Afterwife (9781101618868)

by Williams, Polly

  Ollie’s smile was a flare in the darkness. “Thank you, Mother.”

  She winced. “Sorry.”

  “If you could let the ladies know about the lasagna invasion…It’s been going on for weeks. Tell them I surrender. I can take no more. Can it stop now, please?”

  “I will report back and request retreat. Ollie…” She’d come here to tell him about the wedding. She’d already put it off on two other occasions, she wasn’t sure why. It never seemed the right time. And she felt nervous about it. She just couldn’t shift the feeling that getting married was a bit like dancing on Sophie’s gravestone.

  “Thanks, Jen, for dropping everything.” He frowned and suddenly looked a hundred years older than he had five minutes before. Just as handsome, though, funnily enough. “Sometimes, being alone, especially when Freddie’s at school, my head goes to funny places and I just want to be with someone who knew Sophie like I knew her. You’re the only one. I feel connected to her through you.”

  Jenny busily cleared a pile of out-of-date newspapers off a kitchen chair, trying to hide an unexpected flush of pleasure. “You can always call me. Whatever time of day, you know that.” She cleared her throat, hesitated. “Ollie, I wanted to tell you something.” She took a deep breath. “Sam wants us to get married this summer.”

  Ollie’s face did not change. It was a study in nonplussedness.

  “I just wanted to let you know first,” she gabbled, feeling silly now. “Sophie was going to be matron of honor, and I know it will be, er, difficult for you. But I’d love you to be there. If you can face it.”

  He smiled, finally. “Of course I will, you doughnut. Jenny Vale married…” He tried the words on for size. “About bloody time.” He hugged her and their faces were suddenly too close. She backed away, feeling oddly deflated. “Do you think Freddie would like to be page boy?”

  “Ask him.” He reached out and touched her arm lightly. “Now can I ask you something?”

  “About the wedding?” She knew he’d find it difficult. Poor Ollie.

  “No. I was going through Soph’s things.”

  “Oh, right.” She blushed.

  “Every time I open our wardrobe a tiny, irrational part of me hopes that she’ll be in there. That they’re not just dresses.” His eyes shadowed gyspy black. Had they always been this black?

  “I thought I wanted to keep them but now I think that as long as they’re there…it’s like a fucking kick in the face every morning. I can’t explain it. Would you sort through them, maybe find them another home?”

  “Of course!”

  “Just pick out…oh, you know. You choose. I’ve haven’t really got the foggiest about fashion, but if you could keep special things for Freddie.”

  “To be honest, Ollie, I’ll probably end up saving Freddie a ton of cheap High Street stuff and throwing away her prized vintage Ossie Clark. I’ve not been blessed with an innate sense of style, as you can probably tell.”

  “You scrub up alright, Jenny.”

  Mortified, wondering if he thought that she was angling for a compliment, or worse, comparing herself to Sophie, she felt the heat rise on her cheeks once more. “And, er, what do you want me to do with the other stuff?”

  Ollie’s face darkened. She couldn’t read it. He looked, as he had done numerous times in the past few weeks, like a totally different man to the one she’d known when Sophie was alive. It was as if Sophie’s death had deleted a version of him and someone else was emerging, changing the structure of his face, making it harder and rougher, older. “Oxfam. The mum mafia, I don’t know. It makes no difference to me. It’s just stuff. Her clothes are not going to bring her back, are they?”

  He was wrong. For when Jenny slid back the white wardrobe doors, there she was, a whole clutch of Nicolas from different years, different parties, shreds of Sophie in the print of leopard spot, in the fluff of a rabbit skin collar, the tilt of a cowboy hat.

  There was Sophie’s peacock feather dress, the one she used to wear to weddings, when she’d invariably be late, falling through the church doors noisily, turning every head, seeking out Jenny. She remembered how they would stand there wedged together. “Do you reckon it will outlast the wedding registry appliances?” Sophie would joke and they’d both giggle silently until Sophie completely lost it and did the Honk and everyone would turn and glare at them.

  Ah, here was the seventies-style caramel silk blouse that she’d worn on their shopping trip a couple of months before she died. This was the time Sophie had bought some yellow heels from Topshop and frog-marched a reluctant Jenny to the tills to buy a navy sequin shift dress—“Not age appropriate!” Jenny had protested, “not age appropriate!”—that now sat unworn in her own wardrobe, like a glamorous relic from a different, sparklier life.

