I go home and the house is a mess, the beds are unmade and, as I walk in the bathroom, the bath is full, the water clear and cold. I roll up my sleeve and put my hand in to pull out the plug.
It’s his birthday.
I’m not back at work till Tuesday.
I can get it all sorted by then.
She’s got a sleepover at Felicity’s tonight.
It’s his birthday.
I try not to think about it.
Maybe I should put the golf clubs on eBay?
It’s his birthday.
I have to sort things out.
I can't make sense of last night.
I’m sorry if I scared you.
I’ve scared myself too.
Remember at school and those horrible changing rooms where you had to get undressed for the showers - and the showers didn't have a curtain? I found them torture. I used to wrap a towel around me and just dampen my hair, just as loads of the other girls did. We were all embarrassed about getting undressed in front of each other.
Well, I did that last night.
I didn’t get in the water.
I put on my dressing gown and dampened my hair just in case Charlotte came out, like I used to in the changing rooms.
Except, the only person that I didn’t want to see me last night, was me.
I go through the leaflets Doctor Patel gave me.
There’s something wrong with me.
They all recommend talking but I don’t want to talk to anyone.
And how’s a pill going to help?
Will a pill clean my house, will it sort out the money, will it put everything back as it was?
I read on though, I know that there’s something wrong with me.
I read about bi-polar and mania and I want some of that – I want some energy back.
In fact, I realise, I have some.
It’s an angry energy though.
I am so angry with him today, so angry with him for leaving me.
I start cleaning, except it doesn’t soothe me.
It’s his birthday.
It’s all right for him, cold and dead in the ground.
It’s all right for him, resting in peace.
While I have to carry on.
I hate him.
Not just for leaving me.
But for what he did to me when he was here.
And, I decide, I’m going to tell him so.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Gloria
I get some flowers, which is a bit of chore, because there are all these adverts about not leaving kids in the car, so I can’t even nip into the shop – no, I have to haul out her pushchair.
It’s one of those jogging ones.
Noel bought it for Eleanor when she told him that she was pregnant.
Me, with a jogging pushchair!
It’s embarrassing.
Still, once I've strapped her in and bought the flowers, it's easier to walk to the cemetery than to get back in the car. Beryl says I should walk more and I know that I haven't done enough exercise this week.
We walk up the hill. Daisy's asleep and I think of all the chocolate I’m earning but it shouldn't be like that should it? I should be thinking of him instead of food.
Why do I always think about food?
Why, when I'm walking to the cemetery to visit my late ex-husband, instead of thinking about our marriage, our kids, about heaven and God, instead I'm thinking about a Walnut Whip.
Instead of thinking about God and an afterlife, and this great plan that we are not privy to, and the ground that he lies decomposing in, I can see myself biting the head off that Walnut Whip and getting to the goo in the middle.
There's a shop on the corner and surely after puffing up that hill I've earned one?
Maybe it's the pushchair, because I'm almost jogging. I can taste that sickly fondant and it’s so much sweeter than my thoughts. I don't want to think about him dead in the ground, I don't want to think that all it comes to is that.
I look down and Daisy’s awake now but she’s quiet, enjoying the motion. She's just lying quietly, her little rosebud mouth smiling and I don't want to disturb her, I don't want the movement to stop, so I push past the shop and the Walnut Whip and I’m running up that hill and I’m crying.
I don't know why.
He’s not my husband to mourn.
I’ve been a single parent for years, so why am I so scared of being one now?