When a person goes, that habitat never comes back. An occupied room is a great diversity of life. The inspector would have limited time in Carlos’s office. It was the place to start. He was working against extinction. When his wife had died, it wasn’t just her body that had gone. She had been an incalculable volume, and there was nothing unusual about that. She didn’t stop at the edge; she had a field of life around her. Her scent, her appearance, her effect would have been wholly different if even one day of her biography were omitted. There was a frame around her, a hive, a community created by the kind of thoughts she had and the way she spun her hands and moved her feet. It wasn’t just that she had gone; more than her had been devastated. Biodiversity was weaker.
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It was only later that he thought of further evidence for his theory, wishing he’d presented it at the time. In long-established couples, especially the elderly, who are very sensitive to change, the death of one frequently leads to the death of the other. It is not a romantic thing, not a death of the heart, he had thought, and neither is it simply a matter of grief-induced stress weakening the immune system and leaving the widowed more vulnerable to infection; no, it is about a home space undergoing a sudden violent extraction, disordering a balance that had been slowly and painstakingly built up over many years. It is about a new toxicity entering the home. Without her being there he was more exposed: her contribution to climate and atmosphere was significant, and now it was all shot to pieces. How could he trust the air in a room that was his alone? The idea was ridiculous. There was no evidence to say that his routines and behaviours were fit and able, any longer, to make a viable living space – such things ought to be checked, he thought, as soon as someone leaves, rather than simply trusting them to get on with it, just as if nothing had happened.
