The New Woman by Charity Norman Read Free Book Online Page B

brushed, and it frizzed around her head.
    ‘No,’ she said, stopping me with a raised hand. ‘Don’t come up.’
    ‘Eilish, I—’
    ‘And don’t say any more—not to me, not to anyone. I don’t want to hear a word of this . . . this absurdity. There’s a lot to do. Kate’s arriving sometime today, and tomorrow your mother andSimon and Carmela and Nico and Wendy, and they’re all going to be—’ She broke off.
    The tree-planting. Of course . ‘I’d forgotten,’ I said.
    ‘Had you?’ She began to walk down the stairs. Her steps seemed steady, but I saw how she gripped the rails on both sides.
    ‘I think you should talk to someone,’ I said. ‘What about Stella? She’s off to Cornwall—just left a message about the cat—but she won’t have gone yet. She’ll come round. I don’t mind if you tell her.’
    ‘No.’
    She stepped around me, careful to avoid any accidental contact. She was in survival mode. I’d seen it before, when we lost Charlotte. In those first terrible hours we sat in the bedroom, holding our baby—now dressed in the stripey suit we’d so happily bought for her—weeping until we had no more tears. It felt as though Eilish and I were one person: one grieving, shattered person. Then Charlotte was taken away for an autopsy, and Eilish insisted on getting out of bed and putting on her clothes. She said she had a funeral to arrange and it was bloody well going to be a good one. She faced the world, though the world did not expect her to.
    On the day of the funeral I looked like a scarecrow. My eyes were bloodshot, my suit crumpled. I’d cut myself shaving. But Eilish was beautifully turned out in navy linen, her hair in an immaculate French pleat, her face closed and rigid. She never noticed, and nobody mentioned, that her shoes weren’t a pair. One was a blue court shoe, the other a sandal. I admired her even more, because those mismatched shoes were a window onto her courage.
    She had that same closed look now, as she opened the chest freezer and began hauling things out of it.
    ‘This can’t just be ignored,’ I said. ‘You must have a thousand questions, and we have decisions to make. Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything to make this easier for you. I’ll leave immediately, if you want.’
    ‘Sleep in the study tonight, will you? Tell the children you have a cold.’ She was piling the contents of the freezer onto the bench top; piling things up, higher and higher and higher in a tottering pile, without even looking at them.
    ‘Please stop!’ I implored her. ‘Let’s cancel the family. It’s only planting a tree for Dad. We can tell them we’ve gone down with flu.’
    ‘Please don’t mention this thing again.’
    I was baffled. ‘What, never?’
    ‘Not until after tomorrow.’
    ‘But it’s going to be impossible—’
    ‘No, Luke!’ She slammed the freezer lid. ‘No. I’m asking you to let me keep my dignity for another forty-eight hours. My dignity . For pity’s sake, is that so much to ask?’
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything.’
    I watched as she took a kitchen knife and slit the wrapping off a frozen leg of lamb. Her movements were quick and jerky.
    ‘I think you’re deluded,’ she said savagely. ‘Perhaps by tomorrow you’ll have found your sanity again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go and get Kate’s room ready.’
    ‘Can I help?’
    She shook her head and disappeared upstairs. I wandered into the study. It was tidy; unnaturally tidy, because I hadn’t intended to return to it. There were no sticky notes on the filing cabinet, no chaotic piles on my desk. In the top drawer lay a sheet of paper with notes for my executors. There was also a list of everything Eilish might need to know: my online passwords, the location of the stopcock in the flat, the addresses of everyone I wanted to be informed. I wasn’t supposed to be here.
    I stood with no purpose, in a future I hadn’t expected to see. I was an impostor in my own