Listen to the author reading this story:
Five minutes from the house, further than he’s been in months, and Gant’s heart’s flying. He senses the suppositions of hairdressers behind salon windows, the commuters stalled at interminable traffic lights, and builders perched on scaffolding: See your man Gant floating around town? Killed the wife, you know. Not what I heard. Cashing in the life insurance apparently. You’d feel sorry for him. Don’t be daft, should be locked up.
Chancing a gap between rumbling motors Gant darts across the road. The traffic lurches forward. A horn blares. He catches his foot on the kerb and stumbles, mercifully, onto the footpath. Abi’s voice pipes up, No one could be blamed for running you over if you carry on like that. Plausible deniability.
It’s warm despite the chilly breeze and Gant’s scalp itches beneath the wooly Thinsulate. Layers promised anonymity but passing bare arms and swishing skirts he feels like Bigfoot. Not that anyone’s stopping him for a chat, mind you. Past acquaintances allow their gaze to slip over him and only for a group of anonymous women who stop chatting long enough to glare he’d think he was a ghost. Outside the front window of his old office, he pauses. Familiar faces swivel in his direction, but they ignore his wave and Gant lets embarrassment push him on.
From the sanctuary of his musty living room the distance to the bank seemed insurmountable, yet arriving outside the red brick building couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. His appointment isn’t for another hour. Maybe he’s not ready. He could reschedule? On the road, a white jeep rolls to a halt, its beep splintering Gant’s thoughts. He doesn’t recognise the car, but no one else dawdles on the footpath. The window whirrs down. Gant only has to see the woman’s hair, the shape of her forehead to feel shame rising inside him and he peels off down the street. Turning the next corner, he looks back, fearing a footchase, but the car has disappeared.
At O’Connell’s, hot deli scents lure him inside. Eat something, he thinks, steady the nerves. He keeps his eyes low and his voice steady and is surprised when he finds himself back on the street, unassailed, clutching a bulging roll and a cup of tea. He sits on a bench at the bustling square. It’s been ages since he’s eaten something that didn’t have microwave instructions and chewing the fresh roll he feels like one of those cows in springtime, luxuriating in the almost forgotten touch of grass beneath their hooves.
Nearly seven euro for that roll. And three for tea!
Even though Abi is physically gone, she chatters constantly.
Give my regards to the Rockefellers.
He smiles at the old joke. Abi, ever the pragmatist, and Gant, head forever in the clouds. She was always making him To Do lists and he followed as best he could. He takes out his phone and reviews her last one: INFO FOR WHEN I’M DEAD. It’s comforting to imagine her putting this together, information about phone bills, broadband, life insurance. He wishes she’d told him about it but what difference would it have made.
He looks up as a tracksuited teenager with a white collection bucket walks over. Gant’s hand slips easily into his pocket in search of change, but the lad’s expression gives him pause. It’s as though he’s trying to determine if Gant’s really there. Gant has the impression the whole square is watching, that infants speculate from their buggies, that the water fountain has paused mid-spurt with anticipation. He doesn’t risk glancing around to confirm this. Instead he says hello, and watches the boy’s face contort as if smelling something foul. He strides off, coins ricocheting like bullets inside the bucket, and Gant lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
At the bank, he is directed into a small carpeted office by the finance agent. She leaves the door open. Gant asks to close the door. Customers and staff flutter around outside, seemingly without cause, side-eyeing him with hawkish speculation.
“I didn’t think half the town was coming to this,” he says.
Keep your temper.
To her credit, the agent hesitates only a second before getting up, but a security guard Gant recognises steps into the doorframe. His name is Bruen.
“You need me for this?” Bruen says.
He and Gant went to school together. Not friends but orbiting the same social groups.
The agent glances at Gant, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Bruen insists however and pulls up a chair. Gant doesn’t like this. One gossip is as bad as a roomful.
There’s a lot to get through and the agent is thorough. Abi’s life was insured for such and such, the payout process is this, sign here, signature there. Throughout, Bruen stares at Gant, an unnervingly thoughtful look plastered on his face. Gant’s stomach is starting to turn on him when the agent briefly touches upon the suicide clause. A two year gap required of all life insurance policies. It’s completely unnecessary to mention, they’re almost done, but she’s from town, has been reared with the compulsion for suspicion and she states with an almost cruel appreciation how Abi’s death occurred just over the deadline. On this happy note she gathers her papers and steps outside to consult a colleague. Gant feels Bruen leaning in.
