The Life Impossible – Matt Haig An Ongoing Situation
An Ongoing Situation.
‘Sorry if this is too direct,’ I told the solicitor. ‘But how did she die?’
‘I thought you knew,’ she said. Mrs Una Kemp. A voice like it had only just come out of the fridge and needed time to soften.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It stated that she had died, in the letter, but it didn’t say how. So I would like to know how she died, if possible.’
‘She died at sea …’
This wasn’t, I realised, a direct answer.
‘I’m sorry. How did she die?’
A crackle of breath on the line. ‘Oh. That is an ongoing situation.’
Ongoing situation.
‘Sorry. In what sense?’
‘In the sense that the Spanish authorities are still looking into the precise circumstances in which she died. They are very thorough. The only thing that we know for certain, the only thing that we have been told, is that she died at sea.’
It only occurred to me a good five minutes after the conversation had ended that this ambiguity seemed rather peculiar. Why were the facts so mysterious? According to the solicitor, her will had been recently changed to include me as a beneficiary. This, combined with the general bizarreness of it being left to me, filled my mind with questions.
And I had always been the type who couldn’t see a question without pursuing an answer. Wherever it took me.
