam’s administrative remains, of that huge desk with its papers and computer. She couldn’t get rid of them – she couldn’t touch them – and yet she couldn’t leave them there, gathering dust like Miss Havisham’s wedding dress. To remove those papers, that computer, she would have to decide: to look, or not to look. To let Adam keep his secrets – but there is something so terribly final about the way the dead take their secrets with them. Or to uncover them – but there is something so terrible about uncovering someone else’s secrets and not giving them a chance to explain. Perhaps she should remove all of Adam’s belongings without looking at them at all, and store them away in a wooden chest, a safe place, leaving them for someone else to discover after her own death. But who would want to discover Adam after she had died, other than the children they had not had the time to have? She was all Adam had left, now that he had deserted her.

  So she crossed over the room, from her desk of works in progress to his desk of relics. The land of the living to the land of the dead. She sat down in front of his computer and switched it on, and as it whirred into life, it occurred to her that she had never, not once, sat in this chair where Adam would always sit, looking at what Adam would always see. She noticed that her desk looked tidier from this angle, the more unruly stacks of paper hidden by her computer screen; she noticed that the funny china frog that had been passed down to her from her grandmother was just above where her head would have been, if she had been sitting at her usual place. Damn you, Adam, giggling in secret at the sight of me toiling away with a frog on my head. And now I can’t even get my own back on you.

  She noticed that on the bookshelf to the left of Adam’s desk, where your eyes would naturally wander to, away from the computer screen, was a photo of her. It was the same one as on his desk at work, as she had found out on that awful day when she had gone to clear it out. A porter had carried the cardboard box containing the few sad items with which Adam had tried to cosy up his NHS office. And as they had walked side-by-side down neon-green corridors, Adam’s colleagues – uniformed strangers who all, from the cleaners to the consultants, seemed to know who she was – had floated towards them with aggrieved faces before retreating again to their medicinal functions, like Dante’s friends in purgatory backing away from an embrace they can no longer give.

  The photograph had looked pitiful at the bottom of that box; but here, in the warmth of their beloved library, it was charming and full of life. Even Eva, who didn’t like to look at pictures of herself, had to recognize that it was a good photo, the kind that you could gaze upon wistfully on nights when you were separated from your beloved. If she had been the one to die, this would certainly have been one of the photos of her Adam would have most treasured. She looked so tremendously happy in it, presumably because Adam must have said something funny as he pointed the camera at her (typical that he would select a photo in which she was laughing at one of his jokes – here is one thing you loved about me, Adam: that I was such a good audience), and also because she was in New York, with a steamy pavement creating gauze-like swirls around her, and tall, tall, glossy buildings framing the world. Down at the bottom of the avenue, in the background of the picture, one of the Twin Towers was just about visible. We didn’t know it then, Adam, but towers crumble, and people die. Or did you know it? Is that why you chose this photo, with its background of ghosts? The dead always seem so much wiser than us, once they are dead.

  With the image of her younger self laughing gaily at her, Eva logged on to the computer. She braced herself to delve into Adam’s hard drive, his memory.

  She would have to go through the whole thing at some point to retrieve his correspondence with banks and internet providers, Christmas card lists, tax returns – for as if the agony of mourning were not enough, the dead must also leave us with an administrative nightmare in their wake – but for now she had one mission only: finding Ulrich’s contact details, and then doing something about Adam’s email account. It had been nagging at her increasingly over the past two weeks, like a thread left hanging on the hem of someone else’s jumper: the idea that Adam’s presence on the internet remained unchanged. He still popped up on Facebook, in that daft photo of him at Henry’s stag do; in fact his page had become a virtual shrine where people who didn’t know him very well could post their condolences. The survival of his profile after death unsettled her, but she also couldn’t face deleting it, so she had simply stopped logging on. She had resigned herself to letting it remain on the basis that it seemed to give people some strange outlet for their grief, or shock, or morbid fascination with his death.

  But his email account – there was something about its continued existence that was altogether more disturbing; it haunted her. Some people might still be sending messages to his address, not realizing that no one was reading them at the other end. They probably wouldn’t even find it odd that they hadn’t received a response after a few weeks, because after all we’re all very busy and these things back up. To those people, Adam was still alive. They were, without knowing it, communicating with the dead.

  She logged on to his email, and the window opened unquestioningly, as though it were Adam himself sitting at the desk, stored passwords and keychains breaking through privacy settings like so many Open Sesames; she was in. It occurred to her that she could be a phantom Adam if she so chose, sending out messages in his name, continuing his existence for the people lucky enough not to have yet heard the news. She almost wished she could have done it for his mother, whose grief was more than Eva could bear because it was so horribly like her own. She wished she could do it for Henry, who looked as though the sky had fallen on to his head.

