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.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
‘She’s wetting the bed.’
It’s the day after, the day after, his funeral.
The day after, the day after that.
I spent yesterday curled up in bed, then Jess brought Charlotte home and I cobbled together dinner from some of the leftovers in the fridge. This morning Mum came over and when she saw me doing the sheets, she rang the doctor for an appointment.
I can’t look at Dr Patel.
It turns out that she’s really popular and I was hoping she’d be so booked up that I wouldn’t get into her, that I might have to see someone else, but no. I’m sitting there looking at a poster of a skeleton on the wall behind her and that’s what he’ll be soon.
I wonder how soon you start decomposing?
I jerk my eyes away from it in panic almost and I meet her calm brown eyes for about one twentieth of a second.
Eye contact really isn’t my forte and especially not today.
‘It’s to be expected,’ Doctor Patel says. ‘How is she going back at school?’
‘She just went back today.’
‘Okay.’ Doctor Patel nods and nods again – she does that an awful lot. ‘It’s good she’s getting back amongst her friends, back to normal – try and keep as much of a routine going for her as you can.’
I nod too, because I know how much my routines mean to me. ‘Try not to make any major changes if you can. Don’t go making any big decisions on impulse, Lucy. You need a year to really see how things are.’
I’ve heard that from a few people and I find myself again nodding back.
‘The bed-wetting will sort itself out in time but it’s the last thing Charlotte needs to be dealing with now. I can write her up for some medication to take before bed, just for a few nights.’
She starts typing up the prescription, she’s offered her condolences, she’s asked how I am and I just want to grab the prescription and get the hell out of there but, of course, she doesn’t leave it there.
‘How are you holding up, Lucy?’
‘I told you,’ I say. ‘I’m fine.’
She must have the slowest printer in the world.
‘We have a grief counsellor here at the practice.’
I give a small snort and then I do manage to look at her. ‘How long were you prescribing him Viagra?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘You let me sit here and tell you the problems we were having and all the time you were writing him scripts.’
I’m changing my doctor, I decide. How dare she?
‘There’s patient confidentiality, Lucy.’
‘I was your patient too,’ I point out. ‘How long?’ I demand.
‘Lucy, he’s still my patient.’
‘He’s dead!’ I retort. ‘He’s in no position to sue!’
‘Lucy,’ her voice is calm and she refuses to match my anger, she just nods at me, she always does that but it annoys the hell out of me now. ‘I’m sure you know far more about your marriage than I do. You don’t need to hear dates and times from me.’
‘So, I’m guessing it was a repeat prescription?’
I hate the sympathy in her eyes and so I look at the poster again. He can rot in hell for all I care.
She rabbits on about how I’m doing and she gives me more pamphlets. This time they’re about grief and depression. She tells me again that there’s a grief counsellor and I hear the chair scrape loudly as I stand. I look down at her and I don’t say goodbye to her and I certainly don’t thank her – instead I remind her about my patient confidentiality and that she’d better damn well make sure that her receptionist, Beth, knows about it too. I storm outside but instead of going to the chemist in the village to get Charlotte’s prescription, I get in my car and I drive.
I drive for a good twenty minutes. I drive through where I came from but Mum still lives there and someone might recognise me, so I drive a bit further. I park my car and walk into a dingy chemist with bars on the window and I hand in Charlotte’s script and I ask to speak to the pharmacist.
‘Can I ask what for?’
‘The morning after pill.’
Out she comes.
She’s about my age and as my face burns, she tells me not to be embarrassed, she hears it all the time. ‘Accidents happen,’ she tells me with a smile.
‘They do,’ I say, thinking how her eyeballs would fall out if I told her the truth about this particular accident– that my husband’s condom didn’t split, in fact, he’s dead and on the day of his funeral I shagged my stepson-in-law on the hall floor.
I buy a bottle of water too and I don’t even make it to the car. I’m popping my pill and guzzling water because I cannot be pregnant.
I cannot be pregnant.
I cannot be.
It’s an awful drive home.
I turn the radio up but my brain won’t stop thinking.
It would be Charlotte’s half sister or brother and Daisy’s too.
And Laura and Daniel’s so would that make Eleanor its step mum if she and Noel got back together and he wanted access?
Would my stepdaughter be my child’s step mum?
So what would that make Gloria?
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!
I can hear the Hillbilly bells ringing and the audience chanting as I turn into my street.
I see my home and it should soothe me but I’m terrified that I’m going to lose it, that I’m going to lose everything.
I am going to lose it.
I am, I am.
I can’t.
I can’t go back to where I came from.
I’m not taking Charlotte there.
I know I’m going to be sick.
I have to be sick.
My car scrapes the wall as I hit the driveway.
My neighbour comes over to examine the damage, for another chat, for more information, but I race through the door and up the stairs but, as I get to the loo, I realise that I can’t even throw up.
I can’t, because I need the pill to stay in there.
‘Lucy!’
It’s my mum knocking on my bathroom door.
‘Lucy! Is everything okay?’
‘I just need the loo.’
‘What happened with the car?’
‘Can you just leave me?’ I scream but she doesn’t. She’s hovering outside when I come out. ‘Don’t start, Mum…’
I do not need a lecture now.
‘I’m worried about you, Lucy,’ she says. ‘I want to help.’
‘Well, you can’t.’
‘I could if you’d just let me.’
‘You just don’t get it!’ I go to walk past.
‘I might if you talk to me, I might understand.’
Actually, she might – after all, she was an expert in one-night stands, so much so that I don’t even know who my father is. At least I’m not that bad, at least I’d know who the father was. I turn to her and I look at her and I tell her the truth.
Not that truth.
I tell her mine.
‘I’m terrified that I might turn into you.’
I know I’ve hurt her, but do you know what?
She hurt me too.
‘I had a disease.’
She hurls her usual defence.
‘Sherryitis.’
‘I wasn’t well,’ she says. ‘But I’m better now and I want to help take care of you and Charlotte.’
But I won’t let her.
‘Too late,’ I tell her. ‘Too little, too late – I’ll take care of my daughter.’
‘I won’t stop trying Lucy,’ she warns me. ‘And you can shut me out all you want but Charlotte wants me in her life and I intend to be there for her.’
I don’t get it.
I truly don’t get it.
Somehow, she’s turned me into the bad guy.