Forget Her Name(5)

I kneel on the rug beside him. ‘Fuck.’

‘Nobody even noticed.’ He throws an arm across his eyes. ‘She’d been dead maybe twenty minutes, half an hour, before anyone even thought to check she was still breathing.’

I lean my forehead on his shoulder. My heart aches for him. And for the old lady.

‘This fucking government . . .’ He kicks the far end of the sofa, and there’s a distinct crack. ‘Shit, sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ I stroke his hair, trying to communicate how sorry I am without being mawkish. Dominic distrusts sentimentality; he says it clouds the important issues, that love is better without pity in the mix. ‘What was her name?’

‘Ida,’ he tells me after a long pause. ‘Her name was Mrs Ida Matthews, a widow. And she had a son, and three grandchildren.’

‘Weren’t they with her at the hospital?’

‘On a winter holiday, she said. Two weeks’ bloody skiing in the Alps.’

I tense, pushing away a sudden vision of Swiss chalets against a backdrop of snowy mountains . . .

‘That’s awful.’

‘I left Sally trying to find a number for their hotel.’ He gives a croak of humourless laughter. ‘If I hadn’t spent so long talking to her, we wouldn’t even have known about them. She could have been lying unclaimed in the morgue for days.’

‘You did your best.’

‘Oh yes, I did my bloody best. No one can blame me. Or the doctor. Or the system. We were all doing our best under difficult circumstances, that’s what the report will say.’

Dominic sits up suddenly, knocking me away. His eyes are damp and bloodshot. He stares at nothing, his face grim, then turns his head towards me and says, ‘Sorry,’ without actually meeting my gaze. ‘You’re only trying to help, and I’m being shitty. Come on.’ Standing, he holds out a hand to me. ‘Let’s make supper together. I’ll do us chicken pasta. You can tell me about your day.’

I think about my day, and my smile falters. ‘You’re too tired.’

‘I insist.’ He pulls me up effortlessly, six foot of pure brawn, and kisses me again, this time a lingering kiss that leaves me warm and aching. ‘Mmm, you’re so good to come home to. I love this.’ His fingers play with my short, ash-blonde hair. ‘Soft hair, soft skin . . .’ His hand slips down to my behind. ‘Soft bumps.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

To his credit, Dominic gives an embarrassed laugh. ‘Curves, then. Though I like to think of them as bumps.’

‘You mean like speed bumps?’

‘Quite the opposite effect. Your bumps make me go faster, not slower.’

I grin at that, and kiss him back. My lips part and his tongue slips between them, probing delicately. I know what he’s asking and don’t pull away, slipping a hand down between our bodies. I take my time, my eyes shut tight, concentrating on him. It’s the perfect distraction.

He starts to harden against my fingers, and his breathing quickens.

‘Yes,’ he mutters.

We don’t make it to the bedroom. He makes love to me right there on the sofa, from behind, while I’m bent over, gasping. I don’t know where he finds the energy, after his long shift at work. I close my eyes and try to close off from that other world. The one with eyeballs, and parcels from anonymous ill-wishers. Despite his fatigue, he makes love to me with a familiar, almost violent urgency that often accompanies days when he’s witnessed a death at the hospital.

Afterwards, Dominic lies panting beside me.

‘You didn’t come,’ he says.

It’s not a question. All the same, I consider lying. Avoiding all the fuss by pretending he missed it in the rush of his own orgasm. But a greedy little voice in my head won’t let me. Instead, I whisper, ‘It doesn’t matter’, and wait.

‘Of course it matters.’ His hand pushes between my legs, bold and insistent, as I secretly hoped it would.

‘What about the pasta?’

‘Fuck the pasta.’

I stifle my cries against the cushions, my face hot and flushed, my legs shaking as though after some traumatic incident.

Dominic always seems to know what I need, physically. It’s his gift, I tell him in a hoarse voice, but he’s already moving away and doesn’t hear me.

I consider showing him the snow globe.

But then I decide against it. He knows I had a sister who died young. But none of the details. And that’s how I prefer it. I don’t want him to know about my past.

About Rachel.





Chapter Three

After we’ve eaten the chicken pasta, we lie together on the sofa for an hour, limbs tangled in lazy torpor, and watch a late-night news programme where they’re discussing the state of the NHS.

‘Bloody fools,’ Dominic growls, throwing an empty cigarette packet at the screen. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’

He’s a political animal.

I was vaguely apathetic before I met him, not even bothering to vote. But I take a keener interest in politics now, largely down to him and his highly vocal opinions. Dominic seems better informed than the guests we see on news shows, quickly grasps political nuances and complexities that other people miss. He snaps at the television when annoyed, as though the presenters can hear him.