‘I want Marmite on my toast. Not Dairylea,’ Libby yelled downstairs at the top of her voice.
The day Christie’s life changed for ever, began just like any other. Her nine-year-old daughter was sulking on her bed.
Nick called up to her: ‘Darling, we don’t have Marmite. Mummy’s told you she’ll get some later. How about honey? Now, come and give your old dad a kiss goodbye, gorgeous girl.’
‘No.’ Libby already had a very definite mind of her own.
‘Well, you’ll have to go hungry, get weak and feeble, and you won’t be able to go out on your bike with me at the weekend.’
‘Don’t care.’
Christie came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea-towel. ‘Libby! Come down here right now and eat your breakfast or you’ll be late for school.’
‘I hate you.’
‘Don’t speak to Mummy like that, madam.’
And I hate you too.’
‘She’s definitely from your mother’s side.’ Nick slid an arm around Christie’s waist. ‘See you later, my beautiful, clever wife. Love you. ’Bye, Freddie.’ He kissed them both, and Christie watched the back of his familiar head as he walked away down the mews.
Her morning happened as every morning happened. Wrestling with Libby’s stubbornness, coaxing both kids into the car and getting them off to their schools. By nine forty-five she was back indoors and ready to clear the breakfast debris. It was then that the phone rang.
The rest of the day was filled with such pain that much of it she couldn’t recall. She had been told that Nick had died, suddenly, on the pavement two hundred yards from his office and that bystanders had attempted to revive him while calling for an ambulance. She remembered the hospital doctor: young, inexperienced at breaking this kind of bad news to a wife who needed to know exactly what had happened to her husband. ‘It was a pulmonary embolism,’ he explained. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’
How? Why? Why? Why?
At last she was taken to the mortuary, where Nick lay in a silent, nondescript room that she supposed had housed many corpses and heard many tears and farewells.
He was cold and gone from her, with a bruise on his cheek where he’d apparently hit the pavement. Had he been dead before he hit the ground? Had he had any warning?
She climbed up next to him and put her arms round him. He was cold. If only she could have closed her eyes and let go of her own life, right there and then, she would have. She stayed there, feeling utterly empty, hopeless. Her sane self stayed outside her body, looking down at the sad sight she made, lying next to him. Someone opened the door, asked if she was all right. Of course, she wasn’t bloody all right. She kissed Nick goodbye for the last time, then sat outside waiting to be told what to do next as she let the silent tears spill onto her coat.
Later, Fred stared at her, silent, his eyes big with incomprehension. Libby wailed, clinging to her as if she was the only life-raft in a stormy sea. ‘Mummy! I didn’t kiss him – I didn’t kiss him. I told him I hated him. It’s my fault. I love Daddy. I want him to come home.’
Libby’s grief was so huge and suffocating that Christie wanted to slap her, to shout at her. In more pain than she had ever experienced, what she wanted to say was right on the tip of her tongue: ‘Don’t you think I want him home too? He’s my husband. The