2 October
Where the hell is Scott?
I pound my interlocked hands onto Roy’s sternum, pressing deep and hard to circulate blood. Each time I release, the suction effect allows his ribs to recoil and fills the heart again.
Too late. Roy’s light has already ebbed. Wide and blue, with that unmistakable cataract gleam, his eyes stare clean through me. It’s no surprise when there turns out to be no electrical activity in his heart.
Despite this flatline, I carry on for Pat’s benefit. I want her to know that we’ve done everything we can.
She wavers in the living room doorway with one liver-spotted hand cupped over her mouth. My colleague Trevor makes gentle but fruitless attempts to coax her onto the sofa, in case her legs give out.
When life becomes extinct, there’s always shock. Makes no difference whether people deny the facts of mortality, or contemplate death on a regular basis, or even actively plan for death, right down to the grim nitty-gritty of graves and urns. None of this makes any difference at all. Because in the end, they never truly believed this day would come.
Hey, here’s an idea. What if Scott’s every bit as dead as Roy?
I pound on Roy some more. The grating of the ribs I’ve broken feels horrible, as it always does. But even worse, his face has become Scott’s face, because I’m a massive weirdo whose imagination is liable to run away with itself.
Scott goggles blindly up at me, his eyes two blown bulbs. A thick purple tongue lolls in his open mouth.
Pat finally plonks herself on the sofa. “He can’t do this, can he?” she says. “November’s our fiftieth. The pub’s booked. We paid the deposit in August.”
August. It’s been a little over four weeks since Scott asked me to move in. I told my landlord straight away, handed in my work notice and secured the transfer to Brighton. I’ve disposed of so many possessions that Marie Kondo herself would consider me hardcore.
Scott can’t be dead, can he? He’s only thirty-seven.
People die unexpectedly all the time, regardless of their age. If anyone knows this, it’s you.
That’s enough, brain. Any minute now Scott will text me back, so I must get my head back in the game. I have to maintain laser focus on Pat, whose husband really has died from a cardiac arrest in his late seventies.
Delivering one final compression to Roy’s chest, I feel yet another rib crack. Reality regains its grip on my sight, and Scott’s lifeless face becomes Roy’s once again.
Resting my backside against my heels, I swipe the back of one hand across my brow and claw at the collar of my shirt. This cheap polyester shit never gets any easier to work in.
Joining Pat on the sofa, I hold her parchment-paper hand, look her straight in the eye and say, “Pat, I’m afraid your husband has died. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Pat studies Roy’s corpse, which lies in the middle of the cramped living room where they’ve laughed, cried, watched TV and bitched at each other for so many years.
“Pat, would you like Trevor and me to move Roy through to your bedroom and cover him up on the bed until the police arrive?”
Her weathered face holds this frozen disappointment, like Roy’s genuinely let her down by failing to last until the big anniversary. By having forfeit that piddling deposit.
Everyone handles this in their own way.
Hey, why not tell Pat she can hold the wake in that pub instead?
I squeeze her hand. “Your husband’s moved on to a good place, sweetheart.”
Pat turns cold, appraising eyes on me. She says, “You don’t believe that. I can tell,” then returns her attention to Roy.
She’s right, of course. Despite having seen countless people die, I’ve never once sensed their spectral essence coil out of them, destined for Heaven, Hell, Valhalla or anywhere else.
The sorry truth is, dead people resemble complex biological systems that have ground to a random and sometimes ugly halt. What we humans think of as our minds, it’s all electricity. All our thoughts, desires and funniest jokes, they’re just lightning bolts, bouncing around inside a bag of meat.
“I do believe,” I tell her. “I really do.”
When Pat does not respond, I abandon these lies and offer to make tea. There’s always time for a quick brew when someone’s died. Trevor takes my place beside her as I disappear into a kitchen that smells of cooked sausages and fried onions. What would have been Roy’s final meal cools and congeals in two pans on the hob.
Once the kettle’s on, I feel the burning urge to check my phone. If Scott had texted, I would have felt the vibration against my hip, but I want to check anyway. This kind of compulsive behaviour feels dangerously like my old, bad ways. I really should restrict myself to one check per hour, max, but this is no ordinary day. This is the end of my life here in Leeds and the start of my life with Scott down in Brighton, so I decide to consult my old Nokia once again.
The tiny screen glows into life, opening a restricted window onto the world. This antiquated device shows me calls, texts, low-res photos and little more. Bare bones.
Still no reply from Scott.
He’s probably had second thoughts about this whirlwind romance – and can you blame him? If you were Scott, would you honestly want to live with some tedious Miss Average who comes home every night smelling of blood and sick?
I remind myself yet again that it’s only been seventeen hours since his last text. This is by far the longest we’ve ever gone without comms in the four months since we met, but there’s got to be a perfectly good reason.
There had fucking better be. What a truly weird time for him to drop out of contact.
Don’t you dare ghost me on the day before I move in with you, Scott Palmer.
Don’t. You. Dare.
Steam gushes from the kettle spout. The urgent bubble of hot water makes me feel panicked, so I switch off the kettle before it hits the boil, and I make the widow her tea.