“Not easy is it?” Bruen says.
“Easy?”
Bruen closes over the door, settles closer to Gant. “The wife’s not doing well. Came home the other day, found her on the floor. She’d been there for hours.”
Bruen’s eyes are red rimmed, watery. He snorts, blows his nose, tells Gant how the wife’s been getting worse, how the bills keep piling up and what sort of life is that for anyone and wouldn’t it just be easier if she went. He bends his head in shame, his fingers knotting themselves in his oily hair. Gant feels sickened. Was he like this? Did he fall apart on Abi the same way? He doesn’t think so, but maybe he just couldn’t see it. He stares at Bruen’s heaving back. He should say something reassuring, but can’t think what that might be. Abi set the insurance policy up, Gant didn’t even know about it until the bank kept calling. He sees Abi’s dimpled smile, remembers her soft palm beneath his fingers. He hears how she cried when she fell yet again.
Bruen’s fingers close on Gant’s arm. “What am I gonna do?”
Gant opens and closes his mouth. He can’t seem to catch a clean breath of air. Bruen leans closer as though for benediction. There’s a brown stain festering on his shirt, just above his nametag, it might be blood but most likely grease. His breath smells mucusy. Gant vomits onto the floor and Bruen stands up, stunned, disgusted. He goes off to find a cleaner and when the agent comes back, Gant is gone.
“Are you all right?”
Gant’s lips taste earth, brackish and coppery, and he opens his eyes to a pavement slab. Someone kneels over his prone form and something about it feels familiar. He’s on a side street, squat, grey buildings observe him. How did he land up here? Strong hands help him to sit up and his brain clangs against his skull. His mouth tastes fuzzy and his legs feel damp. He pats his trousers, cautiously sniffs at his fingers, and is delighted it’s only puddle water.
“You collapsed,” the man says, a hint of accent. “Do you need a doctor?”
Slowly he gets to his feet. When the man asks again about a doctor Gant shakes his head, a painful mistake. The last thing he wants is more questions. He remembers the bank. Bruen’s desperate face. He should go back, tell them Bruen should be on sick leave or something. The man wasn’t right.
“Can I buy you a pint?” the man asks.
He hasn’t drank since before Abi got really sick, but right this second he can’t imagine anything sweeter. A dangerous feeling.
“I’d better not,” he says.
The man gestures to a pub across the road. “Let me buy you a coffee at least.”
“You vomited?”
The man laughs. His name is Christoph. A local, he says despite the accent, home to see family. Gant doesn’t recognise him but that means little.
“All over his shoes.” Gant drains his pint. His third.
Drink consumes some widowers but not Gant. Whenever he drank, Abi’s voice shrank as if afraid of what he might say and this final abandonment scared him. He tells himself he’s past all that. Still, the pints hit hard.
“I think that’s me,” he says, indicating the empty glass.
Christoph makes a show of pointing over to the barman who pours two fresh ones. Gant sighs, his arm successfully twisted.
The pub is quiet. Brooding men cluster by the bar, eyes fixed to a dusty black flatscreen. They side eye Christoph as he talks with the barman leaning on the counter. The barman never looks in his direction, but Gant can guess what they’re talking about. Christoph fiddles with his phone, inattentive, and when he walks back with the drinks he doesn’t notice the barman’s murderous expression.
“Making friends?” Gant says as Christoph sets the pints down, white foam slopping over the rims.
Christoph’s phone slips to the floor and he leans to get it. “Barman says you’re famous.”
Famous. Gant laughs. Heads turn.
Saw that lunatic Gant today, laughing his head off so he was.
Gant catches himself. A mistrustful contentment has blanketed across him. He paws his face, grounding himself with the gritty stubble on his jaw.
“Did the security man say something to you?” Christoph says.
Gant sees Bruen’s sore, weeping eyes. “Like what?”
Christoph shrugs, looks at the TV, “You said he was talking. You got sick. I thought maybe he upset you.”
