Chapter Text
Coco is surprised by how intensely she doesn’t want to go to the funeral.
‘I don’t want to go,’ she says lamely, the words not only totally inadequate but landing super weird in the middle of the office, punctuated by the chink of spoon against mug as she stirs her coffee.
‘Nobody wants to go to a funeral,’ Jess points out, totally reasonably.
‘No, obviously, but I…’ Coco lowers her voice. ‘This one is extra awful. Everything about it is just, like, extremely tragic. Right?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.’ Jess sighs. ‘We’ll get through it. It’s gonna be sad, but at the end of the day, we’re not there so much for, you know, the commemoration of her life. I mean, we are, obviously, but… we’re there to support Iga.’
And, like, yes. Jess is a senior associate; she and Iga like each other, they get on fine, but they’re not peers, they’re never going to be best friends. Coco wouldn’t presume to have any kind of special relationship with Iga, especially right now, but they aren’t just colleagues. Coco doesn’t have any reason to grieve, but she thinks she does have a right to be upset when something so awful happens to someone she likes. Her friend.
That’s all it is.
But then Coco feels proved right the second they walk into the building. It’s packed, but there are no smiles, no one’s laughing as they share memories of a life well lived; everyone speaks in hushed voices, not just out of respect but shock, like they’re checking with each other that this is really happening. None of them should be here. The face in the framed photo at the front is too young and Iga is a widow at twenty-six and it all feels so, so wrong, a funeral through a funhouse mirror.
The whole team gets the afternoon off to go, which says something about how highly the partners value Iga. In lost billable hours, their attendance is worth tens of thousands of pounds. The room is full enough that they end up round the side, which gives Coco a bad view of the speaking platform but an almost too good view of Iga in the front row. The broad-shouldered man beside her can only be her dad, and there’s her sister on the other side, taller than Iga but otherwise so alike they could be twins; no mother, and Coco can’t help but wonder what the story is there. Iga’s eyes are red. She doesn’t speak at the ceremony - one of her wife’s university friends does the eulogy - but she’s clearly been sobbing in private, and her face is so tense that she seems to know she can’t move so much as a muscle or she’ll start again. Coco looks anywhere else. She stares into her lap, or at the floor, or over Iga’s head. She manages not to cry by reminding herself how embarrassing it would be to burst into tears at the funeral of someone she didn’t even know. It feels ridiculous to be so affected, but her stomach actually twists when she thinks about the blank look on Iga’s face; a reaction that she knows deep down she shouldn’t admit to.
‘Jesus,’ Jess sighs afterwards, ‘that was messed up.’
‘We should go over. Say something.’ Amanda has been crying. ‘Coco, don’t you think?’
Coco nods, because she hates the thought of Iga thinking they don’t care. But Iga’s family sweep her away before they can try, and Coco doesn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.
OOO
Ben asks afterwards if she wants him to stay over, and she says no even though she does appreciate the offer.
‘It was just a lot, you know?’ she explains. ‘A lot to think about.’
‘It’s really rough,’ Ben agrees, and Coco knows that he’s not actually getting Iga’s tragic bereavement confused with a difficult run of form for an NFL team; it’s just the way he talks.
OOO
Iga takes three months off after the funeral. Coco gets the impression from the partners that it had been very much non-negotiable, from their end rather than hers, which tracks; Coco can believe that Iga would much have preferred to keep working. Coco inherits some of her files, and it’s strange working through them and seeing Iga’s emails, memos, scans of careful attendance notes in Iga’s surprisingly loopy handwriting. She doesn’t like the way it makes her feel. As much as they don’t admit it, out of all of them Iga had been the one who was most obviously on the way up, the star junior, partner track; no mistakes, good with clients, if she was ever anxious or unsure she didn’t show it. Part of Coco, a very small part but not small enough to go away, can’t help but wonder whether this is her chance.
