What Goes Around

chapter THIRTEEN

Lucy

It’s only when we turn into the hospital that I wonder if being here will upset Charlotte - but she doesn't seem to relate it to Monday. She's chattering away about the baby. I've never known her so excited, but then, I guess it's the first baby she's ever really had anything to do with. I'm an only child, so she doesn't have any cousins on my side and Bonny lives on the other side of the world and Eleanor’s other two are much older.

‘Do you think I'll get to hold her?’ Charlotte is holding the present as if it’s the baby as we walk along the corridor. ‘Do you think Eleanor will let me hold her?’

‘I think we’ll just have a little look today. She’s very new…’ I don't want Charlotte getting her hopes up. I know how horribly awkward this could be, but Gloria surely knows that I’m coming. She’ll probably have gone home, just in case, and Eleanor is always really nice to Charlotte.

Not today.

Eleanor doesn't look up and she doesn't look over as we walk into the room, she just carries on staring out of the window.

And Gloria is there.

I want to turn and run.

I want to push Charlotte forward and tell her that I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.

I do not want to face Gloria.

I do not want to be here.

Except I am.

Whatever Gloria thinks of me, I'm very grateful when she puts it aside and smiles and speaks to Charlotte.

‘You came at just the right time!’ Gloria says to Charlotte. ‘She's just starting to wake up.’

‘I’ve got a present for her.’ Charlotte hasn’t noticed that Eleanor is ignoring her. She’s trying to be polite and not just dash to the baby, as she wants to. She’s trying to hand Eleanor the parcel but she doesn’t even give Charlotte a glance. I know exactly how Eleanor feels, because all I want to do is lie in a bed and stare out of a window. I want to not have to get up when Charlotte cries, or not have to answer the phone, or door, or even speak. Yes, I know how Eleanor feels, because I’d far rather be doing what she is, than organising the million and one things that you have to, when death comes in.

But I’m not.

I’m not an adult lying there ignoring a child who’s just lost her father. She’s supposed to be her sister for God’s sake.

Half sister.

There is such a difference.

‘Can I see it?’ Gloria asks, when it’s clear Eleanor’s not going to make an attempt with the present. Gloria takes over and she is lovely with Charlotte. She opens the parcel and pulls out the little baby suit and socks and there’s a little headband too. Gloria tells Charlotte how lovely it all is and how she can’t wait to see the baby in it.

‘She’s so cute!’ Charlotte peers over into the cot. ‘Mum look, she’s so tiny.’ I walk over to the cot and the baby is adorable, she’s all snuggled up and I feel Gloria’s eyes on me, sort of waiting for my reaction.

She’s beautiful.

Smaller than Charlotte was but sort of the same and she’s got her grandad’s chin. She’s absolutely and completely beautiful.

‘She’s adorable.’ I feel tears at the back of my nose and I feel it go red. I want to pick her up and hold her; I want him to have lived to have seen her.

Emotion rushes in as I gaze at her, she really is the most adorable baby.

But she’s not Noel’s.

‘What’s her name?’ Charlotte asks and Gloria casts an anxious look towards Eleanor before she answers.

‘We haven’t quite decided yet.’ The baby’s wriggling about and her arms are stretching as she slowly wakes up.

‘Would you like to hold her, Charlotte?’ Gloria offers.

I really am grateful that Gloria is there. I never thought I would say that but she sort of takes over with Charlotte and answers her endless questions. I am so glad of the reprieve, so glad to sit and not speak – to be Eleanor for just a few moments. ‘Is that okay with you, Lucy?’ I don’t even know what Gloria said and I drag my mind to the conversation, try to remember what I’ve missed. ‘If Charlotte helps me change her nappy and gives her a cuddle?’ It’s the first time Gloria has ever spoken to me. Actually, that’s wrong, it’s the second. The last time was long before Charlotte was born, after the Thames boat trip that Luke brought up - we’d all gotten off the boat and were standing on the pier and it was clear Gloria’s husband was coming home with me. There was a row and then a fight between him and Luke broke out, fists and everything. For a moment I thought Gloria might even hit me, but of course, Gloria’s too bloody dignified for that. ‘I got the best years of him.’ They are the only words she’s ever uttered to me. She came right up to my face and said it again. ‘I got the best years of him.’ Then Luke walked off with her.

We haven’t spoken since.

‘I can watch Charlotte if you like,’ Gloria offers. Maybe she sees that I’m struggling, or maybe she is too. Maybe it’s killing her to be in the same room as me and so I’m politely dismissed. ‘If you want to go and get a coffee or something?’

I don't want a coffee – I’m putting on weight. I had two at Ricky’s this morning and Mum and Jess keep insisting that I eat. Instead, I wander outside maternity, trying to avoid going near Accident and Emergency, but as I walk, I see a sign for the mortuary. I wonder if he's in there, I don't know where he is. I'm still waiting for the coroner to get back to me.

I’m still wondering if everybody's going to find out.

