What Goes Around

chapter SIXTEEN

Gloria

You wouldn’t believe the work I have to do for a funeral that I’m not even going to.

Black dresses, black bras, black shoes, black underskirts… don’t get me started. I’m the taxi tomorrow too – I’m picking up Daniel and Laura from Lucy’s – I’m to toot apparently and they’ll come out, then I’m to drop them back to Noel’s.

The house is fit to bursting and we keep changing rooms but I’ve worked it out now.

I’m sleeping downstairs with the baby.

Eleanor’s called her Daisy.

Or rather I’ve pressed Eleanor for a decision and, with a lot of prompting, she’s now called Daisy Lydia Jameson.

Daisy, probably because she’s wearing the outfit that Charlotte brought her and it’s the first thing Eleanor’s glazed eyes landed on. Lydia, because, as I told Eleanor, her other two have middle names. I suggested Lydia after my mother and it’s Alice’s middle name too and she gave me a tired nod of agreement.

And Jameson, because she’s not Noel’s.

We announce it, or rather I announce it.

‘Are you going to tell them?’ I sort of pretend she isn’t sitting slumped in the chair and not engaging. ‘Are you going to tell them the baby's name?’

‘Daisy.’ Eleanor mumbles.

‘Daisy Lydia Jameson.’ I say in that happy clappy voice that I seem to have reserved lately for Eleanor. I should audition for Play School. Daniel her eldest goes off to announce his sister’s name on Facebook. Noel should be picking them up soon.

I head out to the kitchen. It’s after nine and we still haven’t had dinner and Daisy’s bottles are all scattered on the bench waiting to be washed and there are her little sleep suits going around in the washing machine. I must remember to put them in the tumble dryer before I go to bed. I’d forgotten just how much work a new baby is. Eleanor is still having nothing to do with her.

I can’t begin to get my head around dinner.

It’s his funeral tomorrow.

Tomorrow he goes into the ground and I don’t get to be there.

Lucy gets everything.

She gets to be his widow.

She gets the cards and the sympathy.

I bet she’s not lifting a finger.

I bet she’s not making dinner and running out of loo rolls every five minutes – no, she gets to bask in her grief while everyone supports her.

I'm hurting too, I want to scream.

I was married to him once, or don’t you remember?

I’ve lost someone too!

But I don’t think I count.

I hear the doorbell and they’re all talking in the living room and probably don’t hear it.

It rings again and I guess, again, it’s down to me.

I open the door and there is Luke with his lovely wife Jess.

He is holding up three bulging plastic bags and it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever seen.

‘We stopped at the fish and chip shop….’

Jess is wonderful. She sorts out plates and knives and forks and tomato ketchup and takes them through to the dining room table and calls everyone through to eat. I stand in the kitchen, my head on Luke's chest and his arms around me and, for the first time since the whole thing happened, I properly cry.