Afterwife (9781101618868)

by Williams, Polly

  Tash beams. She is holding a heavy white plastic bag that pulls on her palm. “Beer.”

  “Ah, brilliant.” He stands there for a moment, as if trying to remember what social convention dictates he say next. She doesn’t budge. She is waiting. “Er, come in,” mumbles Ollie.

  Tash steps over the threshold and hands him the bag of cold beers.

  He smiles. “You don’t need to keep doing this, Tash.”

  Tash waves her hand. “It’s the least I can do.” She glances around, taking in the details, looking for signs of not coping. “Where’s Freddie?”

  “Jenny’s taken him swimming.”

  Tash grins. They are alone!

  “Would you like a cup of tea? I have a range of water-boiling appliances in which to make it.”

  Tash puts her hand across her mouth and laughs like a little girl. “I wasn’t the only one to buy you a kettle?”

  “Nope.” He goes into the kitchen, bag of beers in one hand, old sock in the other. “But thanks anyway.”

  “Looking tidy in here,” notes Tash approvingly, sitting down at the kitchen table and resting her bosom on its surface for support, which has the effect of pushing up her cleavage and making it spill out over the top of her blue denim shirt like a rising loaf of bread. As I have settled directly above her, on the smoke alarm, I get an eyeful.

  Ollie throws his spare postmasturbatory sock on the work surface then begins to open all the cupboard doors, looking for biscuits. He’s clearly had practice at this tea game, knowing that all women would rather have a biscuit with their tea than not, even if they don’t realize it until it’s winking at them from a saucer.

  “Jammy Dodger?”

  Tash is not a Jammy Dodger type of woman either. She is a low-carb cracker woman. She takes the Jammy Dodger.

  Ollie glances at the clock and sighs. “I guess it is too early to have a beer.”

  Yes, far too early.

  “Never too early.” Tash grins. “It’s the weekend. I’ll join you.”

  He grabs a beer from the bag, puts the rest in the fridge, sloshes it frothing into two glasses. Then he sits opposite Tash. He stares. No, he cannot help but notice how beautiful she is, can he? No man could. Nor can he help but notice that cleavage. He’s always been a boobs man.

  “How are you?” she asks in that way that suggests he can confide in her, even if he can’t with other people.

  I’m starting to prickle now. I mean, I like Tash. I did like Tash. We were thrown together at the school gate at reception and her son Ludo gets on well with Freddie, which I’m grateful for as Ludo’s one of those slightly thuggish testosteroney boys you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. And Tash has been so helpful since I died. But…she’s not the kind of friend I’d have if I didn’t have Freddie. She’s one of those fun but intense women who always leave you slightly drained. Her conversation is urgent, dramatic, especially if it involves her, which it usually does. And you know the telling thing about her? The screensaver on her phone is not a photo of Ludo. It is a photo of herself, in a white vest, laughing, holding a tennis racket, like something from Sports Illustrated! What mother has a photograph of herself rather than her child on her phone screensaver?

  Ollie’s eyes dart to her cleavage and away. She squeezes her arms together. His eyes are sucked back again. She’s waiting for an answer to her question.

  “Up and down,” says Ollie, trying not to look at her tits.

  “Tell me about it.” Tash bends down to stroke Ping Pong under the chin. She looks up and fixes him with an eyelash-fluttery stare. “Oh, Ol. Are you not able to find pleasure in anything?”

  Ollie reddens. He was wanking less than ten minutes ago. “Um…”

  Tash grins. And it’s like she knows. She’s sniffed out the fug of sex. I want to shout down at her that it was my knickers he was bringing himself on, not her boobs. Put the bazookers away, woman! Save them for Marko the Wildebeest.

  “I’ve been busy. So much stuff to do…” He drifts off. He is thinking of court cases and compensation claims and all that other stuff that his brain is so not able to deal with right now. “Thank you for having Freddie after school. It’s helped a lot.”

  “God, anytime!” She rolls her eyes. And it’s then that I realize she’s wearing false eyelashes. Falsies! At eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning. I’m willing a false lash to drop off and stick on the end of her nose like a giant nostril hair. “Freddie’s been a pleasure. A civilizing influence on Ludo. You wouldn’t know that—” She stops herself.

