What Goes Around

chapter SIXTY FIVE

‘I haven’t seen you for a while.’ Denise says.

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘You don’t need to explain. Just come and see me when you feel it might help.’

It’s good to know that she’s there.

‘How’s Charlotte?’ Denise asks.

‘Doing well,’ I smile as I say it. ‘She’s going to be a bridesmaid,’ I tell Denise. ‘And she’s got a new puppy. She has her moments.’

‘That’s good,’ Denise says. ‘That you recognise that she has her moments.’

I nod, because otherwise Charlotte would be having her moments without me.

We talk about how well I’m doing, that I’m off my medication now, and no, I’m not dancing naked in the street or having random sex with the postman.

‘I feel guilty though,’ I say and then I roll my eyes at myself, because every one who enters this room must say that. ‘I feel guilty that I’ve sat in this room and I trashed him so many times. He did an awful lot of bad things and there were some terrible times but I never told you how funny he was, how kind he could be.’ I’m starting to cry. ‘How good he was with Charlotte.’

‘And?’ Denise prompts but I just sit there. ‘And?’ She asks again.

‘How good he was with me at times.’ I sit there still for a very long time, I don’t cry, I just sit there and I remember some of the good times.

I really don’t understand. By all accounts we had a terrible marriage, he cheated all the time and my perfect life was actually a mess, I was falling apart at the seams.

I just don’t understand how I can suddenly decide now that I loved him, I tell Denise and I tell her a bit more of the truth.

‘I was thinking of having an affair.’

I remember driving around with no knickers on and a mug in my bag and I was so cross, so, so cross and I wanted someone who wanted me.

I frown as I try to remember how I felt. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it, I hadn’t properly thought about it, but I was holding back on him. I wasn’t telling him things and he knew it. He told a very close friend that he thought I was, but I wasn’t. I think I was…’ I don’t know the words.

‘Preparing to leave?’ Denise offers and I nod, but then I shake my head. ‘I don’t think it was as straightforward as that.’

‘The end of a marriage never is.’ Denise says gently. ‘People start to disengage, pull back, people grow up…’ I frown. ‘Sometimes people grow out of each other and, had he not died…’

Yes, I think I’d have left him.

I think I was starting to.

I just didn’t know it at the time.

We talk some more.

It turns out Dr Patel was right - I was grieving.

Maybe I still am.

Not just my husband, but also my marriage, my own childhood and the perfect world I had so badly wanted for Charlotte.

I feel so superficial, I tell Denise, that I stayed for a house. ‘How shallow is that?’

‘Lucy.’ Denise’s voice is practical. ‘You said that you stayed for the house, for the pony, for Charlotte.’

‘I did.’ I nod.

‘What was he like with Charlotte?’

‘Always on her side!’ I roll my eyes. ‘She could wrap him around her little finger.’

‘So could you.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I mean, she could always win him around, he was always telling her how stunning she was, how he could never say “no” to her…’ and then I stop talking and I look at my husband and the relationship we had.

I’m sitting on his knee and I’m looking into the only eyes, apart from Charlotte’s, that I can stand to look into. I’m teasing him and talking him around and I know that I’ll get my way.

Oh, he might have thought that he was getting his way with me too, but there was no way I would have got in that pool in Portugal.

I don’t think.

Or perhaps I might have and that would have been the end of us.

I don’t know.

But I do know how we were.

I got to play house.

I got to dress up.

I got all the nice things that I never had in my childhood.

I got to be one of his girls

I didn’t just stay for Charlotte.

I stayed for me.

But, as Denise explains to me, as every child changes, as every young adult yearns to stretch their wings, I was starting to grow up, I was getting ready to leave.

I grew up with him.

And I’m grown up now without.