The room was half full by the time Jess arrived. Pale beneath her tan, her once fitting black dress hung loosely from her shoulders. She was just grateful to have found the energy to shower and wash her hair. It had been a whole other exercise to apply her makeup and she had given up after putting on mascara. As long as she didn’t smell, Jess didn’t care what she looked like.
It was a plain room, white walls, wooden floor, no pictures, no windows, a long table at the front and rows of chairs separated by a central aisle, occupying the main area; it was the conference room next to Andrew’s favourite café. Outside more people were milling around the entrance, unwilling to commit to going indoors on such a warm day. Most looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun for a while. Predominantly male, young, wearing glasses and with carefully tended beards, some were vaping, others were chatting in small groups. A few wandered around alone, circling the groups unused to making eye contact with real human beings — the socially phobic. The last thing Jess felt like doing was making small talk with people she didn’t know and who didn’t know her.
It had been Henry’s idea to have a memorial service. She’d been against it, telling him it was too soon, that she’d only just got back. She tried to tell him she hadn’t had time to process the nightmare her honeymoon had proved to be — let alone Andrew’s death. She had pleaded with him to wait for a week, but he wouldn’t budge. He said the sooner it was over and done with the sooner they could all move on. Andrew’s death had been a shock to him too, but he had responsibilities to the business and more importantly to the clients, which transcended all feelings — hers included.
Vaultange, the cryptocurrency exchange which Andrew had founded and run with Henry’s help, needed direction, he told her. The wedding and the honeymoon had created a hiatus not only in day-to-day operations but in leadership — as well as direction. A line had to be drawn. A memorial service where the crypto-community could come together, acknowledge Andrew and pay their respects was required and it couldn’t wait. Her feelings were important, but so was the business. Why couldn’t she understand?
Jess had stopped arguing then. Worn out and worn down, she gave in only to make him shut up and go away. She didn’t have the strength to hold out against him. She hadn’t slept for days. She still couldn’t take in what had happened —let alone believe it. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe it couldn’t wait.
Henry Turner, Andrew’s oldest, closest friend and his best man, had worked at Vaultange as a business partner/associate/employee from the beginning. Jess had never figured out what he did. Andrew had never specified, other than to say, client liaison. What that meant, she had no idea.
Henry used to arrive at the penthouse apartment in a building on the Auckland waterfront every morning at eight o’clock. They either worked there or went downstairs to their table in Café Pierre, the first in a line of cafes and restaurants looking across the promenade to the marinas in the Viaduct Basin. They would flip open their laptops and go about their tasks, fuelled by a continuous stream of coffee. At twelve p.m., they had lunch, talked over the day’s business and went their separate ways, staying in contact by phone, then meeting up again for dinner. After dinner they carried on working until nine or ten p.m. At least that’s what they did on a typical day. Until Jess moved in. The routine changed when she arrived, and it didn’t take long for her to find out Henry wasn’t pleased.
She took the seat directly in front of Andrew’s photo. She stared at it, remembering how happy she’d been on the day it was taken. They’d returned from a drive to Buckland’s Beach to find Henry waiting for them in front of the apartment building. Andrew leapt out of the car before she turned off the engine; he was so eager to tell Henry where they’d been. Almost tripping over the curb then laughing at his clumsiness, before he embraced his friend. A day in the sunshine had bestowed a healthy glow to his natural pallor, and Andrew looked invigorated — alive. Henry had taken the photo of the two of them that afternoon, when all was well, when they were still getting to know each other. Today Jess had been cropped out. ‘For the service,’ Henry said.
Jess looked down at her hands as tears pricked her eyes and she hoped it would be over quickly. All she wanted to do was to escape back to the apartment and bed. Bed was the only place she felt safe. She could lie there, staring at the ceiling, pretending none of this was real. That any moment Andrew would walk through the door and take her in his arms and kiss her. In the silence, she could make believe he was in the other room, pouring them a glass of wine before he called out to her. Hearing his voice, she would get up and walk to the kitchen. There he would be, smiling when he saw her, and the world would be right again. In bed, she could close her eyes and hear him breathing beside her, she could feel his touch as he reached for her. In bed she could pretend he hadn’t died, and that her world hadn’t descended into nothingness.
When Henry came and sat beside her she jumped as his hand reached across to cover hers. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
She turned. The room was full. Every seat occupied by someone looking at her. ‘Just a minute,’ she whispered.
