And I’m nervous too, because it’s today.
She suggests a pub where we could meet and I agree to the place and the time. She gives me the address and directions and I pretend I’m writing them down, I pretend that it’s a place unfamiliar to me, except I know the pub well.
It’s a place where he used to take me.
CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN
Gloria
I ring them all to check that they’re okay and I tell Bonny and Alice that I’ll take flowers for them.
They don’t ask if I’m okay.
It’s been years since we broke up – I suppose they just assume that I am.
Eleanor was all teary and vague when she dropped off Daisy on her way to work. She’s going to try and get to the cemetery this weekend, she tells me, but she just can’t face it today. I understand that and so I tell her that I’ll take flowers for her and that she’s not to go upsetting herself today.
Eleanor doesn’t ask if I’m okay either.
Paul did.
He woke me up with a big mug of tea.
When I went to climb out of bed to get to the loo and have a cry by myself, he pulled me back and let me cry on him.
Not a lot.
I don’t want to push it.
But we can talk about it now.
Not all of it.
There are some things I don’t think anyone could understand unless they’ve been through it.
But I love that Paul holds me and that with him I can be nearly all of me.
Nearly all.
You have to keep a bit of you for yourself.
I’ve learnt that since we lay on that bed and I gave him the darkest piece of me and he loved me back.
I’ve learnt that there is a little piece that’s yours and yours alone - that will survive no matter what, that continues when others move on.
You don’t have to explain everything to everyone.
The people who love you don’t need to know it all.
So, he goes to work and I get an hour’s pause before Daisy comes.
I wander through the house and I see the marks in the wall where our babies grew and I see all the damage his DIY wreaked and it doesn’t make me cross.
It used to.
It doesn’t now.
Eleanor drops off Daisy and I make a real fuss of her, I do. We sing and we laugh and we dance to her favourite show and she makes me smile.
The same way she lets me cry sometimes.
I make a cup of tea and I put sugar in.
I don’t have sugar in my tea now but I do today.
I have the same tea I had then, the same tea that he drank.
It’s too sweet now, I sit at the table and I pull a face – I can’t believe I used to take it like that.
I take another sip and it’s sickly but nice.
You wouldn’t want it all the time, but sometimes…
I remember.
For the first time I remember the good bits.
I hate my name – Gloria.
Imagine looking at a baby and thinking, I know, we’ll call her Gloria.
But sometimes when he said it.
Sometimes he’d come home from the pub (and we’re talking back in the early days) and he’d say my name in a way no one ever has, or ever will, say it.
I hear it now.
Gloria.
He (sometimes/rarely – I’m not talking about the bad times now) made me feel Glorious.
I sit there and I remember Eleanor’s parent teacher night. He was late getting home, we’d had a massive row and we had to sit on those stupid little chairs.
I take a sip of tea and I start to smile.
The teacher farted as she sat.
Just a little one.
And we all pretended not to notice, or rather, the teacher did and I did but I could feel him laughing beside me.
It was embarrassing.
I could feel his shoulders heaving and then the smell hit us and we tried to speak over it, tried to talk about Eleanor’s handwriting but he was nearly doubled up.
I had to get him out of there.
My, we laughed when we got outside.
We laughed and laughed and I sit at the table and I’m laughing now as I remember.
That was the night Alice was made.
I remember the notorious man that he was.
Notorious.
That’s the best word I can come up with for him. He was a man who could make you feel as if you were the only girl in the world sometimes.
Just not all the time.
There were too many girls in his world.
A bit later I hold Daisy as we put the chocolate crackles we’ve made into the fridge and she gets all excited when she hears the door.
‘Who’s that?’ I say, because maybe it’s the postman…
‘Luke.’
He’s holding a bunch of flowers.
‘Thank you.’ I almost start to cry, he’s just so thoughtful like that. I remember the time he came with fish and chips but then I see him blink and I’m angry as I get it.
