It was a while since I’ve been to his house. As I enter I record everything that has changed: the new piano by the library and the table pushed next to the wall, abd the fresh flowers in the vase, and the new, pretty woman in the foyer.

“Where is he?” I ask. She wears a black dress that doesn’t become her. But she’s pretty; enviably pretty. She doesn’t answer at first, just gives me a frosty look that accents the distance between us: me at the door, she by the table next to the wall. Her hair is red. He always had a taste for bizarre women, I think, and then she answers: “don’t you know?”

“No,” I say, “I don’t”. I suddenly notice how sombre everything is: her black dress, the white flowers, the darkness in the house. She looks away and then at me.

“Hurt?” I say. She nods: no. “He’s gone now.”

The room is now colder, darker; I say, “surely…”

“It was,” she says, the custodion by the flowers, and there’s an air of firm sadness to her that keeps the news unreal, yet undeniable, “only a few days ago”.

“How?” I ask, and I’m near her, next to the table, looking into her eyes, dreaming, perhaps, of consoling her.

“A freak accident,” she says.

“Freak accident”.

“While travelling north,” she says, her eyes glimmering, “on a fishing expedition. The boat met with unstable currents –”

“The currents”.

“I mean there was a storm”.

“He died on a boat in a storm,” I say and sigh.

“No,” she says and nods very firmly. “He didn’t die on a boat in a storm”.

“Yes,” I say, and close my eyes. “After… in the water… it was surely cold, the water”.

“Surely,” she says, and closes her eyes.

“And then?”

“And then…” she whispers.

“Was he fighting long? Did he suffer much?”

“No, no,” she says, and there’s merely an inch between us, the powder on her cheeks so visible now in this thin light, “no, he must have suffered very little”.

“And brave…” I say, and look at her lips.

“So brave…” she says and parts them.

We look at each other. A sunbeam penetrates the darkness. She draws back.

“He coming down?” I ask.

Her face shuts like a door. No trace of secret smile remains. “In a minute,” she says.