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August 2024

Cambridge

O N THE FIRST

anniversary of Alistair’s funeral, Bridie opens her laptop and gives a furtive look behind her as though Alistair’s ghost might be watching.

The only ghost Bridie has ever welcomed is Ferris, after he ascended to the great fairground in the sky. She loves Jessie, the one-eyed ginger cat currently curled up asleep on her favourite spot on the sofa, but Ferris was the first cat who saved her. And you never forget your first. When Jessie gets the zoomies after mealtimes, thundering up and down the stairs and meowing, Bridie likes to believe she is playing with Ferris. And she leaves a little extra food in Jessie’s bowl so that Ferris knows he’s welcome. So he knows that she wants him to stay.

She has thought about doing this many times. But now that her wedding ring is in her jewellery box. Now that her mourning period is over. Now that she has given Alistair’s clothes to charity, just as he gave her locket to the Salvation Army, not intentionally, but because he was not looking at

what went into the box, now that Oliver seems okay. Now all those things.

She can look for Eddie.

Bridie can’t remember how old he was when she met Eddie Winston. She can barely remember her own age now, save that she is only a few years from a telegram from the king, but he can keep his telegrams. It is accidental, not an achievement, to be this old. It is a falling apart of things.

Now she is not bound by the covenant of marriage, Bridie feels both free and afraid. The rules were the only thing keeping her weighted to the ground. Now she might just float away.

She types slowly. Eddie Winston Birmingham UK.

It is the third result, after an advert for a family-tree research website and the statistics of a footballer from the 1960s.

And her whole body becomes very still as she reads that Eddie Winston died in Birmingham on Wednesday.

She doesn’t breathe in, doesn’t breathe out.

She waited too long.

It is too late.