What Goes Around

chapter SEVEN

Gloria

I don’t know how I feel.

I just get in the car and drive. I want to get there but there’s a diversion that’s been set up at the roundabout and I keep getting taken back to the same point. The hospital’s not far away, but I can’t get there and now the traffic lights are red and I sit there and wait for the green arrow.

I’ve thought about this day.

Not often.

But I sort of wondered what would happen when he died or what he’d do if first it was me.

Women think like that I think – I’m sure he doesn’t.

Didn’t.

I’m not ready for him to be past tense.

He should already be past tense – I mean he’s been my ex for years. It doesn’t work like that though.

I think, when he left, he thought that was it.

But when you’ve had children together, it never is.

I hear a car toot behind me and then another one and I look in the rear view mirror and I realise they’re tooting me. I’ve missed the light change and now we’ll have to wait.

I catch sight of my newly arched eyebrow in the rear-view mirror and I know there is a God.

You see, I’ve thought about this day, not just about him dying, I’ve thought about facing Lucy again. It’s ironic that I look the best I have in years, in decades in fact, and I’m pleased that I do.

I am.

I’m really pleased.

In the days when I used to plot my revenge, or his come-uppance, when I made up scenarios in my mind, I always looked amazing. I was always a lot thinner and a lot more glamorous than I am in real life. I had a camel coloured coat on, that was knotted at the back and lots of jewellery from Marcel, my sexy French lover - his car is waiting in their carriage driveway, as I stop by to let them know that I’m leaving the country today and no, I’m not taking the children. ‘But who’s going to look after Alice?’ Lucy begs.

‘And Bonny!’ I remind her, because even though she’s older she still lives at home. ‘And I have Eleanor’s kids two days a week,’ I tell Lucy and I just hand the whole sodding lot over to her and she starts crying because she can’t deal with them. ‘You knew he had kids when you took him,’ I tell her and she’s really crying now and not prettily either.

‘Shut up,’ he snarls to Lucy. ‘It’s not just the kids. Gloria, I’ve been thinking…’ he looks at me with those green eyes that once melted, that could always get me to forgive. ‘I’ve been thinking about us,’ he says and I whip my dark glasses off and shoot him an incredulous stare. He pleads with me not to go and live in the lap of luxury in the South of France with Marcel, then he pleads with me to take him back and says that he’s made the most terrible mistake…

I’m approaching the hospital and I remember another one.

I was in a coma – there was a car accident on my way back from a week at a health farm where I’d gone to shed those pesky last two pounds. I’d had loads of massages and treatments and things, so I was fortunately looking amazing when the accident happened. My Coma Buddy has made sure that I stay smooth skinned and without visible roots, just as I have promised to do for her. I don’t have any visible injuries. There’s not a mark on me, apart from a slight bruise above my eye. As I lie there his finger touches it and he thinks I can’t hear him, but I’m in one of those comas where you can hear - tee hee hee. I lie there all pale and dying as he pleads with me to just live. He shouts to Lucy to get the hell out and then he returns to me. He tells me how he can’t go on without me, how sorry he is, what a terrible mistake he made leaving me for her.

I could never decide how the fantasy ended though - if I woke up enough to see him weeping in a chair beside me, or if Marcel walked in and there was a fight.

So, that’s why it’s brilliant that today I’m looking fantastic.

I don’t care if you think that I’m vain.

I know what that bitch did to my life.

I know what she says about me.

I park in the staff car park and I race over to Emergency. It’s starting to be real – I haven’t rung the other girls, it’s the middle of the night there. I really need to get to Eleanor; she’s having a terrible time of it right now. Noel walked out on her a couple of weeks ago and she won’t tell me what it’s about – I can guess. He’s a nice guy, Noel, if a bit boring and it would have to be something big for him to walk out on his heavily pregnant wife.

I can’t think about it right now.

No one tells you when you sign the divorce papers that, even though it's over, it never really ends - not even today, not even on the day he dies. In fact, it gets a whole lot worse, because I now have to walk in there to comfort my daughter and Lucy will be there and maybe their daughter too.

Rose comes up to me as soon as I get there and she gives me a hug. ‘Gloria, I am so sorry.’ But I’m not sure if I’m deserving of condolences. I’m here for Eleanor, that’s all. ‘She’s in Interview Room 3,’ Rose explains. ‘But I need to have a word with you before you go in.’

‘Who’s with her?’

I see Rose’s slight grimace and I guess that means Lucy is in there.

