I shut my eyes and try to listen, but images of the morning before he’d died keep on coming back to haunt me.
‘Surprise!’ I’d said.
Olly helped himself to a croissant, saying, ‘What a treat.’ Rarely did we eat breakfast together before work; I was always in too much of a rush. ‘By the way, the shower-curtain rail thingy collapsed, I’ll fix it later,’ he said.
‘Did it? Oh well,’ I said, pouring the coffee.
‘Becca? Are you feeling guilty? Have you had an affair with Glitz?’
Patrick van Glitzen, or Glitz as I call him, is my sixty-five-year-old
boss. In his late fifties he set up a modern British art gallery on New Bond Street. It’s now one of the most successful galleries in the country.
‘Oh shucks, is it that obvious?’ I leaned across to kiss him. ‘I’ve got some exciting news.’
‘We don’t have to visit your parents this weekend?’
‘Cheeky sod. You know Norman Graham?’
‘The guy who paints blocks of colour.’
‘That sell for thousands. Yesterday I sold a series of six. Six, Olly!’
‘That’s great. So, you must have got a beefy commission?’
‘Yep, but it’s even better, Ol. Glitz is going to review my pay
and
give me a small bonus at the end of the summer.’
Olly smiled. ‘That’s incredible.’
‘So, I was thinking …’
‘Uh-oh, that’s dangerous.’ Olly poured himself another coffee.
‘I was thinking it’s time we moved out of here—’
‘Not that again.’
‘Olly! That’s not fair.’
‘It’s just you keep on going on about it.’
‘Well, that’s because we live in a shoebox and I’m sick of it.’
‘I know,’ he said, wounded pride in his voice. Olly felt uncomfortable talking about money. He felt he should be the one earning more, but teaching music and writing a novel in the hopes it was going to get published one day was never going to get us on to the property ladder. So I’d given up my freelance illustrating to work for Glitz. Olly felt guilty that I was the one giving up my dream. I’d been passionate about painting since childhood and had studied art in Florence. He kept on promising that he’d make it up to me. He would finish his script and get a publishing deal.
‘There are a couple of witnesses,’ the policeman had continued. ‘Your husband overtook on a corner …’
‘No,’ I uttered. ‘That’s so unlike him! He was always careful, he promised he’d be careful …’
He nodded with respect, but continued nevertheless. ‘He didn’t see the oncoming vehicle until it was too late. There was nothing the driver could have done.’
‘Olly drew people towards him,’ Simon continues, his voice wavering now, ‘with his infectious enthusiasm and charm.’
I touch the photograph on the back of the service sheet. Olly is smiling; there’s warmth in his eyes. This picture was taken the night we moved into our one-bedroom
apartment. It seemed so grand and grown-up four years ago. We were eating takeaway and drinking cheap champagne by the fire.
‘It isn’t hard to see why he has so many friends here today.’ Simon gestures to the packed congregation.
But I know one person who isn’t in the church. Joe Lawson. Joe should be here. He was Olly’s best friend. The three of us used to hang out together.
And then I destroyed us.
‘Oliver was kind,’ ten-year-old Barnaby is saying to me, clutching his mother’s hand. Olly used to teach piano privately, and Barnaby was one of his star pupils.
My best friend Kitty thanks him for me, saying he’d played his Chopin piece beautifully and Olly would have been very proud.
I move through the crowded church hall, pushing past people drinking tea and eating cake. Mum catches me up, dressed in a simple grey outfit. ‘Darling, there you are.’ Pippa joins us, holding on to one of her twins, Oscar. Oscar’s three. He has chocolate brownie smudged around his mouth. Pippa doesn’t know what to say. Nor does Mum. No one does. How can they? I force a smile. ‘I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I can feel them watching me helplessly as I walk away.
Outside, I lean against the wall and take a deep breath. I see the policeman again, standing in front of our fireplace. ‘He didn’t see the oncoming vehicle … it was too late.’ Why was he so reckless? What was he thinking about? I feel angry, and when I’m not angry I feel so sad, as if I’ll fall apart, break into a thousand tiny pieces. I wish with every beat in my heart that I could rewind time, go back to that day. Maybe if I’d waited till the evening to talk to him about moving out of the flat, he’d still be alive.
‘We could rent somewhere more central,’ I’d said, showing him the two properties that I’d circled in the brochure the night before, when Olly had been out playing poker with his friends. ‘I reckon with what we’re both earning, and if we tap into our savings, we could afford it.’
