but Sonny will keep on anyway, unfazed by his older brother’s irritation. My late husband Michael would have loved to see how grown-up they’re becoming. How beautiful they are. I imagine how proud he would have been.
I swallow the lump in my throat and blink a couple of times. This won’t do. I can’t dwell in a world of what-ifs; I need to bring myself back to reality. To occupy myself. The trouble is, it’s my day off and it’s stretching out before me like an endless ocean. Even more so because of the early start. I wish I was working more hours. Maybe Derek will give me some extra shifts. I say ‘work’, but it’s mainly just volunteering at a local charity shop. I help out a few times a week, along with organising various fundraising events for the community.
Michael used to work in insurance. After he died fifteen months ago, he left us extremely well provided for. So much so that I’ll never have to work again, if I choose not to. Only, I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse, because not having to work means far too much time on my hands. Time to think. To mourn. To sink into misery. Which is why I now throw myself into volunteering. My whole adult life, I’ve always done bits here and there for charity, feeling like it’s my duty to help others less fortunate than myself. But these days it’s almost as though helping others is actually helping me. Or, if not helping, at least it’s a distraction. A useful way to fill my days.
I like to feel as if I’m doing good. I always have. It’s probably my Catholic upbringing – the constant cloud of guilt. The feeling that I don’t deserve what I have. That I’ll probably go straight to hell for feeling any sense of happiness or enjoyment.
Maybe that’s why, when my husband died, along with the crushing sense of devastation, I also felt the tiniest sense of relief. The thought that, now this terrible, awful thing has happened, maybe that will be it. That’s my misery quota right there. After all, I never deserved so much happiness in the first place, so it’s only fair that some of it should be taken away, right?
I never voice these thoughts or think of them in any coherent way. They stay a jumbled mess in my mind, swilling around like an oil slick on an ocean. Never properly absorbed; just changing shape a little each day.
I close the front door and head into the kitchen, where I start pulling various baking ingredients out of the larder. I’m going to make a cake for Saturday’s regatta. My friends all envy my huge walk-in larder lined with its rows and rows of painted wooden shelves. The kitchen is original 1940s and I love it that way. None of that modern minimalism for me. I like warm, homely clutter. My best friend Fiona is an interior designer. She says she loves my quirky lakeside home, but I can tell she’s dying to get her hands on it. To transform it into the ‘right’ kind of vintage look. To drag it into the twenty-first century and make it Instagram or Pinterest-worthy. I certainly have the budget to do it, just not the desire. I’m not big on social media – too many happy perfect families showing carefully edited versions of their lives.
I set everything out on the blue Formica table, pull a scrunchie from my pocket and twist my unruly blonde curls into a messy bun. It’s far too quiet so I switch on the radio before settling down to make my famous Victoria sponge. I realise straightaway that I’ll have to make two of them, because there’s no way the boys will be able to see that cake and not want a slice as soon as they get home from school. I up the ingredients accordingly and tip them into my mixing bowl, smiling at the thought of their faces when they see what’s waiting when they get home. I also have some fresh strawberries in the fridge that I can slice and use to decorate the cakes.
I’m busy stirring the mixture and listening to a tune from my school days when I’m startled by a sharp tap on the kitchen window. My first thought is that it must be a bird or a tree branch, because why or how would anyone be at the back