What Goes Around... (11 page)

‘Can I see it?’ Gloria asks, when it’s clear Eleanor’s not going to make an attempt with the present. Gloria takes over and she is lovely with Charlotte. She opens the parcel and pulls out the little baby suit and socks
and there’s a little headband too. Gloria tells Charlotte how lovely it all is and how she can’t wait to see the baby in it.

‘She’s so cute!’ Charlotte peers over into the cot. ‘Mum look, she’s so tiny.’ I walk over to the cot and the baby is adorable, she’s all snuggled up and I feel Gloria’s eyes on me, sort of waiting for my reaction.

She’s beautiful.

Smaller than Charlotte was but sort
of the same and she’s got her grandad’s chin. She’s absolutely and completely beautiful.

‘She’s adorable.’ I feel tears at the back of
my nose and I feel it go red. I want to pick her up and hold her; I want him to have lived to have seen her.

Emotion rushes in as I gaze at her, she really is the most adorable baby.

But she’s not Noel’s.

‘What’s her name?’ Charlotte asks and Gloria casts an anxious look towards Eleanor before she answers.

‘We haven’t quite decided yet.’ The baby’s wriggling about and her arms are stretching as she slowly wakes up.

‘Would you like to hold her, Charlotte?’ Gloria offers.

I really am grateful that Gloria is there. I never thought I would say that but she sort of takes over with Charlotte and answers her endless questions. I am so glad of the reprieve, so glad to sit and not speak – to be Eleanor for just a few moments.
‘Is that okay with you, Lucy?’ I don’t even know what Gloria said and I drag my mind to the conversation, try to remember what I’ve missed. ‘If Charlotte helps me change her nappy and gives her a cuddle?’ It’s the first time Gloria has ever spoken to me. Actually, that’s wrong, it’s the second. The last time was long before Charlotte was born, after the Thames boat trip that Luke brought up - we’d all gotten off the boat and were standing on the pier and it was clear Gloria’s husband was coming home with me. There was a row and then a fight between him and Luke broke out, fists and everything. For a moment I thought Gloria might even hit me, but of course, Gloria’s too bloody dignified for that. ‘I got the best years of him.’ They are the only words she’s ever uttered to me. She came right up to my face and said it again. ‘I got the best years of him.’ Then Luke walked off with her.

We haven’t spoken since.

‘I can watch Charlotte if you like,’ Gloria offers. Maybe she sees that I’m struggling, or maybe she is too. Maybe it’s killing her to be in the same room as me and so I’m politely dismissed. ‘If you want to go and get a coffee or something?’

I don't want a coffee – I’m putting on weight. I had t
wo at Ricky’s this morning and Mum and Jess keep insisting that I eat. Instead, I wander outside maternity, trying to avoid going near Accident and Emergency, but as I walk, I see a sign for the mortuary. I wonder if he's in there, I don't know where he is. I'm still waiting for the coroner to get back to me.

I’m still wondering if everybody's going to find out.

I feel like marching over there and storming in. I feel like hauling him out of a fridge and demanding to know how he could do this to me.

How could he leave me like this?

Jess says I should keep a journal.

She says it’s the only thing that helped after her brother died.

She even bought me one to get me started.

I opened the page and tried to write something, but I didn’t know what to put.

I don’t know what to do.

I just want to go home.

But first I have to go back and face Gloria.

‘Gloria said I could feed her!’ Charlotte is sitting holding the baby and she’s all excited, her face is shining and, for once, it’s not from tears.  Gloria is hovering over her as Charlotte gives the baby her bottle. Every now and then she reminds Charlotte to lift the bottle up
, so the baby doesn’t gulp air. If it were any other woman, I would later thank her for giving my daughter a break from the grief, but instead I sit quietly beside Charlotte. I look down at a very new baby; she's got tiny little knots of curls and eyelashes that look as if they've been crimped. She truly is gorgeous and, when I thought I never would again, and certainly not with Gloria in the room, I realise that I’m smiling. ‘Girl with a curl,’ I say, and even though Gloria doesn't look at me, I see out of the corner of my eye that she smiled a little bit too.

‘Gloria says that she looks like me,’ Charlotte says.

It’s funny, because I was just thinking the same.

When the bottle’s finished I tell Charlotte that it's time to go home. I say goodbye to Eleanor but she doesn't even attempt to answer. I feel like walking over and giving her a slap. My husband had just died and I’ve dragged myself out to visit and she can’t even
be bothered to look up.  Yes, I know it was her dad, I know she's just had a baby, I know her marriage is on the rocks, I know, I know,
I know,
but I'm here visiting her with my late husband's ex-wife in the room. I’m here with my grieving daughter and she can’t even give us the courtesy of a goodbye.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Gloria fills in the awkward silence and I know she's talking to Charlotte and not me. I just want out of there.

I’m glad the visit’s done.

But I’m glad that I went too.

‘Gloria told Eleanor off!’ We’re walking towards the car and Charlotte is still rabbiting on about the baby. ‘She
really
told her off!’ Charlotte elaborates. ‘
And
she swore.’

‘I didn't know saints swore.’ Charlotte doesn’t know what I'm talking about, of course. Even though I really couldn't care less about Gloria and her daughter, it's nice to have Charlotte talking instead of crying for her dad, and so I ask her more about it. Charlotte walks along beside me imitating Gloria’s London accent. ‘If you can't be sodding bothered to name her, then I will. She’s your daughter Eleanor and she needs a name. It’s not her fault that you couldn’t keep your knickers on.’

‘She said that!’  Well, I guess infidelity would be one of Gloria’s hot buttons. ‘What did Eleanor say?’

