A Single Breath. Lucy Clarke

will never be the same again.

      She blinks, her focus returning to the phone. She must speak to Dirk, Jackson’s father. She feels guilty that it was the police, rather than she herself, who informed him of what happened. But Eva couldn’t. She just couldn’t find the words.

      She glances at the long number written in pen across the back of her hand, then dials. Pressing the phone to her ear, she listens to the foreign ringtone, thinking about the physical distance between them. They are on opposite sides of the earth; there it is morning, here evening; there it is summer, here winter.

      She has only spoken to Dirk once and that was before she and Jackson were married. They kept in light contact by writing and she took pleasure in composing those letters on quiet evenings curled up on the sofa. She loved receiving Dirk’s replies, which were written in a spidery hand on airmail stationery and gave her a glimpse of Jackson’s life in Tasmania.

      ‘Yeah?’ a gruff voice answers.

      ‘Dirk?’ She clears her throat. ‘It’s Eva. Jackson’s wife.’

      There is silence at the other end.

      She waits, wondering if it’s a bad connection. She runs her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth feels dry and somehow swollen.

      ‘Right,’ he says eventually.

      ‘I … I’ve been wanting to call … but, well.’ She pushes a hand through her matted hair, rubbing her scalp. ‘I know the police have spoken to you.’

      ‘He drowned. That’s what they told me.’ His voice wavers as he says, ‘Drowned while fishing.’

      ‘He was swept in by a wave.’ She pauses. ‘The water here – it’s cold. Freezing. A lifeboat came. And a helicopter, too. They searched all day …’

      ‘Have they found his body?’

      ‘No. No, not yet. I’m sorry.’

      There is silence.

      ‘They found the hat he was wearing,’ she offers, although she knows this isn’t enough. Nothing – other than Jackson – can be enough.

      ‘I see,’ he says slowly.

      ‘I’m sorry. I should’ve called you sooner, not let the police do it, but … I just … I can’t seem to get my head straight.’ She feels tears blocking up her throat. She takes a breath. ‘None of it feels … real.’

      Dirk says nothing.

      She swallows back her tears and takes a moment to gather herself. Then she says, ‘There’ll need to be a funeral … or memorial service.’ These are words her mother keeps on saying to her. ‘I don’t know when it’ll be yet … after Christmas, I suppose. Maybe you’d like to come over for it?’

      ‘Right.’ She hears a chair being scraped across a floor, then a clink of glass. She waits a moment.

      When Dirk doesn’t say anything, she finds herself filling the silence. ‘I know you don’t like to fly, but if you did want to come you’d be welcome. You could stay at our place … my place,’ she corrects herself. She squeezes the roots of her hair, feeling herself coming undone. Everything she has wanted to say seems to have been tipped out of her brain. ‘Jackson’s brother is welcome. I know things between them were …’ She fumbles for a word, but only comes up with ‘strained’.

      ‘No, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’d work.’

      Her throat thickens. She wants Dirk to say he’ll come. She may not know her father-in-law, but they are connected by their shared love of Jackson, their shared loss. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Think about it.’

      *

      Somehow, time continues to crawl forward. The days pass for Eva in a thick fog of grief. She’ll only remember brief moments from this period: a tray of food untouched outside her door; a dawn walk to the rocks, from which she returns soaked and shivering; a bunch of lilies that drop orange pollen onto her mother’s glass table, which Eva smears with a fingertip.

      Now, a month later, she stands in her dressing gown in front of the full-length mirror. In half an hour a car is arriving to take her to her husband’s memorial service. She is 29 and a widow.

      ‘Widow,’ she says to the mirror, trying out the word. ‘I’m a widow.’

      Leaning close to her reflection, she sees how drawn she’s become. The skin around her nose and the corners of her mouth is pink and cracked. She notices the new crease between her eyebrows and presses her fingertips against it, trying to smooth away the frown that seems to have settled there.

      Footsteps sound up the wooden stairway, accompanied by the jangle of a bracelet sliding along the banister. Then there is a bright knock at the door and Callie, her best friend, sweeps in, filling the room with her smile.

      She lays a dress on the bed, and then she crosses the room to Eva and wraps her arms around her from behind. A head taller, Callie lowers her chin to rest on Eva’s shoulder, so both their faces are visible in the mirror.

      In a low voice she says, ‘This is going to be a hard day. But you will get through it. And you will get through the other hard days that follow. And then there will be some days when it’s not so hard. Okay?’

      Eva nods.

      Callie fetches the dress and holds it up for Eva. ‘I got it from that shop you like near Spitalfields. What do you think? If it’s not right, I’ve got two backups in the car.’

      Eva undoes her dressing gown and steps into the heavy black material, which tapers in at her waist. She pulls the zip up her side and then faces herself in the mirror. The dress fits as if it’s been made for her.

      Callie smiles. ‘You know what Jackson would’ve said, don’t you?’

      Eva nods. Look at you, darl. Just look at you! She closes her eyes, briefly losing herself to the memory of his voice and the image of him taking her hand and turning her once on the spot, making a low whistle as she spun.

      Callie glances at her silver wristwatch and says, ‘The car will be arriving in twenty minutes. When we get to the church, you’re just going to walk straight in with your mother. I spoke to the priest about the music. That was fine to change tracks.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      Callie squeezes her hand. ‘You okay?’

      Eva tries for a smile but it doesn’t come. Her head throbs at the temples and she feels raw inside. ‘It feels … too soon.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Callie asks softly.

      Eva bites down on her bottom lip. ‘Four weeks. Is it long enough to wait?’

      ‘Wait for what?’

      She swallows. On the morning of your husband’s memorial service you do not say, I am still waiting for him to come back. So instead she says, ‘It’s just … I can’t picture it, Cal. I can’t imagine my life without Jackson in it.’

      *

      In Tasmania, Saul unclips his seat belt and leans forward, his thick hands locked together on the steering wheel of his truck. He gazes through the windscreen at the view from the top of Mount Wellington. On a clear day it feels as if you can see the whole of Tasmania from up here, but this afternoon the vista is obscured by the gathering clouds.

      Beside him, his father shifts in the passenger seat as he slips a silver flask from his suit pocket. His hands tremble as he unscrews the lid. Whisky fumes seep into the truck.

      ‘One for courage,’ Dirk says.

      Saul looks away, watching instead as the mourners arrive in their dark suits. Some of them are friends of Jackson’s that Saul hasn’t seen in years – from school, or the boatyard – but most are people Saul’s never even met.

      Dirk tucks the flask back in his pocket.