A Lovely Way to Burn (5 page)

The news was still running silently on the television. A shot of people in white cotton surgical masks crowding a city square somewhere in Asia cut to a view of a hospital ward, failing bodies laid out on rows of beds. Stevie lifted the remote and killed the screen dead.

She had opened a window and turned on the fan, but was sure that the smell of her own illness still permeated the flat. As if to prove her right, Julia Sharkey said, ‘You’ve been unwell?’

Stevie wanted Simon’s cousin to deliver whatever it was he had left for her, and then leave. But she summoned a smile and said, ‘Yes, I’m still a bit shaky, but I think the worst is over.’

Julia Sharkey got up from her seat, crossed to where Stevie was sitting and placed her hands either side of Stevie’s neck. ‘Tilt your head back for me, please.’ Her palms were cool and smooth, their pressure a comfort against Stevie’s skin. Julia’s fingers pressed a pathway along Stevie’s neck, and then slid towards her clavicles, gently kneading the soft tissue at the base of her throat. Her perfume was a blend of bright floral notes Stevie couldn’t identify. She said, ‘Tell me your symptoms.’

‘Vomiting, diarrhoea, fever. I thought I had Ebola.’ Stevie gave a small laugh. ‘I had lots of bad dreams – I suppose you might expect those under the circumstances – and a horrible rash.’

The uncertain woman who had faltered in the doorway had given way to an assured professional. Dr Sharkey asked, ‘Do you mind if I take a look?’

‘No.’ Stevie lifted the top of her tracksuit and exposed her stomach. ‘It’s a lot better than it was. The blisters have almost gone.’

‘I can see that.’ The doctor looked at her skin without touching her and then nodded at Stevie to cover up again. ‘Exactly how long was it from onset to recovery?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I didn’t feel too clever when I left work, but I was coming off night shift and I never feel very clever after that. I was sick for the first time when I got home. I was probably laid up for between fifty-two and sixty hours, if you count it from then.’

‘And you feel okay now?’

‘Like I said, a bit shaky, but basically I think I’m fine. I thought it was a reaction to the shock of Simon’s death.’

Stevie waited for the other woman to give her diagnosis, but Julia Sharkey simply said, ‘Well, you certainly look like you’re on the road to recovery.’ She crossed her legs, giving a quick glimpse of the red soles of her Louboutins, and pushed her coffee cup out of reach, as if ensuring that she didn’t absently take a sip. ‘The police told me that it was you who found Simon’s body.’

‘Yes.’

Stevie cradled her cup between her hands; the smell of the coffee revived the memory of her nausea, but the fan had made the room a little chilly and the feel of the warm china against her palms was comforting.

‘I wondered why you hadn’t got in touch with us, Simon’s family, but if you were unwell that would explain it.’

Stevie rubbed at a stain on the thigh of her tracksuit trousers.

‘Simon didn’t talk much about his family.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them Julia Sharkey was still sitting in the armchair opposite, the cup of untouched coffee in front of her. ‘We hadn’t been going out for very long. I’m sure he would have introduced us eventually, if we’d stayed together, but I’m afraid that even if I had been well enough, I wouldn’t have known who to get in touch with.’

‘We weren’t close.’ Julia Sharkey shrugged as if to indicate that was just the way things went sometimes. ‘Both Simon’s and my parents are dead, and Simon’s brother lives in Thailand. I have a family of my own, two girls, and I work as a GP. When you combine all that, there isn’t much time for anything else. And Simon was always very busy at the hospital.’ Her voice was businesslike, but she drew a tissue from the cuff of her sleeve and wiped away another tear. ‘I hadn’t seen him for at least a year. We had lunch together, just the two of us, somewhere near St Thomas’s. He told me he was going to get married and have a family of his own. All he needed to do was find the right girl.’ She looked up. ‘Had he found her?’

Stevie said, ‘I don’t know. We liked each other a lot, but it was too soon to tell.’

Julia Sharkey nodded. Stevie saw how pale she was and wondered if she too were coming down with something or if grief had sucked the colour from the doctor’s skin.

