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Her nose was running but she didn’t have a tissue and didn’t want to put the phone down for the time it would take to find one, as if losing hold of Alex for even a few seconds would mean that Matt was also lost.
Alex coughed. ‘I don’t know anything else, Sophie. When you get to the hospital – they’ll be able to tell you everything.’
The deep, low rumble of a diesel engine indicated the cab’s arrival. Slowly, trancelike, the phone still in her hand, Sophie moved towards the vehicle and indicated for it to stop. As she clambered in, a feeling of dread lodged in her heart and stayed there for the torturous duration of the drive, the cab constantly impeded by traffic lights, junctions, and queues. Staring out of the window, willing the cabbie to drive faster, to break all the rules, to just get her there as soon as possible, Sophie almost convinced herself that Matt would be all right.
***
Matt wasn’t all right.
When she got to the hospital, Sophie was ushered into a side room and left there to wait. She felt numb, dazed. She knew what the side room must mean but couldn’t accept it, couldn’t even begin to process it. He was probably in the operating theatre or something, having tubes stuck in him or observations (is that what they called them?) taken. That must be what was happening.
A doctor came in, knocking hesitantly on the door before swinging it open. He was accompanied by a nurse and another woman who wasn’t wearing a uniform but was dressed in ordinary, workaday clothes, trousers of the kind usually called slacks and a shirt that gaped where it was stretched over her bosom. She had a name badge proclaiming her to be Jan. Sophie stared at them, trancelike.
The three seemed to take a long time to settle down, arranging themselves carefully: the two women on adjacent chairs, the doctor finally alighting on the edge of one of the plastic armchairs. He was tall and looked incongruous and uncomfortable there, like a gangly heron on a tiny perch. All avoided eye contact with Sophie.
‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs, um …’ The doctor looked down at the notes in his hand. ‘Mrs Taylor.’ He gulped and fiddled with the stethoscope slung around his neck. ‘I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.’
‘Bad news! What do you mean? How bad?’ Sophie could hear the panic in her voice. If Matt were disabled, brain-damaged, whatever, she would still love him. In sickness and in health – that’s what she had committed to.
‘Mr Taylor – your husband – came into A&E unconscious and unresponsive. We did everything we could.’
Sophie’s sharp intake of breath interrupted the doctor’s speech but did not seem to reach her lungs and she found herself gasping for air, floundering, drowning.
‘What are you saying? It’s not serious, is it? Tell me it’s not serious.’
‘I’m really sorry. Your husband has – he’s – passed away. I’m so sorry.’
‘No. No. What are you talking about?’ Sophie’s head spun, from the impossible words she was hearing and the lack of oxygen and the disbelief and denial that coursed through her veins. ‘He’s only thirty-two, he was fine this morning –’
‘We couldn’t … It wasn’t …’ The doctor’s words cut across hers. ‘He didn’t ever regain consciousness. I’m sorry.’
‘You mean … you mean he’s dead?’
Everything went black, the room and all that was in it swallowed up into an atramentous darkness. Sophie started to vomit and a cardboard tray was thrust into her hands. Jan was beside her, patting her shoulder, whispering soothing words that Sophie couldn’t process. When she had finished being sick, Jan removed the tray and gave her some water.
‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.’ Sophie was conscious of repeating the words, her voice a harsh, rasping whisper, even whilst she knew they could not be lying.
‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she said, again and again.
But neither the doctor nor the nurse nor Jan did so.
The next few hours were a blur. Her parents, Helena and Tony, came to the hospital, and Matt’s parents, too. All were speechless, stunned. Matt’s mum and dad went to see his body but Sophie didn’t, couldn’t. She couldn’t bear the thought, screamed when they tried to make her, telling her she’d regret not going. What did they know about how she would feel, did feel? Was it their husband, their lover, their soulmate who was lying on a hospital trolley, lifeless?
No one knew what to do. Jan made them tepid tea in plastic cups but she couldn’t stay with them long. Sophie watched her walk away, perhaps towards another grieving family, other bereft relatives, perhaps simply going off shift and heading home. She realized she herself would never walk in that free, purposeful way again. There would never be any point in walking anywhere, ever, if it were always to be without Matt.