In the days following Andrew’s death, in a country where she knew no one, Jess had coped with a bombardment of official forms in a language she didn’t understand. For some odd reason she remembered Andrew telling her he wanted to be cremated, not buried. He’d said cremation was better for the environment. That was what he planned to do with his mother’s body when she died. When it came to the actual decision Jess couldn’t have cared less about the environment. All she wanted to do was to come home and bring her husband with her. Cremation was the best of the horrible options available. She saw no sense in transporting his body back to New Zealand, only for him to be cremated there. She had stood alone and watched his coffin being slid into the hole, jumping back when the furnace erupted ferociously in flames. She waited, unable to cry, barely able to move as the steel door descended in front of the roaring flames with a clang. Later at the hotel she had numbly accepted the wooden box containing his still warm ashes.
The cabin crew left her alone on the flight home. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming. No one met her at the airport. She caught a taxi to the apartment, dumped her bags in their bedroom, went straight to bed and lay there staring at the wooden box on the pillow beside her. She hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten for two days. She had only got up to shower and change when Henry informed her he was coming to talk to her.
Now, in this room filled with strangers, she had to force herself to stay put, force herself not to run. The mutterings of restless people grew louder behind her. The doors at the back were open, but it was a hot day and the air conditioner laboured noisily in the background. She knew she had to say something, explain, but her mouth was dry, and she didn’t know if she could stand up. She looked across the row of seats at Andrew’s mother in her wheelchair, staring around uncomprehendingly, tugging now and then at her nurse’s sleeve, whispering loudly that she wanted to go back to school.
Andrew had introduced Jess to his mother after he proposed. Henry was with them — he was always with them. The meeting hadn’t gone well. She was only fifty-eight and with the early onset Alzheimer’s, his mother didn’t recognize her only child. Worse, she’d accused him of taking her money and keeping her in this prison against my will — over and over again. They left. Andrew wished he’d never come and said there was no point in going back. He had arranged for his mother to go into care when his father had died, but Andrew, uncomfortable with old age, had barely visited her. No wonder she didn’t know who he was, Jess thought and silently castigated herself for being uncharitable. She wondered whose bright idea it had been to bring her to the memorial service. The poor woman didn’t even know she had a son, much less understand that he was dead.
As Jess’s fists gripped the speech she had prepared, it turned into a mush of sweaty paper in her hands. She hoped the dampness under her armpits wasn’t seeping through her dress. When she heard a woman cough she turned. Carole waved from the back of the room, nodding encouragement as she placed her hand across her heart.
Jess breathed out, releasing the tension she hadn’t known was there from her ribcage. Carole, her old flatmate, her friend hadn’t let her down. A research nurse at the hospital, they had lived together, with Jess moving into Carole’s spare room two years before. The woman was crazy, fun, hardworking and kind. Knowing she was here today supporting her, gave Jess the courage to do what she had to do — speak about Andrew.
When she stood and faced the room Jess was grateful when she recognised a few familiar faces in the crowd. Ross Martin, Andrew’s lawyer, was sitting in the row behind hers. Sitting beside him was Suzie, the manager from their apartment building. The Prof was there too, standing at the back wearing a suit, looking solemn, but he brightened when she caught his eye. He was so busy and yet he’d made the time to come.
The people in the room waited in silence for her to speak. At the back, with her hand still on her heart, Carole mouthed, ‘You can do it.’
Abandoning the speech she’d prepared, Jess put the crumbled pages on the table next to Andrew’s photo. She introduced herself, then thanked them for coming. ‘Andrew proposed six weeks after we met,’ Jess said. ‘You knew him. I couldn’t say no. He didn’t understand the meaning of the word. And I didn’t want to. The short time we had together was the happiest months of my life. He was the most intelligent man I have ever met and we spent every waking hour together talking about everything. We had so many plans. We were so in love.’
Jess looked across the room at Carole who nodded for her to go on. ‘I felt so helpless when he got sick. There was no warning. One moment, he was well and the next, he was desperately ill. I’m a doctor. I couldn’t do anything. We were far away from help, from the care he needed. We were alone and dependent on people I didn’t know to save him. He was too sick.’ Her voice faded. She twisted her hands in front of her, her fingers bending back on themselves, white where they were normally pink. No one moved, the room was quiet. After what seemed like hours, she looked up.
‘It’s been a shock,’ she said. ‘I am trying my best to make sense of it. I loved him. I miss him.’