  The long cable-knit cream cardie that Sophie used to effortlessly wear to the park with Freddie. (Sophie did knitwear; Jenny wore jumpers.)

  Some dresses, unworn, a couple with price tags still attached. There was also a series of more basic dresses and trousers in a Parisian palette of black and gray and navy, the background hum to the times they’d met for coffees in the day, walks in the park, a stolen morning matinee; Sophie’s habit of interrupting Jenny’s day of editing by luring her for noodles, flour-free lemon cakes at Gail’s, or “a quick mosey” around IKEA, “Not to buy. Just to see.” They would invariably come home laden with white picture frames, pink plant pots and enough tea light votives to light up north London.

  Jenny touched the sleeve of a red vintage dress gingerly, half expecting it to vaporize at her touch like a ghost. This was one of Sophie’s favorite dresses, with a sexy slit up the side that showed off her lovely shapely legs. She lifted the sleeve to her nose and sniffed. And there she was again. Sophie’s perfume: floral, sexily old-fashioned, the perfume of a 1950s sex bomb. She wondered how many times Ollie had done the same thing, sucked in the sexy essence of her. She quickly let go of the sleeve, feeling voyeuristic.

  Two piles. The peacock dress would be kept for Freddie. The jersey dresses would go. The vintage prom dress would be kept. The cashmere sweaters would go. The hats would be kept. So would her wedding dress, obviously, she decided, closing the lid on the white box in which she’d discovered it carefully folded in white tissue paper. The shoes would be redistributed among the mums. Or was that morbid? On she went, tearfully picking apart Sophie’s wardrobe, trying her best to discriminate between the clothes that were somehow intrinsically Sophie or valuable and those that weren’t. It was hard. Sophie could transform from school-run mum to pop wife to fashion bunny with a swish of a scarf. How on earth would she, Jenny, who hadn’t a clue what was Pucci and what Primark unless she studied the label, decide which item was more significant?

  She couldn’t help but wonder what anyone would make of her wardrobe if she died. Would anyone really get sentimental about her Gap jeans, shift dresses, navy sweaters and rack of white shirts? No, she would leave nothing of note behind. An explosion of T-shirts. A pile of books. Although she did have a very good collection of classic country and western. Perhaps she would be buried with Dolly’s Greatest Hits, like a Pharaoh queen her jewels.

  She opened the stiff top drawer of Sophie’s dresser. What was this? About a trillion sizes too big. Oh, she realized with sadness, Sophie’s old maternity wear. She frowned, puzzled. It didn’t make sense. Why had Soph kept it? Sophie had told her repeatedly that the baby thing was all over. That she had tried for a baby with no luck for a couple of years after Freddie was born and had decided to forget about it—she couldn’t face the hormonal cyclone of IVF—and end the monthly disappointment. Jenny crushed the clothes to her face. Poor, poor Soph. So she’d never given up hope, after all. Wishing Sophie had confided in her about this, she folded the maternity clothes carefully and respectfully. Clearly you never knew anyone until you’d emptied their chest of drawers.

  Soph’s knickers. She hesitated. It felt like a violation of privacy. But Ollie had asked her, hadn’t
he? It would be far worse for him to do this job. Anyway, she could imagine Soph up there in some pillowy heaven laughing her socks off at her friend’s prudity. She wouldn’t give a toss. When they’d first shared a house at university, a redbrick hunk of crumbling and frequently burgled Victoriana, Soph would pad around in a pair of knickers after a shower, hair wet, conical breasts bobbing, looking for a hairdryer, while Jenny, who’d grown up in a household where long, maroon-colored terry dressing gowns always hid naked flesh—she hadn’t seen her own mother in the nude since she was a toddler—did her very best not to appear shocked and bourgeois.

  Some of Soph’s smalls were reassuringly normal, the fail-safe multipack style from M&S that reminded her of the big yellow ones Soph had worn the night she’d died. But there was also a decidedly slinky contingent, balled neatly to one side of the drawer, obviously not designed for practical purposes. Two pairs were actually crotchless! She blushed, trying to push the image of Sophie and Ollie having sex out of her head, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to meet Ollie’s eyes later if she didn’t.