A discussion ricocheted back and forth about where they should go, which Sophie was only dimly aware of. Someone had given her a pill to take and she was able to breathe again but everything felt as if it were happening far away, to another Sophie who was just looking on, observing wryly how at sea they all were. Death had been neither expected nor prepared for. Thirty-two-year-olds do not, generally, drop down dead. They were asking Sophie did she want to go to her house, to her flat, or back to her parents’ place in Farnham. Which would be best? Which would she prefer? Fear clenched at her heart and made her blood run icy cold, her breath once more refusing to come, at the thought of home.
What was home, without Matt?
She let herself be guided along hospital corridors and through the sliding exit doors to her parents’ car. There was a yellow ticket pinned beneath the windscreen wiper; her father, in his haste and distress, must not have completed the pay-by-phone parking properly. Sophie looked at it numbly. Could they really issue fines to the bereaved?
She watched as her father detached it from its lodging, barely glancing at it. He placed it, carefully and deliberately, in the breast pocket of the smart jacket he was wearing despite the heat. She opened the car door. Inside, it was solid and capacious, leather seats spotless, seat-wells clear of the detritus of water bottles, books, and discarded newspapers that littered hers and Matt’s. She slid into the back and shut her eyes.
She only opened them as she felt the car drawing out of the parking space and into the exit lane. And then she realized that she was leaving Matt behind and that she’d never see him, ever again, and she began to scream. She screamed and screamed and flung the car door open, hurling herself out of it and running back towards the hospital doors, aware of people stopping and staring, gaping open-mouthed at this mad woman.
She cared not at all. She couldn’t leave Matt. He wasn’t dead. She’d make him come alive again; the power of her need for him would resurrect him. She tore headlong through the traffic and the pedestrians and the smokers gathered around the entrance until she finally got back inside the hospital where she knew Matt was waiting for her, smiling, wondering what all the fuss was about.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_1a92c32b-a892-52f1-b4fa-d628f6208ab7)
The room was utterly silent, hushed in that way of places that have been devoid of life for too long. Sophie wandered around, every sound she made deafening in the emptiness that surrounded her. At the open window, she stood and looked out. The sea lay almost directly below, separated only by a narrow road and fringed by the bushy green of a row of juniper trees. There was no wind and the azure water beyond the dusty tarmac shone glass clear and still. On the far side of the bay, dark mountains rose majestically upwards, towering over the red-tiled rooftops of the clustered stone houses that colonized the waterside.
She watched as an enormous Italian cruise ship plied its way towards Kotor, ploughing the deepest course that curved around the opposite bank and which would bring it right up to the city’s ancient walls. Sophie thought of all the people the ship was carrying, all the lives and futures, all the hopes and dreams of those on board. Were any of them like her, only thirty-two but already widowed? She doubted it, but then could hardly believe it was true of herself.
That Matt was dead was undeniable. They had had the funeral. Everyone had been there – family, friends, people she hadn’t seen since their wedding. People who she hardly knew and wasn’t sure she liked. She hadn’t cared. She knew her husband was gone for ever but still she kept expecting him to arrive, to walk in the room as if nothing had happened, to be by her side as he always had been since they were seventeen years old.
The ship sounded its horn and the reverberations echoed between the enveloping mountains. There would be many tourists in the old town today; even in just five days here, she and Anna had learnt to avoid the place when these vast vessels disgorged their multitudes of linen-clad sightseers. It had been her best friend Anna who had persuaded her to come on this holiday, who had insisted she must begin to get back on her feet. But that was easier said than done when you felt as if you had no feet, had nothing to support you or to propel you forwards.
Nevertheless, Sophie had complied, too numb with grief and pain and sadness to find the resources to do anything else. And despite the heartache, she had been instantly beguiled by Montenegro, its beauty and tranquillity. It felt like a healing place, even though she doubted she ever could be healed. And having come here at Anna’s behest it seemed a small leap now to be, at her insistence, looking around a house for sale. The fact that said house was near derelict merely added to the surreal nature of it all.
Anna had been indulging in a solitary game of ‘spot the property that’s ripe for renovation’ ever since they had arrived and had studiously scrutinized Kotor’s real estate office windows, swooning over what was immaculately restored and exclaiming in astonishment at the low prices of what was not. It had probably been inevitable that, at some point, Anna would succumb to temptation and insist on a viewing. But even Sophie, dazed and confused as she was, had been taken by surprise when it happened.
