Homecomings by C.P. Snow

IT was three nights later when, blank to all feeling, I went into the bedroom and switched on the light. Blankly, I pulled off the cover from my own bed; then I glanced across at hers, smooth, apple-green under the light, undisturbed since it was made four days before. All of a sudden, sorrow, loss, tore at me like a spasm of the body. I went to the bed and drew my hands along the cover, tears that I could not shed pressing behind my eyes, convulsed in the ravening of grief. At last it had seized me. The bed was smooth under the light. I knelt beside it, and wave after wave of a passion of the senses possessed me, made me grip the stuff and twist it, scratch it, anything to break the surface, shining quietly under the light.

Once, in an exhausted respite, I had a curious relief. The week to come, some friends had invited us to dinner. If she had been alive, she would have been anxious about going, she would have wanted me to make excuses and lie her out of the evening, as I had done so many times.