What to Do When Someone Dies Read Free

Joe if Greg said anything to him yesterday.’
    ‘Joe wasn’t in the office. He was on a visit.’
    ‘It was a woman.’
    ‘Yes, I knew that. I’ll try.’
    I thanked her and put the phone down. It rang instantly. Greg’s father had questions he wanted to ask me. He sounded formal and rehearsed, as if he had written them down before speaking to me. I wasn’t able to answer any of them. I had already told him everything I knew. He told me that Kitty hadn’t slept the whole night and I wondered if he was making a point about who was mourning most. When he put the phone down, I felt I had failed a test. I wasn’t being an adequate wife. Widow. The word almost made me laugh. It wasn’t a word for people like me. It was for old women with headscarves, pulling shopping baskets on wheels, women who had expected widowhood, had prepared for and accepted it.
    I played over in my mind the exact moment when the policewoman had told me the news, that moment of transition. It was a line drawn across my life and everything after it would be different. I wasn’t at all hungry or thirsty but I decided I ought to have something. I walked into the kitchen and the sight of Greg’s leather jacket draped over one of the chairs hit me so that I could hardly breathe. I used to complain about that. Why couldn’t he hang it on a proper hook, out of the way? Now I leaned down and tried to smell him on it. There would be a lot of moments like that. As I made myself coffee there were more of them. The coffee was Brazilian, a kind he always chose. The mug I took from the cupboard was from the gift shop of a nuclear-power station; Greg had got it as a joke. When I opened the fridge door, I was bombarded with memories, things he had bought, things I had bought for him, his preferences, his aversions.
    I realized that the house was still almost as it had been when he had left it, but with every action I took, every door I opened, everything I used or moved, I was eliminating his presence, making him that little bit deader. On the other hand, how did that matter? He was dead. I took his jacket and hung it on the hook in the hall, the way I’d always nagged him to do.
    My mobile was on the shelf there and I saw I had a text message – and then that it was from Greg, and for a moment I felt as though someone had taken my heart in their two hands and wrung it out like a flannel. With thick fingers, I called it up. It had been sent yesterday, shortly after I’d got upset with him for staying later at the office than he’d promised, and it wasn’t very long: ‘Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. Im a stupid fool.’ I stared at the message, then pressed the phone against my cheek, as if there was a bit of him left behind in the message that could enter me.
    I took the coffee, his address book, my address book and a notebook and started to think of who I should call. I was immediately reminded of the party we had given earlier in the year, halfway between his birthday and mine. Same address books, same table and much the same sort of decisions. Who absolutely had to be invited? Who did we want? Who didn’t we want? If we invited X, we had to invite Y. If we invited A, we mustn’t invite B.
    I felt as if my mind wasn’t working properly and that I had to write everything down, so that I didn’t forget someone or ring someone twice. There were close friends I would have to try to reach before they left for work. First of all, though, I rang my parents once more, dreading the call but knowing they would both be there at that time of morning.
    My father answered and immediately called my mother so they were both on the line. Then they began telling me about a friend of theirs – did I remember Tony, who had just been diagnosed with diabetes and it was all because he ate too much, wasn’t that a ridiculous thing and why couldn’t people exercise control over their lives? I kept trying to interrupt them and finally managed to insert a loud