Having spotted a ‘for sale’ sign outside one particular stone house, serendipitously accompanied by a businesslike woman in smart clothes armed with a glossy brochure in her hands, Anna had summarily screeched the car to a sudden stop. And now here they were, Sophie inside, while Anna, her small son Tomasz, and the estate agent were on their way in. Sophie really had no idea what they were all doing. What she was doing. She felt as if she were permanently on autopilot, acting unthinkingly, without direction, just conforming with whatever she was told to do by someone who had a handle on the world. All her actions were immaterial; nothing mattered now that Matt was gone.
A noise in the background and a clattering on the stairs alerted Sophie to the fact that the others were almost upon her. She walked towards the door – her feet in flip-flops that softly flapped against the wide wooden floorboards – and rejoined them. Jovanka, the estate agent, led them around the rest of the house, revealing room after room, all equally dusty and neglected but full of charm and promise. In each one, she opened windows and threw back shutters, unleashing priceless view after view.
Sophie looked on, stupefied. It was her dream project, something she could transform as she had done the flat in Belsize Park, painstakingly remodelling and redesigning it until it was completely unrecognizable to the wreck she and Matt had bought. But the idea was ridiculous, nonsensical.
‘What are we actually doing here?’ she hissed in Anna’s ear, taking advantage of Jovanka’s temporary distraction with a recalcitrant window bolt.
‘Shh,’ Anna hissed back, and continued to follow Jovanka around, asking a constant stream of property-related questions designed, Sophie assumed, to make her sound like a clued-up potential buyer.
In one third-floor room with no electricity, a pile of grey plaster dust lay forlornly in the centre of the floor.
‘Damage from the 1979 earthquake,’ pronounced Jovanka, sagely. ‘It brought down most of Kotor,’ she continued. ‘But this is a good sign.’ She pointed at the mound of debris.
‘How do you work that out?’ questioned Anna, a note of challenge in her voice.
‘If that’s all the damage the quake caused,’ Jovanka explained, ‘then you know that this is a house that can withstand anything.’
Anna nodded, purporting a knowledge of seismic activity and its effects that Sophie knew was utterly feigned.
Outside, behind the house, the garden rose up from a courtyard through five terraces until right at the top the cerulean sweep of the water became visible again above the pantiled rooftops. Fig, pomegranate, lime, and grapefruit trees grew wild and untended, and the fragrance of wild mint scented the air as their legs brushed against its leaves. A plump tabby cat lay on a stone, basking in the heat.
‘How much is it?’ asked Anna. Sophie surreptitiously kicked her but Anna took no notice.
‘It has just been reduced significantly, and it won’t hang around at this price.’
Jovanka named a sum which, translated into pounds at the current exchange rate, was a steal. The price of a studio flat in London.
‘The owner of the house is ninety-four,’ the estate agent continued. ‘And she wants to sell. She’s set her heart on ending her days in a retirement village on the Croatian coast where it’s nearly always sunny. She’s already sold up in Zagreb.’
Sophie thought she might cry. She wanted the old lady to have sunshine and happiness in her twilight years, and was sorry it wouldn’t be them who made that dream come true. She comforted herself with the knowledge that – as Jovanka asserted – the house was definitely a bargain; someone would undoubtedly snap it up.
‘So the owner would probably negotiate,’ continued Jovanka, cutting through Sophie’s ponderings and going on to present her with exactly what she had been dreading. ‘She’s spending a week or two here in the hope of getting everything sorted – she’ll be back any moment now. Her neighbour takes her for a little stroll to the café every morning. Let’s go in and meet her.’
Sophie and Anna exchanged glances: Sophie frowning, Anna beaming.
‘Lovely,’ said Anna, before Sophie had a chance to say anything. ‘Let’s go.’
Reluctantly, Sophie followed. The last thing she wanted to do was give the poor old lady reason to believe they might really be prospective buyers when they were anything but.
Mileva Golubovic proved utterly delightful, apologizing for speaking better Italian and German than she did English, and then proceeding to converse fluently in said language. Sprightly, bright-eyed, and petite, she looked years younger than she was. She made no secret of her desire to clinch a sale, talking of how much she worried about the house when she was far away in Croatia, about how she couldn’t afford the maintenance and upkeep any more and how she just wanted to be free of all responsibilities.
