Afterwife by Polly Williams Read Free Book Online

busy, bloody brilliant in the current climate.”
    “I know, I know.” Had she made Sam defensive about his career? That wasn’t her intention. He had once dreamed of being a human rights lawyer and had grown up to be a divorce lawyer. This was what happened in life to most people, a gradual distillation of intent. One had to be pragmatic. She’d once dreamed of being a gardener, and she was a copy editor. How did that happen? Well, the rent happened. London happened. Her “career” happened while she was thinking about other things. Like nights out with the girls in karaoke bars in town. Chris. Tim. Sam. Chelsea Flower Show. Her highlights. Her waxing schedule. How to avoid going home for lunch every Sunday. Dolly at Wembley Arena. The demanding full-time vocation of being Sophie’s best friend. Her love of books.
    So she dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and realigned paragraphs. She was good at it. Although sometimes it felt like her pastime was copyediting and her real job was trying to get her printer to work. Her specialty, her passion, although she would take on anything, was the kind of sumptuous gardening and house books that few bought, much less read. She’d always loved detail, the antlike march of letters across a page, the excitement of undressing a manuscript from its large padded envelope. But she’d made some embarrassing mistakes recently. Only last week she’d not spotted that a manuscripthad three chapter fives. If there were a disacknowledgments section for people who’d made the production of the book infinitely more difficult she’d take pride of place.
    “Let’s go somewhere fancy soon. I don’t know, Barcelona? Rome? Business is good, all good, babes,” Sam added, rubbing a hand along her thigh.
    She smiled. “As long as you’re not one of the divorcing couples.”
    “As long as you’re not the husband! Some of the payouts. Woo-wee!” He whistled, stared up at the ceiling. “It’s a miracle anyone gets married.”
    The elephant in the room swished its tail. She remembered Sophie asking her about the wedding date that fateful night. Pushing the conversation out of her head, she quickly sat up and slipped her feet into her sheepskin slippers. She didn’t want to think about that.
    “Interesting look.” He smiled, glancing down.
    “Oh!” She’d put the slippers on the wrong feet. Yesterday she’d gone out to buy a newspaper with her jumper inside out. How she missed her old brain, her tidy, organized, optimistic brain. Where had it gone? It was as if someone had crept in the night Sophie died and emptied all her boxes, books and files all over the floor, like a demented ex-employee sabotaging the boss’s office.
    “Chuck over the lighter. Thanks, darling.”
    She handed him the bullet-cold weight of the Zippo and gazed out the window at the poised row of grubby Georgian houses on the opposite side of the Camden street. They looked different since Sophie had died, in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She felt the faint vibration of a Silverlink train, heard its rumble, then the deaf bloke’s telly next door. Again, these familiar noises now sounded foreign, like something outside a hotel window the first morning in a new city.
    Sam exhaled a curl of smoke. “Where you taking Freddie, then?”
    “Thinking zoo, but it’s a bit arctic, isn’t it?” The freezing Februarysky looked heavy and white. “I remember being dragged to the zoo as a child when it was like this. The only thing you get to see are llamas and rare breed pigs.”
    “Nothing wrong with a rare breed. Preferably between two slices of bread with a dollop of ketchup.”
    She bit down on her bottom lip, where she had developed a permanent dent like the pothole Camden Council wouldn’t mend outside the apartment. “Why don’t you come?”
    “Don’t do zoos, babes.”
    Sam didn’t do north of London or easyJet or rubber-soled shoes. The zoo thing was a new one. “Huh?”
    “The sight