Free Worst Fears by Fay Weldon Page A

as it must be at the moment.”
    “But I miss him,” wept Alexandra.
    “Stop thinking about yourself,” said Irene. “I’ll keep Sascha with me until after the funeral, and that’s that. It’s the best thing. And when is the funeral? Why is nobody saying? Is it going to be a cremation? Really they’re the best, except there’s always a problem about the ashes.”
    “I don’t know, I don’t know,” wailed Alexandra. “I can’t bear to think about it. Hamish is going to see to all that.”
    “You’re the widow,” said Irene. “You really ought to take some responsibility.”
    “You’ve had so much practice, I suppose,” said Alexandra, bitterly. “You know all about it.”
    “Actually,” said Irene, who had indeed buried two husbands out of four, one of them Alexandra’s father, “I do.”
    “Was our house full of whispers when my father died? And rustlings, and movements out of the corner of your eyes? Things you thought you almost saw, but didn’t really. It’s got so spooky here.”
    “It was perfectly quiet and ordinary,” said Irene. “I made sure he died in hospital. But when our cat Marmalade passed away it was just as you describe until she was safely underground. Sascha made a little tombstone in the garden. I expect he told you about that. No? I’d keep seeing Marmalade on the stairs, but when I looked again she wasn’t there.
As I was going up the stair,
    I met a cat who wasn’t there,
    She wasn’t there again today,
    I wish to God she’d go away.
    The eyes play tricks. These are Marmalade’s eight grandchildren we’ve just had. I suppose you don’t want one for comfort? No? Probably wise. You’re never in one place long enough. The sooner Ned is buried the better. Or burned. As for this Jenny Linden, be careful. People like that can be dangerous. If Ned was God what does that make you?”
    “Mary?”
    “No, darling, the devil. In this Jenny Linden’s eyes. Do be careful! Wasn’t there a Jenny Linden in A Doll’s House ?”
    “Christine Linde,” said Alexandra. “She plays the doleful widow, a woman who has to earn her own living. Daisy Longriff was playing her—and understudying me. Now Daisy’s playing me, and they’ve got a girl out of wardrobe to do Mrs. Linde. Her big chance.”
    “That’s a bit spooky,” said Irene. Then she had to go because her current husband wanted her to find one of his golf shoes which the puppy had no doubt run off with, and Sascha had tried to put one of the kittens in the dryer. Alexandra, usually so independent, missed her mother and whimpered.
    Alexandra put Mozart’s Greatest Hits on the CD player, very loud. That dispersed a fear or so but added to her melancholy. She put Jenny’s diary and address book in a drawer amongst Ned’s papers—then she took them out: there was too much intimacy there—and put them on an open bookcase, where they touched nothing important. She would turn her mind to them when she felt like it. She stored it up in her mind as a kind of treat. Having them in her possession increased her control over the situation. She felt empowered, as would a witch who had just stolen the clippings from her enemy’s toenails.
    Dr. Moebius called. Ned’s body would be back in Mr. Lightfoot’s morgue during the course of the afternoon. He hoped Alexandra did not take his insistence on a full autopsy as unfeeling. It was important that the forensic labs didn’t cut corners.
    “Only skulls and breastbones,” said Alexandra.
    The cause of death was myocardial infarction; there was no sign of cerebral haemorrhage. Would Mrs. Ludd like some sleeping pills? He seemed to have forgotten about the herbal tea.
    “What brought the heart attack on?” asked Alexandra. “So suddenly, and without warning?”
    “These things just happen,” said Dr. Moebius. “Or there may have been some undue excitement.”
    “Like someone coming to the door you didn’t want to see?” suggested Alexandra.
    “Possibly,” said Dr.