It turned out that she was a fan of the art form known as abstract expressionism, something she had in common with Anna – a talented artist who currently scraped a living from the paintings she produced in a dilapidated shed at the bottom of her garden. Amidst their avid conversation, Tomasz fell asleep on the aged sofa with a fraying fabric cover whilst Sophie found herself wandering off again, unable to resist the temptation to explore the house further, drawn to the rooms at the front with their gracious proportions and views over the glittering water of the bay.
An antique bureau stood beside the window in what had obviously once been the formal sitting room, its dark wooden furniture still precisely arranged for receiving guests. As Sophie stood there admiring it, thinking how good it would look once restored, the sun must have minutely changed its position in the sky so that it fell upon the heaped-up piles of papers, ornaments, and books shoved into its open front. The light caught something bright and shiny, a diamond sparkling amidst the clutter.
Drawn towards it, Sophie found herself shifting an ancient concert brochure to one side and revealing beneath it a finely carved wooden jewellery box with a mother-of-pearl inlay lid. Without thinking what she was doing, that she was intruding into someone’s private possessions, Sophie opened the lid. Inside, tied together with a ragged piece of ancient string, was a thin bundle of letters. There was something strange about them that at first Sophie couldn’t quite put her finger on. Tentatively, she reached into the box and picked them up.
Immediately, she saw what was odd. The letters were all unopened. They were also heavier than expected and as she handled them, an old-fashioned man’s watch slipped out from the middle of the bunch and tumbled into the box with a solid thud.
‘I’m sorry.’
The old lady’s voice sliced through Sophie’s absorption, causing her to jump and break out into a cold sweat. She had been caught prying into personal papers. How shaming. She turned slowly towards Mileva, flushed red with her guilt.
‘No, it’s me, I must apologize for –’
Mileva, interrupting, shook her head. ‘I’m sorry for the mess, the house is not tidy like it once was; everything has got too much for me.’ She was resting on her stick, breathing heavily. Sitting down she had looked so fit and well but standing as she was now, slightly bent, clearly finding all movement an effort, her years began to show. ‘Many of the things in that bureau I inherited with it and the house. I’ve never gone through it all. I started this summer when I arrived, but as you can see –’ she waved her hand to indicate the disarray ‘– I don’t think I have the energy to finish the job.’
Sophie nodded and smiled sympathetically. ‘I’m sure there’s no need to, is there? If it’s been here for so long, there can’t be anything vital.’ She looked down at the box, then hastily replaced the letters. Unimportant: possibly, and without value in monetary terms: almost definitely. But they were without doubt intriguing.
Mileva shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’ She fell suddenly quiet, her head drooping, her stick wobbling beneath her hand and threatening to destabilize her.
Instinctively, Sophie moved towards her to support her, weaving her way between the heavy furniture. ‘Are you all right? You look like you need to sit.’ She escorted Mileva back to her sofa.
‘Old age,’ Mileva murmured, as she sank down. ‘It’s a terrible thing, but I try to make the best of it.’
‘You seem to be.’ Sophie couldn’t think of anything else to say. She seemed like such a brave old lady, not lonely and needy at all despite being ninety-four and having lost her husband twenty years before, a fact that Sophie had gleaned from Jovanka earlier. A vision of herself, growing old without Matt, flitted through Sophie’s mind and she swiftly banished it.
She looked towards the wide-open window and the bright sunlight on the water. How much better it would be to end one’s days in a place like this than in grey, dreary England. She was envious of Mileva’s sun-soaked future.
Jovanka appeared at the door, looking at her watch, Anna beside her.
‘Ladies, I don’t want to hurry you but I have another appointment. And –’ she glanced meaningfully towards the sofa ‘– I think we should probably leave Mrs Golubovic to rest.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ replied Sophie, not wanting to exhaust poor Mileva, but for some inexplicable reason not wanting to leave the house without knowing the fate of the box with its mysterious cache of letters.
‘If you buy the house you can have everything in it.’ The old lady seemed to have read Sophie’s mind. ‘Otherwise the house clearance people will take it all to the tip, and I’ll probably be heading for the human version soon so none of it’s any use to me.’
