I'm a Believer - Softcover

Jessica Adams has been a staff writer for Elle, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan in Australia, and now divides her time between the South Coast of England, and Australia.

Chapter One
For the first few days after Catherine's death, I find myself doing all the wrong things-though I'm not exactly sure what the right things are. I'm fairly certain you're not supposed to lie in the bath, listening to ABBA, when your girlfriend's just been killed in a car crash. But this morning, that's exactly what I find myself doing. Singing along with Fernando on the radio. Using Catherine's bubble bath. Mindlessly trying to churn up more bubbles with my hands.
Because what's just happened is so major, anything I do which is minor-and in my life, that's quite a lot-automatically seems wrong. Putting my feet up on the table this morning, reading the sports pages, I caught myself thinking: Is this allowed? And making a triple-decker honey sandwich: Is this too frivolous?

Both my grandfathers are dead, so you'd think I'd know how to behave. You'd think I'd know how it's done. But one died in a Spanish retirement home, and the other had a heart attack years ago, and on both occasions I was either too far away, or too young. I know I wore black to one of the funerals, but that's been the extent of my mourning practice.

I have to buy a black suit for Catherine's funeral on Wednesday. But if you always wear black, which I do-which, in fact, most men of a certain age in London do-then what should you wear to a funeral? Blacker black, just to show that it's more serious? And all the time, part of me is thinking: Catherine doesn't know, Catherine doesn't care. Catherine's dead and almost buried, and anything I do with her in mind now is just a total waste of time.

Some other inappropriate things I do this week: Opening her post, and for the first time in the history of our relationship, looking at her bank account. Frying the honey sandwiches in butter, just to see if Elvis Presley was right. Finally, worst of all, getting into bed at two o'clock in the afternoon, with an old photo of Catherine, lying topless on some Australian beach, and trying to take some comfort in it. I think it's fair to say that this is the low point.

People from school have rung up-other teachers, mostly. Some I know quite well, so I'd expect a call, and some I only know well enough to nod at in the corridor. I didn't know some of them cared. There's a woman in administration I only know because she used to pinch my parking space. She's rung up, and she cried as well-in fact she cried so much she couldn't speak. I've even had sympathy emails, which seems wrong somehow, but maybe everybody's doing it these days.

The people at Catherine's work, at the travel agency, have rung up as well. And so far, everyone seems to have heard how she died, which saves me an explanation, but I've still had the inevitable comments:

'If only she'd taken a different road.'

'If only you'd come to us for dinner that night, Mark.'

'If only Catherine had thought twice about taking the car out in that weather.'

The dinner thing got to me the most. Do some people really think that her death hinges on us not going up to Balham to eat their chicken curry at seven o'clock on a Thursday night?

'If only you'd come to us for dinner that night, Mark.' Sod off.

Catherine's ex-boyfriend Matt, has just rung up. He wants to come to the funeral. And he can sod off as well. He's the one who took the topless photo of her in Australia. The photo I've been lying in bed with. I've just remembered that.

The next day, I see that the morning post contains a book from Amazon for Catherine, and some more sympathy cards for me, and her parents-they've all come to this address. The book Catherine ordered is called Eat Right, Live Well, Live Longer. It's up there in the rich irony stakes this morning, along with her low-cholesterol margarine, still sitting in the fridge door, approved by the National Heart Association-and all her cashew nuts from the health food shop. All this stuff dates from Catherine's last big supermarket shop, the day before she died. I chuck the book straight in the bin. Then I chuck the cashews out of the front door, for the pigeons.

It looks as though some of the the sympathy cards addressed to me are along the 'if only' lines too, like the phone calls. Because her accident was written up in the local paper, everyone now knows that Catherine was driving in the rain, at night, swerving to avoid a dog, on a dodgy road, in a very old car. Consequently there's a lot of `if only' stuff revolving around these details.

The people sending sympathy cards, some of whom I've never even met, divide into two camps. About half of them find her death poignant, senseless and tragic, and something which could easily have been avoided-and the other half seem to find her death meaningful, fated and even proof that God might work in mysterious ways. There's no middle ground. Perhaps the people who have no opinion at all about car accidents-other than the fact that they're just accidents-don't bother to write. I have to say, this is the camp I fall into.

