What Goes Around

chapter TWENTY

I take off those support top stockings and those bastard pants that have been holding me in. My body inflates and flops in relief and it’s so nice that I take off my bra too and pull it through one arm.

I haven't been on my own since it happened I realise.

There have been people here every day, flowers arriving, funeral directors, the vicar, catering, dealing with family you'd rather not. Funerals are such hard work it's like trying to arrange a wedding in the space of a week and at the hardest time of your life.

Really, it shows what a joke weddings are–maybe I could be a wedding planner, if I have to get job to pay child support for his children maybe that’s something I could do.

I know it’s going to come to that. I know I’m going to have to get a job.

Or a new husband.

But I guess I need a suitable pause.

Weddings in a Week.

Lucy’s Weddings in a Week

I like that.

I know that I didn't cry enough today to appease people, that my grief wasn't visible enough for them.

I don't think I am grieving, I haven't even got to that part yet, I'm still stuck on what I came home too – or what I could have come home to had I arrived half an hour earlier.

I want that moment and it's been denied to me and I can't share it with anyone. I can't, because then my perfect marriage, my perfect life disappears and I don't want it to.

I worked hard enough to get it.

I chose very carefully, you know.

No, I'm not grieving, I'm angry. And yes, anger might be the first stage of grieving, but I'm not grieving, I'm just angry.

I want to run up the stairs and to catch them.

I want that row, that confrontation and then after…

I don't want to think about after. I don't want to think what would have happened then, because I know how it would have been.

I didn’t always ignore it.

I want to ignore it now but it’s like someone’s holding up a mirror that holds my life and they’re making me look into it, except I don’t want to see.

So, instead of thinking about that, my mind runs up the stairs and catches him and we have the most God awful row and I tell him I'm leaving, that I am through with his shit. I mean it, this time I’m through. I should have left the first time I tell him.

Except he's laughing and telling me just to get the hell out then if I don't like it.

‘Remember how you used to bitch and moan about every penny I gave to Gloria?’ I can hear his voice now and it’s not some fantasy row - it's a memory. ‘Remember how I sorted my income to make sure that we were fine?’ Okay, I don't want this row, I’ll get back to grieving please, only I can’t, because it's there in my head and it won’t get out. ‘Piss off if you don't like it Lucy,’ he’s saying. ‘But you can kiss goodbye to your credit cards, to your Botox and you can tell Charlotte to kiss goodbye to that f*cking pony, not that she will need it because the school she'll be going to there won’t be any need to compete.’ I’m pacing around my living room and I want this row to stop. ‘You can help her to settle in though,’ he tells me. ‘You know all about growing up with a single mum, you know all about having nothing.’

I could pour another brandy and who would blame me?

But, I don't.

I could dive into the fridge and not come up for air till it's empty-I'd even eat the disgusting glazed cherries she put on top of the black forest gateaux…

But, I don’t.

I pull out the vacuum cleaner instead and, when I’ve finished vacuuming, I’m going to scrub the toilets. No, before that I want to get out into the garden to pick up all the mess and empty out the disgusting cigarette butts…

Cleaning soothes me.

I don't have to think, I just walk along the hall vacuuming, picking up the crumbs the elves missed. I ignore the doorbell when it goes, I just want to be on my own – it’s probably Mum come back and I don't want to see her, or it might be one of his family, or Simone. I don't want to be the perfect wife this evening; I don’t have to be any more, except the bell’s still ringing. Can people not just leave me alone? I turn off the vacuum and go to the door and I am so angry. If one more person tells me what a wonderful man I’ve just lost then God help them.

I open the door and it’s Noel.

He wasn’t at the funeral today.

He looks terrible. I think how hard this is for him-all the shame and betrayal that he’s facing.

‘Are the kids there?’ He can't look at me and I can hardly look at him either – another person who’s been screwed over by the Jamesons. ‘I was supposed to pick them up from here,’ he explains.