Some rubbed tears from their eyes while others searched their pockets for tissues. There was a lot of nose blowing and shuffling in seats when she finished — with the exception of one man. Dressed formally in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, eyes half-closed and arms folded in front of him, he had taken off his sunglasses and his gaze remained fixed on her throughout her speech. He looked like a gangster from an old black and white movie except for one facet of his appearance. He had outrageous eyelashes — thick, black and long, they were incongruously gorgeous on an otherwise ugly man. Inexplicably, she felt nothing but relief when later she saw him leave.
Henry stood up next. An accomplished speaker and raconteur he spoke confidently about Andrew the businessman, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur, the tech visionary who in 2013 had been converted to the potential of digital currency.
‘Andrew was one of the first certified Bitcoin professionals in New Zealand. When he started Vaultange five years ago, few people had even heard of Bitcoin — much less believed it had a future. The banks treated him as a maverick, an outlier. Typically, Andrew carried on regardless, backing himself to the hilt.’
Henry described how he met Andrew at school and how they stayed friends, meeting up again when Andrew returned from overseas in 2013, when the buzz around Bitcoin was starting to build. He described being seduced by Andrew’s devotion to the idea of a currency without geo-political boundaries and with the potential to be the digital equivalent of gold. There were murmurs and head nodding around the room. ‘Andrew’s enthusiasm was infectious,’ Henry said. ‘When he asked for my support to set up Vaultange I had nothing else to do. Of course, I said yes. No one said no — to Andrew.’
‘Vaultange,’ Henry continued, ‘was never going to be a fly-by-night operation, set up to take people’s money only to disappear as so many exchanges did back then. Andrew worked hard. We both worked hard. But Andrew was the key to gaining the trust of our clients. His brilliance meant client numbers have grown exponentially as has the total value of the crypto-assets under management. He had big plans for the world he could see coming. When I say Zuckerberg, and the Chinese, you’ll know what I’m referring to.’ More head nodding and murmurs took place around the room.
‘Andrew was a genius in his field.’ He paused. ‘And a born klutz on any sports field — indoors and out.’
Jess laughed then. As did everyone else.
‘He was a man with vision and integrity who worked hard to do his best, putting the needs of others before his own, despite his serious health issues. Things were on the up, Vaultange was doing well. He was on new medication, wasn’t he professor?’ Jess turned to look behind her and saw the Prof caught out, and nod without thinking.
‘In remission for the first time in years,’ Henry said, ‘he had just married the woman he loved. His death, so unexpected, is a tragedy and he will be missed.’
With that Henry walked over to Jess and held out his hand. She had to take it. She stood up and was immediately wrapped in Henry’s tight embrace. The room was quiet. A few people started clapping, others unsure if this was appropriate, checked themselves. Henry let her go, but still holding her hand, announced drinks and food would be served next door.
Chairs scraped the floor as people stood up, some coming forward to offer quiet condolences to Jess before moving across to shake Henry’s hand. Two men, both with beards introduced themselves to her, recounting stories of the hapless Andrew and his disastrous exploits on sports fields. One told her how much Andrew had given to charity, something Jess hadn’t known but which didn’t surprise her.
Carole appeared at her side wearing a black dress and jacket. Her dark hair caught up in her usual high ponytail, her trademark red lipstick carefully applied, the black which made her looked slimmer, suited her. ‘I knew you could do it,’ she said as she hugged her friend.
‘Only because you were here,’ Jess said grateful to her friend for giving her a reason to move away.
‘Of course, I’m here.’ As she held Jess by the shoulders Carole looked her up and down. ‘When did you last eat? Or sleep?’
‘No idea. I go to bed, but my mind keeps going. I can’t stop thinking about him and if I try to eat, I feel sick.’
‘If you don’t eat, you will be.’
‘Not now. I’m the hostess. I have to do the hostess thing and circulate.’
‘Sure, but only after you’ve eaten. Sit down. Don’t move.’
Jess knew when she was beaten. She sat down, closed her eyes and woke seconds later with a start to Carole standing beside her, a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of food in the other.
‘Eat,’ Carole ordered.
Suddenly hungry, Jess wolfed down two sausage rolls, and a club sandwich. She finished the coffee and looked at Carole with a clear head for the first time in days. ‘Thanks. You’re a good friend.’
‘Always,’ Carole replied. ‘Now, go next door and circulate. They want to meet the woman who won Andrew’s heart.’