The God and Heaven cards have crosses and flowers on the front-one shows three bluebirds flying around in front of a cloud, smiling. And the cards go on about God having prepared some sort of paradise for Catherine, and in one case there's a message from one of her old school friends which talks about God having set up a nice eternal resting place for her. I think these people are missing the point. If you follow that line of logic, it's God who set the whole bloody car crash up in the first place.

The people who run Catherine's weekly yoga class have written a long letter, on recycled paper (of course) talking about karma. I didn't know they were that far gone. I just thought they did yoga for the exercise.

In any case, the recycled paper letter goes in the bin. But not before I've ripped it into shreds. The yoga people say we might not understand why she's gone, but Catherine's higher self already knows. What higher self?. I lived with her for two years, and I never saw it. The yoga people say it's part of a plan-I love this bit-it's part of a plan, somehow, but annoyingly enough, the laws of karma mean we'll just never know.

There's an okay card from Catherine's Aunty Pam in Yorkshire. She was always nagging us to get married, but in such a funny accent that we never really took offence. In Aunty Pam's card, she says that ever since her husband died in 1988, she's learned that you get used to it, but you never get over it. This sounds about right to me.

Just before midnight, though, in the middle of another bath with the radio on-it's the 'if only' cards that end up affecting me the most. My defences are probably down because I'm so tired. And obviously, as everyone has been telling me, there's the after-effects of shock to consider. Either way, though, I seem to be weakening. Other people's obsession with the trivial combination of factors that led to Catherine's death is now-finally-beginning to get to me.

When I get out of the bath, I find myself thinking-if only she had stayed home with me that night, I could have walked around the corner and got a video, and then she never would have driven out in the rain. And if only she hadn't bothered with a shower before the yoga class, then she would have driven off fifteen minutes earlier, and whatever freakish set of circumstances the police are now telling me about, with the dog, and poor visibility, and wet roads, and old brakes, and heavy traffic-well, those circumstances would never have lined up. We'd been wanting to get Billy Elliot out on video for ages. I should have got it. That's the bottom line, really. I didn't get the Billy Elliot video out on Thursday night, and she didn't stay in with me, and she went out and got killed in a car crash.

If you wait long enough, when your heart has stopped palpitating and your head has stopped thumping, common sense eventually kicks in. I've discovered this over the years, during the odd work or money-related panic attack. And common sense now says, why stop there? I mean, if I'm going to torture myself with these scenarios about what might have been avoided-well. Why not go all the way?

I mean, if only Volkswagen had never exported the particular make of car that Catherine happened to be driving that night, if only the course of the Second World War had been different, and Volkswagen's corporate destiny in Germany had taken another turn. If only the dog who shot out in front of her had never been born ... and it goes on. If only the rain hadn't been pelting down that night, if only Catherine wasn't short-sighted, and vain with it as well-she never wore glasses. If only she'd set off earlier, if only she'd set off later. If only the council had built better roads.

And to really get at the heart of all those links in the causal chain, I may as well start with myself, because if only I'd never met Catherine Roden in the first place, on a family holiday to a seaside town called Dymchurch in 1977, we'd never have got together anyway. And then Thursday night would never have happened, and she'd still be alive. So take that, those of you who want to ramble on about the endless twists in the chain of fate, and shove it.

Ultimately, if you're going to take this 'If only' thing about her accident to its logical conclusion, then full responsibility for Catherine's funeral next Wednesday rests with me, and me alone. And if anyone else rings up wanting to know about the terrible pre-destined event that's got us to this point where she's dead, it's actually a holiday in Dymchurch, and a copy of a girls' magazine called Jackie, from 20 years ago.

Amazingly, I manage to find the same copy of Jackie the next day, in a cardboard box on the top of our wardrobe. All Catherine's childhood stuff is there. One of those little plastic machines you make name labels with, and then numerous school folders bearing the same labels, along with a list of all the bands she liked at the time, from The Bay City Rollers to Mud. I wonder if her...