Read Online It Isn't Cheating if He's Dead by Julie Frayn - Free Book Online

passage of time. Commemorating his successful
completion of each listed task. Then on the fifth, the X was not so neat. An
arrow of red marker shoved an incomplete task into the box for the sixth. The X
through the sixth was only a slash, not confined to the square allocated for
that twenty-four hour period, but invading the territory of the twelfth. Two
tasks were circled and moved from the seventh all the way to the fifteenth.
Messy, crooked slashes marked the seventh to the tenth. The eleventh was a dark
square, obliterated by black Sharpie. And then nothing. He didn’t come home on
the twelfth.
    Maybe the slash from the sixth pushed him
over the edge. How could he face his precious calendar after the sixth declared
war on his mind?
    “He was obsessed with order. Numerical,
alphabetical, chronological. But he never ironed his clothes and rarely brushed
out his hair.” She shifted her gaze to Finn’s angular face. “He was obsessed
with health food.  No meat, no eggs, no cheese. Nothing that caused any animal
any discomfort. But he refused to get a pet. Wouldn’t go near the SPCA. He was
obsessed with finding a cure for all cancers, a magic bullet if you will. But
he refused to take any medication if he got a cold or the flu. And of course,
he went off his meds. You know, the antipsychotics.”
    “He was a walking contradiction.”
    Could he read her mind? “Yes, that’s what I
always told him. He was brilliant, a genius. But he didn’t understand the
simplest, most obvious humour. A complete social nerdlinger.” She huffed. “That
sounds like such a stereotype. He wasn’t completely awkward. I mean he never had
trouble finding a girlfriend. And I know he loved me. But he didn’t believe in
public displays of affection.” No, he kept those very private. And then even
the private ones became rare.
    “All right. What about daily habits? How
did he spend his time?”
    “Five a.m., run. Five forty-five, shower.
Six, coffee, soy yoghurt, fresh fruit, and low-fat granola. In the lab by seven,
tirelessly researching to find ways to cure his mother. Six p.m. shower number
two. Seven, dinner. Eight, well, between then and his ten forty-five strict bed
time, that was his ‘flex time’ as he called it.”
    “What did he do then, TV, surf the internet,
drink with the boys?”
    She snorted. “Uh, no. Read medical
journals, putter in his herb garden, clean something, anything, everything.”
    “I see.” Finn made some notes then tap-tap-tapped
the eraser on the paper again. “When did he spend time with you?”
    “We got up together. Sometimes showered
together. Coffee and breakfast and dinner, if I was home. Once in a blue moon,
flex time did include just being together, just hanging out. If we did go out,
it was to some fundraising event, or the occasional awards ceremony. Once a
year we went to my office party. We were both busy with careers. Our lives only
intersected at meals and at bedtime.”
    “Is that why no kids?”
    “I suppose. We talked about it, but it
never seemed to be the right time.”
    “Was your life with him always like this?”
    She smiled and shook her head. “Not when I
was in university. He lectured there. That’s how we met. He was older, six
years. Back then he was a lot more… let’s say normal.” As normal as a genius with
a career trajectory that pretty much guaranteed him a place in the cancer
research history books can be. “He wasn’t as fastidious. Didn’t alphabetize his
CDs or mark time on the calendar. Didn’t make lists.”
    “When did that change?”
    “It could have been going on for years. But
I didn’t notice until we moved in together. Bought this house. That was when he
started getting paranoid, thinking there was some phantom group trying to steal
his research. It started with stuff like ‘they’ are reading his emails, or
‘they’ are tapping his phone. Soon it was ‘the others.’ Those were the voices
he heard. The others spoke to him from