  Wouldn’t you? Something tightens inside of me.

  “That’s good. I guess that’s good.” Ollie is studying her face in that quietly intense way he’s perfected, his eyes feeling their way across her perfect features like a blind man’s fingers on braille.

  “Ollie…”

  There is something about her tone of voice that unnerves me. It is quiet and intimate. It is a voice that I have never heard her use before. It is certainly not a voice that she would ever use to address my husband while I was alive.

  “I know it must be hard, so hard on your own. If ever you need…” She looks up at him from beneath the falsies. “…female company.”

  Female company! She’s been spending far too much time with corny Poles. I am shaking with indignation. The little red light on the smoke alarm starts to beep on and off very quickly. Ollie looks puzzled, then something passes over his face and I know that he knows what Tash is referring to.

  “Dinner. A comedy night…something that might cheer you up.” She stares at her fingers, clearly disappointed that he hasn’t jumped.

  The more indignant I get, the faster the light on the smoke alarm flickers, as if it’s picked up some kind of energy. Or perhaps I really am so incensed I’m actually smoking.

  “Thanks.” He shifts his feet under the chair, fingers the edge of the newspaper on the table. The air in the room is beginning to vibrate like a plucked guitar string.

  “It’s just that, you know…” She speaks very quietly. “I’ve been on my own since divorcing Toby. I know what’s it like. That’s all. I know what it’s like.”

  You have no idea! I want to shout but can’t. The light on the smoke alarm blinks even faster.

  “Not that I’m equating what I’ve been through with what you’ve been through,” she corrects quickly. “Not at all.”

  “Fucking smoke alarm.” Ollie suddenly stands up, walks across to Tash’s side of the table, stands on a chair and reaches up toward me on the ceiling. His T-shirt lifts up at the front as he stretches, showing a slither of adorably hairy brown belly. He presses the reset button and it stops misbehaving. He steps off the chair but before he has a proper chance to launch himself out of her orbit Tash throws her arms at Ollie’s waist, lassoing him like a bison. She rests her blow-dry against his belly as Ollie stands there helplessly. “Oh, Ollie, you poor love,” she says.

  And it is only then that I see something that hits me harder than the No. 23.

  Tash is wearing my Acne Pistol ankle boots.

  The smoke alarm starts to wail then. Tash and Ollie leap apart.

  Seventeen

  Jenny couldn’t shake the feeling she was being followed. She’d first noticed the white Fiat, one of those cutesy bubble-shaped ones, near the woods. It had been on her bumper all the way back from Highgate. It was that woman again. The woman who looked like Sophie who was hanging outside of the apartment that evening the previous month. She was sure of it. Again, a stupid, irrational part of her wondered if it really were Soph—admittedly somewhat plastically altered—come to tell her that she’d staged her own death. If only she could stop the car and ask the woman questions that only Sophie would know the answers to. (Q: In what year and where did I end up in A&E because of dry martini poisoning? A: 1996. St. Mary’s, Paddington. Q: What was the name of the man with whom I was violently sick while snogging? A: Chris Butterworth, outside Hacienda, Manchester, 1992. Q: What is my favorite sexual position? A
: Head in the pillow, bum in the air. Blimey, hadn’t done that in a while.) And, yes, she would ask Sophie about the love letters too.

  Checking her mirror again, she was relieved to see that the car had gone and she rationalized that there were hundreds of Londoners who might drive from Muswell Hill to Camden at any hour of any day. She was being paranoid.

  When she got back home Sam was spread out in the living room with a newspaper, cigarette dangling from his lips. He didn’t look up. “How was the lunch with Soph’s mum and sister, babes?”

  “Sad. Sweet. Kind of funny.” She smiled, happy to find him in such a good mood. He’d been unpredictable and irritable in the last few days. And he’d been listening to Radiohead, never a good sign.

  He looked doubtful. “Funny?”

