They’ll drive to the lock-up tomorrow, maybe listen to a true-crime podcast on the way. They’re listening to one at the moment about an ice-hockey player who dies in an aeroplane toilet. It is fourteen episodes long.
Samantha starts to read an article about Grayson Perry, the artist they put on television sometimes. His work is very valuable now but, looking at it, fairly hard to forge. She could find someone to do it, she’s sure, but really she prefers it when she can forge them herself. More profit, fewer moving parts. Damien Hirst is her absolute favourite, both for how beautiful she finds his work, and for how easy she finds it to forge.
The downstairs door creaks. Garth must be back, so she will call it a day. She stands and stretches, hearing him moving about downstairs, a little quieter than usual. Is he losing weight? She hopes not. His bulk is what keeps her on the ground. Keeps her from floating up to be with William again.
Climbing down the narrow stairs from the very top of the house, Samantha reaches the grand staircase. A hundred and fifty thousand, the staircase had cost, marble and cherry wood, and just a pinch of ivory, but please don’t tell anyone. She calls out, ‘Garthy, I’m upstairs.’
But if Garth answers, Samantha doesn’t hear him, as a blow to the back of her head sends her tumbling down the staircase. The thousand lights of the chandelier are the final thing she sees. She has always dreamed that one day she would float up to see William again, but the last sensation she feels before she dies is that she is falling. Down, down and down.
60
The curtains are drawn, the heating is on, and Dvořák plays on the gramophone. Just as they had agreed.
The deed is done. Deed? That surely can’t be the word? Either way, there is no going back. They had both been sure.
They have been talking for hours. They have laughed, they’ve cried, both understanding that laughter and tears are the same thing now. He looks beautiful, in his suit. Bogdan took a photograph of them before he left. Before he hugged Stephen and told him he loved him. Stephen told Bogdan not to be such a silly old fool. Bogdan hugged her too as he left, asking her if she was certain.
Certain? Of course not. She will never be certain about anything again. Certainty is for the young and for spies, and she is no longer either.
But they had agreed. Stephen had injected the drug himself. Had insisted. Elizabeth would also have done it herself if she’d had to.
‘We’ve got time all wrong, you see,’ says Stephen, his head in Elizabeth’s lap. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ says Elizabeth. ‘We get most things wrong, don’t we?’
‘Quite so,’ agrees Stephen, his voice quiet. ‘Nail hit well and truly on the head there, old girl. We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.’
Elizabeth strokes his hair.
‘That’s what I’ve come to understand,’ says Stephen. ‘My memories are like emeralds, clear and bright and true, but every new day crumbles like sand, and I can’t get hold of it at all.’
It had been fiddly, the injection. Not traumatic, not peaceful, not devastating, just fiddly. Just another everyday task in a lifetime of everyday tasks.
‘It has shown me the lie of the thing,’ says Stephen. ‘The lie of time. Everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been is present in the same place. But we still think the thing that has just happened, or is about to happen, we think that’s the most important thing. My memories aren’t memories, my present isn’t present, it’s all the same thing, Elizabeth. That man?’
‘Which man?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘The Polish man?’
‘Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Yes, just the chap,’ says Stephen. ‘He’s not, forgive me if this seems obvious, or we’ve been over it. He’s not my son, is he?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not, he’s Polish,’ says Stephen. ‘But not everything adds up, does it? In life?’
Elizabeth has to agree. ‘Not everything adds up.’
‘I wanted to ask him, but whether he was or he wasn’t, I’d have felt ridiculous. Do you have friends?’
‘I do,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I didn’t use to, but now I do.’
‘Good ones?’ asks Stephen. ‘Good in a crisis?’
‘I would say so.’
‘Is this a crisis? Would you say?’
‘Hmm,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Life is a crisis, isn’t it?’
‘Quite so,’ says Stephen. ‘Why should death be any different? Do they know what we’re doing? Your friends?’
‘They don’t,’ says Elizabeth. ‘This is between us.’
‘Will they understand?’
‘Perhaps,’ says Elizabeth. ‘They might not agree, but I think they will understand.’
‘Imagine if we hadn’t met,’ says Stephen. ‘Imagine that.’
‘But we did,’ says Elizabeth, picking some fluff from the shoulder of his suit.
‘Just imagine what I would have missed,’ says Stephen. ‘Will you make sure the allotment is OK?’
‘You don’t have an allotment,’ says Elizabeth.
‘With the radishes,’ says Stephen.
They walk past it every day and Stephen looks at the radishes and says, ‘Dig ’em up. Grow roses, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I’ll look after it for you,’ says Elizabeth.
‘I know you will,’ says Stephen. ‘There’s a museum in Baghdad, you know. Have we been together?’
‘No, my dear,’ says Elizabeth. The places they won’t go together now.
‘I’ve written down the name for you,’ says Stephen. ‘On my desk. It has pieces from six thousand years ago, can you imagine? And on these pieces you can see fingerprints, you can see scratches where someone’s child has come in and distracted them. You understand that these people are still alive? Everyone who dies is alive. We call people “dead” because we need a word for it, but “dead” just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.’
Elizabeth kisses the top of his head. Tries to inhale him.
‘I understand this,’ says Elizabeth. ‘For all the words in the world, when I go to sleep tonight, my hand won’t be in yours. That’s all I understand.’
‘You have me there,’ says Stephen. ‘I have no answer for that.’
‘Grief doesn’t need an answer, any more than love does,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It isn’t a question.’
‘Did you get milk?’ says Stephen. ‘People will want tea.’
‘Let me worry about milk,’ says Elizabeth.
‘I don’t know why we’re on this earth,’ says Stephen. ‘Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you. The answer will be in there somewhere, I’m sure. I’m sure. There’s still half a pint in the fridge, but it won’t be enough. I forget I love you sometimes, did you know that?’
‘Of course,’ says Elizabeth.
‘I am glad I remember now,’ says Stephen. ‘And I’m glad that I shall never forget again.’
Stephen’s eyelids are beginning to droop. Just as Viktor has said they would. Just as she and Stephen had discussed. As best they could. The last time they read the letter together.
‘Are you sleepy?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘A little,’ says Stephen. ‘It’s been a busy day, hasn’t it?’
‘It has, Stephen, it has.’
‘Busy, but happy,’ says Stephen. ‘I adore you, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry about all this. You saw the best of me though? It hasn’t always been like this?’