There’s no way I can have a conversation now.
I forgot cream!
Shit! I like cream with my ice cream and I’m just about out to head out when the doorbell rings.
I ignore it.
Then I hear the key in the door and for a second I think it’s him coming home, that he’s going to catch me again.
‘Charlotte?’
‘Sorry to startle you,’ Simone smiles. ‘We tried calling.’
Charlotte’s let herself in with her key. She’s all droopy. ‘She doesn’t feel well,’ Simone explains.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was just in the laundry. I didn’t hear you.’
I see her glance around.
The house is tidy - at least the hall is.
‘Thanks so much Simone.’
No, she won’t stop for tea, she says when I offer, she’s got a full house.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask Charlotte once Simone has gone but she shrugs me off and heads up to her room.
I follow her in.
‘What’s wrong?’ I put my hand on her forehead and it feels cool.
‘I just don’t feel well.’
‘Charlotte?’
‘Just leave me.’ She shrugs me off again. ‘I just want to go to bed.’
There’s something wrong, there’s something going on.
I just don’t know what it is.
She won’t talk.
Though, if I’m honest, even if she did, I’m not sure that I’d hear it.
I’ve got a freezer full of ice cream cake waiting for me and I simply can’t ignore it.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
It’s not an attractive thing, so I’m not going to go into detail.
The important point is – I’ve forgotten the cream.
I don’t want Charlotte waking up and me not to be there.
As I’m waiting for the freezer to do its job with my ice cream cake, I remember that I have an awful lot of Baileys left over from the funeral and that Baileys contains cream.
Basically, I eat an awful lot.
I mean, an awful lot.
And I wash it down with cream, or rather Baileys, safe in the knowledge I’m about to purge.
Except I haven’t factored in the alcohol content and as I sit on the loo with a shower cap on, working on my second bottle of cream, or rather, Baileys, with a bucket in front of me, that I’m aiming to puke into, I fall off.
I don’t remember falling off.
But I must have because I’m on the cold floor.
I can hear Charlotte screaming.
But I can’t open my eyes.
I hear noises and I hear footsteps and my eyelids are lifted and there are lights being flashed into my eyes. I am vaguely aware of a second stretcher bumping its way down my staircase and then we’re all clipped into the back. I can hear Charlotte crying and she’s got her phone and is trying to call my mum.
‘No!’ I shout it to her and she’s sobbing. ‘Not Mum.’
She asks if she can ring Jess and no way, I slur at her. ‘No way.’
The laxatives continue working.
She looks at me and my daughter hates me and no wonder.
I’ve officially turned into my mum.
Please God, I beg as the back of the ambulance opens and I’m wheeled into A&E.
Please God, I sob as the lights of the department hit me. Please God, this is rock-bottom.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
‘Gloria’s coming.’
‘What?’ I sort of lurch to sit up and the trolley moves. ‘I’m going home.’
‘You're going nowhere.’
The nurse is really stern.
I thought they were supposed to be nice, she used to be nice.
I remember her.
I try to focus on her name badge for when I write my letter of complaint, in fact I’ll do it now. I demand my bag and I pull out my journal and I start writing but all she does is smile. ‘You’re going down, Rose,’ I say. ‘Who the hell called Gloria? She's got nothing to do with me.’
I don't want her to see me like this. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.
Except, a gradually sobering voice in my head is starting to tell me, my daughter has.
They’ve cleaned me up as best as they can. I can’t stand what Charlotte must have seen and I cannot, I cannot face Gloria.
‘Charlotte called her sister in Australia and she called her mother.’
Half sister!
I've got to talk to Charlotte about the phone calls.
‘I don’t want Gloria,’ I shout. ‘She’s not going with Gloria.’
‘Shall I ring the duty social worker then?’ Rose asks and I shrink back on the pillow. ‘Shall I see if they can arrange a temporary placement for her?’
‘I want to go home. I want to discharge myself.’
‘Fine, but Charlotte won’t be going home tonight with you.’
They keep banging on about my alcohol intake – they don’t get it wasn’t the Baileys I wanted, it was the cream.
‘I don’t drink much,’ I try to explain but they’re not listening. ‘I just wanted the cream,’ I say but my words are slurring.
A doctor examines me and puts in a drip and I hear the word unkempt and I remember that that will sting later. When I look back on this - that word will kill but right now I’m angry.
How dare he?
How dare he judge me for not cutting my toenails, for having roots, how dare he call me unkempt?
I work.
I live in the village.
I’ve got a carriage driveway.
I don't even get my own cubicle for long. I’m moved to the corridor where the nurses can keep an eye on me, without me taking up too much room. I see Gloria arrive, holding Daisy. No wonder he left, I try to tell myself, except it doesn’t console me, because it doesn’t apply, she looks great and as for me…
I look at Gloria and I remember the last time our eyes met.
When she saw me after Noel.
‘Happy now?’ I demand as she walks over.
