The Other People: A Novel(20)

It was a twenty-minute journey to the hospital, which was on the outskirts of town, near the beltway. The same hospital where Jenny gave birth to Izzy. He thought his heart had wrung itself dry with grief, but now he felt it twist again. Bitter drops that burned his soul and made his gut convulse with nausea. He clutched his stomach.

“Are you all right?” Evelyn clasped his hand.

He nodded. “Fine, I’m fine.”

She reached into her purse, took out a small vial of pills and shook two out into her hand. She offered them to him.

“What are they?”

“To help, with your nerves.”

That explained some of the odd, manic chatter. He looked at the small pink tablets and started to shake his head. Then he felt his stomach clench again. He changed his mind. He took the tablets and swallowed them dry. Bitter, he thought again.

They parked in the visitors’ car park, adding to Gabe’s sense of unreality, but then they were hardly going to have spaces marked “Morgue Only,” perhaps with a white outline of a coffin, were they? Wouldn’t want to remind people that the hospital isn’t always a place where their loved ones get better.

Anne Gleaves met them in the reception. She held out a hand. He took it, but it felt like shaking Plasticine. Maybe the tablets were kicking in. Every part of him felt numb.

“If you’ll just come this way.”

A cliché to say the rest was a blur. But there it was. He felt like he was walking through a world made of fuzzy felt, all the sharp edges rubbed off. They padded down soft-blue corridors. Muffled voices settled like sludge in his ears. The only thing that felt sharp and clear to him was the smell. Chemical. Medicinal. Embalming fluid, he thought. To stop the bodies rotting. His stomach rolled again.

They reached a small waiting room. He supposed it was meant to look homely. More pastel hues. Grey sofas. White flowers in a vase. Fake—their fabric petals faded and dusty. Leaflets were spread out on the table. Dealing with Bereavement. Counselling Services. Explaining Sudden Death to a Child. A picture of a wide-eyed toddler stared up at him. He looked away.

Anne Gleaves sat down. Explained about “the process.” It was nothing like you saw on TV. There would be no hideous, dramatic pulling back of a sheet. Jenny and Izzy would be lying on tables, just their faces visible. Gabe could spend as long with them as he wished, but he mustn’t touch the bodies. When he was ready to leave, he would be required to sign a form confirming that the deceased were his wife and daughter. Did he need a drink of water before he went in? Did he want someone to accompany him?

He shook his head. He stood. He made it to the door.

Everything swam. His vision was distorted by wavy lines. He tried to breathe deeply, but all he could smell was that damn chemical stench.

“Mr. Forman? Do you need a moment?”

He opened his mouth to reply. His stomach knotted and vomit spewed from his throat. He couldn’t stop. He threw up again and again, all over the soft-blue carpet tiles.

“Oh God.” He heard Evelyn’s voice. “We should never have let him come.”

He wanted to tell her he had to come. He had to do this. But his head was a grey, fuzzy cloud. His ears buzzed. His knees buckled. He collapsed to the floor.

Distantly, he heard Anne Gleaves say: “I’ll get a nurse. We can do this another day.”

And then Harry’s voice. Surprisingly firm. “No. It’s all right. I’ll do the identification. It’s for the best.”



* * *



—

FOR THE BEST. For the best. The words thrummed around Gabe’s head.

Later, he had asked if he could go back and see them. But by this point, after he had been released from the hospital, where they put him on a drip and asked repeatedly if he had “taken anything,” the police had arrived. His world tilted on its axis again. He was no longer a grieving husband and father. He was a murder suspect. He found himself in another bland, featureless blue room. But there were no flowers or comforting leaflets here. Just a tape recorder, DI Maddock and another grim-faced detective, and a young solicitor, hastily found and seemingly more nervous and unprepared than Gabe.

He sat by, looking helpless, as the detectives asked Gabe about his relationship with his wife, his job, his background…and oh, what exactly had he been doing between the time he left home at 8 a.m. and the time he made the phone call from the Leicester Forest East Services at around 6:15 p.m., seeing as he hadn’t been at work?

He didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to confirm their suspicions about him—that he was the type of man who could hurt or kill somebody. But it was futile. They knew about his record. They had tracked his phone. It had all come out anyway. Most of it, at any rate.

Things between him and Jenny’s parents had disintegrated fast after that. Even when he was eventually released without charge, Evelyn refused to take his calls, changed their number. Shut him out completely. He found out the date of the funeral through his solicitor. He had to take a taxi to the crematorium because his car was still impounded for “evidence” and Evelyn wouldn’t allow him to travel in the funeral car.

As it was, he didn’t even make it through the service. He couldn’t sit there, listening to the minister’s meaningless words, staring at the coffins. Jenny’s was a gleaming oak that was, no doubt, the most expensive Harry’s money could buy. Izzy’s was a miniature version, painted pink and decorated with brightly colored flowers. As if that could make the awfulness, the horror of that tiny coffin, more palatable. Instead, it just made it worse. No coffin should ever be so small. No child should ever lie so cold and still. Children were light and warmth and laughter. Not darkness and silence. It was all wrong, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept it.