I had known of Corrine for many years, though we didn’t become close—if one could call it that—until Jay’s funeral. Death has a way of bringing the living together. It dissolves pretenses. There was Jay, lying impossibly still, his dreamy smirk reminding me of Tollund Man, the fourth-century corpse. Which was why I started to laugh. And turned to the nearest person, who happened to be Corrine. Oh, but it’s a private joke, between just us, I realized in a heartbeat. Something that cannot be shared or ever explained.

Next, I was clamped to Corrine, who was saying, “Yes, yes, yes, I know, I’m here,” and I was being smothered by the woman, whose scent was not entirely that of perfume, but rather of an earthier substance.

Corrine had been a colleague of Jay’s at the newspaper. This was at the Docklands, a sterile place now, and a letdown for Jay after the heady days of Fleet Street. He had been the deputy culture editor, and she had briefly worked in the research library. It takes a certain type to work in a library, and Corrine was not one of those. She was too tactile and vivacious.

They had met at a publisher’s party in London, at which Uri Geller was bending spoons. It was Corrine’s first trip abroad. She spent most of her time in tearooms, or strolling through Bloomsbury, wondering what she should do with her life, that is, if it was necessary to do anything at all. But of course it was. One couldn’t just drift. Friends of friends of Jay’s had invited Corrine to the party. Her light-blue frock resembled a sailor suit. Yet Jay was charmed by the childlike American. Approaching her from behind, he whispered something clever in her ear. I would give anything to know what it was.

When Jay slumped over on a bright day, just like that I became a widow with no head for annuities, sprinkler systems, and all the other mundane things. At least I had my career. I was the distance learning professor of archaeology at an online university in central London. Archaeology has always been my passion (hence my fascination with Tollund Man). Even in my jumper, ironed white blouse, pencil skirt and pumps, I feel connected to those prehistorics who lit fire with rocks.

Today I was balancing the chequebook—trying to. The task had been neglected since Jay’s death, and had only come to my attention because of the bank’s nudge. We—I—was overdrawn. This triggered an irrational, weepy feeling. I lingered over the last of Jay’s golf club fees, written in his hand. And there was something else: a bill from Grennigan’s, the Embankment florist that Jay had faithfully patronized. But my husband had been frugal. No bouquet had ever cost him fifty pounds!

I perused the ledger. Then, on a hunch (for though I am trusting I am not a fool; a woman needs to defend herself from matrimonial vexations as they arise; by nature I am critical, cannot tolerate not knowing), I rang up Grennigan’s. And was informed that when Jay had given me that spray of agapanthuses and blush roses, he had given the same to another as well. His incompetence disturbed me. Surely he could have paid by cash, thus sparing me this discovery.

Archaeology is the study of the human past by what remains. It is a peephole through which the trained eye may glimpse other worlds. What is found (I was fond of saying to my students) must be appreciated for having survived all manner of mysterious conditions. Because the arduous task of following a shambles of ecofacts to a hope that may ultimately dead end is not a skip through bread-crumbed woods, unless one first surrenders to the rapture of granular analysis and interpretation. It all comes down to an enduring curiosity, and context is needed. So I opened Jay’s desk drawer. I pulled out a tangle of wool scarves, a map of the Underground. His diary. Although I believed to my core that the living were entitled to their privacy, certainly the dead were a different matter.

The diary was last year’s. I turned to a random page.

Din w C 6.15 Covt Gdn

I should have stopped there. Instead I dutifully sifted through names and addresses of B&Bs, dates frequented, and Jay’s flagrant use of the smiley face, a habit which stunned me, for I had not known that side of my husband, and it could only mean one thing. Once, on the site of a Scottish castle, I had come across a studded bangle. It was gone by the time I returned from my tea break. Looting is always an issue on a dig, as it is in life. It is often when one pays the least attention to what one has that it is taken, and it is then one grasps the true value of the thing now gone.

Pottery, tools, and weapons. Gold rings. Ancient bricks. Fossils, and bits of iron slag. Ritual burial items. The couture of mummification. Skulls and teeth. Bits of animal bones. Middens of broken shells. Human bones cradled in peat. The key was to be alert, impartial. To see the past as a grid, into which truth fitted. He was a restless, insatiable man.

I concluded that Jay and Corrine had met regularly for the last decade or so. Perhaps longer. These were early dinners in the vicinity of Covent Garden, though sometimes they involved floating restaurants on the Thames, or underground pubs. There was a trip to Wales, ostensibly to visit Lloyd George’s daughter. Numerous Kenwood teas. Tracking other questionable expenses led me to the realization that Jay had bought Corrine gifts. Trinkets, and trays to put incense in. A camera.

