What Goes Around...

by Carol Marinelli

  And if Gloria says that it’s fine, then it must be.

  CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

  ‘I haven’t seen you for a while.’ Denise says.

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain. Just come and see me when you feel it might help.’

  It’s good to know that she’s there.

  ‘How’s Charlotte?’ Denise asks.

  ‘Doing well,’ I smile as I say it. ‘She’s going to be a bridesmaid,’ I tell Denise. ‘And she’s got a new puppy. She has her moments.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Denise says. ‘That you recognise that she has her moments.’

  I nod, because otherwise Charlotte would be having her moments without me.

  We talk about how well I’m doing, that I’m off my medication now, and no, I’m not dancing naked in the street or having random sex with the postman.

  ‘I feel guilty though,’ I say and then I roll my eyes at myself, because every one who enters this room must say that. ‘I feel guilty that I’ve sat in this room and I trashed him so many times. He did an awful lot of bad things and there were some terrible times but I never told you how funny he was, how kind he could be.’ I’m starting to cry. ‘How good he was with Charlotte.’

  ‘And?’ Denise prompts but I just sit there. ‘And?’ She asks again.

  ‘How good he was with me at times.’ I sit there still for a very long time, I don’t cry, I just sit there and I remember some of the good times.

  I really don’t understand. By all accounts we had a terrible marriage, he cheated all the time and my perfect life was actually a mess, I was falling apart at the seams.

  I just don’t understand how I can suddenly decide now that I loved him, I tell Denise and I tell her a bit more of the truth.

  ‘I was thinking of having an affair.’

  I remember driving around with no knickers on and a mug in my bag and I was so cross, so, so cross and I wanted someone who wanted me.

  I frown as I try to remember how I felt. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it, I hadn’t properly thought about it, but I was holding back on him. I wasn’t telling him things and he knew it. He told a very close friend that he thought I was, but I wasn’t. I think I was…’ I don’t know the words.

  ‘Preparing to leave?’ Denise offers and I nod, but then I shake my head. ‘I don’t think it was as straightforward as that.’

  ‘The end of a marriage never is.’ Denise says gently. ‘People start to disengage, pull back, people grow up…’ I frown. ‘Sometimes people grow out of each other and, had he not died…’

  Yes, I think I’d have left him.

  I think I was starting to.

  I just didn’t know it at the time.

  We talk some more.

  It turns out Dr Patel was right - I was grieving.

  Maybe I still am.

  Not just my husband, but also my marriage, my own childhood and the perfect world I had so badly wanted for Charlotte.

  I feel so superficial, I tell Denise, that I stayed for a house. ‘How shallow is that?’

  ‘Lucy.’ Denise’s voice is practical. ‘You said that you stayed for the house, for the pony, for Charlotte.’

  ‘I did.’ I nod.

  ‘What was he like with Charlotte?’

  ‘Always on her side!’ I roll my eyes. ‘She could wrap him around her little finger.’

  ‘So could you.’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I mean, she could always win him around, he was always telling her how stunning she was, how he could never say “no” to her…’ and then I stop talking and I look at my husband and the relationship we had.

  I’m sitting on his knee and I’m looking into the only eyes, apart from Charlotte’s, that I can stand to look into. I’m teasing him and talking him around and I know that I’ll get my way.

  Oh, he might have thought that he was getting his way with me too, but there was no way I would have got in that pool in Portugal.

  I don’t think.

  Or perhaps I might have and that would have been the end of us.

  I don’t know.

  But I do know how we were.

  I got to play house.

  I got to dress up.

  I got all the nice things that I never had in my childhood.

  I got to be one of his girls

  I didn’t just stay for Charlotte.

  I stayed for me.

  But, as Denise explains to me, as every child changes, as every young adult yearns to stretch their wings, I was starting to grow up, I was getting ready to leave.

  I grew up with him.

  And I’m grown up now without.

  CHAPTER SIXTY SIX

  

  I’ve tried to make this phone call so many times.

  I introduce myself and I am met with silence.

  ‘I was wondering if we could meet – for a coffee perhaps…’ Still there is silence. ‘I’ve got so many questions and I thought you might have some too.’ I hear a sharp intake of breath and I quickly squeeze some words in. ‘I know we can never be friends, I just really need to talk to you.’ I don’t know what to say now, I’m about to give in when finally, finally, she speaks.

  ‘Okay.’ There’s another long stretch of silence and then she suggests that we meet for a drink.

  Today.

  I’m relieved that it’s today, because I know if we postpone this, then one of us will change our minds, one of us will find an excuse not to go.

  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?’

  He closes his eyes and nods. ‘I haven’t been carrying a torch for her all this time. I hated her for what she did to you, but yes, that night on the Thames I was hoping for more than a shag.’ Then he looks at me. ‘Why did he have to die?’

  Luke tells me how it nearly killed him to watch Lucy falling apart and not be properly able to step in. How proud he felt when she got all her shit together, how guilty he felt for thinking too much about her.

  ‘How long has it been going on?’ I ask and I’m cross for Jess but then I frown when he shakes his hea
d, when still he insists…

  ‘Nothing’s happened. I did everything I could to keep away.’

  I don’t believe him.

  ‘I tried once.’

  And then I do.

  Believe him, I mean.

  Nothing has happened.

  ‘I tried a few months ago, after Jess and I had broken up but Lucy told me to fuck off,’ Luke explains. ‘Told me that she’d never do that to her friend and I got a slap,’ he lifts his head. ‘She’s not interested.’

  She is.

  I know she is.

  I know that this is love.

  And I want Luke to have it, I want Luke to be happy, I’m not sure that he ever has been, properly happy I mean.

  ‘You need to speak to Lucy.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose our friendship. I don’t want to make things awkward between us again, because that wouldn’t be fair on Charlotte. I know Lucy will be okay now,’ Luke says. ‘I know that she will. And I know she’s a bit crazy, but she’s…’ he shakes his head. ‘I just hate the thought of her and Charlotte rattling along in the world without me.’

  ‘Have you told her how you feel, Luke?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he says. ‘I tried to kiss her.’

  Men!

  ‘Go to the cemetery,’ I tell him, because I think Luke feels he needs his permission on this. ‘You need to speak to him.’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I have to go back to the office.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going about one.’ He gives me a kiss on the cheek and says that he’ll think about it.

  I’ve a feeling I’m meddling.

  But I sit there in my living room and, despite all that’s gone before, despite evidence to the contrary - I don’t just believe what Luke told me.

  I’m starting to believe in Lucy.

  CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT

  

  I'm incredibly nervous walking in.

  I look around the pub but I don't have to look for long. She's sitting at the seat where I used to sit with him and I know then he must've brought her here to.

  I'm not quite ready to go over. I give her a nod. I can see that she's got a drink and I walk over to the bar and I go to order a glass of wine but I order a soda water – I think I might need it.