She assumes that someone else will get moved into their little shared office, but no; maybe three months isn’t considered long enough to disrupt the arrangements. It feels very empty without Iga. Coco hadn’t realised how much she valued being able to just read out random bits of drafting or queries from emails, I’m not crazy, am I, this is the answer, right? She misses the snacks Iga used to bring in. She especially misses the way that sometimes they would both just hit the wall at the same time; one of them would huff dramatically, they’d meet each other’s eyes over their screens, and then Coco would close the door and Iga would slide way down in her chair - especially endearing because of how careful she usually was of her posture - and they’d spend half an hour just venting, gossiping, learning about each other.
Iga was naturally quite a private person, but over the years she’d said that she met her wife on a weekend soccer team, that she was a sports journalist with a column and a substack, that she would strike up conversations with strangers on the train at weekends which made Iga want to curl up and die. In the early days it took time to coax those little details out of her, but even at her shyest Iga had seemed to want to talk. She’d asked all the time about what was going on in Coco’s own life, so Coco loved spinning stories for her over lunch or during their little closed-door breaks, casting the most dramatic light possible on her latest disastrous date or the four hours she’d spent on the phone trying to get her internet reconnected.
It’s not like she’s never been in the office without Iga - vacations are a thing, and days when Iga had been in court or out for meetings - so Coco doesn’t know why she feels so restless.
Firm tradition dictates that the window desk is technically the ‘senior’ desk, so where two associates at the same level share, they toss for it. Iga had won, and Coco had known it was stupid to feel the little twinge of disappointment. Coco decided pretty quickly that in fact she’d got the better deal - from her chair she can actually see out the window, whereas Iga always has her back to it unless she does that TV-lawyer thing of spinning her chair moodily while she’s on the phone, which she used to do until Coco filmed her and put the clip on the associates’ WhatsApp group soundtracked with the Law and Order theme music - so she doesn’t know what it is that makes her suddenly cross the room and drop down into Iga’s seat.
As far as Coco knows, Iga left the office the night of the accident and just never came back. Her desk looks the same as it always does. Iga is methodical, but she’s not necessarily neat: there are little stacks of printing in what’s presumably the order she’d planned to tackle them the next morning, but there are also post-its and lists, a succulent, an ancient tennis ball with an illegible signature. And a photo. It’s so small that Coco’s never noticed it before, only just bigger than passport-size, just taped to the edge of the monitor; nothing formal but right in the eyeline. Iga with her wife. Not kissing, but looking so happy they’re probably about to.
Coco doesn’t look at Iga’s desk the whole rest of the day.
OOO
Coco doesn’t know this, but Iga is thinking about her too.
She doesn’t have to be alone if she doesn’t want to. Her dad doesn’t even pretend to understand why she didn’t just fly back to Poland with him after the funeral. He mentions it every time they speak until she almost almost snaps at him - you know you could stay as long as you need, perhaps you could even move home, you could work for one of the big American law firms in Warsaw - and Iga knows that she’ll never be able to explain to his satisfaction why she can’t do that. She can say that her friends are here, but now her wife is gone, he can just counter that her family are in Poland, and he clearly thinks that’s logically unanswerable, the end of the conversation.
He’d slept in the study for the funeral and Agata had slept in Iga’s bed - their bed - so Andy’s parents could have the spare room. Andy’s parents had been desolate, unsurprisingly, but Iga could tell that they were trying to be brave for her, make sure the funeral was going to be exactly what she wanted, checking she had everything she needed, and it made Iga feel like a total fraud whenever she was with them. Yes, she’s the widow, she’s the next-of-kin, but she only actually had Andy for five years; they had an extra thirty, and she couldn’t imagine what she feels being multiplied by seven. Love isn’t math, but it felt like it must mean something.
Having the house full of people had made Iga want to scream. Even the kindest words scraped at her painfully, and silence was no better when she knew that someone wanted to speak and was holding back because they didn’t think she could handle it. Eva came over a couple of times and talked quietly to Andy’s parents in German, which was okay because it was basically just white noise - Iga never even tried to learn, and Andy always joked that Polish was so hard she’d only have time when she retired - but Iga couldn’t bear to listen to her dad’s careful well-meaning English conversations with them, let alone the constant discussions about logistics, the endless admin around parking permits and hiring wine glasses for the wake and trying to work out how to cancel Andy's phone contract. When everyone finally left, at first it was such a relief to be alone that she slept for over twelve hours, the first time she’d really rested since it happened.
