When I pick her up from school I’m worried how she’s going to take it, if it’s another crisis she really doesn’t need –she loves Luke and Jess so much but she is, in fact, wonderful. She goes and sits on Jess’s knee and gives her a cuddle and then she shares a sort of yikes look with me and we have a little smile.
‘Jess will be okay.’ I tell her, when I say goodnight to Charlotte.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m never getting married.’
I give her a smile.
‘I mean it.’
‘Good,’ I say.
I pick up the hall phone a bit later and Luke’s on the other end asking about Jess, and is she okay, and I know you shouldn’t take sides, I know (and yes, I know you know) how I feel about Luke, but this has nothing do with it.
‘How do you think she is?’ I say and I hang up.
CHAPTER FIFTY
‘Why did you stay, Lucy?’
I’ve just told the grief counsellor about all the affairs.
I’ve just gone through my marriage, through our life.
I’ve told Denise the lot.
I even told her about my foursome fantasy and how ashamed of that I am, how I didn’t even like it, so why was I thinking it?
‘Who knows?’ She smiles. She doesn’t seem shocked. She’s not even shocked when I tell her about Luke. Nor when I tell her the things Jess said.
She was, I think, a bit shocked, but trying to hide it when I told her some of my childhood stuff but we’re not talking about that now.
Today we’re talking about his affairs, today she’s asking me why I stayed.
‘Charlotte,’ I say. ‘Though I liked the lifestyle too,’ I admit. ‘I liked the things I could give her and I didn’t want to be like my mum.’
‘Did you ever have an affair?’
I shake my head.
‘Never?’ Denise checks. ‘Even though you knew that he was sleeping around?’
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Honestly, I never even thought about having an affair…’ and then I look at her and my face is burning and I am trying to tell the truth. ‘Actually, right near the end of it, I did start thinking I might have one…’
‘With?’
‘No-one,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular.’ I just sit there and think for a moment. ‘I just wanted there to be more.’
‘More what?’ Denise asks.
I don’t know the answer but instead of avoiding, I’m trying to find it.
‘I was just…’ I close my eyes as I look at that time; I was like a bucket with holes that could no longer be filled with the meaningless. I take a deep breath and I tell Denise the truth. ‘I was just getting more and more fed up with my life.’
With my perfect life.
With the life I so badly wanted for Charlotte.
But it was starting to not be enough for me.
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
There’ll be no amicable divorce with Jess.
She’s amazing!
There’s four weeks of mourning, where she works mainly from home (mine) because she can’t face the office. It works out great because she’s there for Charlotte in the holidays. Then, after about a month of watching movies with me on the sofa at night and breakfast in bed by day, she suddenly turns the corner.
The very day I’m about to suggest that she sees her GP and maybe go on the happy tabs, I come home from work and she’s dressed in a tight black skirt and black top and she’s off to see a lawyer she tells me.
Her Welsh accent is getting stronger by the minute because she’s on the phone all the time to her sisters in Wales. I’ve got a fiery Catherine Zeta Jones sitting at my breakfast bench and she’s going to take him for all he’s got and boyo, yes, she’s going out on Friday.
‘Fuck him,’ she says, but it sounds sexier with a Welsh accent. ‘We’ll go out. Come on Lucy,’ she says when I wrinkle my nose. ‘You need to get back out there.’
But I like it in here.
I am boring – I’m finding out that I really am. I love being home and I love having someone to sit and watch movies with and I’d love to have someone to walk round furniture shops with, but I don’t want to do the first bit – do you know what I mean?
‘Well, he’s out shagging.’ Jess says, because she has it on good authority that Luke is. ‘He’s out