What am I gonna do?
Christoph goes on but the words slip past him, disappearing into a dark room at the back of Gant’s head. Somehow his pint is already half gone.
“I’m not pushing you,” Christoph says, licking foam off his thumb. “But if you need to talk.”
On her last day, Abi was smiling. The black days were thinning by then, so she said. She could get out of bed by herself. Could manage the stairs with only a minimum amount of wincing. All an act, of course. This slight improvement was the only way she could justify being alone. She wouldn’t need long, he knew. An hour. Maybe less. They’d never discussed it. Gant would have felt duty bound to object if they had. What sort of man would let his wife kill herself? But it had been growing for months. This sense things couldn’t go on as they were. He felt her beside him every night, laying awake, staring through the ceiling, planning for the inevitable.
I might go out on my own today, she said. I’ll go with you, love. He was proud his voice didn’t falter. But he couldn’t raise his head. He stared at the book he wasn’t reading, tears blurring his vision. And then she was beside him, her delicate fingers stroking his hair. Don’t be silly. You’ll be all right. She kissed his cheek. Then she was gone. He waited an hour. A stone statue in the fading light. Only an hour. Such a miniscule amount of time for something so vast to be extinguished. When it started to get dark, he went to find her.
“You knew what she would do?” Christoph is saying.
Gant’s throat feels tight. His pint is gone. He forces a laugh and makes to stand up. Thanks for the drinks. All the best. But Christoph doesn’t move. He’s turned now in his seat, his mass blocking Gant’s only exit.
“You knew?” Christoph repeats.
“Think it’s time you finished up,” says the barman, suddenly standing over them. His eyes are on Christoph.
“I should get home,” Gant says.
Christoph lays a hand on Gant, stalling him. Rain crackles against the windowpane.
“Someone’s on the way for you,” the barman says to Gant.
He pictures Abi arriving, laughing at the state he’s gotten himself into, but discovers he cannot imagine her face, her voice. A pressure fills his chest. He breathes slowly, deliberately, ignoring the argument between Christoph and the barman. He’s ransacking his brain trying to piece back together his wife when he notices Christoph’s phone on the table. He remembers the detective who came to the house. She was polite, formal, hair tied in a tight bun. She’d placed her phone on the coffee table to record them. I can never read my own handwriting, she’d said. Christoph sees where Gant is staring and Gant wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear the rusty cogs turning in his brain. Their hands dart for the phone. Glasses fall off the table and the phone flies to the floor. The table is turned over. Gant stands and the barman raises his palms like he’s trying to contain a wild animal, but Gant shoves past and out the door.
Hear your man Gant was here the other night? Drank like a fish so he did. Smashed the place up. Should be locked up.
Gant takes one wrong turn, then another, eventually lurching along the deserted high street. He shivers with the cold, his hands buried in his pockets. The hairdresser’s is closed and the fences around the empty building site rattle in the wind. Lights engulf him then and Gant turns, dazed, only half realising he’s standing in the middle of the street. A jeep halts with a squeak of its brakes. The engine rumbles and he watches, stunned, as Abi emerges, resurrected.
“What are you doing?” she says, breaking the spell.
It’s not Abi. Their daughter owes a debt to Abi for her looks but her tone of voice is all her own — disappointed, exhausted. Since the funeral they’ve hardly spoken. She suspects certain things much like everyone else. Gant thinks of Christoph and the pressure in his chest returns. For all her suspicion though, his daughter does her duty. She checks on him, but she wouldn’t be here if the barman hadn’t called, wouldn’t have come if her mother hadn’t loved him. She tells him to get in the car, and turns away, her movements an unnatural mimicry of her mother’s.
In five minutes he could be safely hidden behind his front door. But why hurry? His heart already slipped out of that house a long time ago while he sat motionless on a chair and he knows he won’t find it again. So he stands before the headlights and squints at this ghost calling out to him and for a moment he pretends Abi is waiting for him and not the other way around.
Jonathan Cosgrove is a writer from Dundalk, Ireland. His short fiction has previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction, The Other Stories podcast, and the Bram Stoker nominated anthology Arterial Bloom. He spends his free time incessantly chasing his two cats and neglecting his website jonathancosgrove.com.