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barely left my side.
    When they weren’t comforting me, they were tending to Dan and Ella—holding one, gently rocking or shushing the other. The only thing that seemed to soothe them was watching an old tape of
Annie
—I think it had been mine when I was a kid. When I asked them why, they said because it was about children who didn’t have mummies or daddies.
“But then it ends happily,” Ella said. “And Annie gets a daddy and a mummy. Will me and Dan ever get a daddy again?”
    From time to time, Dad escaped to the bedroom to watch aHitler documentary on the History Channel and, I’m guessing, check his blood pressure. Mum turned out my kitchen cupboards, mopped the floors and took charge of the laundry—anything to keep busy. “OK, I’m doing a white wash. If anybody’s got light-colored underpants on—take them off now and hand them over.” She also baked. One day it was a gloriously puffy Victoria sponge; the next, pineapple upside-down cake. None of us had much of an appetite for proper food—in fact Ella was refusing all meals unless I fed her with a spoon—but we demolished the cakes.
    The day after the inquest, reports of Mike’s death appeared in the newspapers. We kept getting calls from the
Sun
and the
Daily Star
, eager to get a quote from the grieving widow. Dad told them “no comment,” but the story appeared anyway. The headline in the
Sun
read: SUICIDE JUMPER CRUSHES DAD TO DEATH . At the end of the article, there was one of those fact boxes you get in the tabloids. This contained a list of other tragicomic fatalities. It seemed that Mike had joined a hall of fame that included a bloke who departed this world while peeing onto an electrical fence, somebody who set a time bomb but blew himself up because he hadn’t accounted for daylight saving and a German spy who choked to death on a cyanide pill.
    I was in too much pain to bother about nonsense in the tabloids.
    “It will get easier,” Mum said one night when I couldn’t face going to bed. “You have to believe me.”
    “How do you know? You’ve never lost a husband. And anyway, you don’t understand.”
    “What don’t I understand?”
    I paused. “You don’t understand . . .”
    “What . . . ?”
    I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.
    “Come on, sweetie. . . . Tell me.”
    I hesitated for a few more seconds. “OK . . . Part of me is glad Mike’s dead.”
    “I get that.”
    “I’m glad he’s dead because I won’t have to deal with his addiction anymore. Jesus Christ—what sort of a person is glad that her husband, the father of her children, is dead?”
    “How’s about one who has lived with the kind of stress and anxiety that you have.”
    “I know, but . . .”
    “No buts. Listen to me. I am your mother and I know what a good person you are. Mike put you through hell.”
    “I should have done more. I should have been on his case right from the start instead of being so preoccupied with the kids and doing up this bloody house.”
    “Sarah, you were a good wife. Take it from me, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing.”
    By now Dad had appeared with a tray of tea. “Your mother’s right. You did your best. You have absolutely nothing to reproach yourself for.”
    “See, for once even your dad agrees with me. Now come on, drink your tea while it’s hot.”

    •   •   •
    D an reacted to his father’s death by withdrawing. If he wasn’t on the sofa with Ella watching
Annie
, he was in his room on his PlayStation. Ella was still asking if she would get a new daddy oneday and then in the same breath she wanted to know when her daddy would come back to life. Aged five, she had a Cartoon Network, Wile E. Coyote take on death. The vision of her little face crumpling in anguish as I explained that her beloved daddy wouldn’t be coming home broke my heart.
    Mum and Dad were adamant that the children shouldn’t go to the funeral. The way they saw it,