‘That’s a shame. I would have liked to think of him being happy before . . .’ The sentence trailed away as she dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a bit of a shock.’

‘I think he was happy. He found his work fulfilling.’ Stevie brushed a stray hair from her eyes, searching for a way to describe how things had been between them. ‘We enjoyed each other’s company.’

They had enjoyed being in bed together. Everything else had led towards or from that, their two bodies moving together.

Perhaps Julia Sharkey saw it in Stevie’s eyes because she sighed and tucked the tissue back in her sleeve. She pulled an envelope from her handbag and handed it to Stevie.

‘I found it in the tea caddy. A perfect hiding place for something you don’t want to be overlooked, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’ Stevie turned the envelope over in her hands. Her name and address were neatly printed on the outside in Simon’s clear, undoctorly hand. ‘The perfect place.’

Julia Sharkey got to her feet, as if eager to be gone now that her task had been accomplished. She said, ‘If it’s a suicide note, I’d rather not know.’

Stevie followed her into the hallway.

‘The policeman said Simon died of natural causes.’

‘Yes.’ Julia Sharkey paused at the front door and turned to look at her. ‘And so it probably was. But don’t forget, Simon was a doctor, and we doctors have a way with death. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed himself quietly and neatly.’

Stevie put a hand against the wall to steady herself.

‘However neat it was, someone had to find him.’

‘True, but if he did do it, and there’s no evidence that he did, at least he showed some consideration.’ Julia Sharkey leant her back against the door. Her skin was the colour of old bone, her eyes hollow shadows. ‘I’ve seen too many messy suicides to think of them as anything other than acts of revenge.’ She forced a smile. ‘Sorry, that’s what being a GP does to you.’ Julia opened the door and stepped into the lobby. ‘I’m not sure when the funeral will be, there has to be an inquest first, but I’ll let you know. I expect a lot of Simon’s friends and colleagues will turn out for it. I posted the news on his Facebook page and we’ve already had condolences from as far away as Hong Kong. He had a talent for friendship.’

‘I didn’t really know any of his friends. We hadn’t got to that stage.’

‘No.’ Julia stared down the lobby, past the doors to other apartments, towards the stairs. ‘The police said you surrendered your keys to Simon’s place to them.’

The word ‘surrendered’ felt like an accusation. Stevie said, ‘I volunteered them. The police gave me a receipt.’

‘Of course, but is there any possibility you picked up his set?’ Julia looked her in the eye. ‘By mistake?’

‘Finding Simon’s body was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. The last place I’d want to go is back to his flat.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply you’d done anything wrong. It’s just that I’ve not been able to find Simon’s keys, or his mobile phone. I thought it might help me be sure I’d been in touch with everyone who needs to know, but it seems to have vanished.’

Julia Sharkey was one of those women who never meant to imply anything, Stevie decided, but who was adept at making insinuations all the same.

‘I’ve no idea where his mobile might be, but Simon always hung his keys on the hook next to the door. He was meticulous about keeping them in the same place. The first time I stayed the night he made a point of telling me where they were. I teased him and asked if he thought I might do a runner. But Simon was serious. He said he’d seen a family of four who died of smoke inhalation in a house fire, when he was a junior doctor. They were found in the hallway, crumpled against the front door, mum, dad and two kids. The keys were in the father’s jacket, upstairs in the bedroom.’

‘Typical doctor.’ Julia Sharkey smiled sadly. ‘We develop obsessions from our patients’ tragedies, as if their misfortunes might help prolong our own lives. What we should realise is, death comes for us all eventually. The day before the police contacted me about Simon I admitted four previously healthy patients to hospital with the same symptoms you exhibited. One of them passed away, another looks like he may not make it. But here you are, hale and hearty.’ Julia Sharkey glanced at her watch and the shadows caught her face again, showing the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the sockets sunk in her skull. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. I took holiday leave when I heard about Simon’s death, but the surgery rang this afternoon and asked me to cut it short. I managed to buy enough time to keep my promise to the girls that I’d collect them from school. They consider it a great treat to see me at the school gate, which makes me feel rather guilty.’