This was how I came to invite Corrine, a vegetarian, to lunch at Odette’s, which served meat dishes. It made sense to confront her at a restaurant that she was sure not to like. I wanted to destroy her, that is, as much as one could destroy someone in a place where the wine is decanted and Mozart, and only Mozart, is played.

“Oh hello, Corrine…” I left a brief message on the answer machine. As I waited for her return call, I felt stressed. Really, the last person I wanted to see was Corrine. We had so little in common, that is, other than Jay.

I powered on the computer, which sat atop Jay’s burr walnut desk in our bedroom. I had committed to a new distance learning module, and felt consoled by the tooled green leather, the jug of pens with its peacock feather, safely inspired.

There was a photograph of me, positioned so that its eyes followed. This woman is too surprised by life’s grand tour, I thought. Or not surprised enough. Helpful Helen, they called me then. I hated photographs.

Looking out the window at the oak, my gaze passed to the sky. I saw in the clouds a wild scene: cherubs, bloated and wayward, and a stampede of stylized horses, or unicorns, or rhinos, rather like those one would find on the walls of Lascaux. Then that changed, and there was only the piercing blue of a shade that has no name or place in this world.

The Prehistoric Woman, I typed. I owned a reproduction of the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, and so I considered this muted creature, who was all rounds and little else. I wished to be her voice—to show the fetishistic Venus as a small, dark, hairy predecessor whose responsibilities, though unlike my own, nevertheless weighed.

Suddenly the computer made a series of loud pops. It was like gunfire, as one heard in the downs, very odd. (Normally an explosion took place outside oneself, but this had seemed to originate inside my head.) And there were no rabbits here at Crawleigh House, no game of interest, no guns. I gave the monitor a smack. Then, drawing back, I observed the screen, now blank. It had gone a glow-in-the-dark green, was gently pulsing. Where was my file? Again, I smacked the monitor, thinking to somehow dislodge it. My rage frightened me (I was not like this), so I got a grip and tried pushing keys: “Esc,” “F12,” and the one that said “Pause.”

Then to my surprise, there came a soft ratta-tat-tat. A string of text appeared:

Th55 ssprighelerr  hdds r bkkolckd nd mendgg

After frowning at this gibberish, I removed my spectacles and put them in their case. What was happening here?

Distance learning headquarters was a suite of unmarked offices, located within the “real” college. It took me twenty minutes to travel into the city by cab, though it seemed much longer, an eternity of bricks and ivy, bygone mammoths, stone and glass, all melded together, all unfurling. Maxwell, the director, was rooting through a cardboard box when I arrived.

“Ah, Helen. Finished with that new module yet?” he asked cheerily.

“Almost,” I said. “I was doing fine until—.”

“What is it, Helen? Are you unwell?”

I was shivering, aside from being pale, so after he flicked on the kettle, he gallantly pushed aside a stack of curricula, and took me in his arms. It was a platonic hug, but still.

“It’s the fault of that Venus of Dolni Vestonice, I tell you.” I felt like crying as I leaned against my pudgy boss.

“Tell me precisely what happened.” 

I did.

“Now you say there was a pop.”

“More than one.”

“How many?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think there were three distinct pops.”

“And then?”

“Then the screen went a sickly green color, and ratta-tat-tat, the keyboard began typing, all on its own.” I produced the page that I had printed out. “It’s just nonsense.”

He studied it. Then he shook his head. “I’m afraid it may be a virus, Helen. Or perhaps a worm or Trojan. Either of which could bring our distance learning system down.”

I, who usually understood everything, didn’t understand this. To my mind, a virus was flu, a worm was in my garden, and a Trojan was a horse in Greek mythology. But no, these were malware.

That afternoon, a young man with a suspicious-looking briefcase showed up at my house in Muldain Road. His name was Will, and he spoke of code. It concerned me how he penetrated the inner workings of my computer so quickly.

Will had just upended the computer to further examine it, when the telephone rang. It was Corrine. I froze as I listened to the incoming message.

“Love to do lunch tomorrow,” Corrine’s voice said. Or rather, gushed. “I know this is a challenging time for you, what with Jay gone. Thanks for reaching out.”

Will continued fussing with a little black box and a mess of colored wires.

“My husband is deceased,” I said.

He seemed not to know what that meant.

“He’s dead.” I would have liked to educate this Will in death’s hidden culture, the choices and decisions involved in seeing someone off, the strange moods that sweep over one, the cinematic memories that can threaten and diminish reality, if one isn’t careful. But he had handed me six tiny screws, which I was not to lose as he dismantled something. I waited nearby.

Will held the black box before me. “Here’s the trouble,” he said. He slipped a new black box in where the other had been.

He stayed on for tea. As he clumsily navigated the sandwich, I pressed him for information about his scooter, his dog. His electrifying presence and his charming habit of biting his lower lip—it was all too much. I got up and opened a window.

