First, Happy New Year to you all.

Secondly, huge thanks to Paul for nominating me as December WOM. It's an honour, and I apologise profusely for taking so long to post my contribution - explanation in future post, but part of the problem was that my hard drive died. Ho hum!

I thought long and hard about what to put up, but in the end, it seemed obvious. Paul nominated me because I'd posted a novel on authonomy, so here's the first part of Chapter 1.

 Six Weeks in Summer

 Paul Cornwall died just as the sun was rising on the first day of winter. When his breathing stopped, the silence in the room was absolute, the sunlight slipping without a sound through the slats in the blinds. Even the woman in the chair beside the bed was silent, immobile, until her own breath released on a long sigh, the world turned again, and the moment was gone.

If only he'd waited, Meg thought. If only he'd seen what a beautiful day it was, he might have stayed. But she knew it wasn't true. He'd hated winter. He'd have seen the bright morning as a taunt.

She reached out, her fingers barely brushing his forehead, unfurrowed now for the first time in years. Her hand was trembling, as if she still expected him to turn away from it. She stroked aside the dark hair so rarely allowed to fall as it did now, and felt slow tears pool and spill over. Such a waste. So many possibilities unrealised now for so many years. Finished. Over, with no hope of fulfilment.

‘Mrs Cornwall?' The nurse at the door looked shocked, as if she hadn't expected this to happen, as if she'd somehow failed at her job. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘So sorry.' She hurried forward to lay a hand on Meg's arm and draw her away. ‘I should have been here.'

Meg shook her head.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘You couldn't have changed it.' Because Paul wasn't a person to fight, to take a positive stand against encroaching death. Only to rail against it, the final insult in the bitter disappointments of his life.

‘But still,' the girl said. ‘I should have...' She jabbed at the buzzer and the light over the door flashed on, bright and urgent when it was too late. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said again.

She was so young, Meg thought sadly, so innocent, despite the things she saw.

And then the room was full of people, hushed and purposeful, alive and busy about the business of death.

They made her coffee in the tearoom while they packed his things. After the long, still hiatus of the night it seemed almost indecent now, that they should pack him out so quickly. Surely he should be allowed to lie there for a while, to settle into death, to find his way through the long tunnel into the next life, if it was there. But what for? They that believe in Me shall not perish, but Paul hadn't believed. And there would be others still alive needing the care, wanting the bed. His clothes, his shoes, his soap and toothbrush and his watch, all in a brown paper bag. Her husband, in a brown paper bag.

‘Can we call someone for you?' The sister's eyes were anxious. For me? Meg thought, or for the needy lives backing up while they dealt with death? ‘Is there anyone who can come and drive you home?'

Meg shook her head.

‘I'm fine, she said quietly. ‘Truly, I'm fine.' She stood, lifting the bag from its place on the table. ‘You've all been so good, but it's over now. You've got things to do. But thank you. Thank you for...everything.'

The woman looked at her in silence for a moment, then stepped forward and put her arms around Meg's stiff shoulders.

‘You're such a good person,' she said quietly, then she turned and hurried out.

Am I? Meg thought. Am I really a good person? There's a whole blank future in front of me, a whole life to remake. I'm fifty and alone, and I've no idea who I am at all.

The house was just as she'd left it. How could it not be? One cup on the drainer from yesterday's breakfast, the mail still unopened on the kitchen table. She'd left yesterday just before lunch and not been back. The bed was still made and the washing folded and waiting to be put away. It was all the same, and yet it was different, because now Paul would never be back. It was as if the house knew, and had taken on an extra quality of silence. Brooding over her. Waiting. Hostile.

Dear God, what was she thinking?

She slid down onto a chair at the kitchen table and dropped her head into her cupped hands. She was raving. It was a house, for heaven's sake. What did it know?

More than she did, probably, it wouldn't be hard. There were things she should be doing, people to ring, arrangements to make, if she could think what they were. If only they'd had children, someone to share this with. But Paul hadn't wanted children, and she hadn't fought hard enough to win. What would have been the point? Why subject them to a father who hadn't wanted them? But now... If they'd been there, if they'd existed...

There were dust motes dancing in the sun that slanted through the window and lay gently across her shoulders as she put her head down and finally wept.

It was almost summer when Meg labelled the last of the boxes and called the courier to take them away. It had taken her weeks to sort Paul's clothes and pack up his study. She'd been hesitant - wary - expecting all the time that his hand would reach out from the grave - or the urn at the crematorium, as it happened - and strike her down for such sacrilege. So she'd done it a bit at a time, a drawer here, a cupboard there, his books today and his desk tomorrow, as if that way she could bamboozle his shade into looking the other way. And she'd been scared, she realised now, scared of what she might find. Some final, irrevocable sign of rejection? Some proof that all the years of their marriage had been an empty farce? Or was it the memory of happier times that held her back? Even a letter, she thought, when he'd known he was dying, telling her that she'd mattered in his life. What would she have felt then? Would it have stirred some long-buried emotion into unbearable pain? Was that what she was afraid of?

But there was nothing.

So strange, really, that you could spend twenty-five years of your life with someone, and in the end there was nothing. Time shared, work, holidays, friends. Hopes and dreams that gradually faded into mist until in the end even grief was an emptiness, a hollow ache rather than a burning pain. Perhaps she'd been hoping, rather than fearing; hoping that somewhere, something would really pierce her heart and make her bleed, make her normal, whatever that was. But there was nothing, and in the end she'd packed his things and sent them away, clothes to the charity shop, books and papers to the other partners in his law firm. And now it was done, and he was gone.

She stood in the hall and looked around her. The house was hers, now. The thought disoriented her, made her uneasy. How could it possibly be hers? It had nothing to do with her and never had, except that she'd kept it clean. It had been Paul's, sacrosanct, inviolate and inviolable, and before that his mother's, her sacred and untouchable obsession. His father had lived here as well, she supposed, although the idea seemed vaguely indecent. Monica Cornwall was the sort who made husbands superfluous. She wondered if he'd felt as she did, a guest to the bitter end. But in her case it was the host who'd departed, leaving the guest in possession.

She turned slowly until her back was to the heavy front door, to take a long, hard look at what was now hers.

http://www.authonomy.com/books/37213/six-weeks-in-summer/