by Julie Croft
impassive and sympathetic on visits, but I could see she despised me for having ruined a promising career in medicine, as she’d been dismissed once the word had reached Boston. I instinctively knew I’d never see Terry again: he wouldn’t come to visit me in prison and only relay through Penny the steps he was taking to sell everything we possessed in order to pay off Harriet and then he’d disappear, fade away and never come back.
Everything ached as I pumped. I had a rough stone in my chest that stopped me from breathing with a regular rhythm and I felt I was wearing a crash helmet two sizes too small for me. When I’d finally run out of the stamina to pump any more, I practically fell off the machine and collapsed onto the floor, allowing myself to sob with huge, throat-ripping howls until I didn’t have the strength to even whine.
By the time I’d clawed my way down the stairs and into the bedroom, it was almost ten o’clock. I made an attempt to trundle to the shower but just didn’t have the energy, so I pulled the duvet back and wrapped myself up in it and fell asleep. Thankfully, it was a dreamless sleep brought on by sheer exhaustion, and I woke up at three. I still felt like a luke-warm dog turd, though.
I grabbed the control from the night stand and flicked the TV on and looked for something to watch, but nothing seemed interesting. I plumped for the National Geographic channel, hoping to find a soothing documentary about polar bears or something, but it was running a documentary on British people who’d been imprisoned abroad and their harrowing experiences. I jabbed at the off button and went to shower.
Once I’d showered, I lay on the bed clad in a pair of flannel Snoopy pyjamas that Penny had left behind, and looked at my phone. There were over fifty texts registered, but I just couldn’t punish myself any more by reading them. I turned the phone off and chucked it into the bedside table drawer, then lay there zapping until I heard Terry come home. He didn’t come up to see me but I could hear him rummaging about in the kitchen, opening the fridge and cupboard doors, turning on the microwave and clinking plates and glasses about.
About twenty minutes later, he came up to me with a tray of food and a bottle of Pinot. He’d microwaved a packet of sweet and sour pork, and he laid the tray at the foot of the bed and walked out without so much as a look in my direction.
I’d been able to keep my mind off all the Catwalk thing quite well after I’d pumped it out of my system, but Terry’s icy attitude dropped the stone back into the middle of my ribcage and the itch under the skin was back. I called out to his back and he turned round to look at me, but he stayed just outside the bedroom door.
I struggled to keep my voice from cracking, as I hadn’t realised how sore my throat was after the morning’s sobbing until then. “Wasn’t Maggie supposed to come in today?” I tried a little small-talk to break the iceberg that floated between us.
“She’s been off sick for about ten days.” He informed me as he leaned in the doorway. “She’s had another bad attack of lumbago.”
“Ah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say and Terry wasn’t in a chatty mood, so he pushed himself off the doorframe and started to move away. I wanted him to hang about just a little longer, though.
“Do you want a divorce, Terry?” I blurted out to his retreating back, which stopped him in his tracks and he turned to me again. “If you do, I won’t put up a fight. It might be better to do it as quickly as possible in case this Harriet business gets ugly, and you might just be able to save the house. You know, maybe we should put it in your name or something.”
He stared at me as if he didn’t understand why I’d said what I’d said. “Jill, I don’t want a divorce. I love you; always have and always will.” He turned and walked away. “I just don’t like you very much at the moment, but it will pass.” He said over his shoulder. “It always does.”
I don’t know how many days went by. I lost track of time completely.
I would wake up around five and zap at the TV until Terry brought up my tea and toast, then after he went to work I’d pump on the elliptic machine until I fell off, cry a bit, roll up in the duvet and sleep, wake up, have a shower and pull on the same pyjamas, and then zap at the TV again until Terry came home. I left the phone in the drawer and simply pretended mobiles had never been invented, and the land line never once rang because very few people had my home number, thank God.
