have wise words with me, but I don't want to hear that she loves me and I don't care how much she cares.
And they were right.
She can't stop me
CHAPTER TWENTY
I take off those support top stockings and those bastard pants that have been holding me in. My body inflates and flops in relief and it’s so nice that I take off my bra too and pull it through one arm.
I haven't been on my own since it happened I realise.
There have been people here every day, flowers arriving, funeral directors, the vicar, catering, dealing with family you'd rather not. Funerals are such hard work it's like trying to arrange a wedding in the space of a week and at the hardest time of your life.
Really, it shows what a joke weddings are–maybe I could be a wedding planner, if I have to get job to pay child support for his children maybe that’s something I could do.
I know it’s going to come to that. I know I’m going to have to get a job.
Or a new husband.
But I guess I need a suitable pause.
Weddings in a Week.
Lucy’s Weddings in a Week
I like that.
I know that I didn't cry enough today to appease people, that my grief wasn't visible enough for them.
I don't think I am grieving, I haven't even got to that part yet, I'm still stuck on what I came home too – or what I could have come home to had I arrived half an hour earlier.
I want that moment and it's been denied to me and I can't share it with anyone. I can't, because then my perfect marriage, my perfect life disappears and I don't want it to.
I worked hard enough to get it.
I chose very carefully, you know.
No, I'm not grieving, I'm angry. And yes, anger might be the first stage of grieving, but I'm not grieving, I'm just angry.
I want to run up the stairs and to catch them.
I want that row, that confrontation and then after…
I don't want to think about after. I don't want to think what would have happened then, because I know how it would have been.
I didn’t always ignore it.
I want to ignore it now but it’s like someone’s holding up a mirror that holds my life and they’re making me look into it, except I don’t want to see.
So, instead of thinking about that, my mind runs up the stairs and catches him and we have the most God awful row and I tell him I'm leaving, that I am through with his shit. I mean it, this time I’m through. I should have left the first time I tell him.
Except he's laughing and telling me just to get the hell out then if I don't like it.
‘Remember how you used to bitch and moan about every penny I gave to Gloria?’ I can hear his voice now and it’s not some fantasy row - it's a memory. ‘Remember how I sorted my income to make sure that we were fine?’ Okay, I don't want this row, I’ll get back to grieving please, only I can’t, because it's there in my head and it won’t get out. ‘Piss off if you don't like it Lucy,’ he’s saying. ‘But you can kiss goodbye to your credit cards, to your Botox and you can tell Charlotte to kiss goodbye to that fucking pony, not that she will need it because the school she'll be going to there won’t be any need to compete.’ I’m pacing around my living room and I want this row to stop. ‘You can help her to settle in though,’ he tells me. ‘You know all about growing up with a single mum, you know all about having nothing.’
I could pour another brandy and who would blame me?
But, I don't.
I could dive into the fridge and not come up for air till it's empty-I'd even eat the disgusting glazed cherries she put on top of the black forest gateaux…
But, I don’t.
I pull out the vacuum cleaner instead and, when I’ve finished vacuuming, I’m going to scrub the toilets. No, before that I want to get out into the garden to pick up all the mess and empty out the disgusting cigarette butts…
Cleaning soothes me.
I don't have to think, I just walk along the hall vacuuming, picking up the crumbs the elves missed. I ignore the doorbell when it goes, I just want to be on my own – it’s probably Mum come back and I don't