Benke out – dry him carefully and thoroughly with a big towel between the toes and behind the ears – dress the child in Peppa Pig pyjamas and then place him softly in a bed. There was a night light that threw out a golden light. It had small motifs twirling around the shade: cars, tractors and trains. Toma would read to his son from a colourful book, which lived with other colourful books on a shelf, until the son fell asleep.
They’d all gone.
The bath toys, the soft pyjamas, the night light, the colourful books, the wife, the child. Many things. Everything.
He should squirrel away the sandwich. He’d had breakfast. He didn’t need it. Or more accurately, he might need it more later. Being on the street demanded constant forethinking and planning. He bit into it anyway.
‘Can you tell me your story?’ she asked gently.
He took another bite. He wanted to tell her. He had to, but he hated pulling the words forward. At first, he had not been able to believe they were dead. For months he kept expecting to come home from work and find his wife behind the ironing board, or in the kitchenette, his son in front of the TV. He would open the door and see them both instantly, there was nowhere to hide in their tiny flat. He would expect them to run to him, kiss him, hug him. It sounded old-fashioned. Him at work, her at home. But she was studying too, a correspondence course in accounting, she had ambitions. She had plans to go out into the world. Be something. Do something. But Benke was young and she had to get the qualifications first, so she stayed at home, did her best to make the small, neglected flat into something that was not awful. They didn’t have much. They didn’t have enough. The place they lived in was a disgrace really. Damp on the walls and in the beds, everything broken – locks, taps, cupboards, windows – and they couldn’t get warm. Toma doubted an Englishman would have ever rented the place. It was all they could afford.
For months he had not accepted they were dead and so never looked for the words to say that they were. When he did finally accept that he’d never open the door to their smiles or sulks, their laughter or their grumbles, he fell into a profound, prolonged depression. He existed in a fug of antidepressants and alcohol. The months slithered by like black slippery eels. There were warnings at work. He was reluctantly let go. Someone who knew his story and felt sorry for him found him another job. More tablets, more whisky. The same solid grief. The warnings were brusquer the second time, the letting go less reluctant. He couldn’t pay his rent. An eviction notice. Then there was a bed at the YMCA. No permanent address to write on application forms meant that there was no gainful employment to be had. Then finally there was another flat. Even worse than his home with Reveka but better than the streets. He shared a bathroom. It was a cesspit. The place was horribly overcrowded. People and mould spores jostled for somewhere to rest. One day he tried to talk to the landlord about what needed to be done. That was the end of that, out on his ear, no notice period. Throughout this time, people asked him to explain himself. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t trade Reveka and Benke’s lives and deaths for sympathy. For a bed, for an extra coin. Their names stuck in his throat, choking him, five years on.
The woman sighed heavily and admitted, ‘I googled you this morning.’
He was not offended; it was a relief. She was curious and concerned. She might be the right person. ‘Providing Toma Albu is your name—’
‘It is.’
‘—Then you are either a genius mathematician born in 1943, which seems unlikely because I’d peg you mid- to late-forties, or—’ She left it hanging for a moment. He nodded stiffly. The pain, which people thought resided in the heart, permeated throughout his body. It throbbed in his legs, his neck, his arms. Everywhere. ‘Or you are a man who tragically lost his wife and child in 2014. Carbon-monoxide poisoning, the result of a broken boiler.’
‘Yes, I am that man.’
‘I’m sorry.’
People always said they were sorry. It wasn’t their fault. What else could they say? It wasn’t enough though.