Laura Bundi kicked off her heels, dumped her handbag on the floor and closed the door behind her. She headed straight into the living room and fell onto the couch. Nothing in her day went according to plan.
She liked to have the house to herself, run a bath anytime she wanted and stream some reruns of the old shows that made her long for her younger days. She liked to spend hours trying on her new outfits, or poking around in her husband’s hardly-used gym, wondering what the latest pointless gadget was this time. If she really felt like it, she would dismiss Njoki, her housekeeper, and make herself a big batch of comfort food, grab the best bottle of wine in her collection, curl up in her oversized chair and catch up with her virtual friends.
Laura looked a decade younger than her forty-seven years: she slept early, woke late, ate healthy, exercised daily. She had passed on her genes to her daughter; Amira was her spitting image. Today, however, she felt every single one of those years, plus a handful more.
Newton had stumbled into her bedroom last night—something he had not done for at least five years now—clutching at his chest, fuming, panicking, in some kind of pain, yelling at his security man, Jared, who was right behind him.
“You’re fired! How could you, you useless son of a bitch… She can’t be gone! Never!... Petite, why? Why, Petite?... Oh, my dear Laura…”
He collapsed a foot from her bed. Laura’s head had been throbbing from a hangover, she really did not need the drama on a Sunday night, but she summoned enough energy to call Njoki to attend to her husband. Njoki had suggested calling for an ambulance, and apparently, that had saved his life. Laura could not be bothered.
Now Njoki came to the living room and presented Laura with a double whisky with a large block of ice in it.
“You are priceless, Njoki,” she crooned, sitting up and accepting the offering. Who cared if it was 9:30 in the morning?
“How is Mr. Bundi, Madam?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” she said.
The Bundi men were a stubborn lot. She could not fathom why Clarence was still hanging on at the Four Peaks Hospice, at almost ninety. Laura did not want to live a day after sixty, and even that was a bit too much.
Njoki nodded and left Laura to herself. She was dog-tired from spending the entire night at the hospital, filling in endless questionnaires as next of kin, waiting for test results, listening to doctors’ diagnoses, waiting for the surgery to end… They assumed that she cared about these things. Newton was not the first man on earth to suffer a stroke, was he? He certainly wouldn’t be the last. The sun would still shine regardless.
Laura knocked back the drink, set the glass down on the carpet, and lay back on the sofa. She giggled at the sensation, letting the alcohol warm her up and befuddle her mind.
Newton had been going on about something before his epic face plant, something about Amira reading some print, and some...