“Hmm. Have you checked those sprinkler heads?” he asked helpfully.

I’ve let things go, I realized, noting the lawn, Jay’s pride, which had dried to a solemn golden color.

I was relieved, now the computer problem was solved. I felt serene as Will walked down the drive. I experienced a rare moment of rightness. It wouldn’t last.

The file cabinet on the bedroom’s north wall was Jay’s (mine was on the south). I began ransacking his journalism archive. I wanted to find the piece he had written about Uri Geller. I needed to see it. Not that it would make me less of a skeptic. Jay had always been the open, affable one, clambering to possibility’s side.

Mind-bending! the headline declared. It was a short piece, only two columns, with a sidebar about psychokinesis. I read it through with pleasure, then to read between the lines. Jay had written: “All were mystified by Mr. Geller’s paranormal parlour tricks.” But he hadn’t been in the room at the time; no, he had been laughing in the vestibule with Corrine. I had witnessed the “mind-moving” spectacle on my own. I recalled Uri Geller’s mink’s eyes, the drooping spoon. He had also worked his magic on a stalled pocket watch, causing it to tick again. I had told Jay about it later, when we came home. It was a spring evening. We had rocked in our hammocks as the moon grew full.

I should not have read it. It brought back potent memories that were exact and therefore exquisitely painful. I recalled Jay’s voice. His preposterous laugh. The way he had walked into the house all those ordinary evenings and called my name—“Helen”—as if it were a thing that he knew, beyond any doubt.

I sank to the floor, landing gracelessly on my bum, and wondered how it was that my solid legs had buckled. But here I was, and the tears were welling, causing distortions.

Eventually I got up. I walked through the house, pausing at the threshold of various rooms, not really thinking, just taking in the fact that there were rooms to behold, with things in them, shrouded objects that ought to be dusted. I took the yellow dusting cloth in hand.

Gone are the honeymooned days of riding donkeys sidesaddle through Greek villages, and searching the turquoise waters, searching our hearts—for what? So that one may lose it all? I flitted about, the roar in my head growing louder: Homo sapiens are bipedal and wise, yes, but we’re also flawed, caught up in the evolution of desire. Does it all come down to slices of time? Tollund Man lay twenty-five thousand years in his bog, his last meal a porridge of knotweed and flax. And what of Lucy’s scattered bones, or Broom’s devotion to the skull of Mrs. Ples? The carnelian, the lapis lazuli. All secreted below, the stash of ancients. So much in life and death is inconclusive. I passed the cloth over my petrified tree rings, the homely basket woven strand over strand by unknown hands, the heart-shaped milagro of negligible power. Relics of a life. My life. Yes, gone are the days—.

Oh no, I sighed. Not again. Light shone in my eyes, and the computer made a terrible whine. Will had explained about sleep mode; maybe it was now coming awake. Then the keyboard ratta-tat-tatted.

I, 

The

sprinkler heads are blocked, need

mending.

Jay

p.s. We did nothing wrong.

I sat for a while in the wing chair. Perhaps I was imagining it? Grief can do such things.

It’s Jay, I thought sensibly. And he’s right about the sprinkler heads. Just as he had been right so many times before. (Our Italian holiday came to mind. We had got ourselves lost in a maze. Jay had known which way to turn.) But the postscript baffled me. We did nothing wrong. Of course we hadn’t! Silly man. Then I knew: he must be referring to Corrine.

“Jay?” I waited, as if he might materialize, a repentant ghost.

No answer.

I marched to his desk. I was about to fling the diary across the room, when I had a change of heart.

Maybe it’s Will. Having one over on me. What was he, some kind of—oh, what was it called?

Hacker.

Have you checked those sprinkler heads? he had asked.

But I had not likely registered on the lad’s radar. Which meant that 1) It really was Jay coming through on my computer, or 2) I was mad, or 3) I was mad and it was Jay.

“Damn you for leaving me in such a mess!” I shouted. And felt better for it. Yet it bothered me that I was having a one-sided row. It was better with two.

Do ghosts read minds? Or do they just aimlessly pass through… That I was pondering such things further unnerved me. I preferred the idea, hard as it was, that when the dead are dead, they are dead. Period.

No need to fret about the sprinklers, I decided. I would simply call my neighbor and ask what landscaper she used. There were ways to cope.

At half past five, I fixed myself a light supper of parsnips with butter and thyme. I poured a glass of white wine. In a little while, I would change into widow’s clothes and head down Langley Lane to my grief group at the Church Hall. I would sit on one of the low chairs used for children.

I was not a parishioner, though I once had been. I was one of those lambs who had wandered off.

