Numb, Shauna replaced the phone on the cradle. She looked around the room and barely saw the costly Osborne & Little drapes at the windows, the plush watered-silk red buttoned sofa at the end of the bed that so beautifully matched them. The chandelier, the fitted wardrobes, all the stuff she had set such store by when all she had ever really wanted was Josh, right here with her.

She had lost him years ago. She knew that.

And now, she had lost him for good.

Josh, dead?

She let out a howl of anguish and the tears started to fall. Maybe she could have got him back, made it all good again. Now . . . She couldn’t. There was no coming back from this. Josh and the bloody fight game.

‘Noooo! ’ she wailed, hitting the pillow, wanting to hurt somebody or something, to take her own pain away.

Now the fucking phone was ringing again. She picked it up. Swallowed. Swiped at her eyes.

‘Connor? That you?’

‘It’s Aysha.’ Aysha’s voice was thick with tears. ‘Connor just called me. Told me the news. Jesus, Mum, this is so awful . . .’

‘Can you come over?’ Shauna’s voice was pitiful, childlike. Not like her voice at all.

‘I’ll be right there. Just hold on.’

Hold on to what?

Aysha rang off and Shauna replaced the handset again. It rang immediately.

‘Connor?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, Mum. I got hold of this Spiro person. I’m sorry. He said they did everything they could for Dad at the hospital, but . . .’ His voice trailed away.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ moaned Shauna.

‘I’ll come over,’ said Connor and put the phone down.

Shauna sat up in her palatial bedroom with a dead phone in her hand, crying her eyes out. Her children were coming. But . . . ah, Christ . . . Josh was gone.

125

125

The morning after the fatal fight, Claire sat in the living room of the apartment she had shared with Josh. She sat on the couch in the room where the light flooded in, while Suki made her coffee she didn’t drink, and offered her food she couldn’t eat.

‘Spiro has phoned the family,’ said Suki, choked with tears and watching her mother with concern. ‘Josh gave him his home number in England ages ago.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Of course. They were Josh’s family, those people over there – that bitch Shauna and his kids. Not her.

‘Everyone’s very upset,’ said Suki.

‘Yeah. Sure. Of course they are.’

‘I wish you’d eat something. Some toast?’

Claire shook her head. She’d had him back. At last. And now, it was too much: she’d lost him forever.

‘Let me run you a bath. Get these clothes off you.’