I’ve learnt that since we lay on that bed and I gave him the darkest piece of me and he loved me back.
I’ve learnt that there is a little piece that’s yours and yours alone - that will survive no matter what, that continues when others move on.
You don’t have to explain everything to everyone.
The people who love you don’t need to know it all.
So, he goes to work and I get an hour’s pause before Daisy comes.
I wander through the house and I see the marks in the wall where our babies grew and I see all the damage his DIY wreaked and it doesn’t make me cross.
It used to.
It doesn’t now.
Eleanor drops off Daisy and I make a real fuss of her, I do. We sing and we laugh and we dance to her favourite show and she makes me smile.
The same way she lets me cry sometimes.
I make a cup of tea and I put sugar in.
I don’t have sugar in my tea now but I do today.
I have the same tea I had then, the same tea that he drank.
It’s too sweet now, I sit at the table and I pull a face – I can’t believe I used to take it like that.
I take another sip and it’s sickly but nice.
You wouldn’t want it all the time, but sometimes…
I remember.
For the first time I remember the good bits.
I hate my name – Gloria.
Imagine looking at a baby and thinking, I know, we’ll call her Gloria.
But sometimes when he said it.
Sometimes he’d come home from the pub (and we’re talking back in the early days) and he’d say my name in a way no one ever has, or ever will, say it.
I hear it now.
Gloria.
He (sometimes/rarely – I’m not talking about the bad times now) made me feel Glorious.
I sit there and I remember Eleanor’s parent teacher night. He was late getting home, we’d had a massive row and we had to sit on those stupid little chairs.
I take a sip of tea and I start to smile.
The teacher farted as she sat.
Just a little one.
And we all pretended not to notice, or rather, the teacher did and I did but I could feel him laughing beside me.
It was embarrassing.
I could feel his shoulders heaving and then the smell hit us and we tried to speak over it, tried to talk about Eleanor’s handwriting but he was nearly doubled up.
I had to get him out of there.
My, we laughed when we got outside.
We laughed and laughed and I sit at the table and I’m laughing now as I remember.
That was the night Alice was made.
I remember the notorious man that he was.
Notorious.
That’s the best word I can come up with for him. He was a man who could make you feel as if you were the only girl in the world sometimes.
Just not all the time.
There were too many girls in his world.
A bit later I hold Daisy as we put the chocolate crackles we’ve made into the fridge and she gets all excited when she hears the door.
‘Who’s that?’ I say, because maybe it’s the postman…
‘Luke.’
He’s holding a bunch of flowers.
‘Thank you.’ I almost start to cry, he’s just so thoughtful like that. I remember the time he came with fish and chips but then I see him blink and I’m angry as I get it.
‘For me to take to the cemetery?’ I’m hurt, I’m embarrassed, and I’m pissed off. ‘I’ll need a sodding wheelbarrow at this rate.’
‘They’re for you,’ he insists but I know that they’re not – he’s just trying now to be polite.
I ask him to hold Daisy while I find a vase, but they’re all taken up with daffodils, so it takes me a while. I’ve calmed down a bit by the time I put them in water and I turn around and he looks like shit.
I mean, he’s still good looking but he’s sort of grey around the gills and he’s lost so much weight.
‘They were for him.’ I’m a bit nicer now as I say it. ‘Have you ever been to the grave?’
‘I can’t,’ he says.
‘Luke…’ He’s hurting and it’s hard to see Luke hurting – he’s lost his best friend, a man who was more like a dad to him and he’s lost his marriage too.
It’s been a hell of a year for him.
We go through to the lounge and I put the vase in the corner