The Man Who Inherited My Husband's Secret

, not under Aldous's lamp, not with the cleaners due at seven and the night po

toms Row and the cranes standing against a sky the colour of a bruise going yellow. I counted the steps to the bus stop. Two hundred and six. I counted the stops. Seven. I counted

arcoal wool overcoat with one button sewn on in the wrong thread, which I had never moved. People had suggested I might. Ruth had suggested it th

et of blotting paper, and I sat down and looked at it the way I'd look at any object that had come into my care.

precious. The sort of stock you'd buy at any stationer's by the quire. Chain lines faint to the l

ket, a jacket lining. Someone had carried it for a long time and had been care

g down and away from the body, the long diagonal of it ending in a little flic

the

to a hard, glassy film, slightly yellowed at the edges, with that particular fine crazing you only get when starch has aged and then been kept somewhere dry. It hadn't been seal

s exactl

a clear, sensible voice. A man who'd known about the crosswords could know about the paste. A man who'd obtained Emeric's papers, his letters, his belongings, could have obtained

of my hair and slid it, v

there was no tearing at all. Inside was a single sheet, folded in thirds, and when I opened it the handwriti

ad

nd you, I'm gone, and I

different ways and they were all worse. You always sai

the Trust. Not to anyone there. Not even to the ones you love. I know how that sounds. I've sat in this kitchen for six weeks trying to find a way to sa

's honest in the way people are when they've decided to be, which

it at breakfast, over the toast, in the middle of an ordinary T

you know I can't leave a thing alone until it's right,

E

crossword. Fourteen-across was

for flaws. The ink: a blue-black gel, ordinary. The pressure: heavy at the downstrokes, as his always was. The hesitat

ht: *it

: *it can

at in this kitch

because that is what my mother taught me to do when I was twelve and couldn't breath

y hands, I took my p

imal part of me recoiled from it. If I called him, it would be real. If I called him, I'd be a woman with a stranger's numbe

lled my

ys did. The last message in it was mine. *Home by 9? I've made too much.* Delivered, never answered

up on the

e. Is somet

answer it." I was standing at the window now, looking at the ligh

th

hear her breathing. I could hear a clock in the room behind her, the old brass carriage clock that had been Walter's, and a dull small sound that might h

um

tly normal. Too normal. A recorded message

hung

en at six every evening of her life, and I knew, as clearly as I knew my o

like a second heartbeat. I counted my breath, in for four, out for six, the way you count a slow lift. I got to the

min

ered.

voice of a woman who'd had nine minutes to find the right face. "Sorry, love, th

t repea

mething I did not want to understand: that the line had not gone funny, that she had caught every word, and that my mot

tly, and I heard the thing that wa