Moments when your life changes: there will always be a before and an after, separated, perhaps, by a knock at the door. I had been interrupted. I was tidying up. I had cleared up yesterday’s newspapers, old envelopes, scraps of paper, left them in the basket by the grate ready to make a fire after supper. I had just got the rice bubbling nicely. My first thought was that it was Greg and he had forgotten his keys, but then I remembered he couldn’t have because he had taken the car that morning. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t knock but shout through the letterbox. A friend, perhaps, or a neighbour, a Jehovah’s Witness, a cold call from a desperate young man trying to sell dusters and clothes-pegs house-to-house. I turned away from the stove and went through the hall to the front door, opened it to a gust of cool air.
Not Greg, not a friend, not a neighbour, not a stranger selling religion or domesticity. Two female police officers stood in front of me. One looked like a schoolgirl, with a block fringe covering her eyebrows and jug ears; one was like her teacher, with a square jaw and greying hair cut mannishly short.
‘Yes?’ Had I been caught speeding? Littering? But then I saw an expression of uncertainty, even surprise, on both their faces and felt the first small prickle of foreboding in my chest.
‘Mrs Manning?’
‘My name’s Eleanor Falkner,’ I said, ‘but I’m married to Greg Manning, so you could say…’ My words trailed away. ‘What is it?’
‘Can we come in?’
I led them into the small living room.
‘You’re the wife of Mr Gregory Manning?’
‘Yes.’
I heard everything, I noticed everything. I saw how the younger one looked up at the older one as she said the words, and I noticed she had a hole in her black tights. The older officer’s mouth opened and closed but didn’t seem synchronized with the words she was speaking so that I had to strain to make sense of them. The smell of risotto reached me from the kitchen, and I remembered that I hadn’t turned the ring off and it would be dry and ruined. Then I remembered, with a stupid dullness, that of course it didn’t matter if it was ruined: nobody would be eating it now. Behind me I heard the wind fling a few dry leaves against the bay window. It was dark outside. Dark and chilly. In a few weeks’ time the clocks would go back. In a couple of months it would be Christmas.
She said, ‘I am very sorry, your husband has been in a fatal accident.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Though I did. The words made sense. Fatal accident. My legs felt as if they didn’t know how to hold me up any more.
‘Can we get you something? A glass of water, perhaps?’
‘You say…’
‘Your husband’s car left the road,’ she said slowly and patiently. Her mouth stretched and shrank.
‘Dead?’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry for your loss.’
‘The car caught fire.’ It was the first time the younger woman had spoken. Her face was plump and pale; there was a faint smudge of mascara under one of her brown eyes. She wears contact lenses, I thought.
‘Mrs Falkner, do you understand what we have said?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was a passenger in the car.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He was with someone else. A woman. We thought… Well, we had thought it might be you.’
I stared dumbly at her. Did she expect me to produce identification?
‘Do you know who that would have been?’
‘I was just cooking supper for us. He should have been home by now.’
‘Your husband’s passenger.’
‘I don’t know.’ I rubbed my face. ‘Didn’t she have her bag with her or anything?’
‘They couldn’t recover much. Because of the fire.’
I put a hand against my chest and felt my heart beating heavily. ‘Are you sure it was Greg? There might have been a mistake.’
‘He was driving a red Citroën Saxo,’ she said. She looked down at her notebook and read out the registration number. ‘Your husband is the owner of the vehicle?’
‘Yes,’ I said. It was hard to speak properly. ‘Perhaps someone from work. He sometimes took them when he went to visit clients. Tania.’ I found, as I was speaking, that I couldn’t bring myself to care if Tania was also dead. I knew that later this might disturb me.
‘Tania?’
‘Tania Lott. From his office.’
‘Do you have her home number?’
I thought for a moment. It would be on Greg’s mobile, which was with him. I swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think so.