In the interim, I debated whether it was worse to sew a button onto a dead husband’s shirt or to salvage the remaining buttons for the button jar. Or if it was better to donate the shirt, or if it ought to stay in the wardrobe.

I left the shirt in the wardrobe, where it gave off a devastatingly faint aroma, as though it was a flower but for a day. The grief group wasn’t for another hour, so I allowed myself a drop more Chablis, remarking to myself on its steely flavor.

Then I hauled out the distance learning equipment. As I wondered what I should say to the World Archaeology students, I wrestled the tripod’s flailing legs. At last it was perfectly set up in the foyer. I was reminded by the video camera’s vacuous eye of other dark places, into which I had looked: abandoned mines, wells, and the dilated eyes of various lovers—before Jay, that is; I had always been faithful. Then it came to me: “I should like to warn you that a dig has many perils.”

My students were known to me by their profiles and user names, or, in the case of the anonymous audits, not at all. Sometimes I wondered if any of them were even there. If I was speaking of past things and making meaning from the dust of time for no one’s benefit but those pioneers of the field who had made their academic mark and gone on. There had been some issues raised on the virtual blackboard. General confusion about the last module (a question about the Locrian maidens). No one knew what I was referring to, and they were right: I had slipped up. That was from a different course.

To the camera (now off), I confessed my various concerns. I said I didn’t know if anyone had done anything wrong, nevertheless it was all I could think of, and I resented Jay for his part in it, even if he was a ghost. I spoke too of my unique emptiness, and how I felt ambivalent about cherishing a thing so useless, which was causing me endless pain.

Jay had once convinced me to undress before this very camera. What a charade! The idea of it accidentally going viral had haunted me for days.

Hearing the stories of the people in my grief group always gave me a feeling of connectedness. Mourning was like an endurance sport, though there were no winners. Being a surviving spouse meant living in a world that was defined by the other’s memory, and that memory could be cruelly intrusive, which was not how Jay had been in life. In life, he had been a gentleman. Or had he…

We did nothing wrong.

“Helen?” the facilitator said.

“Yes,” I said brightly, determined to be the only happy person here. Then I said how lately it seemed the world was decomposing at a rapid rate, and before my very eyes. Mold, for example, was eating away at the basins. Rot. There were signs of it everywhere: things breaking down generally. “And all the while, one keeps flitting from thing to thing! It is the ultimate distraction, life. It seems so pointless to be striving for anything, when it is all of it falling apart.” I had been incapable of speaking of what really mattered: diaries riddled with smiley faces, shadow bouquets.

I left the group early. This was not unusual, people were always running out in tears. I made my way to the car, took my place in the passenger seat, pulled on the strap.

Idiot. Getting out, I went round to the other side. Then I drove myself down the dark quiet road.

Returning home, I drew a hot bath of lavender-scented water. I managed to emerge renewed. I watched the news, remembering nothing. Tomorrow I would meet Corrine at Odette’s, noonish. In preparation for this event, I set out my smart clothes. Everything in order.

Next I did my evening ritual of touching Jay’s things: the cat’s-eye marble, the carved wooden box where he kept the talisman of a condom (we had never wanted children, though now I did), the Victorian shoehorn. After a swoon of some kind had come over me, I pulled back the covers and got into bed. It was a cold marriage bed, in which our bodies had once touched for warmth and solace. But no more.

Propped by pillows, I found my place in a book about the Sumerians. The thinking was derivative of Gertrude Bell’s, but no matter. Reading of digs, especially of controversies to do with digs, fascinated me. Lost in the text, I deepened, and parts of me worked loose, and I felt myself dissolve. I also felt closer to Jay, for he was of that world now, where bone and ash and tarnished jewel mingled with a certain rightness, and in a way that felt wholly honorable.

The idea of confronting Corrine thrilled me. I wanted to get past all the muck and discern what truth was there, if any. It was like being on a dig. One never knew what one would find. It could be anything. It could be the opposite of what one wanted.

I became drowsy as I read of Nicolas Steno’s law of superposition: “If a solid body is enclosed on all sides by another solid body, of the two bodies that one first became hard which, in the mutual contact, expresses on its own surface the properties of the other surface.” It was late: half past eleven.

In my dreams sometimes, I ran with bare savages. Or I excitedly dug in a place called the Sweet Track, searching for a hoard of elephant tusks and ostrich eggs, even for entire lost cities. But tonight, no dreams came. Instead, I tossed and turned, now clutching the pillow, now staring up at the ceiling, that is, what I could see of it in the dark. This darkness being the province of grief, which terrified me. And so it went.

It was a habit of mine to count backwards in times of stress. I did this now. But when I reached eighty-eight, an unpleasant thing happened. The computer groaned like a mechanical beast, and its screen turned the color of emeralds.