And then - oh, right. She’s alone. She should have been careful what she wished for.
There are routines she can still follow. Iga gets dressed properly every morning, even if it’s just joggers and a sweater, even if she has nowhere to go; choosing clothes is just about the level of decision-making she can still cope with, and it feels strangely reassuring, like she’s making herself real for the day, reminding herself she exists. After she makes coffee she always sets aside ten minutes to reply to all the kind checking-in messages, as diligently as emptying her inbox at work. She goes to the gym because if she works out hard enough she can’t think. She makes herself eat twice a day, eggs on toast at twelve, pasta at seven, because if she gives herself any choice in the matter it will just overwhelm her.
Grieving sort of makes sense in the winter. It’s not easy, but at least Iga understands what she’s supposed to do with it: hide under blankets, sleep early, wake late, turn down invitations. The boiler breaks in February and Iga realises she doesn’t know the name of their boiler person, assuming they had a boiler person and Andy didn’t just call someone new for each annual service, which is also possible. In that moment it just seems emblematic of all the little things that Iga never took the time to notice. It knocks her out hard enough that she spends the whole night and most of the next day in tears, shivering in her freezing house, before she manages to perform the embarrassingly basic task of googling a number and calling it. She hadn’t realised she could be so sad that her breath actually snagged in her throat.
When the heat comes back on, Iga spends weeks curled up in a warm silent nest, reading book after book, staying as far away from the real world as possible.
But April comes around, the prettiest April Iga can remember maybe ever, and it just feels so much like a season to be shared. London is beautiful in the spring. People come out of hibernation. On a sunny day, pubs are overflowing by four-thirty, parks full of joggers and picnickers and dog-walkers. Iga starts to think cautiously about doing the same. Not the pub, but the park, maybe. She could invite Naomi over for takeout and a movie. She could take Eva up on one of the free tickets she always seems to have to the latest sold-out West End show, partly from her job and partly because people just seem to give Eva stuff. Several times she considers texting Coco. They could go for a run, maybe a coffee in one of the pretentious cafes Iga always feels slightly ashamed of herself for liking. They could talk about work, just in a casual way, so Iga didn’t feel quite so badly like she’s falling behind and will never be able to catch up again.
They could, but one of the things Iga likes best about Coco is that they wouldn’t even necessarily need to talk very much at all; they’re used to sitting in their shared office working in companionable silence, starting random little conversations out of nowhere about something a client has done or something they’ve just seen scrolling their phones. Maybe Iga could ask her over and they could just hang out, settle at opposite ends of the couch with books, read favourite lines out loud. Iga never feels like she has to entertain Coco, but she’s never been shy of talking to her either.
At least, she never used to be. But Iga is different now, she knows that logically she must be, and she feels it too; she’s struggling to plan or make decisions, can’t imagine the summer let alone the rest of her life, she literally doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s not sure yet how much of the person she was - what she likes, what she needs, how she spends her time - has survived Andy. It feels like she needs to be alone to find out.
Iga fell in love with Andy so fast that Agata had said, not unkindly, that’s extremely lesbian of you. She’d been twenty-one, just moved from Cambridge to London for law school, kind of scared and kind of lonely and kind of thrilled all at the same time. If you told her she’d be married within eighteen months, she would have laughed in your face. Iga was never the girl who grew up dreaming of her wedding, if anything the opposite, after her parents divorced, but when she met Andy it seemed so obvious. Andy was curious and challenging and gorgeous. She was patient and interested enough to keep trying until she broke through Iga’s shyness. She was analytical, she liked rock-climbing and collecting postcards and hated swans and sparkling water, she carried around an actual tiny notebook in her back pocket at all times and blushed when Iga teased her for being retro (you mean old - no, I mean retro, you’re very fashionable right now). Iga had known people would be shocked when she told them she was engaged - she’d even been prepared for the ones who couldn’t hide that they thought she was crazy - but it surprised her when people didn’t seem to understand the simple truth that, with her twenty-two-year-old’s belief that life would just unfold straightforwardly out in front of her, Iga couldn’t see a world without Andy in it.
