BeforeCalifornia.com

A glass of water sits on the bedside table, scarcely half an inch from the edge. The sunlight has been shining on it—a thick, lush slant of brightness—for the better part of the morning and the liquid has turned to beads of condensation on the sides of the glass. Beside the bed, on the floor, lies a book. The Lovely Bones. James can see clearly the folded-up leaflet Sarah has been using as a bookmark and almost allows himself a smile when he recognises it as a menu from the Chinese takeaway down the street.

Almost.

The side of the bed in which he usually sleeps is empty, untouched. It seems like such a long time since he lay there, beneath the sheets, with the warmth of his wife beside him. It seems like such a long time since he heard her speak.

And yet it was just yesterday that he swept her fringe out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear so he could kiss her on the cheek. It was just yesterday he asked, ‘Will you be all right while I’m gone?’ and she answered, brightly, ‘Of course I will.’

Now, that cheek is colourless, waxen. Her hair falls about her face in lank tendrils, damp with hours-old sweat. He can remember exactly the softness of her skin against his lips, the warmth of her body against his, and this… This thing in his bed is not the woman he left yesterday. This broken creature is not his wife.

He will look back on this moment years from now and hate himself for not reacting, hate himself for simply standing there and watching Sarah lie, unmoving, her open eyes like spheres of shiny glass.

‘This is not my wife,’ he says, aloud, as if to convince the room, as if to silence the voice in his head which screams and tears at him with all its might.

It will only be weeks later, long after the funeral—long after the condolences have wilted like flowers on the tongues of his friends—that it will all come back to him in a rush, that he will finally understand that it was his wife lying there, that he will never again hear her voice, see her smile, feel her fingers touch the hollow of his throat as she knots his tie for him.

He stands in silence and stares at this half-human thing lying with its head on his wife’s pillow, stares and wills it to disappear, to burst into a cloud of ash.

It does not. It does not disappear, it does not climb to its feet and leave, and the half-empty bottle of pills lying spilled on the floor remains exactly where he found it.

Instead, he is the one to leave, heading for the landing where he dropped his coat to retrieve his phone. On the line, the operator seems surprised by how calm he sounds, but in truth he is barely aware of the words pouring from his mouth, barely aware of the ambulance pulling into his drive a half-hour later. All he can see is that monster lying there, tears staining its sunken cheeks.

‘You’re not my wife’—his parting words—‘because I said goodbye to my wife yesterday before she went away without leaving so much as a note. You are not my wife.’

Downstairs he sits on the couch and waits, his eyes fixed on the clock on the mantelpiece across the room from him. He does not move until the doorbell sounds, and even then he merely opens the door, greets the paramedics with a nod and returns to where he was sitting.

He turns on the television to drown out the noise of them upstairs.