Alarmed, I sat up in bed.

Now the monitor was flashing like a neon sign, with a queer luminosity. Then—ratta-tat-tat—that sound again.

Wyofj d jf8f f88  ssXX

I made as if to move to the phone. Will would know what to do. Where was that card he’d given me with the help-line number? The twenty-four-hour one. I needed it. Needed him. He could run tests.

When Jay’s face (if one could call it that, for it was a blur)—when Jay’s face wafted across the screen, looking sidelong at me, I felt “a warm chill.” This was how I described it in my notes the next morning.

I didn’t dare write about what happened next. It felt shameful to do so. But if I had, I might have mentioned the breeze, which skimmed pleasantly across and over me. Then time seemed to stretch in an exhilarating way. And I felt of a piece with life, and all its messiness; certainly I was not separate from it. Which was just fine. Because everything was coming at me, fast, and I knew that the hands (though they were not quite that), which swept wildly over me, were Jay’s. And he was descending upon me, hovering now, impossibly weightless, as if he were made of light. Then he seemed to roam about the bedroom, sensing me from a distance, as a magical torch shining in all directions. With a peculiar suddenness he returned, and we were joined in an ethereal embrace of such intensity that I thought I would melt. He was exquisitely gentle, yet also quite ravenous. Oh my. All I knew, as the spasms kept on, was that I wished it never to stop.

But it did stop, and Jay, or whatever it was, withdrew. And I felt sadness, and a swell of loneliness, and I also felt gratitude.

At the breakfast table, I measured out a spoonful of flax. I had a number of important spoons: royal ones, Apostles, a few Trefids. Most were marked on their backs by their maker. I had always meant to properly display them, like little trophies. This common teaspoon I had found by a pond on my wedding day.

The instant I walked into Odette’s and saw Corrine waiting for me, I knew that I had made a mistake.

“So sorry I’m late,” I said, taking my place.

Corrine tossed her book on the table. It was a novel. Not a romance, as I would have expected, but rather something intelligent and current. 

“Oh my God! What happened to you?” Corrine asked.

I had been involved in a minor motor crash on my way to Odette’s. I had hit a newsstand.

“I was listening to the radio,” I said. “It drew me in. So I didn’t see the other car. Which was why I had to swerve. By the time the ambulance arrived, I was on the phone to the call-in show, disagreeing about something. I don’t remember what.”

“You must have been in shock,” said Corrine.

“Yes, I suppose I was.”

After reassuring Corrine that I was fine, that no, the other party had not been hurt, and yes, I had been seen by a medic, she regarded me with sympathy.

“Be glad it was only mild whiplash,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Only that.”

We each studied a menu.

“Jay and I would come here after the theatre,” I pointedly said.

“Did you?” said Corrine softly. With reverence, she unfolded her serviette, taking in Odette’s dark, intimidating atmosphere.

When the waiter came, I asked for my favorite, the charred ribs. Then I waited to see what Corrine, the vegetarian, would have.

She ordered a starter, artichoke hearts, also some wild rice.

“Our house-made aioli would go well with that,” the waiter pleasantly said.

“Lovely,” said Corrine.

“That has eggs in it, I believe,” I broke in.

“I eat eggs,” Corrine reassured me. “Just not stuff with legs or fins. Or eyes, of course.”

“Of course.”

“‘His fiery eyes are fix’d upon the earth!’” the waiter proclaimed.

The two of them—that is, Corrine and the waiter—amicably chatted. Next I knew, the waiter was bowing with flair as he took our menus and backed away.

“He’s an understudy for one of the lords in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine,” Corrine offered.

“I saw that with my late husband,” I said. “Yes, I’m sure of it.”

On the table between us was a cut-glass vase bearing a forlorn gerbera, which Corrine now admired. “He always liked fine things, didn’t he,” she said mistily.

Here’s my chance, I thought. I shall ask her about—.

“It was beautiful, the eulogy,” Corrine went on. “Especially when that old guy talked about the fun times they’d shared at El Vino’s.”

“That would be Clem,” I said. “Sir Clement.”

“His were the lilies,” said Corrine. “I saw the card. You remember how I helped you.”

Yes, it was true. Morbid mounds of lilies, also carnations, had been deposited by well-wishers. I hadn’t known what to do with them all. It had seemed scandalous to discard them, worse to take them home. “Please, will you sort them out?” I had asked Corrine. And so Corrine had. She had driven off in her flower-stuffed convertible, giving a sad wave. Little things, I thought. It’s the little things that bind one to another.

Now a wooden phallus descended, cradled by two large hands. Good lord! I stiffly turned as black pepper fell onto my goat cheese and arugula salad.

“I’ll be glad to get this necky collar off,” I said.