  She scanned his inbox: none of the unread messages looked very personal. There were e-shots from cinemas, theatres, wine traders; various medical newsletters; messages that started ‘Dear friend’ or encouraged him to ‘make her scream’. Perhaps this was what it meant to die online: the severing of all human communication, leaving you to be crushed by a deluge of marketing, much like, in the world of flesh and blood, your body was left a prey to maggots and cockroaches.

  Eva scrolled on, ticking off the days, going down, down, down, deeper and closer to the date of Adam’s death. As she got nearer, the personal emails started to appear, a sparse scattering of them at first, then more and more of them. They were like mirror images of the phone calls she had made that week, an electronic silhouette of people’s closeness to Adam: the later, rarer messages sent by the more distant relations, the earliest ones by people closer to him whom she had not yet at that point got round to calling. But she had called all of them; all of these names she recognized, and for each one she could remember how they had picked up the receiver, how the tone of their voice had changed when she told them, how they had looked at her with horror and pity when they met.

  And then, most painfully, there were the emails that had been sent to Adam while he was still alive, in between the moment wh
en he had last logged off his account, just before they left for Henry’s work thing, and that indeterminate hour, but probably somewhere around four or five a.m., when he had exhaled his last breath. It seemed so unfair that he had not had a chance to see any of these emails, the ones that he would actually still have been able to read.

  The earliest of these unread messages, the one that had come closest to having Adam lay his eyes upon it, the one that had come closest to him alive – was from her. She had sent it from that computer over there, just as he was shutting his down, and just before she had logged off herself. It was a daft video of Nana Mouskouri performing an old German Schlager song which she knew would make him laugh because they had these jokes together, both about Nana Mouskouri and about old German Schlager music, and this particular video was a real find. No one else would find it as funny as Adam would have done. She didn’t think she would ever be able to find it funny any more, now that watching it would always remind her of his not having seen it. Pitiless death, robbing us not just of our loved ones, but of the jokes we share with them.

  There was only one name she did not recognize among the people who had corresponded with Adam on the night of his death, and she hated herself for the twinge of jealousy which she felt on reading it. For God’s sake – I was never suspicious of you while you were alive, why do I feel this now? But it was such a feminine name: Nadia Kaye. And the email’s subject line – PriMed Conf. 2008 – was such a reminder that there were many parts of Adam’s life that she was not privy to. It was hard to resist a temptation to assume the worst.

  But surely I would be wrong to assume the worst? Nothing could have happened then, I would have noticed, I knew him too well not to have noticed.

  Eva’s cursor hovered above the email. Was this a Pandora’s Box waiting to be opened? Or was the Pandora’s Box not opening it, now that she had let doubt creep into her mind? She trusted him. She knew it would be worse to live stupidly in doubt.

  She clicked on the email.

  Dear Adam,

  Great to meet you at the conference, and I hope you had a safe trip home. Sorry for not getting in touch with you sooner, but I have had two angry, flu-ridden teenagers to tend to since getting back, so have had all my time taken up by Mom duties!

  I’ve checked through my records, and the article I mentioned to you was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, not the BMJ – so you were right to be confused!!! Anyway, I have attached a pdf of it as I happen to have it stored on my PC.

  Hope it helps, and good luck with your research!!

  All the best,

  Nadia Kaye

  Nadia Kaye, potential conference femme fatale, expired just as quickly as she had been created in Eva’s mind, and was reincarnated in the dumpy form of Nadia Kaye, middle-aged Midwestern conference acquaintance. Her excessive use of exclamation marks was a sure indication of her total absence of sexual charm. Sorry about that, Adam – I knew really that it would be something completely innocent. I just had to check because – you wouldn’t want me to be walking around not being sure, would you? I just had to check because I’m not myself at the moment – I’m feeling very confused – I don’t really know why I do things any more. I hope, if you are still able to see me from somewhere, that you understand. I hope, if you’re just a ghost I’ve created to give an outlet to my grieving, that you understand.

  Eva wondered if she should write to Nadia Kaye to say thank you for your help, but unfortunately Adam will no longer be doing any research, because – because he passed away, for reasons that are not clear yet – because he’s dead – because maggots are busy returning his body to the dust from whence it came. She pictured Nadia Kaye in the kitchen of a vast, prefabricated house, wrestling with some improbable kitchen appliance, her husband in the living room, creaking on the sofa as he watched Fox News. Nadia Kaye would be very upset to hear about Adam’s death. She would gasp ‘How terrible,’ and thank her lucky stars for the rude, solid health of her corn-fed husband. Nadia Kaye, Eva decided, did not need to know. If Eva did not reply to the email, she would just assume that Adam hadn’t got round to it – too busy, too distracted, not polite enough, perhaps. She would remember him – and eventually forget him – as that nice guy she met at some conference or other, and who was working on diabetes. Yes, Eva would let Adam live on for Nadia Kaye – it was comforting to think that that Midwestern home, with its impressively equipped kitchen and its aged sofa, would remain a zone that was free of his death.