‘Not much,’ Charlotte shrugs. ‘She looked at a vase of flowers and said “Iris.” Then Gloria said, “you’re not calling her that,” and then I suggested Daisy and Gloria said that they’d think about it.’

It was the only reprieve in an aw
ful day.

Actually, I tell a lie, there were two reprieves.

I dropped Charlotte at Felicity’s and when I got home Jess and Mum were sitting, chatting with Luke, who’d finished work early.

‘They’re going to put on a coach,’ Luke told me. ‘Everyone from work wants to come.’

Everyone?

I wonder if
she’ll
be there.

‘I’ve w
ashed all the sheets,’ Mum says. ‘All your laundry is up to date.’

No
, that wasn’t the reprieve – Mum doing my housework just riles me. Charlotte’s wetting the bed and Mum’s going for Nanny-of-the-Year trying to help, but it just pisses me off further – I had to wash my own sheets when I used to wet the bed.

I plonk myself down on the sofa and close my eyes as Jess stands to make me a cup of tea.

‘Here’s your post.’

She hands me a wad – I mean a
wad
of envelopes, they’re purple and lilac and I don’t have the energy to open them, let alone read them.

‘And this came.’

It’s a brown parcel and I wearily start to open it but, as I do, I realise they were a bit off with their 2-3 business days! Given that Mum’s already ripping open the envelopes, I haul myself up to take it upstairs, before she shows the world my vibrator.

No, that wasn’t my reprieve!

I shove it in the wardrobe and head back down and, as I do, the phone rings.

It’s the coroner’s o
ffice.

I stare in the mirror and I brace myself.

I can go ahead with the funeral, I’m told, the body has been released.

And?

I look incredibly calm, I realise, but I’m waiting for the bullet, then I hear the words “death by natural causes.”

I fold over for a moment.

For the first time, since it happened, I feel as if I can breathe.

Jess brings my tea to the phone and I ring the undertaker and
the vicar, then I go to ring Alice but I change my mind, she’ll be here in a couple of hours after all, I can tell her then.

I put down the phone and I simply breathe.

I’ve hit my rock-bottom, I tell myself.

It’s just the funeral to get through now. For the first time I glimpse that we’re maybe going to be okay.

I just have to keep it together, keep up with my routines. Everything will be fine now, I convince myself. I’ll come out the other side.

I had no idea what was to come.

That awk
ward moment when the vicar asks if you want a double-plot in front of your stepchildre
n
.

I just wanted one of those places that do everything. A “
do you want fries with that coffin
” place.  The Original Jameson Girls want a church and not just any old church - they want the one they were all christened in, hence the visit from
their
vicar.

I bought cakes in the v
illage (more stares – am I not supposed to eat?) and Jess winks at me as, already flustered, I go out into the kitchen to get them. Luke is in there with us all, not just as the peacekeeper - as I said, they were close. Mum’s upstairs playing with Charlotte but Jess is cheering me on from the kitchen bench.

Thank God for Jess.

‘Stick to your guns,’ she tells me as I arrange a little platter. ‘You have the final say.’

My jaw is so rigid it aches when I speak. ‘You should hear them, they’re debating You Raise Me Up or The Wind Beneath My Wings…’

‘You can tell me all that later,’ Jess interrupts. ‘For now, all you say is -’ Jess waits, she’s been training me. Honestly, we’ve been sitting on the couch and she’s trained me as to my responses. ‘What do you say, Lucy, when they start to push you towards something you don’t want?’

‘I’ll take it on board.’

‘That’s right,’ Jess says. ‘Remember to give a little nod after you say it, so that it looks as if you’re really going to think about it.’ She gives me a quick hug. ‘Back to it, baby.’

It’s going okay, well I think it is.

They shake their heads when I suggest Robbie’s Angel.

‘Fine,’ I concede. ‘Charlotte wants Morning Has Broken to be sung as we do all the pictures and power point stuff.’

Reluctantly they agree.

We sort out the hymns and the rea
dings. Luke is going to do the eulogy and just when I start to pat myself on the back, just when I think I’ve got a handle on this, comes the awkward moment, and my God it’s awkward (sorry God, didn’t mean to use you in vain there) when the vicar asks if I’ve thought about a double plot.

I just sit there.

I can feel all these eyes on me as they wait for me to answer.

I think I’m supposed to start crying. That I’m to lean onto the table and weep ‘yes
,’ sob sob. ‘Yes,’ as I bang my fist on the table. ‘I want to lie with him forever.’

But I just sit there.

I don’t want to lie with him forever.

I want to kill him for what he did.

I sit there and I’m told about the cost of a double plot and no, I don’t want one.

I am so angry.

I am so furious and there’s no-one left to row with. There’s no chance to have it all out
. I just feel all these faces looking at mine, all waiting for me to crumple, to produce mandatory tears, to dissolve, to collapse in heap, as a good widow should.

‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘Single plot.’

Wrong answer, Lucy.

I can feel that my grief isn’t the grief the room wants, that my answer isn’t the appropriate one.

Shame on you, Lucy.

Shame on him!

So, we have the church the Original Jameson Girls wanted, we have the vicar of their choice and the hymns that they have chosen, which is all fine by me. I am clueless as to religion; Mum didn’t discover her Higher Power till I’d left home. He’s in a single plot which is my (everyone suck your lips in) decision and we have Morning Has Broken, near the end.

I am very happy with my victories.

I really don’t envy Luke doing the eulogy. I have no idea how he’s going to address it all. I guess he’ll just gloss over a lot of things, or rather, I hope that he does.

When the v
icar leaves we start to discuss the wake.

I want to have it back here or, if it’s awkward for t
hem, maybe refreshments in the church hall but, of course, the Original Jameson Girls don’t like that idea.