What Goes Around... (22 page)

Or were they?

They benefitted us too, added to the illusion we created.

I don't know what part of us was real.

Do I miss him?

I don’t know.

Is he missing me?

I don’t know that either.

Did he love me?

I have no idea.

Charlotte wakes me up at six and I go out and get dinner.

I spend ten pounds on takeaway.

That’s two hours of work.

It doesn’t make sense.

If I was home I could have cooked dinner.

I’d have some time.

It doesn’t make sense.

My mind feels all flickery.

It’s the best word I can come up with, even if it doesn’t exist.

He doesn’t exist.

It’s his birthday tomorrow.

I think of the poster on Dr Patel’s wall and I wonder if he looks like that now.

We eat pizza from the box
and we drink our bonus bottle of cola. ‘Can we have salad tomorrow?’ Charlotte asks. ‘And, can you get some fruit for my lunch box. I don’t like going to the tuck shop.’

I look at the empty pizza box.

She’s only had one slice.

I’m disgusting.

She disappears for a little while and I remember it’s bin night. I should get up and drag them out but I just don’t have the energy and then Charlotte calls me upstairs.

‘I've run you a bath…’I walk into the bathroom and Charlotte's been busy - there are bubbles and candles and towels have been put out. There is even a little glass of sparkling wine. She did this for me on Mother's Day, just before it all happened.

I used to love my baths.

It's the one place where I really relaxed. I used to have a quick shower in the morning after we'd sorted out Noodle
, but in the evenings, after Charlotte was in bed and he was on the computer, or on the phone, I would head up to the bathroom to do my routines.

Exfoliate, face mask, hair mask… you know what I mean.

Now, I take off my blue supermarket blouse and black trousers. I look at my bra-it should be white but it's grey, I’ve been sleeping in it.

I’m bloated.

I look down to my feet. My nail varnish on my toes is there at the end of long nails, a blood red that went with my lovely red dress. I really should get the clippers and find a fresh razor. I peer in the mirror and I look at my face. My horrible, puffy face, that sits on top of my horrible, puffy body. I open the bathroom cupboard and there's my exfoliating cream and those little glove things that you pull on. They’ll be bald by the time I’ve finished tackling my lizard skin. I line them all up on the edge of the bath.

I don't really know what happened then.

I look back at that moment sometimes and I find it hard to believe what I did. I still find it difficult to make sense of it, even now.

I don't know what I was thinking.

Okay, I know a little of what I was thinking.

That it all just seemed too hard.

Too big.

Too impossible.

Insurmountable.

I can’t do this.

I pick up his razor, one of those old-fashioned ones where you change the blade. Charlotte bought it for him one Fathers Day. I find the little rectangular packet. I can hear Charlotte outside; she must have got up to use the loo.

‘Night, M
um!’ She calls.

‘Night.’

Just go to bed.

‘I love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Please, just go to bed - I can't do normal
tonight.

‘Nice bath?’

‘Wonderful.’ I call out. ‘Come on now Charlotte, it's time for bed –you’ve got school tomorrow.’

I sit on the edge of the bath and it takes all my energy to just answer, because we have to start the love you, love you too thing all over again if I miss out a part. Then ther
e’s the, see you in the morning thing too. They're supposed to reassure her but if I miss a beat, if I miss one word, panic grips and we have to start all over again.

‘See you in the morning,
’ she says for maybe the third time.

I can’t do this.

I just can't keep on doing this.

‘Go to bed
, Charlotte.’

She doesn't say anything, I just feel the tension
in her silence and I have nothing left to comfort her with tonight.

I really don't know what I was thinking.

I looked at the bath and the bubbles and the jars and the lotions and the razors and I can't explain what happened next.

Even now it doesn't make sense.

Gloria

‘
We’ll go somewhere nice,’ Paul says. ‘You deserve spoiling and I might not get to take you out for a while.’

‘I'm not sure if I can get a babysitter for Daisy.’ I try to get out of it that way, but he says that he doesn
’t mind a bit if we bring Daisy along. Paul’s nice like that and so I tell him that I'll be ready by seven.

I don't want to go.

It doesn't seem right.

Paul starting a stint on night duty and it's nice that he wanted to take me out but
, the thing is, it’s
his
birthday.

Not Paul's.

It just seems wrong to be going out when he's lying cold in the ground.

I had the most terrible dream last night.

About him.

About him in the ground. I don’t like my thoughts sometimes. I don’t like the horrible images that flash in my mi
nd sometimes and I can’t tell anyone.

I can't really discuss it with Paul.

It's the only thing we can't talk about.

Well, it’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing.

He gets awkward when I bring him up. I suppose it's understandable really. Given that we’ve been divorced for years, I should be well and truly over my ex. I am but it just feels different knowing that he's dead.

I’m obsessed about his last minutes. Did he talk about me, did he think about me for even a moment, did he suffer, did he know he was going to die?

There’s no one I can talk about it to.