Her light-hearted tone did not mask the prescience of her words. This time, the thought of Matt was almost too much, reminding Sophie of his coffin disappearing behind the curtain at the crematorium, making her think about where he might have gone, where he might be now. She wasn’t sure if she believed in heaven, but couldn’t bear to think that he was nowhere, that he simply no longer existed, was not even a soul soaring somewhere far above the sky.
Mileva was talking again, and Sophie forced her attention back to her. ‘My third husband bought the house many years ago, in 1960 I think. I wasn’t married to him then, of course. We didn’t meet until the late Seventies.’ Mileva smiled, a wistful, nostalgic smile, as if looking back on good times, gone but not forgotten.
Sophie nodded, inwardly absorbing both Mileva’s ability to talk about her past love without the taint of sorrow that marred all her own memories, and also the fact that Mileva had been married three times. What had happened to husbands one and two? It felt too intrusive to ask.
‘He purchased it from a Serbian man who had rented it out for years. An absentee landlord, I suppose you would call him now,’ continued Mileva, dreamily. ‘The last family to live here had long gone. Apparently, they were tenants all through the Thirties and early Forties, but after the war they moved away from the area. The Serbian man was already ill and infirm and he simply left the place unoccupied and untouched until Zoran – my husband – bought it.’
‘Gosh,’ responded Sophie, inadequately. ‘It seems strange to think someone had no use for a property so beautiful, but …’ She left the sentence hanging, unsure where she wanted to take it. There were so many derelict houses around, testimony to people leaving for work, family, or myriad other reasons. Then she thought of something. ‘Where did the old tenants go?’ She wondered if they wanted their things back. Surely not, after the passage of so much time.
‘I’ve no idea what happened to them, or where they went,’ continued Mileva, as if reading Sophie’s mind. ‘They left so much behind, including that bureau, but people had no money in those times to pay for packers or removal firms. My husband and I came here only during summer, and somehow we never quite got round to sorting it all out.’ Mileva paused for breath, and met Sophie’s eyes. ‘So anything you want you are welcome to keep.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Sophie blurted out, holding back tears with difficulty. ‘Thank you.’ She had no idea why she was saying this when it was clear she was not going to be the house’s purchaser.
‘I’m sure,’ she vaguely heard Mileva say, her voice faint with tiredness. ‘And God bless.’
***
Stepping out onto the street, Sophie was momentarily blinded by the sun’s glare. The heat was stultifying. Anna, dragging a whinging Tomasz – who was unsettled by being disturbed from his impromptu nap – followed. After her came Jovanka, shutting the door behind her.
‘Are you going to put in an offer?’ she asked, addressing Sophie whilst Anna was half hidden inside the car. ‘The house will not stay around for long at this price.’ Her tone was forceful.
‘Oh no …’ Sophie began.
‘I’m not sure.’ Anna’s voice, as she emerged, rose above Sophie’s. ‘We’ll have to think about it. It’s a lovely house but there is a lot of work to do, so –’
Jovanka was momentarily distracted by her phone ringing.
‘Be careful,’ hissed Sophie. ‘You’ll make Jovanka think you’re in the running.’ She caught the glint in Anna’s eyes and stopped, abruptly.
‘I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not sure I like it, whatever it is.’
Anna merely shrugged and smiled in response.
Jovanka was off the phone again now.
‘That was the representative of the Russians who saw the house yesterday,’ she said. ‘They will definitely be offering, later today or tomorrow.’
‘OK. That’s interesting to know. We’ll be in touch.’ Anna’s voice had an affected air of disinterest about it. She shook Jovanka’s hand and opened the driver’s door. ‘Speak later.’
In the car, Anna decisively clicked her seat belt into the catch. ‘Never let estate agents think you’re too keen,’ she stated, definitively. ‘And if she thinks we were taken in by that Russian buyer story, well, she must think we were born yesterday.’
Sophie put her head in her hands. ‘Why are you playing games?’ she asked, when she had recovered enough composure to speak. ‘You’re not even thinking of buying that house, are you?’
‘I’m not,’ replied Anna, speeding off along the shimmering bay road amidst a cacophony of horns at her sudden pulling-out. ‘But why don’t you?’
The strobing sunlight streaming through the trees that lined the road was like a flashing neon sign, impossible to ignore.
‘Me?’ Sophie wasn’t sure whether to be angry or amused.