I feel like marching over there and storming in. I feel like hauling him out of a fridge and demanding to know how he could do this to me.

How could he leave me like this?

Jess says I should keep a journal.

She says it’s the only thing that helped after her brother died.

She even bought me one to get me started.

I opened the page and tried to write something, but I didn’t know what to put.

I don’t know what to do.

I just want to go home.

But first I have to go back and face Gloria.

‘Gloria said I could feed her!’ Charlotte is sitting holding the baby and she’s all excited, her face is shining and, for once, it’s not from tears. Gloria is hovering over her as Charlotte gives the baby her bottle. Every now and then she reminds Charlotte to lift the bottle up, so the baby doesn’t gulp air. If it were any other woman, I would later thank her for giving my daughter a break from the grief, but instead I sit quietly beside Charlotte. I look down at a very new baby; she's got tiny little knots of curls and eyelashes that look as if they've been crimped. She truly is gorgeous and, when I thought I never would again, and certainly not with Gloria in the room, I realise that I’m smiling. ‘Girl with a curl,’ I say, and even though Gloria doesn't look at me, I see out of the corner of my eye that she smiled a little bit too.

‘Gloria says that she looks like me,’ Charlotte says.

It’s funny, because I was just thinking the same.

When the bottle’s finished I tell Charlotte that it's time to go home. I say goodbye to Eleanor but she doesn't even attempt to answer. I feel like walking over and giving her a slap. My husband had just died and I’ve dragged myself out to visit and she can’t even be bothered to look up. Yes, I know it was her dad, I know she's just had a baby, I know her marriage is on the rocks, I know, I know, I know, but I'm here visiting her with my late husband's ex-wife in the room. I’m here with my grieving daughter and she can’t even give us the courtesy of a goodbye.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Gloria fills in the awkward silence and I know she's talking to Charlotte and not me. I just want out of there.

I’m glad the visit’s done.

But I’m glad that I went too.

‘Gloria told Eleanor off!’ We’re walking towards the car and Charlotte is still rabbiting on about the baby. ‘She really told her off!’ Charlotte elaborates. ‘And she swore.’

‘I didn't know saints swore.’ Charlotte doesn’t know what I'm talking about, of course. Even though I really couldn't care less about Gloria and her daughter, it's nice to have Charlotte talking instead of crying for her dad, and so I ask her more about it. Charlotte walks along beside me imitating Gloria’s London accent. ‘If you can't be sodding bothered to name her, then I will. She’s your daughter Eleanor and she needs a name. It’s not her fault that you couldn’t keep your knickers on.’

‘She said that!’ Well, I guess infidelity would be one of Gloria’s hot buttons. ‘What did Eleanor say?’

‘Not much,’ Charlotte shrugs. ‘She looked at a vase of flowers and said “Iris.” Then Gloria said, “you’re not calling her that,” and then I suggested Daisy and Gloria said that they’d think about it.’

It was the only reprieve in an awful day.

Actually, I tell a lie, there were two reprieves.

I dropped Charlotte at Felicity’s and when I got home Jess and Mum were sitting, chatting with Luke, who’d finished work early.

‘They’re going to put on a coach,’ Luke told me. ‘Everyone from work wants to come.’

Everyone?

I wonder if she’ll be there.

‘I’ve washed all the sheets,’ Mum says. ‘All your laundry is up to date.’

No, that wasn’t the reprieve – Mum doing my housework just riles me. Charlotte’s wetting the bed and Mum’s going for Nanny-of-the-Year trying to help, but it just pisses me off further – I had to wash my own sheets when I used to wet the bed.

I plonk myself down on the sofa and close my eyes as Jess stands to make me a cup of tea.

‘Here’s your post.’

She hands me a wad – I mean a wad of envelopes, they’re purple and lilac and I don’t have the energy to open them, let alone read them.

‘And this came.’

It’s a brown parcel and I wearily start to open it but, as I do, I realise they were a bit off with their 2-3 business days! Given that Mum’s already ripping open the envelopes, I haul myself up to take it upstairs, before she shows the world my vibrator.

No, that wasn’t my reprieve!

I shove it in the wardrobe and head back down and, as I do, the phone rings.

It’s the coroner’s office.

I stare in the mirror and I brace myself.

I can go ahead with the funeral, I’m told, the body has been released.

And?

I look incredibly calm, I realise, but I’m waiting for the bullet, then I hear the words “death by natural causes.”

I fold over for a moment.

For the first time, since it happened, I feel as if I can breathe.

Jess brings my tea to the phone and I ring the undertaker and the vicar, then I go to ring Alice but I change my mind, she’ll be here in a couple of hours after all, I can tell her then.

I put down the phone and I simply breathe.

I’ve hit my rock-bottom, I tell myself.

It’s just the funeral to get through now. For the first time I glimpse that we’re maybe going to be okay.

I just have to keep it together, keep up with my routines. Everything will be fine now, I convince myself. I’ll come out the other side.

I had no idea what was to come.