‘Lucy.’ She's all calm and practical and she talks to me like I’m a patient and I remember that she’s a nurse. ‘I'm going to take Charlotte home with me, she'll be fine. You can come and get her in the morning.’ I want her to shout at me, I want her to call me a bitch or a slut, to tell me I am nothing. I hate her dignity, I hate how she just puts up and shuts up.
And then, when it couldn’t get worse, when it surely could not get any worse – I hear a man’s voice.
‘Gloria, what are you doing here? Is everything all right - is there something wrong with Daisy?’ It's a voice that I vaguely recognize, and I watch as a paramedic comes over and gives Gloria a light kiss on the cheek, and I can't stand it. I know who he is. He’s the one who was there when he died, he’s the paramedic who asked what medication he was on, and I just can't stand it any more.
‘I bet you're both laughing, I bet you sit every night laughing…’ I'm deranged, maybe I'm officially mad, because I'm being moved back to a cubicle now and they’re talking about sedation as I continue my rant. It's him! It's the paramedic from that day and, from the way that he is with Gloria, he must be her boyfriend.
‘Excuse us a moment,’ he says to Gloria. He tries to talk to me, to tell me he’s never said anything and that he never would, but I’m screaming with my shame. I’m burning in hell at this moment, because Gloria knows what he did to me.
‘Lucy.’ Gloria comes in a few moments later; she doesn't have the baby with her. I don't know why, but it looks as if she's been crying. ‘No one is laughing at you.’
‘Please.’ My head is lolling on the pillow. ‘I bet he told you, I bet he came home that night and you both pissed yourselves laughing.’
‘Paul's never said anything about it. I wasn't even seeing him then,’ Gloria explains. ‘He won't even discuss it now.’
‘So how do you know?’ I don't understand, she says he's never told her and yet she knows what I'm talkin
g about.
‘I was married to him remember?’ She says no more than that but I feel a bit of her spite slither out and it wraps itself around me and attaches itself to me but she doesn’t let any more out. She swallows it down and she’s back to her bloody dignity. ‘Charlotte is fine for tonight.’
‘You were right!’ I shout to her back as she walks out. ‘You got the best years of him…’ I watch her shoulders stiffen, strong shoulders that have carried so much of his shit and still do. She turns around and I know it’s coming, that slap to my cheek, all the anger and hate that she has for me, for what I did, not just to her, but to Eleanor. The verdict as to the horrible woman that I am, is about to come. She’s standing over me and her face is savage and then it comes right down to mine.
‘Then don’t let him have got the best years of you…’
I cringe back on the pillow, I want her spite for me, I want her hate towards me to finally be delivered but she won’t let me have it. She walks out of the cubicle and I lie there crying like I never have in my life, and I don’t know if I’m waiting, I don’t know if she’s gone. I don’t know if she’s taken Charlotte.
I’m going to lose my baby….
Then she’s back and I don’t get why she’s crying.
‘Where’s Charlotte?’
‘She’s having a drink in the nurses’ staffroom,’ Gloria says. I can’t stop crying, I can’t stand what Charlotte has seen, I can’t bear that Gloria knows.
I’m curled in a ball on the trolley and her hand is on my shoulder and she’s squeezing it. ‘I know.’
How does she know?
‘I know how you feel.’
She can’t.
‘It took me years, Lucy,’ she’s telling me. ‘It took me years to move on and on days like today I’m back there again. It’s like one of those sodding nuclear reactors exploding, it will never be better, it will never be finished and over with. It goes on for years, for decades, for generations, it’s never over… you just have to keep….’ she looks down at my journal that I’m clutching and there are tears pouring down her cheeks as she then looks at me. ‘Keep writing it down.’
‘It doesn’t help.’
‘Then keep pouring cool water,’ she says and I’ve no idea what she means and she isn’t explaining further, she’s exhausted, I can see it. I can see every line on her face and for the first time it registers - she lost him too.
‘You held it together,’ I say.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Your girls didn’t find you collapsed in the bathroom covered in shit.’
‘They didn’t find me dead either,’ Gloria says, the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘But one morning they could have.’ She chokes as she says it. ‘I don’t know if I just wanted to sleep, or if I never wanted to wake up. I don’t know what I was thinking, Lucy, but I took enough sleeping tablets one night that I nearly didn’t have to think about anything anymore…’ She’s back there, I can see it. I can see the pain on her face and the lines and the grief and do you know what? I know that it wasn’t just me who put them there. I know that she now knows that too.
We know.
She takes a deep breath and then another one and tells me she has to go, that I can come and get Charlotte whenever I’m ready. To maybe go home and sort myself out first and then, as she goes to leave, she says it again. ‘Don’t let him have got the best years of you.’
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Gloria
‘Will Mum be okay?’
‘She’ll be fine.’ I say as I open up the house. ‘Let’s put Daisy in her cot.’
‘But she’s not fine.’ Charlotte says and I look at her little pinched face and she looks like one of mine. My heart breaks for all she has to deal with, the same way it broke for my girls.
‘I don’t think she misses him or even likes Dad very much,’ Charlotte says. There are tears falling down her cheeks. ‘It’s not his fault that he died, I don’t get why she’s so angry…’
I feel like I’m back there again, back to the hell he made.
