Mrs Ashford is Dead

ed was that someone had

away, the way it is when a doctor has been generous with the drip, and for a few seconds I lay still and let the c

oom. It was not an

onitor beside the bed counted my pulse in soft green beeps, and

nd that was when I

to a news channel with the captions running. A

ald dress. My husband's hand at my back, cropped out so only the edg

twice before the wo

d this afternoon. Mrs Ashford died nineteen

ping out of a black car, a wall of cameras flashing

and signed the death certificate himself. Under the terms of the Hale-Ashford merger, h

tar

t does not reconcile, and everything on that screen was a number that did not reco

voice came out cracked and

ssed it twice more and heard the silence

waiting for

over the bead of blood, swung my legs out of bed and nearly fell

grey tracksuit, a pair of trainers in my siz

c

on over the tracksuit anyway, and something small and hard shifted against my hip. In t

ry of ever se

warning: rain on a windscreen, a woman's hands whit

it wa

ners. When I reached the window, I

fence, a cemetery spread out in tidy grey rows, and up the

re alre

d chosen one a short walk from where I lay. I could n

witched off, as if someone had made sure nobody would be around to stop me. I noticed that, and I filed it

e. There were perhaps sixty people, family and company directors, kept apart from the press by a ro

most ever

, solemn and silver-haired. Tobias Reeve, Lucian's oldest friend, stood half a step behind the family as he always did, one hand on Lucian's shou

ad of the grave with h

jaw. The stillness in his hands. The way he gave nothing away because giving nothing away was how he

composed at my own funeral, and something

ou looked at whatever they

nt, and Lucian stepped forward

cker at the corner of his mouth, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He bent h

o, and the co

question that kept hammering. Not why am

ndful of earth. Odette sobbed. Victor dabbed hi

one beside the raw mound of soil and a single

step out fr

w I was alive, and he was standing over the empty pro

osed arou

efore I could take a second step. A voice spoke low against my ear, calm and

ream, Mrs