Sometimes it felt like the only person she’d actually managed to convince was Andy herself. ‘I know you think I’m naive,’ she’d said, almost in tears after Andy did her calm infuriating journalism-school thing and went through a numbered list of all the reasons why getting married would be a mistake, ‘but I believe in this.’
It was the only thing in Iga’s life that she’d ever done with her heart not her head.
Iga was married to her for three years, five months and eighteen days: thousands of selfies and voice notes (Andy’s) and properly punctuated messages (hers), nights when Iga had to stay late at the office and almost but never quite managed to creep into bed without waking her, press tickets to soccer matches, last-minute travel, coffee and sushi and frayed tempers, finding ways to avoid talking about hard stuff, buying each other’s favourite snacks to apologise for snapping, sharing clothes, sharing books, spending half an hour debating the best TV show until they ran out of time to watch anything at all, working so much they fell asleep on each other. It was a lot. It was exciting. It wasn’t nearly enough.
But it’s hard to remember how much fun that could be, now that Iga knows the story ends in screeching tires and a brain bleed and the silent disinfectant-scented wait for it to be over.
As she gets closer to returning to work she starts to practise what she’ll say when well-meaning strangers ask questions. Am I seeing anyone? Well, I was married, actually - no, yeah, my wife died - car accident, not her fault, though… thank you, that’s very kind - yeah, it was really hard, still is, of course, but I’m much, much better now… She’s been longing to get back to the office, but part of her is scared, too, worried that she won’t be able to cope. She hasn’t had a serious conversation for a really long time. When she’s in the house, she hasn’t completely broken the habit of talking out loud and assuming Andy will hear her: is the dishwasher clean or dirty, where are the spare lightbulbs, did you see the score.
She’s gone forever. There’s a degree to which Iga still can’t really compute it, like a kid learning about the Big Bang: she’s gone forever, she will never come back, she existed and Iga loved her and spent every day with her and now she just doesn’t exist any more.
On the three-month anniversary of the accident she plucks up the courage to call Eva - can you, like, take me out tonight? Just so I can see what it feels like? - and Eva is happy to do all of Iga’s thinking for her: picks out her clothes, chooses where they go, orders the drinks, and strokes her hair in the back of the Uber when Iga’s one cocktail predictably goes straight to her head and she starts sobbing in the middle of the bar.
‘You don’t have to be ready yet, you know?’ Eva says tenderly afterwards as she rummages through the kitchen cupboards to find Iga a glass of water.
‘But I want to be,’ Iga replies, bewildered, and then wonders if that’s a betrayal.
OOO
Iga had already been married when they all joined the firm straight from law school at twenty-three, which looking back is kind of insane. Coco remembers watching Iga across the room at their new joiner meet-up, nursing her drink and laughing at whatever the person next to her was saying; remembers that very clearly, but the rest of the memory is fuzzy, and she’s not even absolutely sure now who it was that leaned in and said she’s married, I saw the ring. It might have been Amanda, or that might just be Coco making an assumption because Amanda always knows everything, not in a bad way, just because she pays attention.
‘Huh,’ Coco had said, wanting Amanda - or whoever it was - to continue so she didn’t have to ask, but then not really waiting long enough to give her a chance. ‘But she looks so - is she older than us? Or, like, religious?’
Amanda - yes, now she thinks about it, surely it was Amanda - had shaken her head and said no, Iga was their age, if the education dates on her LinkedIn were anything to go by, but judging by Instagram her wife was older, not, like, weirdly older but maybe early thirties, so perhaps they’d just decided to go for it. And Coco had nodded and said cool, or something equally non-committal, because otherwise it might have shown on her face that part of her had stopped listening when Amanda said the word wife.
