‘The same sanctuary we always planned on working at,’ he says. ‘It’s still there.’ He casts his eyes down. ‘It felt like the best way to honour him.’
‘How was it?’
‘Exactly as we expected,’ he says. ‘Mad. Peaceful.’ They stop at the top of the stairs, Seb turning to Maisie with an apologetic look. ‘I couldn’t be here,’ he says. ‘And then, one day, I was sitting in this yard with all these dogs, talking out loud to all of them, and I just thought: what am I doing? Why am I talking to you, and not—’ He shakes his head. ‘It just suddenly seemed so stupid. And that’s when I knew it was time to come home.’
‘We all cope in our own way.’
The Auden poem is a cliché, but the clocks really did stop when Nimesh died. Then they sped up, and suddenly a year had passed, and Maisie has found herself living in a space frozen in time, a house still overflowing with him. She has kept his clothes hanging in the wardrobe, his razor balancing on the edge of the sink, his shoes in the rack by the front door. Clara has been here constantly, playing the part of art therapist. They’ve been doing angry paintings together in the garden. They’ve been writing poetry, then burning the poems.Apparently, it’s supposed to help, but the real help has been the company, the presence of someone who sees Maisie as more than a widower. The kids are muddling through. Nora has done more for Finn than Maisie ever could.
But Seb is a different kind of presence. She needs someone solid. She generally avoids this room, except for when she’s forced to fetch some form or file pertaining to the will or the insurance, the bureaucracy that takes all of the life out of death. If she stays away, if she stays quiet, she can imagine that she hears Nimesh behind the door, tapping away on his keyboard, snoring lightly in his office chair. When they enter his office, she’s surprised by all the dust.
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ Maisie says.
It’s time to make some changes. To move forward. What will she use the room for? That’s all in the future. For now, Seb is already assembling boxes, pulling down entire shelves of bric-a-brac. She watches him go. The work isn’t intolerable, to him. It’s an escape. After a while, she joins in. Starting with the shelf that always embarrassed her, the one that Nimesh had devoted entirely to her pamphlets, the magazines that printed her poems. She stops for a little cry. Neither of them can bring themselves to remove the medical certificates from the walls, but they make good progress on Nimesh’s meticulous files, on Priya’s ambitious drawings, on Finn’s football trophies. All will be redistributed throughout a house that has to be different. Nimesh’s acoustic guitar sits in one corner. Seb stares at it, looks like he might finally cry.
‘You can have it if you want,’ Maisie says. ‘I’m hopeless. And you’re too old for the drums.’
But he’s not looking at the guitar. He’s looking at Nimesh’s lucky guitar pick, tucked behind the strings, so old that the bronze has gained a rusty patina. He’d had it since his days in the band, carried it through all his exams, clutched it in his palm on the day Finn was born. When Maisie presses the pick into the palm of Seb’s hand, he accepts it without a word. They continue without speaking until the room is almost empty, at which point they begin to sort the files into piles on the floor. One pile resists categorisation, a miscellaneous collection of memories. Museum tickets. Father’s Day cards. Wedding invitations. And this.
‘He kept it,’ Seb says, his hand trembling, his voice unsteady.
He’s holding a faded ink drawing. A man and his dog, sitting at the foot of a statue.
‘He was always more sentimental than you.’
Back down in the kitchen, Seb gives each of the dogs a fuss in turn. It’s like Nimesh had planned it, the menagerie he has left for them. Four dogs, two cats, a litter of rabbits and guinea pigs, and the odd goldfish or two. Maisie and the children will never be alone. Now Maisie sits at a dining table long since ruined by crayons and felt-tips, drinking black coffee and watching Seb drift around the room.
‘Smudge hasn’t burned the bar down, then?’ Maisie asks.
‘Not that I know of,’ Seb says. ‘He might actually be a better manager than me.’
He’s not looking at her, but at a particular photograph, sitting on the shelf in front of the cookbooks. He picks it up, smiles. Then he brings it over to Maisie, though she knows exactly what it is. The four of them, in their twenties, outon the decking at the back of Seb and Clara’s old flat. Seb’s messy hair is hidden beneath a baseball cap. Clara is wearing one of Seb’s old band T-shirts with the arms cut off. Her hair is intact, the undercut a while off. Nimesh has a man bun and a boyish smile. Maisie’s hair is mousy brown, her expression awkward, her teeth bared in something like fright. She has not yet become herself.
‘Our first photo together,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know Ryan was taking it. I didn’t know Ryan. I didn’t even know Nimesh, not really.’
She smiles, caught in the past. Seb puts his arm around her.
‘He always made fun of me for looking so shocked in the picture,’ Maisie says. ‘Like I didn’t want to be caught with him.’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t. And I did. Cam must have known what was going on.’
‘Cam!’ Seb says, and it breaks the moment. His laugh surprises both of them. ‘That guy sucked.’ They’re both laughing, now. ‘You really traded up.’
The laughter subsides.
‘Yeah,’ Maisie says. ‘I did.’
Seb takes the seat next to her. The photo sits on the table between them, a porthole to the past.
‘Have you been keeping up with her?’ Maisie says.
Seb’s heavy eyebrows furrow in the same way they always have. ‘We don’t talk any more.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ It comes out curt. ‘I meant, have you been keeping tabs on her?’ She stops him before he can interrupt. ‘Don’t say you don’t use the internet. That act doesn’t cut it any more.’
Seb looks down into his coffee. He can’t answer, seems ashamed about it.
Maisie looks into her own cup, speaks matter-of-factly. ‘She’s been drawing again,’ she says. ‘They’re talking about an exhibition.’
‘That’s good,’ Seb says, eventually, quietly.