“Does it hurt?” Corrine asked. The poor thing had lipstick on her teeth.

“Not at all,” I said.

With finesse, the waiter cleared something away. Mademoiselles, he called us, which was a stretch, for I was well into my fifties. I observed rosy Corrine, buttering her bread. Her hair was thin and red—hennaed probably—and she wore it curled, with one side cut shorter than the other, in an edgy style. I had more hair, but that was where the advantage stopped, because my style (a bowl) was so outdated as to be unseen. I wondered how I should bring up the matter of the shadow bouquets. I didn’t want to offend. Yet Jay’s death had taught me that if everything mattered, also nothing did.

Corrine talked about herself. She was having man troubles. Such women often found themselves with a full dance card, a situation that was unfamiliar to me. My life had been a sincere enterprise, full of duty. 

“So, what will you do?” Corrine asked, turning her attention to me. For it was common knowledge that widows needed hobbies, such as crochet or birdwatching. Something to fill the space.

“I don’t know,” I said, frightening myself. Perhaps I would garden. That would relieve my need to dig.

“Don’t move,” Corrine said as she aimed her Nikon—no doubt the one that Jay had bought. After working in the research library, she had taken up amateur photography in the style of Diane Arbus.

I helplessly gestured to my neck with its foam ring.

Too late. Click.

After I had picked my ribs clean, I poured the weakly brewed Earl Grey tea for Corrine and myself. Now I shall spring, I thought. I shall confront. I studied the chipped teacup with its heartbreaking rosebuds. Stirred, round and round. The effect was dizzying.

I was about to speak when instead, to my astonishment, Corrine said, “Well, this is awkward.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Because there’s something I need to tell you.”

I dropped my spoon. And was reminded of Uri Geller bending spoons with his mind. “If it’s about the bouquets, don’t bother, my dear,” I said, meaning to shock. “I know all about them.”

“What bouquets?” Corrine really did look like a child, I thought. One that was large and clueless.

“Grennigan’s.” Having said the forbidden word, I gave a twisted smile. “The Embankment florist. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

“No…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. One bunch for you, the other for me.” Out of desperation, I grabbed the cut-glass vase.

“Put that down!” cried Corrine.

I did, but not before the waiter, whose timing was impeccable, placed his hand over mine.

The three of us waited.

“‘Give her the crown, Turkess, you were best,’” he said, taking the vase from me. And was off to other tables.

Silence. Then Corrine nostalgically said, “Jay did give me a posy once. For my birthday. He gave me buttercups.”

“Did he,” I said icily. There were buttercups growing wild in the garden. Perhaps he had picked those.

“And another time,” said Corrine, “he sent me an arrangement with spikes and such. That was when my mom died.”

I sighed with defeat. Into my mind came the image of yarn being pulled from a jumper, all the knitted work unraveling.

“But don’t you see? There were years and years of chrysanthemums, and masses of baby’s-breath, all sent to me, and someone called ‘C.’ Which is you. Who else could it be?”

Corrine looked at me with puppy eyes. “I wish I could make it all go away,” she said.

I knew what was coming next. Corrine would confess her affair with Jay. Tearfully. And there would doubtless be handholding. Because I cared, of course I did. Or maybe Corrine would try to deny the affair with Jay. To my mind, that would be worse than the actual lapse (as I preferred to call it), because groping is one thing, deceit another. But I had proof. I had seen the ubiquitous smiley faces in Jay’s diaries. If he had enjoyed himself, probably Corrine had too. Manners, I thought. It is always bad manners to slap someone when Mozart is playing.

“Please don’t judge me,” she said.

Just listening to Corrine’s velvety voice was a trial. I flinched when she said, “It was a Thursday.” I didn’t know which Thursday she meant, but it had an ominous ring. Nothing good ever happened on a Thursday. Jay had died on that day.

“It was after my jazz dance class,” she began. “Here, let me show you a step.”

In the restaurant? I thought. “But the people—.”

Corrine extended her arms inelegantly. She resembled an albatross taking flight, a diver or buzzard.

“Step stamp, step stamp…” Presumably she was doing the ball change, while still seated at the table.

“How admirable,” I said with equanimity.

“Thanks. I’m not very good.”

“But you are. You just lack confidence.”

“Anyway,” said Corrine, “the lift was out at Covent Garden. So I had to walk up that spiral staircase. There are a hundred and ninety-three steps, in case you’re interested. By the time I got home, I was knackered.”

“I imagine you were,” I said, noting the Covent Garden reference. I hadn’t taken the Tube in ages. Maybe I should. It sounded like a great adventure.

“I felt off. Like something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it,” Corrine went on. “I think I must have been dehydrated.”

“Dehydration is key,” I said. “I learned about that in the field.”

