Little Bee by Chris Cleave Read Free Book Online Page B

said the older officer.
    “What
do you mean?”
    It
came out more aggressive than I intended. The policemen stared at their caps on
the table. I needed to look at the text message that had just arrived. As I
reached out my hand to pick up my phone, I saw the two of them staring at the
stump of my missing finger.
    “Oh. This? I lost it on holiday. On a
beach, actually.”
    The
two policemen looked at each other. They turned back to me. The older one
spoke. His voice was suddenly hoarse.
    “We’re
very sorry, Mrs. O’Rourke.”
    “Oh,
please, don’t be. It’s fine, really. I’m fine now. It’s just a finger.”
    “That’s
not what I meant, Mrs. O’Rourke. I’m afraid we’ve been instructed to tell you
that—”
    “See,
honestly, you get used to doing without the finger. At first you think it’s a
big deal and then you learn to use the other hand.”
    I
looked up and saw the two of them watching me, gray-faced and serious. Neon
crackled. On the wall clock, a fresh minute snapped over the old one.
    “The
really funny thing is, I still feel it, you know? My finger, I mean. This missing one. Sometimes it actually itches. And I go to
scratch it and there’s nothing there, of course. And in my dreams my finger
grows back, and I’m so happy to have it back, even
though I’ve learned to do without it. Isn’t that silly? I miss it, do you see?
It itches. ”
    The
young officer took a deep breath and looked down at his notebook.
    “Your
husband was found unconscious at your property shortly after nine this morning,
Mrs. O’Rourke. Your neighbor heard cries and placed a 999 call to the effect
that a male was apparently in distress. Police attended the address and forced
entry to an upstairs room at nine-fifteen A.M., when Andrew O’Rourke was found
unconscious. Our officers did everything they could and an ambulance attended
and removed the casualty, but I am very sorry to tell you, Mrs. O’Rourke, that
your husband was pronounced dead at the scene at—here we are—nine thirty-three
A.M.”
    The
policeman closed his pad.
    “We’re
very sorry, madam.”
    I
picked up my phone. The new text was indeed from Andrew. SO SORRY, it said.
    He
was sorry.
    I
switched the phone, and myself, onto silent mode. The silence lasted all week. It
rumbled in the taxi home. It howled when I picked up Charlie from nursery. It
crackled on the phone call with my parents. It roared in my ears while the
undertaker explained the relative merits of oak and pine caskets. It cleared
its throat apologetically when the obituaries editor of The
Times telephoned to check some last details. Now the silence had
followed me into the cold, echoing church.
    How
to explain death to a four-year-old superhero? How to announce the precipitous
arrival of grief? I hadn’t even accepted it myself. When the policemen told me
that Andrew was dead, my mind refused to contain the information. I am a very
ordinary woman, I think, and I am quite well equipped to deal with everyday
evil. Interrupted sex, tough editorial decisions and malfunctioning coffee
machines—these my mind could readily accept. But my Andrew,
dead? It still seemed physically impossible. At one point he had covered
more than seven tenths of the earth’s surface.
    And
yet here I was, staring at Andrew’s plain oak coffin (A classic
choice, madam), and it seemed rather small in the wide nave of the church. A silent, sickening dream.
    Mummy, where’s Daddy?
    I
sat in the front pew of the church with my arms around my son, and realized I
had begun to tremble. The vicar was delivering the eulogy. He was talking about
my husband in the past tense. He made it sound very neat. It occurred to me
that he had never had to deal with Andrew in the present tense, or proofread
his columns, or feel him running down inside like a piece of broken clockwork.
    Charlie
squirmed in my arms and asked his question again, the same one he’d asked ten
times a day since Andrew died. Mummy, where’s mine