The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso Page A

could see anything, if his work could be any good, but when he unveiled the stone she stopped – Gary, sun-beaten, leather-skinned Gary, had made something beautiful. The base was thick, and a thin slab projected out from it at an angle, all in white marble. Hortensia was surprised at the thinness of the slab. ‘Won’t it break?’ She was careful to sound disinterested. They were standing in the driveway, looking into the back of the truck. He shook his head. ‘Reinforced,’ he said. The slab was covered, meticulously, in a fine pattern of black dots, like tar bubbles. Hortensia wanted to run her hands over them (she could almost feel them already, the bumps) but she restrained herself. She found that she liked Gary’s design and she was worried that he’d notice. ‘Alright,’ she said and offered directions but he said he didn’t need them – he knew already where the plot of land was.
    So much else was happening. It didn’t help that Hortensia kept forgetting things. The mortician wanted to know the name of the hospital, the doctor who’d signed the death certificate. It was all written down – why was she asking her? ‘I don’t know, Cathy-something,’ Hortensia had said. ‘Dr Cathy Marcus or something like that. Oh, there were many doctors, though. Oh, you mean the one who signed? Marcus … or something.’
    Hortensia also forgot simple things. She forgot to ask Malachi to make a cutting of the bougainvillea for the vase on the bureau in the hallway. She forgot to tell Bassey, who was the only man large enough to fit anything Peter owned, to go through her husband’s things, take whatever he wanted. She forgot that Peter would want her to contact Unilever in Ibadan – who would still be there of the old crowd? Let them know about the death. The so-called regulars. She’d even forgotten to tell Zippy, who had phoned from London, all concerned to find out how Peter was doing. Hortensia felt like an idiot telling her sister, three days after it had happened, that her brother-in-law was dead.
    ‘Oh, my darling, poor thing,’ Zippy said, but who was Zippy’s pity directed at: her or Peter?
    ‘It’ll be okay,’ Hortensia said.
    ‘Should I come? I should come. Shouldn’t I? You sound so normal, why didn’t you call me the minute it happened? I’ll come.’
    Hortensia let her baby sister carry on for a while, then she used all her powers to persuade Zippy that the funeral was nothing, rather come out for a longer time afterwards, when Hortensia would need the support. It sounded right, even though none of it was true. She listened a bit more to admonitions that were simply a younger version of the ones she’d received from their mother, before telling Zippy there were things she had to attend to, and ringing off.
    There’d also been a surprise. No death is complete without one. Hortensia placed her teacup down, taking small joy – a sense of the rightness of things – in the crisp clink-sound the bone china made as she set it on the saucer. A breeze blew up onto the patio and she looked out and noticed that the clouds were threatening rain. Hortensia could hear Bassey preparing dinner. Everything was normal, except that her husband was dead and apparently she was no longer the executor of his will. Someone else was, a someone she now had an appointment with the following day. Hortensia curled her lip; it was involuntary. If she were with company she would fight the urge, fight the way the corners of her mouth just naturally wanted to sink to the ground, but since she was alone she let them go. She picked up her cup again and took a sip of Earl Grey, prepared with Chinese Black Congou tea and not the usual Ceylonese. This small detail made the moment bearable.
    Within seconds of meeting the young lawyer, Hortensia knew she didn’t much like him.
    ‘Come this way,’ Hortensia said to him, noticing by the fluster in his eyes that he’d have preferred niceties before business.
    ‘I’m