  Problem was, Soph and Ollie were one of those couples who it was hard not to imagine having sex. They’d had nuclear chemistry. It had been embarrassing to be in the same room as them sometimes. In the early days they’d never stopped touching each other, a hand on a bottom, a hand on a knee, a brush of fingertip against Sophie’s lips. Jenny remembered the holiday they’d all gone on together not so long ago: Sophie and Ollie’s bedroom had been next door to hers and Sam’s and it had been a thin, brickless partition. They’d heard everything. She stuffed the knickers into the bin bag briskly, pushing the memory and its animal acoustics from her mind.

  Relieved to have finished the underwear, she started working on the dresser’s lower drawers. Parrot green kaftans. A beach sarong. A lilac silk dressing gown in a silk bag. And what was this? Something hard and small wedged at the very back of the drawer, stuffed beneath the polka dot drawer liner. She stuck her hand in and pulled it out. It was a small dark wood box with pretty white shell inlay. Puzzling.

  She opened the box carefully, unable to rein in her curiosity. Ooh, letters. A stack of letters, folded neatly. She caught glimpses of handwriting, biro doodles; while others were simply typed. “My beautiful Sophie…” Love letters! Oh, God! Startled and guilty to be looking, she snapped shut the box and shoved it back to its hiding place beneath the drawer liner. “Sorry, Soph,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “You dark horse.”

  Eleven

  Absolutely would have paid good money to see Jenny sorting my smalls but I returned to number thirty-three just as she was dropping the black bag into the wheelie bin. “Good-bye, Soph’s smalls,” I heard her mutter under her breath, making the critical error of releasing the wheelie bin lid before stepping out of the way so that it crashed down upon her head. Sorting a dead friend’s knickers is beyond the call of duty, isn’t it? Still, I do wish she’d protested more when Ollie suggested giving my things away. Take my smalls! Just not my Acne Pistol boots! I’m not sure I want anyone else to have any of my beloved clothes actually. Well, maybe my sister, Mary, although she hates anything that doesn’t come box fresh from Marks and Spencer so she may be slightly grossed out by dead sis’s vintage. And I wouldn’t mind Jenny taking a few prize pickings, even though she’s bound to put the dry-clean on a hot cycle.

  Just not Tash.

  Too late! It’s eight p.m. now, three weeks later, Suze’s house. It’s steamy with the smell of pesto and marinating nappy bags, the windows misted with condensation from London’s endless Narnia winter. The Help Ollie squad is sitting in Suze’s dark red living room facing off the pile of my clothes on the wooden Indian coffee table, trying not to look scared. Only Tash is eyeing them like a wolf might a small, succulent baby sheep grazing away from its mother. Her fingers twitch at her sides. Her Achilles tendon is stretched, poised to dart forward. The others are less sure, sitting upright on the cat-clawed sofas and drinking wine too quickly. Liz fiddles with her hair. Jenny bites her nails. Suze rises a couple of inches on her seat as she clenches her buttocks to repress wind. Tense times.

  “Well one of us has to go first, ladies.” Tash lurches toward the coffee table, yanks my Jaeger leopard-print skirt out of the pile and flaps it out in front of her. “Come on, let’s not stand on ceremony.”

  Suze takes a deep breath, pulls out a pale blue silk blouse with a pussy bow at the side and holds it away from her body, eyeing it suspiciously, lest it leap up at her and love-bite her neck.

  “That’ll look great on you,” says Tash with a smirk, knowing perfectly well it’ll add ten years to Suze.

  “You think so?” Suze struggles to push that frizzy foam-wedge of hair through the neck hole. (Suze should sell her locks as mattress filler. Ultimate bounce! No springs necessary!) Tash comes to her aid, yanking it firmly down over her head, releasing an electrical storm of static that makes Suze’s hair spark. They’re both sweating from the exertion.

  “It doesn’t seem right, does it?” Liz whispers to Jenny, who is seated next to her on the sofa, sheltering behind a vase full of splayed bare twigs.

  “The blouse?”

  “No, this.” She pulls a long face, glancing over at Suze. “And yeah, the blouse looks a bit rubbish too. How on earth is she going to get out of it?”

  “Dunno. I got trapped in a dress once,” says Jenny, looking pained. “It was horrible.”

