Then She Was Gone

by Lisa Jewell

those hopes and dreams and talk of ballerinas and pop stars, concert pianists and boundary-breaking scientists. They all ended up in an office. All of them.

She knows this is utter nonsense; losing a child ages you faster than a life spent chain-smoking on a beach. “I’m nearly fifty-five,” she says. “And I look it.”

“As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are forever.”

But she is remembering now. Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient; it nurtures the chef.

will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she’d vowed. I will never expect more than they are able to give.

“Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.” Laurel and Paul smile and nod. Then they turn to each other and exchange a look. Not a wry look this time, but one of disquiet.

Ellie used to read two books a week and when they teased her about always having her nose in a book, Ellie used to say, “When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”

mean anyway? When her children were small they’d sometimes say, “What would you do if I died?” And she would reply, “I would die too, because I could not live without you.” And then her child had died and she had found that somehow, incredibly, she could live without her, that she had woken every morning for a hundred days, a thousand days, three thousand days and she had lived

“I’ll call you at seven,” he’d said. And here he is, calling her at seven. She might have enjoyed a few moments’ indulgent anticipation. For a minute she toys with the idea of not answering her phone, but then she checks herself. She’s doing it again, keeping too much of herself back. And this was exactly why she and Paul had not survived