‘Are you saying that what I had was serious?’

Julia shrugged. ‘There’s certainly a nasty virus doing the rounds – as usual the media are making a big thing of it – but you’re young and in good basic health, so probably not. If you were old, or suffering from an underlying condition, it might be a different story. The main thing is you recovered.’ She took Stevie’s hands in hers and gave them a brief squeeze. Her palms were slightly damp. ‘I’m glad Simon had you in his life.’ Julia gave a wry smile. ‘When I saw your name on the envelope and assumed you were a man, it crossed my mind that he might have been gay. Not that I would have cared about that, but he was always so private, I thought maybe he had killed himself out of some kind of misplaced shame. I’m not sure I could have stood that.’

‘So you do think he killed himself?’

‘I think I’m just doing what I’ve seen countless relatives do, trying to attach some kind of meaning to death. Maybe that’s why I’m fixating on his missing keys and telephone, to distract myself from the pointlessness of everything.’ Julia settled her oversized handbag on her arm and her brow furrowed as if something had occurred to her. ‘If Simon was feeling unwell he very possibly locked the door and put them somewhere he wouldn’t normally.’

‘Yes,’ said Stevie. She remembered the damaged door jamb and the necessity of locking the door to keep it closed. ‘I’m sure they’ll turn up, eventually. Things usually do.’

Seven

Stevie put the coffee cups in the dishwasher, poured herself a glass of water and went back through to the lounge. The seat of the armchair was rumpled where Julia Sharkey had sat. She smoothed all trace of her visitor away, lay down on the couch and took Simon’s letter from the pocket of her sweatsuit.

It was sealed in an ordinary, white envelope. She ran a fingertip across her name and address, handwritten by Simon before he died. It occurred to Stevie that Julia must believe his death was suicide, whatever she had said about the lack of evidence. Why otherwise would Simon have left a hidden note addressed to her? He had known he was going to die, guessed it would be Stevie who would find him and left the note as an apology, somewhere it would be found by his cousin, rather than by the police.

‘What if they’d made me a cup of tea? You didn’t think of that, did you, you selfish bastard?’

Stevie flung the letter across the lounge and turned on the television.

Ten minutes later she muted the screen, crossed the room and picked up the letter. Part of her wanted to put it in the kitchen sink and burn it, like microfilm that must be disposed of in a spy movie, but Stevie knew she would regret it. She turned her back on the TV screen where Naomi was demonstrating a range of bracelets and necklaces made from semi-precious stones, and went through to the spare bedroom.

The bed was still unmade, and smelt faintly of sweat. She stripped the sheets, left them in a mound on the floor and opened the window. A pile of catalogues featuring forthcoming products was heaped on her desk. Stevie pushed them to one side. She had hung a framed poster above her workspace when she moved in, the alphabet in several fonts, pretty enough to be decorative, boring enough not to distract her too much. She sat staring at the print without seeing it, and then placed Simon’s letter in front of her. Her fingertips touched her name again. She could feel the indents beneath the letters where Simon had pressed hard as he wrote. How strange that the pressure he had exerted should still persist, when the man himself was dead. Stevie slit the seal, unfolded the sheet of paper inside and started to read.

Dear Stevie
,

I’ve never written you a love letter. I wish I was correcting that oversight now, but this is a letter I hope you never have to open. If you are reading it, it means I’m lying low and have an important request to make.

I have left a package in the loft space of your apartment. My plan is to collect it myself without your ever knowing, but if circumstances make that impossible, I beg you to conceal it in your most frivolous bag and deliver it unopened to Mr Malcolm Reah at St Thomas’s. Do
not
entrust it to anyone else, no matter how polite, kind or authoritative they are. It may be that something has already happened and that your first instinct is to turn to the police.
Please don’t
. Malcolm will know what to do. He finishes his rounds at 3pm on weekdays and then goes directly to the ward office to write up his notes. Please deliver it to him there at your first opportunity.