I’ve taken a few weeks off work. They don’t quibble over long-term illness or bereavement. If you’re off with a stomach bug, there’s no end of enquiry. Questions about the exact nature of the sickness, how long you had it, what you took for it and how you’re feeling now. But mention death and everyone falls silent. No questions asked.
You hear about people who can’t bear to enter the rooms of the dead, who can’t bring themselves to touch anything that once belonged to their lost loved ones. People whose grief is so great that they seal the door of the deceased’s room and leave everything just as it is, for years, as a kind of shrine.
But I haven’t been able to get Kathryn to leave Robert’s bedroom. Since the funeral, she sits in there every day, lost in his sea of blue. I wait downstairs in the living room, a mug of tea going cold on the table in front of me, and listen to her footsteps above. I hear the springs of the bed moan as she sits herself down on his duvet. I hear the creak of his wardrobe door, and I imagine her reaching in to touch his jumpers, shirts, socks, again. I hear the groan of his drawers as she opens each one, and I picture her flicking through his sketchbooks, looking for something she hasn’t seen before.
Yesterday, I heard her close and lock Robert’s door behind her. She slid the bolt home, and I sat all afternoon, listening
to the sounds of my wife in our dead son’s bedroom. I sat and listened, and, outside, it snowed. I didn’t notice this until
it was quite dark and I’d stood up to draw the curtains. A thick layer of white had fallen over my garden. Even the stumps
of my roses were covered. The reflection of the street light on the snow cast a yellowy light over everything in the living
room, and I stood for a moment, looking back at my own imprint in the cushions of the chair where I’d sat all afternoon, and
I heard the bed springs above me moan again, and I knew that she would spend the night in his bed.
In the morning, I knock on the door of his bedroom, and there’s no response.
‘Kathryn,’ I say. ‘Can I come in?’
I hear the bed springs go. After a few moments, she slides the bolt over and cracks open the door.
‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come in?’
She sighs and rests her head on the doorframe. Her hair sticks out to the side. I think of our son’s cockatoo touch. She closes her eyes and her dark lashes rest on her cheeks. Her cheeks seem dark, now, too. They have a hollow look.
‘Why do you want to come in?’ Her voice is a quiet monotone.
For a second I feel a terrible urge to shake her.
‘Please,’ I say.
She turns and sits on the bed, leaving the door open. She’s wearing her maroon dressing gown. It has a zip all the way up the front and an embroidered tulip on the pocket. I chose it for her years ago, thinking of the book on tulips that she’d held to her chest on the day we’d had our first real conversation in the library.
I look around the blue room. Robert’s old Midland Bank schoolbag is still crumpled in the corner. A pile of glossy, brightly coloured magazines is stacked by the bed. His two brushes are on the table, beneath his mirror, leaking dark hairs. The woman standing on the shell looks down blankly from the wall.
I bring the model Somua tank from behind my back and place it on his bedside table. I’d left it in my coat pocket for weeks, not knowing what to do with it.
‘I wanted to return this,’ I say.
We both stare at the khaki plastic.
‘Do you remember that day?’ I ask her. ‘The day at the Tank Museum?’
She looks at me.
‘You waited for us in a café. I took him round those awful tanks. And all the time, I wished you were there with us.’
She lifts the model tank and weighs it in her hands. She turns it slowly, examining the tyre treads, the cockpit, the gun. She peers at the tiny face of the soldier. With one finger, she flicks the turret round and round. There isn’t a chip or a scratch on it. It is still perfect, despite being painted almost twelve years ago.
‘I wished you were there, Kathryn.’
She puts the tank in her lap, covers it with her fist, and closes her eyes.
After a moment, I crouch down before her and place my hands on her knees. Through the soft maroon material that covers almost every inch of her, I can feel a slight warmth.
Then Kathryn lays a hand on my head. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know.’