Emily wants her mother to reassure her; she wants her to say that this is normal police procedure after a traffic accident. After all, Greg died in this crash. And Emily was driving. She has been trying to shut that thought out, but she knows the grief and guilt will catch up with her.
Instead Josephine says, ‘I thought you couldn’t remember what happened. What’s the point in bothering you about it?’
‘Sergeant Campbell said she wanted to follow up a report by a witness.’
‘I still don’t see how you can help with your amnesia.’
Josephine pulls out a chair and sits down opposite her daughter at the kitchen table.
‘I’m not really suffering from amnesia, Mum,’ Emily says, avoiding her mother’s eyes and staring instead at the mark left by her mug on the table. She puts her mug down, placing it exactly inside the wet circle. ‘I’ve just blanked out the accident itself and what Greg and I were argu…um…talking about. That’s all.’
‘What did they say about that at the hospital? Will you get your memory back?’
‘I haven’t lost my…’ Emily begins, but gives up mid-sentence. Unbidden, the image of her car about to crash into a tree replays in Emily’s mind. She blinks and focuses on her hands gripping the mug. ‘They said it might be due to the concussion, or, more likely, the emotional trauma of the accident. I may never remember exactly what happened in the car. According to the doctors, that may be just as well.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s not the first time you’ve forgotten something important.’
Emily snaps her head up and looks into her mother’s cold, blue eyes. They appear magnified behind her glasses, but Josephine’s expression is inscrutable. Emily thinks she knows what her mother was referring to with that barb, but she doesn’t know what reaction she was hoping to provoke, so she ignores it.
‘And it’s not the first time the police have questioned you about a suspicious death.’ Emily is still holding her mother’s gaze and it takes her a split second to realise Josephine hasn’t spoken. This remark has come from a voice in her own head. Deep down, this is what she’s afraid of. What if Campbell and Constable don’t think it was an accident? If they find out anything about my past, anything at all, they won’t believe me, no matter what I tell them, she thinks.
Emily sighs. She feels irritable and overwhelmed. Her mother opens her mouth to say something, but Emily doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to talk any more.
‘Mum, I think I’ll go and take a shower and then sleep for a while,’ she says, adding, ‘if that’s all right with you.’
‘Yes, that’s fine, Emily. I’ll potter around down here and make something for dinner later.’ Josephine slurps her tea loudly. Then she gets up to busy herself in the kitchen as Emily leaves the room.
Minutes later, as Emily lathers her body with soap under the scalding jet of the shower, she wonders how long her mother plans to stay. She immediately berates herself. Her mother is trying to be helpful. And, anyway, does she really want to be alone right now? As she rinses the shampoo from her hair, a line from the end of Perfect Blue Buildings, one of her favourite songs by The Counting Crows, comes into her head. But she can’t think of the tune.
Stepping into the master bedroom from the en suite bathroom, she notices Greg’s red jumper. It’s slung over the back of the antique chair next to his side of the bed. He wore it recently when they went out as it was rather chilly for a summer’s evening. They ate at a nice restaurant, then went to a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre. A few bars from the Schubert Sonata that the pianist performed begin to play in Emily’s head. She and Greg both thoroughly enjoyed themselves. When they arrived home, Emily recalls, Greg wanted to make love, but Emily pretended to be too tired. She regrets that now.
She wraps the towel around her head, pinning up her shoulder-length hair, and walks over to the wooden armchair to pick up his jumper. She buries her face in it and inhales deeply. She feels weak as she breathes in Greg’s cologne mixed with the faint scent of the laundry detergent that he liked her to use to wash his woollen jumpers. There’s also the odour of beeswax and polish that permeated all of Greg’s clothing. It’s a smell Emily would usually find comforting, but in this instant it symbolises everything she has just lost. Her legs give way beneath her and she sinks onto the worn, unwelcoming cushion of the chair.
In spite of herself, Emily presses the jumper harder against her face and breathes in again. This time she can detect the hint of a more floral fragrance. She stiffens as a memory hovers at the back of her mind, but it stays stubbornly out of reach. The smell is vaguely familiar, but disturbing at the same time. As the towel slips from her hair, releasing her chestnut curls, she tells herself it’s just her conditioner, her own smell mixing with that of her husband. Her late husband. Tears start to stream down her cheeks as she clings to the jumper, rocking her body backwards and forwards.
Emily doesn’t remember getting up from the chair, but when she wakes up an hour or so later, she finds she’s lying in her dressing gown on Greg’s side of the bed, still clutching his sweater. She gingerly raises herself to a sitting position, grimacing. She stays on the bed, in a daze, gently rubbing the faded scars on her right forearm with the fingertips of her left hand. It’s an unconscious gesture and as soon as she realises she’s doing it, she stops and tugs her sleeve down. She can hear the muffled noises her mother is making in the kitchen downstairs, but she doesn’t want to join her just yet.
Scanning her bedroom, she notices that most of the things in it are hers. Her paintings are displayed on the walls; her perfume bottles, hairbrushes and make-up are on the dressing table; her ornaments are lined up neatly on the shelves. The antique armchair, on which Greg’s clothes were always strewn, was his. She has always found it ugly and uncomfortable, but suddenly she feels fond of it.
Her eyes fall on her MacBook Pro on top of the chest of drawers. Greg bought it for her because she wasn’t very computer-literate and he said it was user-friendly. But really Josh, the computer whizz she’s employing to set up a website for her artwork, uses her laptop more than she does.
Emily remembers how much Greg had loved new technology. He and his friend Charles would sometimes talk about computers for hours on end, which she found intensely annoying. Thinking how much she would love to listen in on one of those conversations now, a lump comes to her throat. She remembers spending evenings sitting next to her husband, losing herself in the novels on her Kindle while Greg, who had never been much of a reader, was on his laptop or smartphone replying to emails or searching for antiques on the Internet or catching up with friends on Facebook. She makes an effort not to start crying again.
It dawns on her that although all of Greg’s close friends and family know he has lost his life in a car crash, several of his old classmates from school won’t have heard about it. Now she comes to think of it, many of his work contacts won’t know either. She decides to type a short message on Facebook to tell them. She brings her laptop over to the bed, props up the pillows behind her and, sitting with her legs out straight and the computer on her thighs, she boots it up. She knows Greg’s password, so she brings up his account. She mulls over each sentence, but in the end she’s satisfied with her announcement.
It is with deep sadness that I inform you that my husband Greg passed away on 1st August following a road accident. His funeral was held last week. I’m very grateful for the support I’ve received at this tragic time. Emily Klein.
Although she doesn’t go on Facebook much, Emily does have an account, and she tags herself so that the message will appear on her Timeline, too. Wondering if some people will find an obituary on Facebook distasteful, she hesitates briefly. Then she posts her comment, logs out of Greg’s account and connects to her own to check that the message has appeared on her Facebook wall.
Just as she has logged in, she hears the four notes of the message notification sound. She clicks to open the message. The