Don’t get maudlin, she told herself, sternly, and then another thought popped into her head. She could phone Andrew Dyer. With a renewed energy, she thumbed through her contacts.
‘Hello, Karen? What’s up?’
‘Hi, Andrew. I …’ How to say it? She hadn’t thought of this before picking up the phone. ‘Um. I wanted to talk about Alex, actually, if you’ve got a few minutes.’
‘Right.’
Even from that one word, she could tell he was taken aback, but there was something else there too.
‘I’m actually wrapping up a meeting just now. Err … do you want to meet up, maybe go for dinner? We’ve not caught up in a while.’
‘Yes, okay. As long as Tash is in to keep an eye on Callie, I can do most nights. When were you thinking? Later this week works.’
*
He’d picked an upmarket Thai place, which boasted pale wood and expensive-looking art in place of the usual rhinestones and buddhas. The front of the restaurant was crowded and bustling, but a waitress had led her to one of the high-backed upholstered booths that lined the back wall. It had been a bit of a trek for Karen to come so far east, but it was near his offices. Andrew had set up an online furniture retail business years ago, and after steady initial growth it had exploded in the last couple of years. It seemed impolite to ask in anything but the vaguest terms but, given that the TV ad was now appearing all over the evening schedules, she could only assume that business was booming.
She saw him come through the door and took a moment to observe him whilst he waited to speak to a member of staff. There was a trace of the old jazzman cool about him. He had remained slim and a charcoal grey suit fell sleekly from his elegant frame. The silver showing in his dark hair did nothing to detract from his svelte good looks, but where she remembered a tanned complexion his face now carried the pallor of someone who spent little time outdoors.
When she’d seen enough, she waved him over, accepting his kiss on the cheek and his flustered apology for being five minutes late.
‘Will you have a drink?’ he said, pushing the wine list across the table. ‘I always go for lager with anything spicy, so don’t worry about me.’
‘Actually, I think I’ll join you. It’s been ages since I had a nice cold beer.’
He ordered swiftly, checking quickly with her before telling the waitress they’d share a banquet for two.
‘Saves picking,’ he explained. ‘So, tell me what’s going on. Why on earth did you want to see me about Alex?’
His bonhomie had evaporated. He didn’t add ‘this had better be good’ but that was the clear message she took from his tone and the flint-hard look in his eyes. Suddenly the drive and decisiveness that he must possess to have become so successful was laid out on show. There was something vulpine about him.
She took a deep breath and pulled out her tablet. Wordlessly, she keyed in the passcode, tapped open the saved screenshot and slid it across the table to him.
He gazed at it, seemingly impassive, for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity.
‘I think I need that beer.’
‘You see it too then?’
By way of answer, his hand travelled up to his temples, mirroring the posture of the woman in the background of the picture. Karen didn’t need to see the tablet – the arch of the woman’s arm, half-raised, her fingers brushing her forehead as if to smooth away some stray, invisible hairs, was etched on her brain.
‘She used to do that all the time. If she was anxious, or just uncertain. She was so polished, you know, always looking perfect, knowing exactly what to say, but when you got to know her there was so much vulnerability underneath.’
Andrew was right, now she came to think of it; she’d forgotten that tic of grazing her forehead with her fingertips, which had been one of Alex’s characteristic gestures.
‘Could it be her?’ she asked, her voice a whisper. ‘It’s not a twenty-year-old who looks like she did then. This is the grown-up version, though it’s hard to guess if the ages match because of all that dust. I just can’t imagine anyone else being so like her, in so many ways. Right down to that gesture, like you say.’
Just then the waitress arrived with two frosted bottles of Singha. Andrew took his time – and a long draught of the lager – before he answered her.
‘You know, there’s nothing I’d like more than to believe it could be her.’ He spoke to the bottle in his hand more than to Karen. ‘I know we were only twenty-one, twenty-two, but she was the one for me. I’ve never had anything like that in my life since.’
‘I do understand,’ she said, softly. ‘I know how it feels to lose a partner.’
‘Of course you do, and I wouldn’t for a moment take away from what happened to Jonathan. That was a tragedy and you had the girls’ grief to deal with too. But …’ she watched his face crease with the effort of trying to express himself, ‘… I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. I don’t want you to feel like I’m diminishing your suffering or trying to be competitive.’
‘No, no, of course not. I’ve known you long enough that I’d never think that of you.’
She reached out to place a reassuring hand on his forearm and was rewarded with a smile of relief. It struck her as the most heartfelt expression she’d seen on his face that evening.
‘The thing is that when Jonathan died, everyone around you recognised your loss. That it was something horrendous, huge … and that you needed and deserved every bit of support they could give you.’
She nodded, not entirely sure where he was going, but sensing that she couldn’t hurry him, she just had to let him try to explain in his own way. He rubbed at his forehead and opened a button on his shirt. It was clearly difficult for him to talk about Alex’s death, despite the length of time that had passed.
‘Well …’ he continued, carefully, ‘it wasn’t like that for me when Alex died.’
His explanation was cut off by the waitress arriving laden with their starters. She fussed for a couple of minutes, clearing the table of its flower arrangement and candles and naming a variety of dishes as she set down the ornate little bowls. They waited in silence, save for the odd muttered ‘thank you’ and when the waitress was finally ready to depart, Karen found that she didn’t want to be the one to break it. When Andrew spoke, his voice was strained with emotion, and his words were unexpected.
‘There isn’t a formula, you know, for losing the love of your life at twenty-one. I didn’t know what was expected of me. I certainly didn’t know what I should expect of them. Alex’s family … it felt like they closed round like … I don’t know … like a flock of vultures or something. I was on the outside. All I got was sharp pecks to keep me away.’
He held up one hand and mimed a vicious avian attack, managing to laugh, in spite of himself. Karen wondered with a jolt whether he’d ever given himself the chance to talk about these painful memories before now and felt a weight of responsibility on her shoulders.
‘What about your own family – surely they would have been there for you?’
He shook his head. ‘They