‘For me to take to the cemetery?’ I’m hurt, I’m embarrassed, and I’m pissed off. ‘I’ll need a sodding wheelbarrow at this rate.’
‘They’re for you,’ he insists but I know that they’re not – he’s just trying now to be polite.
I ask him to hold Daisy while I find a vase, but they’re all taken up with daffodils, so it takes me a while. I’ve calmed down a bit by the time I put them in water and I turn around and he looks like shit.
I mean, he’s still good looking but he’s sort of grey around the gills and he’s lost so much weight.
‘They were for him.’ I’m a bit nicer now as I say it. ‘Have you ever been to the grave?’
‘I can’t,’ he says.
‘Luke…’ He’s hurting and it’s hard to see Luke hurting – he’s lost his best friend, a man who was more like a dad to him and he’s lost his marriage too.
It’s been a hell of a year for him.
We go through to the lounge and I put the vase in the corner and Daisy toddles over to him.
She’s walking now.
She started last week.
‘I miss him,’ he says and then because it’s Luke he stops, he just closes his eyes and closes off. ‘You don’t need this today.’
‘Go and speak to him,’ I say. ‘I go there now and then and it helps.’
‘I can’t,’ he shakes his head. ‘I can’t face him.’
He puts his head in his hands and I hear this rapid breathing and I’m watching a grown man cry.
I sit on the edge of the chair and I put my arm around him and Daisy’s standing at his knee and her hands are reaching up to be held.
To comfort him the same way she does me.
He picks her up and he cuddles her.
And I know.
I know in my heart what is killing him.
I don’t want it to be confirmed.
I don’t want it to be true – but it is.
I found a lump in my breast once.
I ignored it and ignored it but still it grew.
I tried to deny it, tried not to feel it, tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
But it did.
And when I finally fessed up – when I went to the doctor to be sentenced to death, I found it wasn’t something sinister after all.
A fatty lump doesn’t sound very beautiful.
It did that day.
It still does.
It’s better to face things.
I look at another bunch of flowers that belong on his grave, that have somehow ended up in my lounge and I don’t want to bin them this time.
I remember Lucy that day, dirty, ranting, angry and terrified – on the edge and about to dive off and I remember running away. I remember Daisy’s tears as I ran down that hill and I want to go back and change what I did, I want to have stepped in and stepped up, as I should have.
I want to put my arms around her now.
I look at the ring on my finger and I want Lucy to know what I know.
How good a good love can be.
‘You don’t need this.’ Luke tries to right himself; he’s a proud guy, a nice guy…
A good guy.
‘You should go and talk to him.’
‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘I haven’t got flowers…’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I say.
And then I say what does.
‘Lucy?’ I feel the tension zip his shoulders closed beneath my fingers. ‘Did something happen between you and Lucy?’ I ask. ‘Is that why you can’t face him?’
‘No,’ he says and I don’t believe him.
‘You can talk to me Luke.’ He can, I know a lot more about life than he thinks, than anyone thinks and he can talk to me.
‘I hated her,’ he says. ‘I really did.’
Yes, it’s a very thin line though and he tells me the moment that the line started to blur.
‘We were playing golf and he told me that he thought the marriage was in trouble, that Lucy was starting to lie and hide things. Well, she always had, he told me, but he thought that she might be cheating on him, or about to leave, that’s why he changed his living wishes, he wanted to make sure that everyone was provided for if Lucy left.’
She would have left him, unlike me. Lucy wouldn’t have put up with his shit forever.
People think I’m the strong one but actually, Lucy is.
Or was.
I’m a whole lot stronger now – it took me a long time and really I think it took his death to finally push me to get properly over things – yes, I know I’m slow, but I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, Lucy just does things in record time.
‘I still hated her but…’ He’s holding onto Daisy who sits quietly on his knee. ‘Jess called last night, we spoke for ages, she said it all started going wrong in the New Year.’
‘When you found out that Lucy might soon be free?’