It’s one of the most annoying things about being not-straight that even the barest hint of queerness has Coco’s antennae twitching, but there it is. And Iga was categorically not available. So it shouldn’t have made any difference.
But it was impossible not to casually lust after her a little bit, even with the wife thing. She was beautiful, and even if she hadn’t been, she dressed like a lesbian fever dream with her neat pressed shirts and tailored suits and easy little feminine touches, lipstick and jewellery which Coco couldn’t help but imagine her wife buying her. She looked like a grown-up, someone with her life together.
They live half an hour’s walk from each other, less on the bus, and over the years they’d met up sometimes for a run on the Common or the occasional brunch. For whatever reason they’d never been to each other’s houses until last year, when Coco’s PA had arranged for the airport car to pick up Coco first then Iga, an early flight for a conference in Berlin. Iga had been late, which she hated at the best of times. She’d looked almost like she was going to cry as she waved Coco off the doorstep through to a big kitchen-diner smelling of coffee: sorry, I won’t be a minute, I was trying to finish that doc review last night and then I was so tired and I just, I ran out of time…
Coco had sat at the breakfast bar, feeling uneasily like this panicked version of herself wasn’t something Iga really wanted her to see, until Andy appeared down the stairs, yawning in a German national team soccer jersey. She’d tossed a little bottle of vitamins into Iga’s open suitcase and then gently but firmly shouldered Iga out the way and zipped it up, countering Iga’s but I haven’t checked my list with all you actually need is your passport and your laptop, I promise they do have clothes shops in Berlin, I have seen them. And then she’d kissed Iga so simply and domestically that Coco had instinctively looked away, like she’d just stared into the sun.
Coco only vaguely remembers what Andy actually looked like, dark hair and laughter lines, but she definitely remembers the way Iga softened, allowing herself to smile a little bit at her own stress. She remembers the I love you, see you soon. And she can’t help but be sad, despite herself, that Iga will never go home to her again.
OOO
The head of the team announces Iga’s return to work on the Monday stand-up call, very solemn, encouraging them all to be Sensitive and Aware. Coco knows at once that he’s handled it absolutely wrong. Iga would definitely prefer just to appear in the office one day with no fanfare, like she’d never been away.
Coco spends an almost literally sleepless night agonising over whether Iga would prefer to have time alone in the office before she sees anyone, or whether she’d want Coco to be there when she arrives. In the end, the fact that she’s wide awake at six am makes the decision for her. She showers, dresses with slightly more care than usual, enjoys being on the tube before it gets busy, and is at her desk by seven-thirty.
Iga appears at ten to eight, early enough that Coco suspects she was probably trying not to be seen.
‘Hey,’ she says, like nothing’s happened.
‘Hey,’ Coco replies automatically, then finds herself halfway out of her chair without thinking about it. ‘Um - can I - and then I promise I won’t say anything about it again?’
Iga nods, dropping her bag, and Coco steps forward and hugs her. She smells good; new perfume. At first she’s stiff in Coco’s arms, but then her shoulders drop and she sort of readjusts, winding her arms properly around Coco’s waist. It feels real, like she knows she needs it.
She turns her face away as they break apart, like she’s embarrassed, and smiles crookedly as she sits down behind her desk.
‘So how was it, having your own office all to yourself?’
Okay. That’s how she wants to play it.
She looks thinner, but when she takes off her jacket her shoulder muscles are insane, like she’s spent the whole three months in the gym and not eating properly. It would be excusable under the circumstances. Coco wonders idly whether Iga cooks or if that was Andy, and then deliberately opens an email from her most annoying client to distract herself from that train of thought.
Once Iga has unpacked and sorted herself out she asks Coco if they can talk about her cases that Coco took on. Coco can’t help but be slightly taken aback - already? - but she grabs her laptop and drags her chair over to Iga’s desk. Side-by-side Coco can’t always catch her expression, but the couple of times she does glance over, Iga looks very tense, staring at the screen like she’s going to fight it.
When Coco finally sits back, she realises the little photo is gone.