Afterwife by Polly Williams Page B

settling on the sill, airy and solid at the same time. Like love, Jenny suddenlythought. Like how true love is meant to be. Like what Soph and Ollie had. Airy but solid, like meringue. “How has Freddie been?”
    “Nightmares.” Ollie rested his square jaw in his hands. She noticed a crescent of grime beneath his fingernails. “Although he’s better when he sleeps in my bed. He dreamed of Ben Ten last night. Progress?”
    “Definitely progress.” Jenny tried to stop her eyes from filling by blinking really fast. She could cope with most things, just not the idea of Freddie losing his mother. “And the counseling?”
    “Nice lady, says he’s doing okay. Well mothered, she says.” He raised his eyebrows at the irony. “It helps.”
    “Well fathered too.”
    Ollie turned to her, dark eyes blazing. “Jenny, he thinks that Sophie is still
here
. That she talks to him. That she’s in the room.”
    Jenny felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. “I sometimes feel Sophie is still here,” she confessed quietly. She’d never tell Sam that. Sam would tell her to get a grip. “Do you?”
    Silence. He looked at her long and hard before speaking. “Yes.”
    She felt a wave of relief. It wasn’t just her. “Do you talk to her?”
    “Doesn’t talk back” was all he said, turning to face the window despondently. The sky was a cushiony blue above the rooftops now, framing the crow’s-wing black of his shoulder-length hair. “But the bond between her and Freddie was so close, so…so umbilical that maybe she can connect with him.” He shook his head, closing his eyes again. “I’m going back to the studio Monday.”
    It took a moment to sink in. “Already?”
    “I need to do something.” Ollie started rolling another cigarette. “Anyway, there’s no one else who’s going to do it.”
    “What about Freddie’s pickup times and stuff?” Jenny didn’t really know what childcare was involved but she’d heard Sophie talk about it often enough, the endless deadlines. It had always struck her as an enormously complicated business requiring military planning.The reason Sophie hadn’t been able to go back to work was because Ollie worked such erratic and long hours, sometimes not leaving the studio until late evening. How on earth would Ollie, not the most practical of men, fill her shoes?
    “Don’t worry, Jenny. I’ll sort it.”
    “I’ll help you all I can. Happy to take him swimming, whatever. I mean, I’d love to, if you want me to,” she stuttered, suddenly worried that she might be intruding. “I wish I could do more, Ollie. I wish I lived closer.”
    Ollie got up and walked slowly to the fridge and pulled out a beer.
    Should she say anything about the drinking? No, no, she shouldn’t. Not now. Let it go. “Is there anything I can help you with today? Like now, as I’m here? I feel like I should be doing something.”
    He snapped the can and looked at her sharply. “Maybe you can explain that list on the table.”
    “Sorry?” She started at the change in the tone of his voice.
    “That piece of paper on the table.”
    She bent forward, peering at the crumpled square of paper, Sophie’s large, rounded writing. “What is it? A to-do list.” She smiled. “Sophie was queen of the to-do list.”
    Sophie used to say that without her to-do lists she’d be the most disorganized mother in the world. Jenny never believed this. Sophie had always had a knack for the domestic. Although she was often late—she made being late glamorous rather than just annoying—she always knew where she was going, where she needed to be. She didn’t forget stuff. Like smear tests, or her grandmother’s birthday. She organized and decorated any environment she was in for more than ten minutes, whether that was a tent—Sophie camped with battery-powered fairy lights—or her room at university, which had boasted nondead orchids, sidelights dangerously draped with Indian silks, black-and-white professionally