‘Sorry.’ I drag my mind back to the wake. ‘Daniel was upset; I think they left with Hugh and Alice.’ I’m all mixed up; I want to get back to my cleaning. ‘I thought Gloria was supposed to be picking them up?’

‘God knows,’ Noel says. ‘You never know what's bloody going on with that lot.’ His voice is so full of bitterness. He sounds like I feel. He turns to walk away and I admire him, because he doesn’t thank me, or offer his condolences, he’s just through with the Jameson shit.

‘I don't know what Eleanor was thinking.’ I see him halt and I’m probably the first person in this family to actually address it, but the thing is, I'm not in this family. I hover on the outside, I'm barely tolerated, I’m the bitch who ended the happy family dream and God, did they judge me harshly for it.

It's all right for them though, when they do it – it’s not the same rules for them when Eleanor cheats.

Excuse me, but yes it is.

I am not religious – I think we all get that but I do remember something about removing the splinter in your eye so you can see the plank, or is it removing the plank so you can see the splinter?

I’m not thinking very straight at the moment, but I’m the plank and Eleanor gets to be the splinter.

Eleanor gets to lie in bed and be fussed over and looked after and I’m still the bitch.

I look at Noel, always smart, always polite, always doing his part. ‘I think she's mad to do what she did when she had you at home.’ I’m telling him what I would like to hear; I say the words that I want someone to say to me.

He turns around.

‘What's everyone saying?’ His eyes search my face. ‘I’m so embarrassed,’ raw is his admission. ‘I’m so ashamed.’

‘She's the one who should be ashamed.’ And then I say it again, but it’s with different meaning. I can’t really explain it, but it suddenly tips – I’m talking about me, saying what I want to hear, what I want people to think about me but Noel must be feeling as crap and as low as I am, Noel’s ego must need a little inflate and it’s like I’ve got an industrial strength pump – I stand on the step and I blow and I blow. ‘I don’t know what she was thinking. I’d give anything to have a guy like you and she’s just pissed all over it.’ He walks back to me. ‘You’re gorgeous Noel,’ his face is on mine, his tongue’s in my mouth and mine’s in his and we’re savage. His hands are on my breasts, his mouth is at my ear. ‘She’s mad to want anyone else.’

We grapple each other, his mouth pushes me through the front door and we’re in my hallway.

I don’t have any knickers on, I don’t have on a bra and his hands are just everywhere and so too are mine.

It’s a minute.

Another moment in your life where suddenly everything has changed.

We can’t look at each other after.

We closed the front door, thank God.

I only know that because, after a minute of stunned silence, he arranges his clothes and then opens it.

There’s nothing to discuss.

It happened.

It never should have.

I don't even fancy him - not once when he’s done Charlotte’s teeth have I looked at him in that way. That's not me being a good wife or step mum, I'm being honest - there has been no simmering tension between us. I go to the window, my hand shaking as I peek through the blind and watch him.

I stand at rock-bottom and I don’t want to be here.

I see him drive off, hear him skid a bit on the gravel and I know that he's as mortified as me. Some things just shouldn't happen - no one must ever know, please God that Noel never says anything, because no one will ever hear it from me.

But God must hate me today and for most of last week too, because, just as I want to go to bed and curl up with my shame, just as I want to put today behind me and move on, just as I go to close the blinds, I see her.

Gloria, I mean.

I see Gloria sitting in a car on the street and she's looking directly at me. I know from the expression on her face, from the loathing in her eyes, from the pure disgust on her lips, that she's seen everything.

That she knows.

I snap closed the blind and I wait. I can hardly breathe. I know she's going to come over, I know she's going to let me have it, not just for today but for everything. We’re going to have the confrontation that we never really had.

The doorbell doesn't ring though and a few moments later I hear an engine starting. By the time I pluck up the courage to look I realise she's gone.

And so I revise.

This is rock-bottom.

You’d think so.

I mean, you’d really think so wouldn’t you?

But you’ve no idea just how low Lucy can go.