‘His whole family is here.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ I tell Rose. ‘Just let Eleanor know that I'm here.’ My fantasies have faded. I’m in the real world now and I don’t want to see Lucy. I don’t want to face her; I don’t want this to be real because I don’t want the pain for my girls. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

Except this is my life, so it’s not quite that simple.

It never is.

‘She’s gone into labour, Gloria.’

It never sodding is.

‘We’re just arranging to move her up to maternity,’ Rose tells me.

I don't care if Lucy and the whole Jameson clan are in there, I have to be there for Eleanor. I walk into the interview room where Eleanor is sitting shaking and crying and I put my arms around her. I want to comfort her, to tell her it will all be all right, but how can it be?

‘Noel won’t come.’

‘I’m here,’ I say and then a midwife arrives and tells me that they’re going to wheel her up to maternity, they’re just waiting for a porter and a wheelchair. I look up and there’s Luke.

He’s like a son to me.

To what once was us.

He lived next door and I was friends with his mum and when she died Luke had six months of school left. He had some aunties in Ireland but he moved in with us so that he could finish school. Apart from the kids, he’s the only mutual one left from my old life. He’s the only one who kept in touch, who comes around. He comes over now and puts his arms around me and he lets me lean on him for a moment. I need that moment before I look over. Lucy is sitting there, her face is vacant and her arm is loosely around her daughter, sort of absently patting her shoulder. The hate that rises in me sometimes, that rises now, is suddenly doused as, for the first time, I see Charlotte. I’ve seen photos of her, they’re all over the place on that bloody Facebook, so I see them when I catch up with Alice or Bonny. I try not to look but sometimes I do.

I hate Facebook, I really do.

I know we’re all connected, I know we’re all just a few steps removed and all that, but Facebook joins us all up, and there for the peeking are glimpses of things that an ex-wife didn’t used to have to see. I try not to look because I get this big black churn rise within me when I see her with her pony, Noodle (stupid name) and in her private school dress with her little straw boater, or on holiday at the Maldives, or skiing, or wherever. I just feel jealousy on behalf of my girls when I look at photos like that; because they never had those things, but this is the first time I’ve seen Charlotte face-to-face. It is the strangest feeling because, the thing is, she could be mine.

She’s like Bonny and Alice and Eleanor all rolled into one but she’s different too. She could be mine had we had another.

I am actually having to fight the feeling to go over and wrap my arms around her and take care of her, because she looks so scared and lost. I feel this surge of protectiveness for her that is surely out of place, that is surely not my feeling to have, and then she looks over to me and she speaks. ‘Is Eleanor okay?’

I want her mother to answer her, to comfort her, but Lucy's still just sitting there and it looks like it’s down to me. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘And the baby?’

‘The baby is going to be fine,’ I say, because even if Eleanor has it now, it's only a few weeks away from her due date and Charlotte doesn’t need to be upset any more than she already is. Charlotte's been so excited about this baby. I only know because her endless questions have driven Eleanor crazy. I know that Charlotte wanted her dad to bring her straight to the hospital when the baby is born, which Eleanor was a bit worried about – it might be a bit of a sensitive time apparently.

‘Mrs Jameson!’ Lucy stirs and we both turn around as a nurse I don’t know comes to the door. ‘The doctor can speak to you now.’ I almost go to see what the doctor wants, my mind is moving really slowly, and then it dawns on me that she’s talking to Lucy.

‘Do you want Jess or me to come with you?’ Luke offers, but Lucy shakes her head and stands. She doesn’t acknowledge me but she’s not being rude, it’s as if she doesn’t realise that I’m there. She gets up and follows the nurse and, because it’s Lucy, she’s all dainty and fey. She’s dressed in a smock and her hairs all rumpled and tumbling. Strange the things you notice but she isn’t wearing a bra and, because it’s Lucy, her tits aren’t down to her waist as mine would be.

Charlotte tells Jess that she needs to go to the toilet and I find myself left with them.

I can’t tell you how awkward it is to be in this room.

There's his brother and his mum and they both look away when they see me. We were supposedly family once, but I'm not acknowledged at all - I haven't been since the day he left, not a card, not a phone call, nothing. Those years of supposed friendship were wiped out the day he left. It took a couple of years for it to dawn on me - I was never their friend and I wasn’t their family. I was only there at birthdays and Easters and included in conversations because I was his wife. It upset me for a while, but then I thought about it. I really examined it and it was a relief to realise that I didn’t like them anyway; they really are the most boring, unevolved lot. I’m in half a mind to tell them the same, but I don't say anything of course - I just step outside and stand in the corridor and Luke follows me out and tells me a little of what’s been going on.