  “We laughed a lot about things she did. Freddie was writing it all down in his Mummy Memory book. Bless.” She smiled and shrugged. “I guess it hit home how much everyone loved her.”

  “She was indeed much loved.” And for a moment he looked soft and vulnerable and almost unbearably pained.

  “I wish you’d been there, Sam.”

  He blew out a smoke ring, puffed away the sadness from his features. “You know I’d just be this eejit in the corner saying the wrong thing.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, feeling sorry for him. He really did struggle to express his emotions. She was sure he’d feel so much better if he let them romp a bit more freely. “Honestly. Ollie would have appreciated some grown-up male company.”

  “Next time, eh?”

  Was Sam avoiding Ollie? It did look like that. Or perhaps he couldn’t face up to death full stop. Some people were like that. Her phone started ringing, interrupting her thoughts. She pulled it out of her handbag, glanced at the interface and pinged it to voice mail. “Sorry, Tash again.”

  He brightened. “Tash Wright?”

  “Yes. Er, how do you know her surname?”

  He blew out a thick rope of smoke. “Didn’t I tell you she phoned me last week?”

  “Really?” she said, forgetting for a moment that she’d given Tash Sam’s number weeks before. “She wanted advice?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, asked the Questions.”

  She knew all about the Questions. Since Sam’s friends had hit their forties there had been many discreet inquiries about divorce. Tash was probably after a free bit of legal advice in the same way she’d been after a free pair of ankle boots.

  “She can talk for England, that one. It’s a small world, as it turns out.…” He stopped and took a lug on his cigarette, frowning. Something was bothering him.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Just a couple of people we both know. Knows Seb Lewis at Pulson Partners. Small world. Actually she knows his sister.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, not really relishing the coincidence. Sam was one of those people who appeared to be five rather than six degrees separated from everyone else. Especially women. “Sam, it’s really weird,” she said, changing the subject and sitting down next to him on a scratchy wicker floor cushion. “I had a funny feeling that I was being followed in my car on the way back from lunch.” Spoken out loud, it sounded even more monstrously silly.

  He looked up, startled. “Followed? By whom?”

  “Some woman. On my bumper all the way back from Muswell Hill to Camden.” She rubbed her temples, trying to rub some sense into her head. “I don’t know. I just noticed her, that’s all.”

  “Woman?” Something unreadable passed across Sam’s eyes. He smiled. “Perhaps one of Ollie’s new acolytes want you taken out. It’s a murky world, the world of the new widower.”

  “Yeah,” she laughed, resting her head against his knee, suddenly grateful that she had him. That she was not on her own. Like Ollie.

  After dinner they had sex. Jenny faked an orgasm. It was the first time she’d faked with Sam. As she’d hoped, he promptly rolled over, satisfied, and fell asleep. Needless to say, she couldn’t sleep. Her brain was like the bluebottle she could hear banging itself between the double glazing. So when her phone bleeped at two a.m. it was a relief that she was not the only person awake. She turned on her side to read the text.

  “U up?”

  Her heart quickened. She thumbed back a reply, keeping one eye on the sleeping form of Sam, who was snoring now. “U OK?”

  “Blk dogs. Can’t sleep.”

  “Nor me.”

  She sank back into the bed, sweating now, heart pounding, clasping the phone, willing Ollie to text back. After ten minutes he still hadn’t. Her mind started to gallop. Was he in a bad way? What if he did something silly? No, that was stupid. Then again. Anything could happen. He was so up and down. And she wasn’t sleeping anyway. And there would be no traffic at this time of night. Sam wouldn’t even notice she’d gone, would he?

  She drove north in record time. The moon was low and heavy in the sky, full, tarnished silver, and London’s empty streets unfolded before her like a computer game. She didn’t ring Ollie’s doorbell for fear of waking Freddie. Nor did she need to, as Ollie must have seen her shadow through the glass, opening the door immediately. He pulled her toward him, sinking his chin onto her shoulder, where it wedged in the fleshy bit.

  He stank of booze.

