Page 27 of Last Night

‘Was the driver of the car OK?’ Ed says, in a clipped voice, and he reaches over and squeezes my sweaty, freezing hands. The idea there is a murderer in this story, a flesh-and-blood still-living person who’s violently wrenched Susie from us … I don’t know how I feel about them yet. I haven’t even started trying to work that out. My shock can barely recede an inch to start letting in the ocean of grief, let alone rage.

‘He was treated at the scene for his injuries. The police will know more about that.’

‘Was he drunk?’ Ed says.

‘He’ll have been breathalysed, I don’t know the result.’

‘Police officers have been to see Susie’s father, he seemed in a confused state?’ the doctor continues.

‘He has dementia,’ Ed says. ‘We’re not sure how advanced.’

The doctor nods. He bows his head, slightly.

‘We were wondering if, in light of this, you’d be able to identify the body?’

Ed and I look at each other with bloodshot eyes. ‘No’ does not seem an acceptable answer.

‘The body.’ Susie is not Susie, she is an artefact. She hasleft it behind. She is a thing.

There’s a soap opera, unreal quality to this experience, as if everyone other than myself and Ed might be an actor. The phrases we’re being given abouttake all the time you needandwe’ll be right outsideandcome out and take a break if you need toandthere’s no pressure if you’re not sure.

I feel as if I’ve seen this scene in blue-light procedural dramas that I had half my attention focused on while shovelling my tea. Except this body will not sit up when someone shouts ‘Scene.’

I can’t accept Susie has consented to leave her body anywhere that her personality isn’t. It runs completely contrary to her nature.

Part of me feels defiant – yes, show us this impossible thing you keep saying you have hidden behind a curtain. Death is physical, perhaps it existing in a purely intellectual realm is too much to reconcile. Susie losing her life has been only words, wild claims. Knowing someone wouldn’t lie to you, and actually believing them, are two different things, it seems.

I have a firm conviction that if I ignored them, broke free and ran away from this bleach-sluiced place that I shouldn’t be in, hailed a taxi and went to Suze’s, she’d be there looking baffled at me in the doorway, hair back in one of those cotton Alice bands she uses to keep it off her face.

What’s up with you? Course I’m here. I always work from home on a Friday.

The ease and clarity with which I can picture her makes this seem entirely feasible. She’s at my fingertips.

They take us into an empty room, witha long, shallow curtained window across one wall. Ed and I hold hands, not looking at each other. My heart is thundering.

‘Are you ready?’ the doctor says, quietly, more to Ed than me, and he nods.

On the other side, they briskly draw back the curtains.

I give an involuntary gasp at the sight of her. Ed and I grip each other’s hands so hard it feels like it could snap bone.

It’s her.

She’s there.

Susie’s lying on a trolley with a dark blue sheet pulled up to her neck, her long hair pooled around her head, some of it spilling over the edge, her eyes closed.

I expected Susie to look asleep, as much as I could picture this at all.

She doesn’t look asleep. She looks like a sallow waxwork of Susie, with a slack expression. Like someone has made a model of Susie Hart from plaster of Paris, like something they might put in a modern art gallery.

I’ve never seen a dead person before and I didn’t know that I’dknowthey were dead, if that makes any sense. If I’d suspect a heartbeat hiding under that sheet. But I can tell Susie is dead, that this is what death looks like. If I’d been the first to find her like this, I’d have understood she was gone. We are still mammals, with instincts.

Her face – her regal, prom-queen face I know every detail and shadow of – is without animation. I can see the edge of a huge spreading purple bruise at her temple. I guess they have shown us her this way round so it’s at the far side.

I turn to the doctor, who’s standing with his hands behind his back and his chin respectfully on his chest.

‘That’s her,’ I say, voice full of water, and pain. ‘That’s Susie.’

---