Flash lay there alone, wound tight and unresponsive. This was a sight he’d looked forward to, yearning for an end to his wife’s lassitude, but found jarring, encountering it in reality. In the bedroom he was happy to see the shape of her in their bed, because she hadn’t slept in it with him for weeks. He loosened his tie and came to sit gently beside her, not yet realising that something had spoiled the air in the room. He had no inkling of catastrophe. But it was there in their bed that, judging from the temperature and rigidity of her—of what remained—she had died some hours before. On the bedside table were boxes of Veronal cachets, to which they both had recourse every so often when unable to sleep. However, this number of cachets, with their insides removed, was unreasonable. Inconceivable. Deranged. Harry stood up quickly. Sat down. He touched her, her face. He covered his mouth. Took in his hands the weight of her lifeless head. Completely dumbfounded that all her sighs and gasps, disjointed stories and half-sentences, the shadows he’d contented himself to know from the corner of his eye, the entire universe of her, should have been extinguished.
