What Goes Around

chapter SEVENTEEN

Lucy

How can you keep a stiff upper lip when you haven’t got one?

I should have had my fillers and Botox, I think, as I face the mirror to tackle my make-up. If that sounds shallow, then I think it’s safer for me to be shallow today, or I swear, I’m not going to get through.

Luke and Jess arrived as promised at eight and now I understand why. Flowers keep arriving and the doorbell keeps ringing and Jess looks after Charlotte as I lock myself in the bathroom and try to face today.

Everyone’s going to be looking at me, everyone’s going to be turning their heads towards me and for once I don’t want it.

I pull my hair out of the shower cap. I had it blow-dried yesterday (and a few more foils) and I was going to wear it up, but I feel better with it down. I feel, that way, people can’t see so much of me.

I pull on black underwear that’s supposed to keep it all in and then sit on the edge of the bath and wrestle my damp legs into black stockings. I tear them but I bought two pairs, so I put the second pair on really slowly. They’re really sheer and they’re not really black, I should have got darker ones. I look at the dress and I should have got a size ten. People have been here all week, there have been cakes and casseroles and rolls and I know I’ve put on weight and everyone is going to be looking.

I can’t do this.

I feel the bubble of panic start to rise.

I can’t do this.

I shouldn’t have had breakfast; I can feel it still sitting there. I can feel my anxiety building and I try to find a hair tie, but there isn’t one, so I stuff my hair back into the shower cap because there’s only one thing that can bring me relief.

I hunch over the toilet bowl, I have my fingers at the back of my throat and I stick them right back and start to wiggle them but, at first gag, I pull them out and I lie there cuddling the toilet bowl because I can’t do this either.

I can’t go there again.

‘Lucy!’ There’s a rap on the bathroom door and I hear Luke’s brusque voice as I sit on my knees clinging on to the toilet. ‘Your mum’s here.’

Great!

I nearly put my fingers back down my throat but instead I stand up. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’

I wash my hands and teeth then shake out my hair and brush it and I put on some lipstick.

I head back to the bedroom and I swear I have to step over him. It’s like he’s still lying there dead and naked on the floor with his Viagra beside him.

There’s no escaping today.

Even if Gloria’s not, his daughters will be there -whom I now have to provide for.

Well, I do.

If he’d left it all to me, things would have been fine.

Instead, we’re still paying child support for the Original Jameson Girls.

I’m savage inside.

I’m not upset.

I am savage with anger at what he’s left me to deal with.

I pull on my shoes.

And then I put on the diamond necklace he gave me on our first anniversary, which sounds romantic, but two days before I’d threatened to leave, to end it.

I can’t think about that.

But memories are raining in.

I put in the diamond studs that he gave me a couple of years later – I’d been threatening to leave then too and I’d told him I was getting the house.

I wasn’t going back to slumsville.

I look in the mirror and the dress that just fitted last week is a bit too clinging now. It really shows my hips and boobs, though it actually suits the dress – I look curvy, sort of hourglass.

Even if I suit the dress, I don’t know that the dress suits a funeral and Ricky’s gone overboard with the foils. I’m a bit too blonde to be mourning, if you know what I mean.

I look good.

I’m not supposed to, but I really do.

I know I do, because Luke’s jaw tightens in disapproval as I come down the stairs. Here’s Mum arriving - staggering under the weight of cakes and sandwiches. ‘I told you,’ I say to her. ‘I’m getting it catered.’ As if she’d ever listen. I just let it go, but there’s no way I’m putting out the cheese and pineapple squares and black forest gateaux and egg sandwiches that are whizzing through the hallway courtesy of her merry band of helpers. Jess gives me a smile and a hug, not an air kiss hug, a real one.

‘You look so good, you bitch,’ but she says it so nicely. Jess knows what they’re like, his family, his friends, the people in the village, the school, the whole circus really.

She knows what today means.

Charlotte comes over to me and I wrap her in my arms and I tell her it’s all going to be okay, to just try and be brave and I’ll be there by her side.

And you know what?

I can do this.