cream, it was my only friend. I forget to be posh; I drop my accent, as I shout. I drop the pretence. I’m every inch an Essex girl as I fight for what’s mine and Charlotte is mine and I’m keeping the house!
‘I am.’ I am standing there right in his face and he just stands there looking at me.
‘It’s okay,’ he says.
Just two words.
Two words that I so needed to hear.
‘It’s going to be okay, Lucy.’
I feel my terror leave.
We sit back down at the table and finally we’re actually talking.
While I want things to carry on as before, at some level I know that it can't. I just want this to be as gentle on her as possible, which is the one common ground between us. He crunches the figures as I try to find statements and we quietly work towards that goal.
‘It’s hard to get a mortgage.’ Luke looks at the numbers in front of him. ‘They don’t just give them out these days.’
‘I know that,’ I say.
I do know that.
I know something else too - I'm going to have to get a job.
I hear a noise and I stand and look out of the window - Jess's car is pulling up. I watch Charlotte climb out and she so doesn't deserve this. I look at her little face and she’s so pale and all that exuberance just seems to have left her.
She’s not losing her home; I won’t let her lose it.
I just need that year.
I’ll get another husband.
A richer one.
A younger one.
Anger fizzes inside me again and I spit it out with a single word. ‘Bastard.’
‘Because he didn't have enough life-insurance?’
Ah yes, I forget at times - Luke was his friend not mine. I'm the bitch, the gold-digger. I must remember his opinion of me.
‘Yes.’ I don’t even turn around as I speak. ‘I’m pissed off because he didn’t leave me enough money.’ I watch my daughter and I say it again. ‘Bastard.’
An hour of just us and Luke’s rapidly losing patience with me. ‘What are you so angry with him for Lucy? He didn't choose to die.’
I’m still watching my daughter through the window. She’s such a good girl, she’s laughing at something Jess has said but it’s a little too late and I can tell she’s pretending. My heart just squeezes. So much so, that again, for a moment, I forget to lie.
I forget for a moment who I am supposed to be.
The woman I invented.
The one with the perfect life.
I forget, so much so, that I answer him. ‘That smile on his face when he went out.’ I head for the door to greet Charlotte and I toss the words out over my shoulder but I don’t need to turn and see his reaction. I don’t care about Luke’s response. I say it out loud for the first time, purely for me. ‘He didn't get it from me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Gloria
‘She’s doing well.’
It annoys me that the nurse just hands Daisy back to me and starts to fill in the book. Yes, Daisy’s doing well but what about her mum?
What about me?
I think I’ve been too nice about it, I think I’ve said that I’m coping too well. I’m starting to find out that a lot of people are going through this. A few women at work, I’ve realised, are raising their grandkids. I just didn’t know and I never thought it might happen to me - that Eleanor would, if I let her, happily sign off on her child.
As I head out to the car with Daisy, I want to turn around and go back in. I want to tell the nurse that no, things are not okay.
She’s six weeks old and her mother is having nothing to do with her.
I’m sick of softly, softly.
I’m sick of my beaming smile when Eleanor deigns to give her daughter a bottle.
And I’m furious that Noel was round there the other day.
Laura told me.
He’s been round a few times.
It’s been churning inside me since I found out.
I’m sick of slowly, slowly because I’ve a feeling that this might take, oh, around sixteen years.
I’m not joking.
They’ll slot back into their perfect lives and just ignore their problem.
‘I’m going out tonight.’
I ring her while I’m still angry.
I sit in the car park and I call her.
‘Oh?’
‘So, do you want me to bring Daisy over?’
There’s silence, a long one and then she starts to cry. ‘Mum, please.’
‘Or, you can come over to mine and look after her.’