Azra wasn’t mentioned in the will; it pre-dated the break-up of our marriage. She disappeared from sight and I had no idea where she’d gone, nor did I want to know. I heard nothing from her until that rainy December night, eighteen months later, when she turned up unannounced on my doorstep.

Two

Two

‘Can I come in?’ she asked. ‘I’m soaking. Even my knickers are wet.’

‘Your knickers?’ My head reeled. Suddenly time telescoped. I was back at the funeral; she was back as she used to be, strong and healthy, with a full head of hair.

Azra pushed past me into the kitchen, like Pam used to do, and flung herself down in a chair. Her fake-fur jacket, being sopping wet, looked strangely lifelike.

She gave a huge, shuddering sigh. The shorn hair didn’t suit her somewhat monumental features but she had the confidence to carry it off. I placed the urn on the table and we both looked at it.

‘Do you think we ought to give him a memorial?’ Azra asked. ‘Or is it too late? Everybody’s probably forgotten him by now, except us. And some day we ought to scatter his ashes somewhere. Where do you think it should be? He didn’t say anything in his will.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘On the bus.’

‘I mean, all this time?’

‘New Mexico. Then I got cancer.’ She stood up. ‘I’m freezing. Can I have a shower?’

I nodded. ‘There’s a dressing gown behind the door. A posh towelling one.’ I’d stolen it from Calvin’s house, just as he’d stolen it from the St Regis Hotel.

Azra sloughed off her sodden leopard-skin and went upstairs. I sat there in a daze, gazing at the pot. Why had my husband been brought back to me? There had been no arrangement. I’d presumed Azra would have scattered him by now, probably at Mortimer’s Creek, their love-nest and future home.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Greg. Azra must have transferred him from the crem urn to this more tasteful storage container. It had previously held her herbal teabags. Now, sitting on the table, it radiated a powerful magnetism, as if lit from within. The surrounding clutter faded into meaninglessness. This was my husband, and I was alone with him at last.

I didn’t speak to Greg out loud. Upstairs, Azra’s footsteps creaked across the floorboards and then stopped. Maybe she was listening. Silently, I urged my words onto the urn. My mother used to take me to church and I made the same effort when I was praying. I remembered pressing my forehead against the pew in front, my body straining to concentrate on the unanswering void.