Afterwife by Polly Williams Page A

life, if only I’d realized it sooner.” Dorothy Parker? Anyway, I like to think I would have been able to face my expiration with some grace, although I realize there’s a chance I would have panicked and refused to accept the fact I was dying, like poor Aunt Linda, and spent all my money on an alternative medicine clinic in Austria and massage and vitamin injections.
    Did I have an alternative destiny? Was there some small seed of fate buried within my body that I didn’t know about, a lump in the breast too small for detection? A furring of the left aorta? An unknown yet lethal genetic predisposition embedded in my helix of DNA set to activate at age fifty-five like a bomb in the hold of a plane? I guess we all carry the seeds of our death within us. Then you’re hit by a bus. And those seeds are blown to the wind like a dandelion clock. It’s a fucker, it really is. I realize that nothing else in my life was a fucker now, even though I thought so at the time. Not the fact that I couldn’t conceive a second child. Not the fact that I didn’t become a film star. Or never found the perfect boot. No, being hit by a bus is the fucker of all fuckers, end of.
    You know the truth? The horrible, grave-chilly truth? I feel robbed. I feel robbed of my beautiful child, the sock and honey smell of him, the concavity of his flexible back, his focus as he makes a Lego spaceship, that pink wet tongue curling out of the corner of his mouth with absolute concentration. I feel robbed of his laughter and love, of watching him grow up. And I also feel robbed of theman I fell in love with, the man I’d watched for three years at university, shy of his looks and his cool-kid reticence, the man who kissed me in a field one cool summer dawn in Somerset and made my heart corkscrew with happiness.
    I even feel robbed of my flipping wrinkles! I never ended up looking like my mother, did I? Or my grandmother, a grandmother who lived in near perfect health to the age of ninety-seven, then fell asleep into her cream of mushroom soup one afternoon and didn’t wake up again. I will never be able to say, “It was better in my day,” or marvel at how no one can remember what an iPhone was. No, I am forever a twenty-first-century thirtysomething, like one of those photographs of women in the forties who died during the war and can only ever be remembered with set curls and red lips. Vintage.
    “Was it fun playing at Ludo’s earlier?” Ollie asks, interrupting my thoughts before they get gloomier.
    “Ludo’s dad has gone,” Freddie replies, deadpan, cat’s-cradling an elastic band between his fingers.
    “No, he doesn’t live there anymore, Fred,” replies Ollie softly. “He lives in another house.”
    (FYI, with the old au pair, Astrid.)
    “But he still sees Ludo,” Ollie reassures Freddie.
    Freddie ponders this for a moment, his eyes wide, processing. “I think that’s better than being in heaven. I wish Mummy just lived in another house.”
    So do I, my love. So do I.
    They sit there watching the flames leap blue and orange. I desperately want to curl up beside them, run my fingers along the coiled ridges of their earlobes. Surely my love must conduct itself to them somehow. Love can’t just expire. It’s not got a pulse. Therefore it cannot die. Lateral thinking for you.
    Freddie looks thoughtful. “If you emailed Mummy on your computer what would happen?”
    “Nothing, Fred.”
    “Have you tried?”
    He hesitates. “Yeah. I did once.” He looks down, embarrassed. “Didn’t get a reply. The account is closed now anyway.”
    “What about the thingy on the computer when you get the face like it’s a telly?”
    “Skype?”
    Freddie nods. “The one we use to talk to Granny sometimes.”
    Ollie’s eyes are filling. The lump in his throat is rising up his neck. He’s trying really hard. “She’s not there either, Freddie.”
    “But she’s somewhere!” Freddie shouts. “I
know
she is.”
    Ollie takes Freddie’s