Olly glanced at the flats, but was quiet. I watched him put on his jacket. ‘What do you think?’ I pressed, trying to hide my frustration. ‘Both flats are close to the river and to your work.’ Olly worked in the music department of a school in Chiswick.
‘We could have an extra half-hour in bed,’ was my last attempt to get something positive out of him.
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Fine. Listen, got to run.’ He grabbed his motorbike helmet off the sofa. Detecting my disappointment, he came back to me, pressed his forehead against mine. ‘I’m tired. Hungover. Entirely self-inflicted,’ he added.
I stroked the back of his neck. ‘You want to move, don’t you?’
‘More than anything.’ He brushed a greasy crumb from one corner of my mouth, kissed me. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ says Kitty.
‘He was keeping something from me.’
Olly had left a message later that morning, when I was in a meeting. ‘Look, we need to talk,’ he’d said.
‘Becca, don’t,’ she says, leaning against the wall with me.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Go over it again and again. It’s not helping anyone, least of all you.’
‘But he said we needed to talk.’
‘That doesn’t mean he was hiding anything.’
‘He was distracted, something was worrying him.’ I bite my nail.
‘Becca, not today, not now.’ She rests an arm on my shoulder. ‘Come inside. Your father wants to say a few words.’
‘Maybe I should talk to Carolyn, see if he’d spoken to her?’
‘No! Stop doing this to yourself. Let it go,’ she begs.
‘I can’t!’
She shakes me by the shoulders, looks me in the eye. ‘Olly loved you so much, he’d
never
keep anything from you, you know that.’
Tears come to my eyes. ‘Do I? I don’t know anything any more.’
‘It happened quickly,’ I hear the policeman trying to reassure me. ‘He wouldn’t have been in any pain.’
I want to scream. I want to die.
Kitty’s arms are around me. I hold on to her. ‘I can’t live without him, I can’t,’ I cry. ‘Oh Kitty, what am I going to do?’
‘Shh. I’m here. I’m here. We’re going to get through this, Becca, I promise you. We’ll get through it together.’
2
‘Right, that’s it, we’re ready for tomorrow.’ I look around the gallery. Paul Lamont’s abstract paintings of London landscapes are mounted on the walls, their prices printed out on fresh white cards just waiting to have that red sold sticker in the corner.
I watch as Glitz loosens his tie, slips off his shoes and stretches his legs under the desk. Exhausted, I sit down opposite him. Glitz is handsome, in an unconventional way. He has silvery-grey hair, a long face, large nose and sharp blue eyes that could spot a needle in a haystack. If he didn’t work in modern art, he’d make an excellent detective. I can see him in a stylish trench coat with a pair of binoculars.
‘You’ve done an excellent job, Rebecca,’ he says. ‘The frames work well.’
‘You’ve got a hole in your sock.’ I smile at his big toe poking out.
He peers at his feet. ‘So I have.’
I play with my pen. ‘I didn’t have you down for a hole-in-the-sock kind of man.’
He pauses, thinks before he says, ‘Life is full of surprises.’ He then looks at me for a moment too long, and I turn away, knowing he’s going to ask me that dreaded question.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Is it me or is it hot in here?
‘Scout’s honour fine, or are you crossing your fingers under the desk?’
I show him my hands, fingers uncrossed. After Olly’s funeral, six weeks ago, Glitz had suggested I take some time off work, but the thought of being alone in our flat all day was unbearable. I still haven’t fixed the shower-curtain rail. ‘You see, fine,’ I pretend.
‘In that case, how about a drink?’ Over the past three years Glitz and I have become good friends and occasionally we go to a bar or have something to eat after work.
‘Oh my God,’ I gasp, reading the scribbled message I had forgotten to give him earlier today. ‘Marty called! You have a party tonight. Tom…’ I try to decipher my writing. ‘Tom Bailey?’
‘Bugger.’
Marty is Glitz’s American wife. She’s plump and lovely and wears pale-yellow jumpers with gold jewellery. She’d called me earlier, saying, ‘Is His Majesty in a good mood?’ When I replied yes, she promptly told me about the drinks tonight, stressing that he couldn’t wriggle out of it.
Yet he remains firmly in his seat. ‘I can’t hear a word at these parties.’
‘Well, maybe it’s time you invested in a hearing aid.’