I am back there again, because I give her a cuddle and I take her to Alice’s old room. I find her one of Laura’s nightdresses and, when she’s climbed into bed, I sit there like I did all those years ago.
Here’s the guilt, though.
It’s not like all those years ago.
I couldn’t stand Alice’s questions.
They never ended.
I wanted her to go to sleep and then I had to deal with Bonny and then Eleanor would ring and my parents were checking in every five minutes and the school and the neighbours – I wanted to go to bed.
I wanted chocolate, or toast, to just sit and read, or watch TV to escape, to not have to think. I actually didn’t have time to think – not really, I didn’t have time to fall apart.
One hour with a box of cereal was all I had time for and Alice would lie there, taking up every minute of it - her mouth moving, questions spurting, tears starting. It always came at the end of the longest day – I had my uniform to iron, bills to pay, the house to sort. I had all the sodding divorce stuff to deal with.
‘Why did he die?’ I look down at Charlotte and I want chocolate, I want to lie in the bath till it’s so cold that I wake up. ‘Why did he leave me?’
‘He hasn’t left you,’ I say. ‘He's always going to be there looking out for you. Your dad loved you, the same way he loved my girls. Love never leaves.’
It's not much of an answer but it's the best I can give.
Bastard.
I feel this black smoke rise in my chest, it coils up my throat and it tickles my eyes, it fills my nostrils and lungs and I try to swallow it down.
I look down at the little pet – and I want to lie down and cry, I want to be put to bed and tucked in and for someone to make it all go away.
I don’t want to remember how bad my marriage was. I’ve been doing my best not to remember.
It was easier to just blame Lucy.
It’s so much easier to hate her.
Yes, my burden should be lifted by knowing he inflicted the shame and the pain on her just as he did to me – that the pretty blonde thing who took him away, suffered as I did.
But it’s not lifted.
‘Why is mum cross?’ Charlotte persists.
‘Because she’s hurting.’ I look down to her child. I’ve had enough now - there is nothing left of me to give. ‘Grown up feelings are complicated but your mum will work it out.
‘Tell you what,’ as Charlotte opens her mouth with another question I have to think fast. ‘I'm really tired tonight and I’m worried that I won’t hear Daisy if she wakes. Why don't you sleep in Eleanor’s old room with her? Don't get her out of the cot or anything, come and get me if she wakes up. You can keep an eye on your little niece.’
Thank God for Daisy because Charlotte seems delighted. She scampers out of bed and we creep into Eleanor’s old room. I keep the cot in there now, it seems right that she’s close to her mum, even if she's not there and I whisper good night and Charlotte does the same.
I close the door quietly and I wonder what’s downstairs to eat. I could text Paul perhaps and see if he’s free to speak, except I don't want to. I don't want to put him in that awkward position - I don't really want to know what went on but I can guess.
I was married to him after all.
I close my eyes and I remember.
For the first time I properly look at my marriage and I look properly at me.
I’ve tried so hard not to.
I remember things I can never share with another.
Not even Paul.
Especially, not Paul.
I want something to eat; I’ll make a big mug of coffee and some toast. I’ve got some peanut butter. I try not to have it in the house because if it’s there I get tempted, but Daniel likes peanut butter and I know that I bought some last week. I hear a wail from Daisy upstairs and I grit my teeth as I run up the stairs. I don't want her to wake Ch
arlotte. Daisy’s sleeping through now but she must be unsettled from being dragged out in the night.
She's not crying though. She’s turned herself over and put herself back to sleep and Charlotte is out for the count.
This time, when I leave them, I don't go back downstairs. I don’t care if I left the kitchen light on, I just don't want to go near the kitchen because, if I do, I won't stop till the whole loaf is gone. Instead I go to my bedroom, the one I once shared with him. I sit on the bed where we once slept and I think of all the chaos he left behind.
I’d like five minutes with his body again, just so that I can kill him.
I wouldn’t be begging for him to look after his girls.
I’d be pleading with him to stay the hell away.
He can never make up for the damage he did.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
‘How’s Charlotte now?’ Eleanor looks up, from where she's changing Daisy’s nappy.
‘She seems okay.’ Charlotte is on Facebook, I asked her to go on it so that Eleanor could have some time with Daisy.
Eleanor is looking better.
This morning we’ve had a long chat and she’s told me she’s sleeping with Noel. That he’s round quite a bit and sometimes he stays and she thinks there is hope for them.
I don’t know how I feel about it. If Noel is going to get back with Eleanor, then he needs to understand that that means Daisy too. Still, I get that they might need some time. I’m worried too though, knowing what I know about Noel and Lucy. So I changed the subject.
I told about her about the carry on last night, well not the part about Paul and how it seemed her dad was up to his old tricks as he died, I told her that Lucy was in a right old state. I watch her now as she kisses her daughter's foot and I am warmed that the bond is starting, just worried that it is taking so long.
All I bloody do is worry.
‘Her mum will be here soon.’ I say to Eleanor when she asks after Charlotte.
‘That bitch.’ Eleanor says.
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