Rach shakes her head. ‘Don’t think about logistics now. We’ll sort it out.’
No offence to Rach, who has been beside me through every failure, but we’ve never ‘sorted out’ something of this magnitude.
Can losing your almost husband technically be construed as failure? And am I going to be trapped in this torment of calling him my ‘almost husband’ for the rest of my life?We were so close to earning those titles. He’s my husband in every way. I feel as much of a widow as someone with the piece of paper I would have held in my hands two days from now, if only I’d picked up that phone call before he did.
Except, if I had … who’s to say I wouldn’t have been the one? Wouldn’t it be him here in this foyer, staring at dashed wedding plans and panicking?
No. Fraser doesn’t panic.
Didn’t.
Past tense.
What iswrongwith me? Why am I even playing God in my mind, twisting the outcome, flipping our misfortunes? Why am I thinking about money and semantics when it’s been a mere hour since he died?
‘Slow down!’
I think it’s me who says this, but it could have been April. She places an arm around my shoulders and says, ‘Seriously. Slow down. We will get you through this.’
I have a flash of Fraser on that bed. ‘He only looked like he was asleep,’ I say, panic strangling me. ‘I have to go back!’
What if I made this up?What if I called them all in unnecessarily, and they left meetings and kids, in Jess’s case, and a date in Clair’s, and my fiancé is about to bring the car around and ask what on earth I’m playing at:I knew you had a wild imagination, Audrey, but this is preposterous!
I grip Rach’s hand. ‘I don’t think he’s dead,’ I assure her, more confident about this than I’ve ever been about anything. He can’t be. ‘They made a mistake. He was unconscious. Can you check? I have visions of them burying him alive. I can’t do this to him!’
They exchange glances. I’ve seen this look before. The time I gave serial cheater Declan Maxwell a third chance. The day I dropped out of the Con. Every decision I made on that Contiki tour after Declan’s final, deal-breaking fling with my second cousin.
‘Sweetheart,’ Jess says, flicking long red hair over her shoulder. I hate it when anyone calls me that. Even one of my best friends. ‘You’re in shock, which is why it doesn’t seem real. It’s okay that you don’t want to believe it yet …’
Will there be a time when Idowant to believe it?
‘Will they give him a blanket?’ The nonsense words that are coming out of my brain now. But I imagine him becoming colder by the second and then being … Ugh, I see him beingrefrigerated, and I simply cannot bear the idea of him not being wrapped in something warm. I’ve watched enough episodes ofCSIto know that he won’t be. They will cover him in a sheet or put him in a bag and reserve the blankets for people who really need them. People with oxygen in their lungs and blood pumping through arteries. People with thoughts and emotions. And a future.
‘We can drop off a special one if you like?’ Rach assures me.
I don’t even understand where we would deliver it. But my heart skips a beat at the desperate chance of seeing him one last time. Of checking, again, for the miracle my brain won’t allow me to abandon.
24
FRASER
I scroll through the contacts in my phone, shuffling between two numbers, imagining each woman responding to my call, reluctant to inflict this misery either way.
Maggie knows there was an accident. She had to leave work to collect Parker when the school called to break the news. It’s our week to have her.My week.But, of course, she’ll have her for as long as we need.As long as I need.
My brain won’t accept the truth, sentences spluttering as it corrects entrenched pronouns, outdated by events. It’s been ‘us’. It’s been ‘ours’. ‘Me’ and ‘my’ and ‘mine’ try to force their way into sentences, unnaturally, and it’s breaking my brain.
I need to tell Parker what’s happened. Parker, who, last night, was flitting about the house in a flower girl dress, twirling and dancing after her final fitting with the dressmaker.
My hand is shaking, holding my phone. Or is it my phone vibrating in my hand? Hard to tell. The world itself feels like it’s rattling. I glance at the screen.
It’s Rachael.
My heart drops through the floor. This willwreckher.
I hit the green button and lift the phone to my ear, only to sense worry in her voice already. News travels fast.Who told her? Maggie?
‘Fraser,’ she gushes. ‘Audrey’s left me on read! She’s not answering calls. I’ve got this horrible sense … Oh, God. I can’t breathe. Has something happened?’
