Is She Still Alive? by Tessa Duder

Author:Tessa Duder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Alan was aware his voice had slowed, the last sentences barely audible. He’d been chilled by Larry’s bizarre request, but they went back a long way, to those basement digs in Hammersmith. Two batty old codgers, he thought absurdly during a lengthy silence when a uniformed staff member walked through, greeting them with a brisk smile. Slumped into his armchair, his head sunk onto one hand. Larry looked to be sleeping, a little aged gnome. But he was sobbing silently, and he repeated the question. ‘Why, when she was so much better?’

Alan fell back on lack of up-to-date knowledge, and his own limited training in mental health compared to today’s students — but it seemed that suicides often seemed improved to family and friends for a few days or weeks before they . . . took action. At some deep, little-understood level, the internal struggle was over.

Above them, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in his admiral’s uniform stared out sternly across the room.

‘Would it have been quick?’ asked Larry.

‘She almost certainly blacked out before impact.’

‘She broke practically everything, never woke up. But her face . . . untouched . . . just looked asleep. At peace.’

Alan folded the two sheets of paper, almost reverently, but filled with a sudden sense of desolation. His last sight of Jacqueline had been overflowing off a morgue trolley, her plump face contorted in death. He had to remember the musical voice, slightly tiddly, offering him a life, which also wasn’t to be.

Larry would mend his relationships with his children, rebuild his life. It’d take a year or two. He’d get an expensive apartment with a view somewhere in Europe, near one of them, share the pleasures of the grandchildren as they grew up. He’d probably drink too much, or write a book. He might take up gambling, or bridge, or even find himself prey to all those questing women on a cruise ship. And he’d get some counselling from time to time when the grief and guilt and the self-imposed burden of his twin secrets got too much.

In counsellor-speak, he’d ‘integrate’ Paula’s death into his life as he — apparently — had his eldest son’s. Eventually, he might even unburden himself of his terrible secrets to his children, a challenging but ultimately very wise move for whatever time he had left. But he was in no shape to hear that sort of advice now.

It felt unsatisfactory, close to betrayal, to accept Larry’s thanks in the lobby, wishing him good luck under the Union Jacks, but Alan couldn’t do otherwise. Too bruised, too tired, too old. He despised himself for the clichés of farewell, the insincere invitation to come down to Plymouth for a few days, sometime in the spring. Alan waved as Larry’s taxi pulled away, bound for Fulham.

Larry would get through it, as he had, twice — as everyone did.

Alan caught his own cab to Paddington through the snowstorm and on the last train knew he’d find some excuse not to invite Larry to Plymouth.

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