My work schedule would pop into mind quite often, though, and I’d fret about who had taken over my post and how they were coping. This time of year was especially complicated and a lot of phone calls and organising had to be done. The most popular models could get cross-booked if you weren’t on your toes, the caterers and lighting companies needed a schedule sheet, the make-up artists and hairdressers had to be booked; the list was endless. If Harriet was doing the job, I was absolutely sure that she’d bugger it up as she’d cross-book her own bloody lunch dates. And, if Janine was doing the work, she would definitely screw it up! She’d misdial numbers as she couldn’t see the bloody phone under those gigantic boobs and…
‘Oh, stop it girl. It’s not your problem and if they bugger it all up, it’s their stuff to deal with.’
That was true, but it worried me like hell that so many years of hard slog could be blown in a week.
Oh, God! I needed to get back to the office so bloody badly!
Terry, for his part, carried out his own particular ritual. I would hear him potter about as soon as he walked in, putting the washing machine on or vacuuming downstairs, then he’d microwave something and bring it up to me with the usual bottle of wine. I’d drink more than I’d eat and he’d take the tray away with his typical fatherly look of disapproval, but we hardly said a word to each other, apart from one evening that he told me he’d called Penny from the office.
“I told her you’d been fired.” He said, matter-of-factly, as if he’d told her I had a sore bloody thumb. “She was very upset for you, and she said that you could call her whenever you felt up to a chat.” He left before I could ask how she was or what else they’d talked about.
I wondered if he’d ever like me again.
I smoked at least a packet a day, and didn’t even bother to open the bedroom windows. I moved from the bedroom to the attic, to the bedroom, to the shower and back to the bedroom. I lived in gym gear or the same Snoopy flannel pyjamas, and I didn’t have to go out for anything as luckily I’d bought a carton of cigarettes the Friday before I got fired. I only contemplated throwing on a tracksuit to go down to the local newsagent to buy more cigarettes the morning I realised I was down to my last packet.
Luckily, Jackie called the land line that morning. Great, I thought, she can get me the cigarettes.
When Jackie arrived and I took her into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, I got a good look at the kitchen for the first time in ages. God, it was disgusting! It looked as if someone had cooked enough packet meals for the 23rd Regiment and hadn’t bothered to clean up afterwards. Terry had purposefully left it like that to see what I’d do! Well, I wasn’t going to do a bloody thing! It was obvious he wanted me to do something useful now I wasn’t working, and his idea of ‘useful’ was the fucking housework. Well, if he thought I was going to be Maggie’s substitute, he had another think coming!
Jackie didn’t know what was going on, and I still couldn’t tell her. She’d always looked up to me, in a way, as I’d gone to university and made a success of myself. She’d left school before she took her ‘A’ Levels and did a course in hairdressing at the polytechnic, and lived a bit of a wild life. While I was busy building up my career, she was out to pubs and discos and, in all honesty, sleeping with every guy she could wrap her legs around. I’d met Terry into my second year at university and he’d been my first and only real boyfriend, but by the time Jackie met Bob, she was almost thirty and ready to settle down. She fell pregnant about a month after their wedding and she left the hair salon and she’s never looked back. She loves being a mum and housewife, and she absolutely dotes on Bob and the kids. If only he felt the same about her, th
e randy bastard.
I get on quite well with Richard, Bob’s brother and partner in their estate agency, and at one party he’d had a little too much to drink and told me all about Bob and Marbella. He’s had, according to Richard, a string of mistresses and rents a luxury apartment in Puerto Banus. He wines and dines in the best restaurants and mixes with a rather dubious crowd of so-called businessmen and local politicians. Thanks to his connections, both he and Richard had made a lot of money out of his collaboration and investments in construction with these people. Well, that’s what Richard told me, but I’d never seen any evidence of cash flowing like the Ganges in Jackie’s house.
I got the idea that Richard worried about exactly what goes on over in Marbella. Bob kept him in the dark, he confided, about a lot of the agreements and contracts, and he certainly kept Jackie completely blindfolded.
Whenever she’s gone over to Spain with Bob, she comes back and tells me he lives in a humble little apartment in a holiday complex in Benalmadena. He never takes her for a meal, not even a drink, and they don’t go anywhere near Puerto Banus because after what Richard had told me I asked her. I know that, when Chloe was five Jackie suggested they settle in Spain