Little Bee

Behind her the flatscreen was showing Jon Stewart. He was laughing. His guest was laughing too. I felt better. You had to find something to laugh about, that summer, the number of places that were going up in smoke. You laughed, or you put on a superhero costume, or you tried for some kind of orgasm that science had somehow missed.

I took the stairs down to the lobby, speeding up as I went. The two police officers were standing rather too close together, with their caps in their hands and their big, sensible leather shoes on my black marble. The young one was blushing horribly.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

I glared at the receptionist and she grinned back at me from beneath her perfect blond side part.

“Sarah O’Rourke?”

“Summers.”

“Excuse me madam?”

“Sarah Summers is my professional name.”

The older policeman looked at me with no expression.

“This is a personal matter, Mrs. O’Rourke. Is there somewhere we can go?”

I walked them up to the boardroom on the first floor. Tones of pink and violet, long glass table, more neon.

“Can I get you a coffee? Or tea? I mean, I can’t absolutely guarantee it’ll come out as coffee or tea. Our machine is a bit-”

“Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mrs. O’Rourke.”

The officers’ faces glowed unnaturally in the pinkish light. They looked like black-and-white-movie men, colored in by a computer. One older, the one with the bald patch. Maybe forty-five. The younger one, with the blond cropped hair, maybe twenty-two or twenty-four. Nice lips. Quite full, and rather juicy-looking. He wasn’t beautiful, but I was transfixed by the way he stood and cast his eyes down deferentially when he spoke. And of course there’s always something about a uniform. You wonder if the protocol will peel off with the jacket, I suppose.

The two of them placed their uniform caps on the purple smoked glass. They rotated the caps with their clean white fingers. Both of them stopped at exactly the same moment, as if some critical angle they had practiced in basic training had precisely been attained.

They stared at me. My mobile chimed brashly on the glass desktop-a text message arriving. I smiled. That would be Andrew.

“I’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs. O’Rourke,” said the older officer.

“What do you mean?”

It came out more aggressive than I intended. The policemen stared at their caps on the table. I needed to look at the text message that had just arrived. As I reached out my hand to pick up my phone, I saw the two of them staring at the stump of my missing finger.

“Oh. This? I lost it on holiday. On a beach, actually.”

The two policemen looked at each other. They turned back to me. The older one spoke. His voice was suddenly hoarse.

“We’re very sorry, Mrs. O’Rourke.”

“Oh, please, don’t be. It’s fine, really. I’m fine now. It’s just a finger.”

“That’s not what I meant, Mrs. O’Rourke. I’m afraid we’ve been instructed to tell you that-”

“See, honestly, you get used to doing without the finger. At first you think it’s a big deal and then you learn to use the other hand.”

I looked up and saw the two of them watching me, gray-faced and serious. Neon crackled. On the wall clock, a fresh minute snapped over the old one.

“The really funny thing is, I still feel it, you know? My finger, I mean. This missing one. Sometimes it actually itches. And I go to scratch it and there’s nothing there, of course. And in my dreams my finger grows back, and I’m so happy to have it back, even though I’ve learned to do without it. Isn’t that silly? I miss it, do you see? It itches.”

The young officer took a deep breath and looked down at his notebook.

“Your husband was found unconscious at your property shortly after nine this morning, Mrs. O’Rourke. Your neighbor heard cries and placed a 999 call to the effect that a male was apparently in distress. Police attended the address and forced entry to an upstairs room at nine-fifteen A.M., when Andrew O’Rourke was found unconscious. Our officers did everything they could and an ambulance attended and removed the casualty, but I am very sorry to tell you, Mrs. O’Rourke, that your husband was pronounced dead at the scene at-here we are-nine thirty-three A.M.”

The policeman closed his pad.

“We’re very sorry, madam.”

I picked up my phone. The new text was indeed from Andrew. SO SORRY, it said.

He was sorry.

I switched the phone, and myself, onto silent mode. The silence lasted all week. It rumbled in the taxi home. It howled when I picked up Charlie from nursery. It crackled on the phone call with my parents. It roared in my ears while the undertaker explained the relative merits of oak and pine caskets. It cleared its throat apologetically when the obituaries editor of The Times telephoned to check some last details. Now the silence had followed me into the cold, echoing church.