  Lydia leans toward Jenny on the other side and whispers, “Talking of dresses. I’ve been wondering, what happened to Sophie’s wedding dress?”

  Jenny grimaces. “Saved for Freddie.”

  (Thank you, Jenny. It’s now folded like a lily at night. I loved that dress.)

  “Oh, God!” Lydia fans herself with a copy of Homes and Gardens; a litter of leaflets showers onto the floor. “Don’t. It’s going to set me off.”

  Tash and Suze walk over with their new bits. They eye Lydia’s emotional magazine fanning warily. Jenny too, I see, has learned to ignore her. Lydia sniffs loudly. I have no idea how such a phlegmatic builder’s sniff can come out of such a teeny woman.

  “Come on, Lyds,” says Suze impatiently, eyeing the fallen leaflets scattered over her stripy rug with irritation. “Let’s not get all morbid. Again.”

  “But it is morbid.”

  “It’s what Ollie wanted,” said Tash quickly, smoothing down one of my white shirts over her architectural hip bones approvingly. “It really is.”

  Jenny suddenly slams down her wineglass on the coffee table, leaps to her feet and starts bundling up the clothes in her arms like a madwoman at a jumble sale. “Lydia’s right. It’s too weird. Shall we just give the rest to Oxfam and be done with it?”

  “Good idea,” Liz says with a puff of relief, reaching over to fill up her wineglass. “Take all the stuff away, Jenny.”

  “Oh, but what about these boots?” Tash determinedly pulls on one of my black Acne Pistol ankle boots. Damn. It fits her. “They’re too good for Oxfam.”

  “Ooh. Nice boots.” Lydia sits up straight, morbidity forgotten. “What size?”

  “My size.” Tash knocks her heels together like Dorothy.

  I retreat to the corner of the room and crouch down on the dusty edge of Suze’s framed Matisse repro print. My Acne boots. Mine.

  When I wake from my celestial sulk the clothes have been bundled out of sight by Jenny and the tight atmosphere has loosened, like the stitching on the blouse when Suze finally struggled out of it, blinking and sweating like someone emerging after years trapped in a small, dark cave. The wine has wound them all down now too. Good old wine. There’s a reflective, dreamy air. Liz is looking sleepy: she was up changing children’s urinated bedsheets in the small hours last night. Tash is still admiring the boots. Lydia is lying out on the sofa, hair spilling prettily over frayed turquoise cushions, looking more cheerful. “Ollie and Sophie are forever the perfect couple.” She sighs noisily, expelling more air than is strictly necessary to create drama. “They’
ll never split up now. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Jeez. Never thought of it like that. Guess there’s an upside.

  “I read somewhere the other day that couples actually know less about each other the longer they stay together.” Suze reaches for a mini pizza. Observational note here. Every time I see Suze she’s reaching for food. She’s put on at least a stone since I died. It’s actually kind of touching: I grieved so much I piled on fourteen pounds! “We assume we know everything so we stop asking,” she says thoughtfully. “They’re spared that indignity at least.”

  “Nor will they become one of those couples who sit at a restaurant trying to think of something to say that isn’t about the children,” Liz adds.

  Ha! You think we were never there? Everyone sits at that table at some point in their marriage. It’s the one at the back, near the toilets. Bad service.

  “Nor will she get to that point when she thinks nothing of farting loudly while pouring out his Cheerios in the morning,” adds Suze cheerily, mouth full of Parma ham parcel.

  Deafening silence.

  Lydia’s mouth drops open, exposing a hidden brace. “You don’t?”

  “What?”

  “Break wind in front of the hubby like that?”

  Suze blushes. It pulsates across her giant pale facescape like the northern lights. “Well…”

  She does!

  “At least Sophie won’t have to face him running off with some prepubescent,” snarls Tash, pushing back her cuticles forcefully with a cocktail canapé stick. “Not that he would, of course,” she quickly corrects. “Ollie’s one of the good ones.”

  “Let’s hope he gets to taste all that with someone else,” observes Liz, as they sit contemplating the farts and other indignities that Ollie and I have mercifully escaped. “He’s only in his thirties.”

  “Thirty-six.” There is a new look on Tash’s face, one I’ve never seen before. “Too young to be alone forever,” she mutters darkly. “Far too young.”