For Eleanor it was like being dropped into the burning hot center of hell. She woke every morning with a tight chest and a dull headache that rose and spread in intensity all day. And it wasn’t just because one of the people she loved best in the world had been ripped away from her, but because she was in a state of permanently heightened emotion. There was no certainty anymore, no structure to her days, no safety from feelings of desolation that threatened to pull her under and suffocate her.
Eleanor had always thought that she kept her life unencumbered by relationships and children precisely because she wanted to be able to pack up and run into the unknown at a moment’s notice. Except her past life hadn’t ever felt like this—this strange sort of free-falling, where it was impossible to predict how she might feel from one hour to the next. She had stood her ground in countries where lands shifted or cyclones raged or wars ravaged and had never felt like she might dissolve into the atmosphere in the way she did now.
For the first time in really forever, Eleanor found herself thinking obsessively about her father’s death twenty-seven years before, just as she was starting out on her life after university. They had watched him wither and die before their eyes, consumed by a horrible, relentless cancer. Eleanor could once again hear the hiss of the oxygen pump and the bleep of the machine that dispensed morphine like sweets, overlaid always by the sound of her mother’s weeping, replacing forever her famous laugh. As Eleanor lay in her bed at night and cried, she sometimes forgot who she was crying for.
It became easier to simply stay as busy as possible, which meant spending as much time as she could at Nancy’s house, where she was always needed and there was always something to do.
Robert got himself a lawyer. He came back from a police interview and announced his intention, loudly and accusatorily, as if Eleanor were the one questioning him and not the police.
“They haven’t said as much, but it’s obvious I’m a suspect,” he said as they ate a desultory takeaway meal. “They keep going over and over it, asking if I knew about the affair and how it made me feel.”
Eleanor felt her breath like a physical force inside her. “What are they suggesting?”
“I suppose they’re thinking that if I knew Nancy was having an affair and she wanted to leave me, that would give me a motive to kill her.”
“But you didn’t know. I told you about it the night it happened.” His demeanor was so strained that Eleanor felt a fluttering in her chest. He hadn’t seemed himself for days now, but surely that was to be expected.
He rubbed at his bruised-looking eyes. “I know. I’m not sure they believe me, though.”
“But why wouldn’t they?” They had gone down the rabbit hole, and everything was different now. “They can’t be thinking you had anything to do with it.”
Robert hunched farther over his plastic carton, spooning orange food into his mouth. “I haven’t got an alibi,” he said finally. “I mean, no one saw me that night. By the time I got home from work, Nancy had already gone to meet you and I didn’t speak to anyone until I rang you at four in the morning.”
Just tell me you had nothing to do with this, Eleanor wanted to scream at him, in the hope that he’d allay her sense of unease, but there was a noise at her back, and she turned to see Zara standing in the doorway, her expression fixed and definite, her brow set in a deep frown.
* * *
It rained on the day of the funeral, the sky so dark and menacing it looked as if the world were in mourning. The turnout was large, despite Robert’s decision to hold the ceremony in Sussex, at their country home. Eleanor couldn’t help thinking that Nancy would have been pleased at the sheer number of people there, at the extent of their grief. She looked around the rows and rows of somber men and women, all dressed in black, all red-eyed, and wondered how Nancy had known so many people. Eleanor couldn’t help thinking of her own funeral and how sparse it would be, and then she wondered why she had always been happy to keep herself at a remove.
Robert and Zara sat at the front of the church, their shoulders hunched and their misery visceral, but still people went up to them and patted them on the back or made them stand up to hug them, and Eleanor realized how much Nancy had existed within a community. And with that thought came the panic she thought she’d quelled, that rising feeling of weightlessness that always threatened to spin out of the top of her head and dissolve her into dust.
She felt a hand on her arm and turned to see Mary as she sat down next to her. Her friend kissed her on the cheek, and the warmth of touch was enough to ground her for a while. She reached over and squeezed Mary’s hand.
“Are you on your own?” Eleanor asked.
“No. The girls are sitting with Howard at the back. He’s still really unwell, so he might need to leave.”
Eleanor turned and saw Howard in a pew by the door. He looked shockingly bad, gaunt and hunched, a poor impression of the man she’d known. Even his beard had whitened, making him look decades older. “My God. He looks awful.” Eleanor suddenly realized she hadn’t asked after Howard once in all the times she’d spoken to Mary in the past week as they’d tried to come to terms with the loss of their friend.
Mary nodded. “He just can’t stop being sick. The doctors don’t know what’s wrong. They’re even talking some form of cancer now. He’s got to go for tests at the hospital next week.”
“Oh, Mary, I’m sorry. I had no idea you were coping with that as well.” It seemed very unfair that Mary couldn’t be allowed to mourn Nancy properly, without yet another thing to worry about. Although that was a mean way to think, as even Howard couldn’t have planned an illness to coincide with this. Eleanor tried to muster some sympathy for the man, but she knew too much about him for it to feel completely sincere.
She’d argued with Nancy a few times over the years about Howard, Nancy never able to comprehend why he irritated Eleanor so, which Eleanor in turn understood because he presented such a consummate face to the world. It would have been much easier for their friendships if Mary had confided in Nancy as well about how Howard had behaved in the past decade, although Eleanor also understood why she hadn’t. It would be hard to sit in front of someone who appeared to have as much as Nancy and admit that everything had gone to shit.
Mary leaned in to her ear. “I feel awful for him, he’s so poorly.”
“Do you?” Eleanor instantly regretted her words. Maybe she should take a leaf out of Nancy’s book and be more magnanimous about Howard. It was clearly the supportive thing to do. She looked back again and saw Mary and Howard’s daughters flanking their father, but their son was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Marcus?”
“No idea.”
“But wasn’t Nancy his godmother, like me?”
Tears darted into Mary’s eyes. “Yes. I don’t know what’s going on with him. You know how Marcus’s behavior has been deteriorating this last year. Well, it’s suddenly got much worse. I reminded him about the funeral yesterday and he said he’d come, but he didn’t come home last night, and he’s not been picking up his phone all morning.”
A collective hush descended, the vicar took his position at the front of the church, and Eleanor could hear Zara’s deep intake of breath, followed by her slow and steady sobbing.