‘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.