“What field?” asked Corrine.

I downed the last of the wine. Had Jay told her nothing? Then I explained.

“Wow,” said Corrine in her vital, innocent, likable way. “So you’ve been all over the world!”

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose I have.”

“Which country was your favorite?”

I said Greece. I described the glaring sun and the way families and couples promenade in the evening. I said that I had once lived in a cave in Matala. This was before I had become an archaeologist.

Corrine was spellbound.

“I always enjoyed waking to the sound of birdsong,” I reminisced. “It was glorious. That summer on the island influenced me in so many ways. I met Jay in Matala,” (And I thought of Jay strumming his guitar, looking up as I walked along the beach one day. What was that song? By Joni Mitchell, was it?) 

“It’s funny,” said Corrine. “Jay and I covered many things, but never Greece.”

“Really.” By narrowing my eyes, I could see into Corrine, as if by X-ray vision. Her skull was Australopithecine. Small. She was a hairy Eve.

Jay had been a poet. Not a particularly good one, but a poet nonetheless. He was a working-class troubadour from Swansea (like Dylan Thomas), and it was his stormy interior that had attracted me. I would be his lighthouse, a stable tower of femininity to warn him, to provide safe entry. To protect him from sirens. Steady Helen.

“Stasis,” a poem about a modern-day mariner who searches for his sea maiden among the tide-rushed rocks, he had written for me. It was too dear. I had been embarrassed by it.

But he’d known, hadn’t he? Known that it had meant something to me. All those unsaid things.

Imagine walking on. Because that was what I did in Matala. Regret is born of such lighthearted omissions, such vanities.

Then by chance, years later I went into a London wine bar, to use the phone. I noticed a foppish, chain-smoking fellow working on a sheaf of papers. His expression was cheerfully desolate, like the last frost. It was Jay, a journalist now.

What does one say? One talks of futility and reparation, of dreams soured, before realizing that by some miracle you and he are the same two people, it is as if you have not left behind each other or yourselves. One hears the bell at closing time and ignores it. He proposes, you accept—a wobbly feeling. He lays his head upon your lap. One wishes for time to keep going back, to some finer point of recognition.

Corrine lived in a one-up, one-down flat in Belsize Park. The view was of the back end of Hampstead Heath. She rented.

“That’s a decent area,” I said.

“I love it!” said Corrine. “The shops, the tapas place. We should go there sometime.”

“Yes, let’s,” I said.

“Anyway, so there I was that Thursday, standing before my own front door, and I’d forgotten the key. There was one hidden somewhere, but I didn’t know which pot it was under, or if it was even under a pot, they were all so heavy. Then I happened to see that I’d left the sitting room window open. I’ll just wriggle in! How hard can it be? So I pulled myself up and over, like mounting a horse. I got in. And went right to the kitchen for some coconut water.”

We discussed electrolytes. I tensed as we veered off topic.

She babbled on—something about kelp and fair trade olives. It came out that Corrine was studying to be a nutritional therapist.

“I want to make a difference. I want to tell everyone about genetically-modified foods.”

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” I said.

“Really? Oh, I hope so. You know, Jay always said that my heart was in the right place.”

I glanced at Corrine’s chest. Then I dusted some crumbs from the table. I had to wonder at Jay’s attraction to this creature in the spangled top. But I also had to admit that I felt oddly flattered and energized being around Corrine. I could see how Jay had been taken in. This knowledge gave me a wise, sick feeling.

“Back to my story,” said Corrine. “So I took a shower and my hair was wet. I was in my robe. Then I went into the sitting room to chill. I have a divan. It’s silk, pink and beige, with big bold stripes. It’s by the window.”

Dear God, why do I need to know about the divan? I wondered. Unless Corrine was house-proud, and I doubted that.

“It began with a breeze,” Corrine said.

I sat up, recalling my own experience the night before. “A breeze. How interesting,” I said in a prickly voice. 

“I thought it was because the window was open,” she went on. “But outside it was muggy and still. So it definitely wasn’t that. What’s weird is the way this current of air darted right through the sitting room. It was like I was being teased by some unknown force.”

I gave a little shriek as dessert menus were set before us. “What did you do?” I asked. “I should expect the first course of action would have been to close the window.”

 “I didn’t think of that,” said Corrine. “Then—whoosh!—it zeroed in. I felt leery of it. I also wanted to abandon myself. I’ve felt the same way sometimes on one-night stands,” she distractedly added.

“Have you.” The band around my neck caused me to feel more virtuous than I probably was. My thoughts ran their course: Sailor-girl. Siren. Smiley-face.

“I remember clinging to the divan, wishing it would go away.”

“Did it?”

“No.”

