The Widow(87)

Outside, I looked for Bob Sparkes, but he’d gone as well. Everyone wanted to kiss and hug me and tell me how fantastic I’d been. I managed a smile and hugged people back, and then it was over. We’d thought about putting on a tea, but we didn’t know if anyone would come. And then if there’d been a tea, we would have had to talk about Glen and someone might have mentioned Bella.

We kept it simple. The five of us went home to my house and had a cup of tea and some ham sandwiches Mary had made and put in the fridge. I put my hat in its tissue paper and John Lewis bag and slid it on top of the wardrobe. Later, the house was quiet for the first time since Glen died, and I put on my dressing gown and wandered through all the rooms. It isn’t a big house, but Glen was in every corner of it and I kept expecting to hear him shout to me: “Jeanie, where’ve you put the paper?” “Off to work, love. See you later.”

In the end I made a drink and took it up to bed with the handful of cards and letters from the family. I’d burned the nasty ones on the stove top.

The bed felt bigger without him. He wasn’t always in it—sometimes he slept on the sofa downstairs when he was restless. “Don’t want to keep you awake, Jean,” he’d say, and pick up his pillow. He didn’t want to go in the spare room anymore, so we’d got a sofa that pulled out into a bed and he’d crawl into it in the middle of the night. We kept a duvet behind it during the day. I didn’t know if anyone noticed.





FORTY-NINE


The Detective

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010


After the funeral, Bob Sparkes read the coverage and looked at the photographs of Jean at the crematorium and a close-up of the word “Glen” spelled out in flowers. “How Will We Find You Now, Bella?” the papers said, taunting him.

He tried to concentrate on the job but found himself staring into space, lost and unable to move forward. He decided to take some leave and get his head together. “Let’s pack up the car and drive to Devon. Find a place to stay when we get there,” he said to Eileen on Saturday morning.

She went to talk to the neighbor about feeding the cat, and he sat at the table with the post.

Eileen crashed in through the back door, her hands full of runner beans and peas. “Picked them quickly; otherwise they’ll be over by the time we get back. Shame to waste them.”

Eileen was clearly determined that life would go on in their house, even if it was stuck on pause in her husband’s head. He’d always been a thinker—it had been what she loved about him. Deep, her friends had said. She liked that. His deepness. But now it was just blackness.

“Come on, Bob, finish shelling these peas while I pack a bag. How long are we going for?”

“A week? What do you think? Just need a bit of clean air and long walks.”

“Sounds lovely.”

He did his chore mechanically, sliding a nail along the pod and pushing the peas into a colander, as he struggled with his feelings. He’d let it get personal, he knew. No other case had touched him like this, had reduced him to tears, had threatened his career. Maybe he ought to go back to the crazy counselor? He laughed, just a short bark of a laugh, but Eileen heard it and rushed downstairs to see what had happened.

The journey was painless; it was a warm summer’s day before the school holidays with little traffic on the motorways that Sparkes took to put distance between him and the case as quickly as possible. Eileen sat close to him, occasionally patting his knee or squeezing his hand. They both felt young and slightly giddy at their spontaneity.

Eileen chatted to him about the children, filling him in on his family, as if he were emerging from a coma. “Sam says she and Pete will get married next summer. She wants to do it on a beach.”

“A beach? Suppose it won’t be Margate. Well, whatever she wants. She seems happy with Pete, doesn’t she?”

“Very happy, Bob. It’s James I’m worried about. He’s working too hard.”

“Wonder where he gets that from,” he said, and glanced at his wife to see her reaction. They smiled at each other, and Sparkes’s stomach began to unclench for the first time in weeks. Months, really.

It was wonderful to be talking about his own life instead of other people’s.

They decided to stop at Exmouth for crab sandwiches. They had brought the kids there for a summer holiday when they were little, and it held memories of being happy. It was all still there when they pulled up—the blue pompons of the hydrangeas, the flags fluttering around the Jubilee Clock Tower, the screeching seagulls, the pastel shades of the beach huts. It was as if they had stepped back into the 1990s, and they walked along the promenade to stretch their legs and look at the sea.

“Come on, love. Let’s get going. I’ve phoned the pub to book a room for tonight,” he said, and then pulled her to him and kissed her.

Another hour or so and they’d be at Dartmouth and then on to Slapton Sands for a fish supper.

They drove with the windows down and the wind blowing their hair into mad shapes. “Blowing the badness out,” Eileen said, as he knew she would. It was what she always said. It made him think of Glen Taylor, but he didn’t say anything.

? ? ?

At the pub, they sprawled on the benches outside, soaking up the last warmth of the sun and planning their swim in the morning. “Let’s get up early and go,” he suggested.