  Even in the half-light she could see he looked terrible, piratical. Then she wondered what she herself must look like, no makeup, bed hair, leggings and Sam’s old jumper that she’d thrown on in the blur of the bedroom. “I’ll make a cup of tea,” she said, sounding uncannily like her mother in times of crisis.

  Ollie stumbled into the kitchen in the clattery noisy manner of a drunk man trying to be quiet.

  “Stop drinking, Ol,” she said, pulling water into the kettle. “You’ve got to stop it. It’s not helping.”

  He scoffed. “It’s helping me.”

  “No, it’s not.” She leaned back against the cool brick wall. It broke her heart to see him like this.

  “I want her, Jenny. I want her back.”

  “I know,” she replied softly, unearthing two cleanish cups from the cupboard, wishing she hadn’t admonished him for drinking. She’d love a stiff drink herself.

  “I can’t stand this,” he growled with sudden, startling ferocity. “I can’t stand…the days…the nights. How long do I have to fucking wait?”

  “What for, Ol?” she asked softly.

  His gypsy eyes flashed. “How long do I have to wait before I have sex again, Jenny?”

  Sex! Oh! The question danced provocatively on the delicate boundaries that protect friend from friend’s husband. She could feel the heat rise on her cheeks. “Well…”

  “I’ve embarrassed you, sorry.” He shook his head, despairing of himself, then looked up and grinned wolfishly in a way that made something inside clench. “I promise you I haven’t lured you round here to have a pop.”

  “Don’t be stupid. I know that.” Did she? Yes, yes, she did. Of course she did.

  “It’s just sometimes my…mind boils over.”

  “I guess it must be very hard.” Hard! Why had she said “hard”? She blushed furiously again and fumbled in the cupboard for a tea bag. Her clumsiness activated an avalanche of tea bags and takeaway ketchup sachets down on her head.

  “I think I might have just had an offer actually.”

  The boiling water splashed over the sides of the cup all over the work surface. “Really? God. Who?”

  He looked at her deadpan, raised an eyebrow. “Tash.”

  “Tash!” Oh, no. She crushed her hand to her mouth in horror. “You didn’t…”

  He looked sheepish. “No. But part of me wanted to.”

  “Right. Right.” She didn’t know what to do with herself. She wanted to stick her fingers in her ears. Tra-la-la-la. But then again…Tash! Outrageous! Tash would never appreciate Ollie. She’d never understand him. She’d…she’d use him! And worse…how dare she?

  He slumped back against the wall. “And now I feel like a piece
of shit.”

  “I’m sure this is all normal stuff,” she said briskly, wondering about the box of letters. Had he found it? Was this why he was thinking about other women? Had something in them given him the green light to seek alternative sexual gratification? No, no, her mind was playing tricks on her.

  “You think so?”

  “Well, it’s a bit soon,” she managed, her voice high and squeaky. She despised herself at that moment for not giving him her blessing. That was clearly what he wanted. She was the closest he got to Sophie and he was using her as a conduit to get permission to have sex. Damn. Why couldn’t she give it? That would be the humane response.

  “When is not soon, Jenny?” he growled from behind his long, dark fringe.

  “I just don’t know, Ollie.” The full force of the late hour hit her all at once. She was totally exhausted. She must get home. She wished she’d never come over here so late. What if Sam woke up and found the bed empty? What was she thinking being here in the small hours?

  “You think I’m a fucker for even mentioning it, don’t you?”

  “No!” Yes.

  He sank his head to the table in despair then. Appalled, blaming herself for her inappropriate prudity, she stroked his arm, unable to hug him as she normally would have done in case he suspected she was doing a Tash too. He looked up, eyes ink black in the early morning gloom. “I don’t want to be alone, Jenny. I want to love and be loved.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, fuck, now I sound like a James Blunt lyric.”

  “For what it’s worth I think you’re doing brilliantly,” she stuttered. He must think her so priggish, so deeply uncool. “You will meet someone else eventually, in time, of course you will.”

  “I can’t fucking stand that idea,” he spat out.

  “But you just said…”

  “I know. Both are true.”

  “Tea.”

  He pushed the tea away from him as if the sight of it revolted him. “That’s the head fuck.”