‘Oh, not you too. I don’t need another wife.’
‘My father has one, Glitz.’ I don’t add that he never wears it.
‘What?’ Glitz smiles wryly. He watches me gather my jacket from the back of my chair. I lose my balance for a second.
‘Call Marty right now and tell her I’ve been mugged.’
‘No. You call her and tell her you’ve been mugged.’
‘Can’t. The bastards took my phone.’
I laugh.
‘I’ll give you that Lamont painting you love,’ he bargains.
‘Ah, now that’s more interesting.’ I sit down again, feeling dizzy.
‘Rebecca? Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘No.’ I rub my eyes. ‘I think I need to get home, lie down.’
‘I’ll call a cab.’
I stand up, lose my balance, grab on to the corner of the desk.
‘Rebecca!’
I see black dots swimming before me, like tadpoles.
‘Sit down, now!’
‘I feel weird, Glitz, faint.’
He rushes to my side, places a hand against my forehead. I’m sweating. Next thing I know, he thrusts my head between my knees.
I groan, feeling sick.
‘Not working?’ He’s now grabbing me under the arms and dragging me down on to the floor.
‘What are you doing?’ I protest as I crash to the ground.
‘Recovery position. Legs in the air!’
Once my legs are stuck in the air Glitz jumps up, saying he’ll fetch me some water. ‘I feel awful,’ I murmur, my vision blurred.
‘Hold on,’ he urges.
I don’t remember him coming back.
*
I’m in hospital. A young dark-haired doctor who looks half my age is taking my blood pressure, a yellow floral-patterned curtain drawn round us for privacy.
Glitz sits awkwardly on a plastic chair by the side of my bed, next to a blue paper-towel dispenser. In the cab on the way to hospital, he told me I had been unconscious for at least a minute and that I needed to see a doctor immediately. I felt he was being a drama queen, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when I was feeling more or less back to normal. ‘I promised Marty I’d look after you. She told me you shouldn’t be working so soon.’
I’d raised an eyebrow. ‘This isn’t just a ploy to get out of your drinks thing?’
‘It’s a small ray of light.’
‘Blood pressure normal,’ the doctor mutters, writing on a piece of paper attached to a grey clipboard.
‘So I can go home?’
She nods. ‘We’ve done all the tests we need to do.’
‘Great. Thank you.’
‘You and the baby are fine.’
‘Wonderful. That’s great. Sorry, the
what
?’
Glitz knocks his shoulder against the towel dispenser.
‘The baby, it’s fine,’ she repeats, looking curiously at Glitz cursing and muttering in the corner.
I stare at her. ‘I’m pregnant?’ She doesn’t know about Olly. This can’t be happening. She doesn’t understand! I can’t be having a baby.
She nods.
‘Sorry, there must be a mistake.’ This is a joke, surely.
The doctor shakes her head.
She waits for a sane reaction from Glitz, but he’s as stiff as a piece of cardboard.
‘Congratulations, er, both of you,’ she says.
3
Three weeks later, and Kitty and I are loading cases and boxes into the hired removal van.
The doctor guessed I was nine weeks pregnant. ‘You need to leave London, Rebecca,’ Glitz had said in my kitchen that night. He’d gestured to the mess in the house, the piles of letters unopened, last night’s supper left on the kitchen table …
He was right. It was too painful living here, Olly’s shadow following me around, and now I had an unborn baby to think about too, but where was I going to go? ‘This can’t be happening,’ I kept on saying.
‘It is happening, Rebecca. You need your family. Take all the time you want.’
I shook my head. ‘Right now, all I need is a cup of tea.’
He whipped a plug out of its socket, turned round
and stared at me. I’d ironed my dress that morning before I left for work, but I was sure I’d turned it off, hadn’t I?
We drive past the Dairy Crest building on the A316. ‘Look at the little cows on the roof,’ I remember Olly once pointing out.
I can’t look at them today. I glance at Kitty, sitting grimly behind the steering wheel, her fiery auburn hair tied back into a ponytail. When we first met outside the school gates I was drawn to her amber-coloured eyes. I’d never seen eyes like hers before. Like me, Kitty grew up in Winchester, though her parents moved to Kent many years ago, to be closer to her brother and their grandchildren.
I stare out of the window, knowing how much I will miss her.
‘I’ll miss you,’ Kitty says, as if she can read my mind. ‘Who can I call after another disastrous date?’