IN THE MORNING, ALEXANDRA called Abbie, and asked Abbie exactly where the body had lain when she found it. She’d assumed it was between the table and the window, but on no real grounds, she could now see. Abbie said Alexandra should try to forget this kind of detail: wasn’t it better to be vague about the matter, especially since presumably Alexandra would go on living in The Cottage with Sascha and there was no question of selling? Though, if Alexandra did, Abbie and Arthur would be interested in buying: they might sell Elder House and give up the language school altogether: if she, Abbie, turned her back for a moment all hell broke loose. But Alexandra must not, must not, believe Abbie grudged Alexandra a moment of her, Abbie’s, stay at The Cottage after Ned’s death, it was the least she could do for her friend. She shouldn’t even have mentioned “grudge”: of course it wasn’t in her head. Consider that last unsaid, cancel, cancel. Only five days since the death but it seemed like years.
“Why should someone die of a heart attack?” asked Alexandra. “Just like that? Wouldn’t something have to happen to set it off?” Abbie said she didn’t know. There was hardly anything death-inducing in the first ten minutes of Casablanca. She repeated that Alexandra should stop brooding over the detail, forget the past, and get on with living. Had she had any more trouble with Jenny Linden? Alexandra said she hadn’t. Abbie said she thought Alexandra should return the address book and diary: otherwise Jenny Linden might get yet more obsessive and send in the police. What, as a matter of interest, was in the books?
“Nothing much,” said Alexandra. “What you would expect from someone with such a little life.”
There was a short silence and then Abbie said, “You shouldn’t talk about people like that, Alexandra. As if you were something special but they were nothing. I can see people could get infuriated.”
Alexandra was hurt. She supposed that if you didn’t have a husband to add a kind of veracity to your life, to bolster up your opinions—well, opinions that you and your husband shared; a general world-outlook, as it were, acquired over time—you might well find yourself under attack. She and Ned together were entitled to a general superiority, an assumption of centrality in relation to those around, but on her own it was a different matter.
“I just mean,” said Abbie, “that Jenny could cause a lot of trouble, so please go carefully. Don’t stir things up, Alexandra, if you can help it.”
“What sort of trouble?” asked Alexandra. “Who’s going to believe her?”
“You know what people are,” said Abbie.
“I’m beginning to,” said Alexandra, and Abbie had to go because one of the students had spilled calligraphy ink over the tablecloth. The student had been making her, Abbie, a Happy Cherry Blossom card to demonstrate the tender customs of the Japanese in their home country as compared to the brutality of other nations abroad. It was just a pity she was doing it on a white tablecloth.
Alexandra called Vilna.
“Vilna,” she said. “I think I’m being given the run-around by Abbie.”
Vilna said if that was the case it was only for Alexandra’s good. Abbie adored Alexandra. Alexandra asked Vilna where exactly in the dining room the body had been when she arrived at The Cottage and Vilna said Alexandra should think about the future not the past and start life again. Abbie had put a blanket over the corpse; she, Vilna, had never seen a dead body: that’s why she’d had to go down to the morgue to see it without its blanket.
“I hope you enjoyed the sight,” said Alexandra, and slammed down the phone. Then she had to call Vilna back to apologise. A friend was a friend. Vilna said it was okay: the English had such a funny view of death it kept surprising her but she was adjusting to it. Would Alexandra like to use her house for the party?
“Party?” asked Alexandra.
“After the funeral,” said Vilna. “I think you call it a wake.”
Alexandra accepted the offer.