can see his car on my carriage driveway and instead of racing to get there, I actually want to turn the car around and drive away.
I swear, had I not met the eyes of my neighbour, I might just have done that.
I wish I'd gone for Botox, or out for lunch, or taken that spin class, but instead, I coax the car forward and park behind the ambulance and me and my pounding headache climb out, to be met by my neighbour.
‘Lucy!’ My neighbour is breathless with excitement. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
I shrug her off; I know she wants to come in, that she wants to find out for herself exactly what is going on.
All I know is that I don’t want her to.
There is a policeman at the door and he asks who I am. I tell him it's my house, I don't need his questions right now and no, I’m not showing him my ID. Another ambulance is pulling up and I have to stand back on the stairs as they race past me. I hear the police officer shout that the wife is here.
My headache is really pounding and I’m sweating as I run up the stairs. As I turn on the landing I can see his bare legs on the bedroom floor and I know what I’m going to find.
I don’t want to know but I know.
There’s shit everywhere if you look.
Mum said it all the time.
Or slurred it.
I can hear male voices; someone is counting as I walk in. I watch them pounding on his chest, there are bruises all over it. The paramedics that have just arrived are pulling up drugs and I’m pretty much ignored as I walk in the room, except by one.
‘You all right love?’
I think I nod.
He’s a big guy, and he’s very practical and kind and he lets me take in the scene for a second or two before the questions start.
‘Do you know if there’s any history?’
So much history, so much bloody history, because even though I haven’t looked, even though I haven’t so much as turned my head towards her, I know that she’s there. I turn and face her and mum was right – I’m looking at shit. She’s wrapped in a sheet and crying and shaking, her skinny legs are buckling and, Christ, she’d only be about twenty!
‘Does he have any history of heart problems, or medical conditions?’ The paramedic is more specific with his questions this time.
‘None.’ I hear my voice, so I guess I can speak.
‘Is he on any medication?’
‘None.’ There goes my voice again, except what would it know? There’s a policeman going through his jacket pocket and he opens a pillbox. I stare at the little pile of blue pills that he tips out onto the bed and one falls on the floor beside his body.
It might be safer for him if they stop the resuscitation! I feel my lips stretch into the wrong shape - into a shocked, incredulous smile.
There’s no need to state the obvious – no need to say that I didn’t know.
I stare at the pill that rolled to the floor and all I can think is - he wouldn’t get them for me.
For the first time I look properly at him.
He’s naked.
They’ve put a towel over his bits.
A white one that he’s not allowed to use – it’s one of my for display purposes only towels. How ironic, I think. I never let him dry his hands on it and now it’s covering his cock.
The room smells of sex.
It reeks of it.
It sticks to the lining of my nostrils and it makes be want to gag as it moves into my lungs. I see that they’re not bruises on his chest - they’re love bites and, a moment or two later, when he makes gurgling noises and they roll him on his side, I see scratches on his back and they didn’t come from me.
I will kill her.
I swear, the second this over, my eyes turn from him to her, and even though I don’t say a word, my expression clearly tells her that very soon, any moment now, she’s going to have her head ripped off.
His phone is ringing and I half expect him to answer it. For him to ask everyone to stop everything for a moment and then get up and step outside, or go out to the garden to answer it, as he always does. Christmas, Easter, middle of a