now and then she reminds Charlotte to lift the bottle up, so the baby doesn’t gulp air. If it were any other woman, I would later thank her for giving my daughter a break from the grief, but instead I sit quietly beside Charlotte. I look down at a very new baby; she's got tiny little knots of curls and eyelashes that look as if they've been crimped. She truly is gorgeous and, when I thought I never would again, and certainly not with Gloria in the room, I realise that I’m smiling. ‘Girl with a curl,’ I say, and even though Gloria doesn't look at me, I see out of the corner of my eye that she smiled a little bit too.
‘Gloria says that she looks like me,’ Charlotte says.
It’s funny, because I was just thinking the same.
When the bottle’s finished I tell Charlotte that it's time to go home. I say goodbye to Eleanor but she doesn't even attempt to answer. I feel like walking over and giving her a slap. My husband had just died and I’ve dragged myself out to visit and she can’t even be bothered to look up. Yes, I know it was her dad, I know she's just had a baby, I know her marriage is on the rocks, I know, I know, I know, but I'm here visiting her with my late husband's ex-wife in the room. I’m here with my grieving daughter and she can’t even give us the courtesy of a goodbye.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Gloria fills in the awkward silence and I know she's talking to Charlotte and not me. I just want out of there.
I’m glad the visit’s done.
But I’m glad that I went too.
‘Gloria told Eleanor off!’ We’re walking towards the car and Charlotte is still rabbiting on about the baby. ‘She really told her off!’ Charlotte elaborates. ‘And she swore.’
‘I didn't know saints swore.’ Charlotte doesn’t know what I'm talking about, of course. Even though I really couldn't care less about Gloria and her daughter, it's nice to have Charlotte talking instead of crying for her dad, and so I ask her more about it. Charlotte walks along beside me imitating Gloria’s London accent. ‘If you can't be sodding bothered to name her, then I will. She’s your daughter Eleanor and she needs a name. It’s not her fault that you couldn’t keep your knickers on.’
‘She said that!’ Well, I guess infidelity would be one of Gloria’s hot buttons. ‘What did Eleanor say?’
‘Not much,’ Charlotte shrugs. ‘She looked at a vase of flowers and said “Iris.” Then Gloria said, “you’re not calling her that,” and then I suggested Daisy and Gloria said that they’d think about it.’
It was the only reprieve in an awful day.
Actually, I tell a lie, there were two reprieves.
I dropped Charlotte at Felicity’s and when I got home Jess and Mum were sitting, chatting with Luke, who’d finished work early.
‘They’re going to put on a coach,’ Luke told me. ‘Everyone from work wants to come.’
Everyone?
I wonder if she’ll be there.
‘I’ve washed all the sheets,’ Mum says. ‘All your laundry is up to date.’
No, that wasn’t the reprieve – Mum doing my housework just riles me. Charlotte’s wetting the bed and Mum’s going for Nanny-of-the-Year trying to help, but it just pisses me off further – I had to wash my own sheets when I used to wet the bed.
I plonk myself down on the sofa and close my eyes as Jess stands to make me a cup of tea.
‘Here’s your post.’
She hands me a wad – I mean a wad of envelopes, they’re purple and lilac and I don’t have the energy to open them, let alone read them.
‘And this came.’
It’s a brown parcel and I wearily start to open it but, as I do, I realise they were a bit off with their 2-3 business days! Given that Mum’s already ripping open the envelopes, I haul myself up to take it upstairs, before she shows the world my vibrator.
No, that wasn’t my reprieve!
I shove it in the wardrobe and head back down and, as I do, the phone rings.
It’s the coroner’s office.
I stare in the mirror and I brace myself.
I can go ahead with the funeral, I’m told, the body has been released.
And?
I look incredibly calm, I realise, but I’m waiting for the bullet, then I hear the words “death by natural causes.”
I fold over for a moment.
For the first time, since it happened, I feel as if I can breathe.