I hate the sympathy in her eyes and so I look at the poster again. He can rot in hell for all I care.
She rabbits on about how I’m doing and she gives me more pamphlets. This time they’re about grief and depression. She tells me again that there’s a grief counsellor and I hear the chair scrape loudly as I stand. I look down at her and I don’t say goodbye to her and I certainly don’t thank her – instead I remind her about my patient confidentiality and that she’d better damn well make sure that her receptionist, Beth, knows about it too. I storm outside but instead of going to the chemist in the village to get Charlotte’s prescription, I get in my car and I drive.
I drive for a good twenty minutes. I drive through where I came from but Mum still lives there and someone might recognise me, so I drive a bit further. I park my car and walk into a dingy chemist with bars on the window and I hand in Charlotte’s script and I ask to speak to the pharmacist.
‘Can I ask what for?’
‘The morning after pill.’
Out she comes.
She’s about my age and as my face burns, she tells me not to be embarrassed, she hears it all the time. ‘Accidents happen,’ she tells me with a smile.
‘They do,’ I say, thinking how her eyeballs would fall out if I told her the truth about this particular accident– that my husband’s condom didn’t split, in fact, he’s dead and on the day of his funeral I shagged my stepson-in-law on the hall floor.
I buy a bottle of water too and I don’t even make it to the car. I’m popping my pill and guzzling water because I cannot be pregnant.
I cannot be pregnant.
I cannot be.
It’s an awful drive home.
I turn the radio up but my brain won’t stop thinking.
It would be Charlotte’s half sister or brother and Daisy’s too.
And Laura and Daniel’s so would that make Eleanor its step mum if she and Noel got back together and he wanted access?
Would my stepdaughter be my child’s step mum?
So what would that make Gloria?
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!
I can hear the Hillbilly bells ringing and the audience chanting as I turn into my street.
I see my home and it should soothe me but I’m terrified that I’m going to lose it, that I’m going to lose everything.
I am going to lose it.
I am, I am.
I can’t.
I can’t go back to where I came from.
I’m not taking Charlotte there.
I know I’m going to be sick.
I have to be sick.
My car scrapes the wall as I hit the driveway.
My neighbour comes over to examine the damage, for another chat, for more information, but I race through the door and up the stairs but, as I get to the loo, I realise that I can’t even throw up.
I can’t, because I need the pill to stay in there.
‘Lucy!’
It’s my mum knocking on my bathroom door.
‘Lucy! Is everything okay?’
‘I just need the loo.’
‘What happened with the car?’
‘Can you just leave me?’ I scream but she doesn’t. She’s hovering outside when I come out. ‘Don’t start, Mum…’
I do not need a lecture now.
‘I’m worried about you, Lucy,’ she says. ‘I want to help.’
‘Well, you can’t.’
‘I could if you’d just let me.’
‘You just don’t get it!’ I go to walk past.
‘I might if you talk to me, I might understand.’
Actually, she might – after all, she was an expert in one-night stands, so much so that I don’t even know who my father is. At least I’m not that bad, at least I’d know who the father was. I turn to her and I look at her and I tell her the truth.
Not that truth.
I tell her mine.
‘I’m terrified that I might turn into you.’
I know I’ve hurt her, but do you know what?
She hurt me too.
‘I had a disease.’
She hurls her usual defence.
‘Sherryitis.’
‘I wasn’t well,’ she says. ‘But I’m better now and I want to help take care of you and Charlotte.’
But I won’t let her.
‘Too late,’ I tell her. ‘Too little, too late – I’ll take care of my daughter.’
‘I won’t stop trying Lucy,’ she warns me. ‘And you can shut me out all you want but Charlotte wants me in her life and I intend to be there for her.’