The First Mistake(30)

I become fascinated by the power of algorithms as name after loosely connected name is offered up as a potential ‘friend’. I vaguely remember Jack Stokes from my first job in London and Lindsay Brindley as one of the mothers from Sophia’s Year One class. The tenuous connections make me feel uneasy, as if someone is trawling through my head, ravaging the cobwebbed corners that store information that is no longer needed. When I see the face I want to see, more than anyone else in the world, I almost gloss over it as being too familiar to concern myself with. But as I continue to scroll down, the image starts burning itself into my brain.

Tom Evans, my Tom, is on Facebook.

I race back up the screen, not knowing whether I want to be seeing things or not. In my haste I miss him and force myself to slow down as I go through the images again.

My heart feels as if it’s stopped when I see his face peering out at me; like a hand is in my chest and squeezing the life out of it. His eyes bore into mine, from the same photo that Sophia keeps in a frame on her bedside. My fingers trace the outline of his lips, and if I try really hard I can almost feel them pulsing.

How have I not seen this before? Why hasn’t he been flagged up to me, his wife, as a contact? I didn’t even know he was on Facebook. Surely his account would have been closed down by now. I feel sick as I click on his photo, frightened to see the friends he made and the conversations he had before he died.

There’s a photo of him on his news feed, the last one I took, on the day he left for Switzerland. He’s wearing the navy shirt I bought him for his birthday. His eyes, so much like Sophia’s, glisten in anticipation of his trip, excited for what lay ahead.

I look around the dining table, to the chair he had been sitting in the morning he went. He and Sophia had been side by side, smiling at me as I came down from the shower with a towel still wrapped around my head.

‘What are you two up to?’ I’d asked, their faces full of mischief.

Sophia giggled. ‘Can I show her, Daddy? Can I show her?’

‘Show me what?’ I’d said suspiciously.

‘You’re so rubbish at keeping secrets, Sophia,’ he laughed, nudging her with his elbow. They’d looked at each other conspiratorially, as they so often did, the pair of them as thick as thieves.

‘We’ve got something for you,’ she said.

‘O-kay,’ I said, looking between them, panicking that I’d not marked our temporary separation with anything in return.

Sophia reached down onto the floor. ‘Ta-dah,’ she said, bringing up a homemade card and placing it in my hand. Jewels and gems had been stuck haphazardly onto the front, the white glue still visible and tacky – the glitter sprinkles not yet having had a chance to stick. I tried to hide the fact that there was more falling on the carpet than there was on the card.

‘Ooh, what’s this then?’ I asked.

‘Open it, open it,’ she’d said, bouncing up and down on her chair. I glanced across at Tom, his eyes ablaze with love, for her, for me. He’d give us the world if we asked for it.

Inside was a photo of us at our wedding, looking at each other at the altar. The words underneath read:

It hurts to be apart,

but believe me when I say

I’ll love you all the more,

until my dying day.

‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ I said, reaching across the table to kiss him. ‘Is this your guilty conscience kicking in?’

‘Oh, that’s charming,’ he’d laughed. ‘We’ve gone to all this trouble and you think it’s some kind of conspiracy.’

‘So, there aren’t three other wives and mothers down the road getting the very same treatment this morning then?’ I said, knowing that Chris, Ryan and Leo would no doubt be offering the same sentiment to smooth the way towards their departure, on what had become something of an annual jolly.

‘Absolutely not,’ he’d said in mock protest. ‘Jules’s card has got green jewels on it. Yours has got blue.’

‘Go on, get out of here,’ I had said.

He’d kissed me. ‘I’ll see you in five days. You sure you’re okay to hold down the fort until then?’

I thought of the meetings lined up for the week and felt the usual rush of excitement. I couldn’t remember ever being as happy or fulfilled.

‘I suppose I’ll have to be,’ I’d said teasingly as his lips grazed mine. ‘I’m the talent after all. Remind me why the company needs you again?’

‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone,’ he’d laughed. And then, all of a sudden, he was.

When Jules’s husband Leo had called me the following night, to say that Tom was missing, I thought he was joking.

‘He’s probably still in the bar at the top of the mountain where you left him,’ I’d said, unconcerned.

‘No, I’m serious Al,’ he’d replied. ‘Tom went out on his own after lunch and he’s not come back.’

A chill had run through me, though I still wasn’t unduly worried. He was a good skier and it wasn’t unusual for him to go off and explore. I looked at my watch and at the darkening skies outside the living room window, choosing not to acknowledge that Switzerland was an hour ahead.

‘Okay, so it’s gone six there?’ I’d asked, my logical brain trying to overrule the feeling of panic that was building within me. ‘He’s very likely to be sitting in the warm somewhere, trying to remember the time you were supposed to be meeting tonight.’