Were so close in
everything else. I can tell Paul anything.

Well, not anything.

There are some things I could never tell him, some things I could never tell anyone.

I let him talk about his ex though, but as soon as I bring up mine, or talk about Lucy
, Paul just clams right up.

It's a problem really.

A deal breaker perhaps - because when I started dating again, I made a promise to myself that if I ever got serious again, then good or bad I’d be myself and, today, my self is sad.

I'm
about to ring him, to tell him that I don't want to go out, that today is a hard day for me, but the phone goes again and I’m saved from cancelling, saved from speaking my truth. His work has rang and asked if he can go in tonight.

‘Honestly,’ I say. ‘It's fine.’

‘Are you okay, Gloria?’

I’m about to say yes, but I change my
mind, I keep that promise to myself. ‘Actually no,’ I admit. ‘It’s his birthday today. He’d have been sixty.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Paul
answers. ‘You should have said.’

‘How?’ I ask
. ‘You don’t like it when I talk about him.’

‘No, Gloria…’

‘Yes.’ I interrupt.

‘Gloria, it’s not him, it’s…’ then, as always, he just stops. There’s just this mumble of sympathy and I hang up on him.

I know he’ll ring back.

Or come over.

I know I’m important to him.

But I’m important to me too.

Daisy is crying and, as I pick her up, I feel like crying too.

When is Eleanor going to sort herself out?

She comes round sometimes and she stays for a couple of hours but the rest is left for me.

I’m too old to play mum.

I want my life back.

Then I look at Daisy’s gre
en eyes. They’re just like her grandfather’s and I regret my thoughts, because I cannot tell you just how much I love her. I cannot stand how her mother refuses to see just how beautiful Daisy is. I hold her close as I give her her bottle and she soothes me. She soothes the anger that is building inside, because I asked him to look after his girls and he hasn’t.

Aside from Eleanor, I can hardly get Bonny to even come to the phone – the only one remotely normal is Alice and that’s worrying enough in itself.

Like, she’s so happy with Hugh.

What happens if it ends?

What happens if they break up?

She’s fine now while they’re all happy, but they’ve never had to face problem
s…

Daisy’s hand finds my cheek and I press it to mine and I correct myself. They have faced problems. He’s been dead for more than three months and they’ve got through that.

‘Let’s go and see him,’ I say to Daisy. ‘Let’s go and see Granddad.’

Lucy

‘Mum!’

From a distance I hear her scream.

‘Mum, please, wake up!’

I force my eyes open.

‘We’re going to be late,’ Charlotte begs.

If Oprah ever comes back to our screens, or if she's franchised, 20 years from now
, Charlotte will be sitting on the couch and I think that will be the moment, she says, when it all went wrong.

Only she could explain the significance
of that morning. What it must have felt like to come downstairs and there was no breakfast table set up.

It’s the one thing I’ve kept to
.

She's teary as she stands by my bed and t
ries to wake me. I stagger downstairs and I go to put the kettle on, but first I have to fill it. Charlotte’s dashing about pulling out plates but there is no bircher muesli and there's nothing defrosted. I feed frozen bread into the toaster and try to sort her out something for lunch. In the end I give her money to get something from the tuck shop.

‘I have
n’t slept like that in ages.’ I give her a smile, the coffee is working and I'm starting to think. ‘That bath was lovely.’

‘You enjoyed it?
’ Charlotte checks. ‘You didn't even empty it.’

‘I loved it
, but it sent me straight to sleep.’

She r
elaxes a little; she even manages a smile as she dashes off to get ready. I haven't put her uniform out and I scrabble for socks. We get to school just before the bell rings and I watch her dash off. I sit there for a moment, with my heart still hammering and I curse myself for last night.

I've always felt as if I was a day
away from things falling apart.

I was right.

I go home and the house is a mess, the beds are unmade and, as I walk in the bathroom, the bath is full, the water clear and cold. I roll up my sleeve and put my hand in to pull out the plug.

It’s his birthday.

I’m not back at work till Tuesday.

I can get it all sorted by then.

She’s got a sleepover at Felicity’s tonight.

It’s his birthday.

I try not to think about it.

Maybe I should put the golf clubs on eBay?

It’s his birthday.

I have to sort things out.

I can't make sense of last night.

I’m sorry if I scared you.

I’ve scared myself too.

Remember at school and tho
se horrible changing rooms where you had to get undressed for the showers - and the showers didn't have a curtain? I found them torture. I used to wrap a towel around me and just dampen my hair, just as loads of the other girls did. We were all embarrassed about getting undressed in front of each other.

Well,
I did that last night.

I didn’t get in the water.

I put on my dressing gown and dampened my hair just in case Charlotte came out, like I used to in the changing rooms.

E
xcept, the only person that I didn’t want to see me last night, was me.

I go through the leaflets Doctor Patel gave me.

There’s something wrong with me.

They all recommend talking but
I don’t want to talk to anyone.

And how’s a pill going to help?