  So Eva left behind the unread emails, and scrolled down into the realm of Adam’s living correspondence. She wasn’t doing it to snoop on him – really. She needed to find Ulrich’s address, and also she wanted to make sure that there were no people she might have forgotten to contact.

  She wondered what it was like to be one of Adam’s friends right now – how deep the loss was, how long it would take them to get over it. Because they would get over it, as though it were a hurdle, a mountain peak, an obstacle to be surmounted and on the other side of which was the smooth running track, the open plain again. What place would he occupy in their lives once they were back on that open plain? She wondered what it was like to lose Adam when he was not a part of you, an extension of your being, a loss that could never be got over.

  The emails dancing in front of Eva’s eyes, each containing a conversation that Adam had had without her knowledge, a relationship that did not involve her, were a comfort to her now, as though their existence were proof that Adam was not just a ghost in her mind, had been his own human being, would continue to be different things to these different people.

  At last, she found an email from Ulrich – and then, a few messages down, another name that struck her like a cry from the past, a twinge in an old wound, like the one she still felt in the tibia she had fractured as a child. This she had genuinely not expected. And yet, now that it was there on the screen in front of her, it seemed like she had always known it would be there; like this was what she had been looking for all along. Sender: Lena Bachmann. Subject: Berlin.

  She opened Ulrich’s email, jotted down his address, returned to Adam’s inbox. And now, really, Eva wrestled with herself: should she read what Adam and Lena Bachmann could have had to say to each other? There was no doubt that this was a violation of privacy.

  It had been easy to open Nadia Kaye’s email. Eva had known, she realized now, that there would be nothing there to rewrite history.

  But this. This email felt like Adam’s flesh in front of her. As though, by opening it, she would be slicing through his skin, cutting him open just like the doctors who had carried out his post-mortem had. Pulling his innards out into the harshest light – because they needed to, because that was the only way to find out why he had died, to understand. How much did she want to understand now? How much more violation could Adam’s flesh take?

  She couldn’t do it – and she was dying to do it in equal measure. Lena Bachmann. Berlin. She had to read it, and she had not to read it.

  Eva turned away from the computer and looked at the photo of herself looking back at her.

  And she felt a click inside her, as though her brain were shutting down. She told herself that she had to leave Adam his secrets – she couldn’t betray his trust. Admin be damned – let these strangers scattered over the world live under the illusion that Adam was still alive. She had to make sure she could never be tempted again to look at what was not meant for her.

  But really – really – she didn’t want to know.

  Lena Bachmann.

  She didn’t want to know.

  She went into the parameters of his email account and fumbled through them until she found the command:

  Close down/delete this email account

  She clicked on it. A message popped up:

  You have 172 unread messages in your inbox. Are you sure you want to delete this account?

  She clicked Yes. Another message popped up:

  Clicking on OK will delete your account. T
his action cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to delete your account?

  Eva clicked on OK.

  EVA FEELS THE sweat streaming off her like rain. She worries she might actually have a wet patch on her arse; it certainly feels like she does. The climb is agony, partly because she is horribly hungover, and partly because she slept so badly last night, her whirring thoughts having joined forces with Carmen’s snoring in the bed next to her. She turns to see who’s behind her: only Adam, the rest of the group having, it seems, powered on ahead at Henry’s surprisingly athletic pace.

  ‘Adam, do I have a wet patch on my arse?’

  ‘Er.’

  Adam is struggling to get his words out between pants.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it from here.’

  ‘Seriously – tell me if I do. I’m not in the mood for being the butt of any mockery today. As it were.’

  ‘Honestly, I would tell you. You haven’t got a wet patch on your arse.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  They wend their way up in silence, both intent on keeping their breath for breathing rather than speaking. Eva is very aware of how close Adam is following her, just a few paces behind, and this makes her walk a bit faster – maybe it’s because she’s worried about a wet patch being detectable at closer range, maybe she wants him to think racing up this hill is an effortless exercise for her, maybe out of some spirit of competition – but always Adam remains close behind her.

  The path they are on is made of slippery white gravel – not so much a path, in fact, as a slightly less steeply inclined part of the slope, which otherwise is covered in scraggy bushes and, here and there, the remnants of a stone wall. The slope beneath the path is sheer but not cliff-like, and looks as though falling down it would have none of the magnificence of plummeting off a rock face, while still being potentially fatal: it would be a scratchy, undignified death, as you bounced down off patches of scrub. Going along a particularly steep section, Eva slips and has to right herself by grabbing a nearby bush; she has avoided an embarrassing end, but gouged a hole in her hand. Adam rushes towards her, or rushes as much as he can without slipping down the mountainside himself. He takes her hand in his and winces.