White Bodies(58)

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” she said softly. “This morning, when he was staying at the Ashleigh House Hotel, your husband . . . Felix . . . went for a run. Afterwards he was found in his hotel room. He had died, I’m afraid, and it looks like he had had some sort of attack or fit.”

Tilda snapped back angrily, “No. No. That can’t be right. Felix is extremely fit, exceptionally healthy . . . Peak fitness . . . You’ve made a mistake!”

“I’m so very sorry.” Sergeant Nokes put her hand on Tilda’s arm, but she swiped it away just as Constable Wright stepped towards us and said, “Yes, me too.”

Something about his casual manner made Tilda leap up and she threw herself at him, shrieking “No! No! How dare you—get out of here!” She was thumping him with her fists, aiming at his face, so that Constable Wright had to bring his arms up to defend his head. Sergeant Nokes and I pulled her off, and she staggered back to the sofa and put her head in her hands. We couldn’t see her face for her falling hair. Constable Wright looked uneasy.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No worries.” He shrugged. “It’s what people do.”

I sat by Tilda and tried to make the news sink in, but I couldn’t anchor it to any imagined context, any understandable chain of events. “What do you mean, an attack or fit? It’s not possible. He’s thirty-two, way too young for a heart attack. It doesn’t make sense.”

“We don’t know the full details yet,” said Sergeant Nokes. Then, through a hacking cough: “There will have to be a postmortem.”

“That’s right . . . there will,” said Constable Wright.

Tilda looked up, her anger giving way to despair. “I won’t believe it until I see him,” she said. Then she flopped down again into my lap, and I held her to me, while Sergeant Nokes told us that the American police would inform Felix’s parents. Then she made us all tea.

The police left at about the same time as the reporters arrived. I’d gone out to buy bread and milk, and on my return found three scruffy male photographers leaning against the wall by the front door, and I overheard snatches of their conversation. Her career’s pretty fucked isn’t it? . . . The desk is only interested because she’ll look like shit. . . . Celebrity meltdown . . . I pressed the buzzer, calling out, “Have some respect! Leave her alone!” which prompted them to grab their cameras and to take pictures of me. I felt like shouting abuse, but Tilda buzzed me in, and I escaped before I could do any harm.

She wasn’t in the sitting room or the kitchen space, so I looked in the bedroom, and found her lying facedown on the bed, covered with piles of Felix’s clothes—random white, pink and blue shirts, dark suits and cashmere sweaters. I dropped the shopping and crawled under, to be with her, and she turned to me, her skin mottled and red, her eyes bloodshot. “I’m trying to find his smell, and I can’t! Everything smells of fucking washing powder . . . I can’t bear it.”

Like her, I couldn’t smell anything of Felix, I could smell only Tilda, and as she rolled away from me I buried my face in her back, and we breathed together. I wanted to fall asleep, and I had to resist sinking into unconsciousness.

“Oh . . . I’m so sorry . . . ,” I said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

And in that moment, I was truly, deeply sorry that I had spied on Tilda, had been paranoid about Felix, had become so obsessed with Controlling Men. It seemed like I had made this happen, had caused Felix’s death.

But then Tilda got out of bed to go to the bathroom and I saw fresh bruises, yellow-purple stains next to each other, bleeding into each other, on her upper left arm—and I was jolted into remembering the reality of Felix. And although I was sad for my distraught sister, I also felt profound relief.

She said, “Callie . . . will you come to the hospital with me, to see Felix’s body?”

“Of course I will.”

She came out of the bathroom and sat on the side of the bed, picking up a white shirt and holding it to her face. Then she pulled off her T-shirt, and put on Felix’s shirt, struggling with the buttons because of her trembling hands. “I want to go tomorrow,” she said. “I phoned Sergeant Nokes while you were out—and she said we need to go to Reading; he’s at the hospital. She’s arranging for us to be there at eleven.”

“I’ll stay here tonight,” I said, “so you’re not alone.” She was at the dressing table now, and she said, “That’s sweet of you” as she looked at herself in the mirror. “I need to speak to the reporters downstairs. . . . I was going to make my face look respectable, but I don’t think I will. It’s better that they see my distress. It’s the truth after all.”

I went with her to the front door. As she opened it, the photographers scrambled away from their position by the wall and took pictures. Tilda stood silently, then said, “As you know, my husband, Felix Nordberg, died today. We had been married only a few weeks and I’m not sure I will ever come to terms with this tragedy. I ask you please to respect my privacy.” Then she came back inside and shut the door, and as she did so, she slid down against it, and became a little ball of grief on the wooden floor.

“Let me help you,” I said, feeling suddenly happier inside than I had been for months. It was so good to be of use to my troubled sister, so reassuring. And as I guided her up the stairs, I scarcely noticed the guilt that I felt.