I was disappointed. Better if the thing had gone.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this next bit,” said Corrine, gazing down. “But we’re friends, right?”

“Friends,” I said miserably. “Of course we are.”

“It sort of took possession of me,” said Corrine in a low voice. “It held me. Maybe it was evil, I don’t know. Then it took my hand. There was this persistent tugging sensation, like it wanted me to go with it somewhere.”

“Did you go?” I asked, feeling that, if she had, it would be the last straw.

“Well, I started to. I felt myself getting small, like Alice going down that hole. It was as if all the cares of the world were being taken from me. But then I thought how my cares are all I have. What would I have if I didn’t have them? I didn’t trust it.”

“I can see the logic of that,” I said. 

“I knew you would,” said Corrine, looking off.

It seemed Corrine’s tale had reached its end. I didn’t know quite what to make of it. The word “unconscionable” came to mind. I took the sticky dessert menu and prized it open. I made it lay flat. I would have the mousse.

“And there’s something else,” said Corrine, scrunching her nose.

“There is?”

“Yes, I heard a noise. It was like grinding metal, or when the TV’s reception isn’t working because the signals are jumbled. Oh, what’s that called? It’s right on the tip of my tongue…”

Interference, I thought. That’s what she means.

“Then I picked up on something: a whisper. So faint, I could barely hear it. I noticed that it went in a loop, just the same four words, over and over—.”

My heart quickened. “We did nothing wrong,” I ventured. “That’s what he said, isn’t it?”

Oh, the look on her face! She had gone white. It was the color of cheap pearls, I deliciously noted.

“But how could you know?” Corrine sputtered. “This can’t be happening!”

“Can’t it?” I said darkly. “Can a woman be married to a man for twenty-nine years, and never really know him? Can she be so devoted as to be utterly blindsided?”

The waiter, having reappeared like a genie, was now on his knees. He was trying to coax Corrine to smile. It wasn’t working. The American was crying molten tears.

“What did you do to her?” he asked me.

“Slut,” I thought, or rather said. I hadn’t meant to.

Then Corrine dashed off like a hunted animal, low and swift, presumably to the ladies’ room. So I gathered my things, paid the bill, and the waiter and I made small talk. He wanted to know if I was all right, and I said that I was, though this was not accurate. I was numb. “Brilliant, thanks,” I said as he helped me on with my shawl. “Lovely, brilliant, lovely.” There was a play he liked by Edward Albee, called The Lady from Dubuque. I had never heard of it before. He was keen to play the role of Sam. He recited a few spare lines for me.

Back home in Muldain Road, I took all Jay’s diaries, and I wrapped bundles of four each in linen tea towels. Since soft material would rot away, I placed these in an airtight bin liner, and the lot into the steamer trunk that Jay had used when visiting his mother in Swansea. I then heaved the trunk into the wheelbarrow and rolled it into the back garden. I had already staked out the site, using the oak as my marker tree. Jay had liked that oak. Neatly I removed the turf with a spade, stacking the living tiles. With my square-mouthed shovel, I then dug a tidy trench. It was long and shallow, mirroring the trunk’s dimensions, with added breathing space. As I patted down the earth to form a level base, I had to pause because my neck was bothering me.

Finally the trunk was in place. It was an excavation in reverse: instead of taking something out, I was putting something in. Let someone else find the diaries.

In Matala, I once lived in a cave, I thought, as I went inside. I gravitated to a filigreed photograph of Jay and me. How young we looked, as if from a different tribe, and perhaps not even belonging to my memory. Then I decided to work a bit. The computer behaved, allowing me to embark upon a forensic analysis of love.

I have come to the view that its traces are far more valuable than the obsessively contemplated sherd, I typed.

For a while, I was as mad at Corrine as I was at Jay. Then I was mad only at myself. But those feelings passed. I began to feel differently: buoyant and untethered as a balloon released into the sky. One sees it, poignantly drifting, lost, yet also as if it has secured some purpose. It cannot help but rise up.

I would have liked a new friend in Corrine, even if she was a bit dull and unconventional. Perhaps because she was so dull and unconventional. Someone to lunch with. To go to musical concerts with. Shows. We could see the waiter in The Lady from Dubuque and dine at Odette’s afterwards. But new friends are not easy to come by, especially when people go through life at speed and have such histories.

One night, I tried that trick with a spoon. I had so many spoons, but this was the one I had found by the pond. Most new brides don’t dig through mucky leaves, looking for treasures, but I had.

The spoon was cold and hard. To make it bend—that was all I wanted.

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Ulrica Hume is the author of An Uncertain Age, a spiritual mystery novel, and House of Miracles, a collection of stories, one of which was selected by PEN and broadcast on NPR. Her work appears online, in literary journals, and in anthologies. Find her @uhume.bsky.social

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