‘It looks like it was a heart attack, but it's been handed over to the coroner,’ he explains. ‘Lucy’s beside herself. She wants to see him with all the tubes and things out.’

‘They won't take them out if it's a coroner’s case…’ I look at Luke, his face is grey, and I can see he’s struggling, but probably only I can see that.

I remember when his mum was dying.

She was lovely.

She just wanted to hold on till he got to university. I used to help, well, I’m a nurse, and so I would pop around and do what I could. But, in the end, she had to go into a hospice and that’s when Luke came and stayed with us for a while.

He was always a dark horse.

A closed book.

But just a teeny bit open to me.

‘How are you doing, Luke?’ I ask.

‘I’m fine.’

Same answer as twenty years ago.

But, like then, I can tell he’s been crying.

‘I saw him on Saturday…’ I look at his lips as he speaks and they are white. He’s just black and white - his shirt, his lips and his skin are all white, but his suit, his eyes and his hair are black. The only bit of colour is the red of his eyeballs. ‘He was fine,’ Luke says. ‘We were talking about going to Portugal.’ He shakes his head just a little. ‘We were talking about going on holiday.’

That’s as much as you’ll get from Luke. A few seconds later he’s back to asking about me.

‘I’m just about to ring the girls.’ I look at my watch and why the hell did they have to move to Australia? ‘Should I wait for morning?’

I don’t know how to tell them.

I don’t know what to say.

I think I’m going to start crying and that would be so wrong for me to do here.

It really isn’t my place.

‘I’ll do it,’ Luke says. ‘Give me the number and I’ll call Lex now – they need to know.’

‘I think I’ve got it.’ I take out my new phone, I have no idea how to properly use it and I have no idea what it does. The girls all got me it for Christmas I tell him. ‘So I can keep up with the grandkids on Facebook and twerp them.’

‘Tweet,’ Luke says and then he finds Lex’s number. ‘I’ll call him now.’

‘Maybe wait.’ I can’t stand to think of their reaction.

‘It won’t change things,’ Luke says.

‘But…’ I stop talking as I see Lucy walking towards us - she's holding an interim certificate. How come she's wearing that floaty smock dress and sandals, how come she hasn’t got a bra on? I feel embarrassed as realisation starts to dawn, as I remember he was at home when he collapsed. I can’t stop looking at her. I’m sort of fascinated really. I watch her petite features harden, her eyes narrow and her lips tighten and I don't know what I've done, if she expects me to have gone by now–it takes a moment to register that her eyes are looking over my shoulder, that her contempt isn’t aimed at me. I turn to see who it is, because Lucy's eyes are shooting daggers. I know that look well, I was the recipient once, the night of the staff do on the Thames springs to mind, but today the daggers are not aimed at me.

‘Nanny!’ I hear Charlotte’s yelp of relief from the interview room but I don’t think her Nanny does.

‘Lucy!’ A woman dashes past me, she’s a tiny little thing with straggly brown hair and I watch Lucy shrugging her off as she tries to wrap her in her skinny arms. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’

But Lucy just stands there, impervious to her mother's comfort - she's as hard as nails that one. Charlotte dashes over and is cuddled by her nanny but Lucy soon ends it, she takes Charlotte's hand and starts walking. ‘We’re just going…’

‘All right darling, let’s get you both home - you need to get his things before you go…’ Her mum’s got a right Essex accent, compared to snooty Lucy. She’s just trying to be a mum, trying to sort things out for her daughter, trying to spare her pain. ‘You need to take his things, you don't want to have to come back to collect them…’

‘Just leave it Mum!’

‘You need his clothes, his ring…’

‘For f*ck’s sake!’ She shouts at her mum. ‘Just leave it!’

‘Lucy!’ I hear Luke fire a warning and clearly it's not his place because she shoots him that look too. I realise there probably aren’t any clothes to collect and I can see why Lucy’s cheeks are on fire. That’s why she isn’t wearing a bra; she must have just thrown something on. It sort of rams it home to me how much more he wanted her - I mean, did he come home at lunch just to screw her?

I don’t carry on watching because they’re moving Eleanor and getting ready to head up to maternity now. While I want to be there for my daughter, a part of me wants to be here too. Somehow, even though they didn't want me, even though I’ve moved on, even though we’re nothing to do with each other now, even if I hate a lot of guts, still, a part of me feels that this is my family.