Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 13

After Mark’s suicide, I had to go and identify his body. I made sure I was in an outfit that Mark had always said was his favourite. The funeral was a woodland burial (neither of us are of religious) and was just going to be twelve of us around the grave drinking champagne and telling stories, no officials to oversee things, just Mark’s trusted circle. In preparation of the funeral, I went out with a friend and I bought the loveliest dress: floor length and bright colours and a teal cardigan to go with it. It was important that it wasn’t black and that Mark would have approved – it was his mission to get me out of black. We do these things to cope and get through. Who cares what they are and who cares what other people say. ~ Emma S

In May 2007, I was in a beauty salon in east Kent having a pedicure. It’s the type of salon where people drop in not just for a Brazilian, but a gossip. That Saturday, instead of the usual small-town tittle-tattle, there was only one subject on everyone’s lips: the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann from the villa in which she was sleeping, whilst on holiday in Portugal with her family.

The unanimous verdict of the women around me was that Kate McCann was undoubtedly involved in the disappearance of her daughter.

The evidence of Mrs McCann’s guilt was overwhelming and based on two counts: firstly, she had gone out running whilst her daughter was still missing, and secondly, she had changed her earrings.

What sort of a woman could find the energy to keep fit not knowing whether her daughter was dead or alive? How could she even think about putting on jewellery or brushing her hair at a time like that?

None of them had lost a child, but if they had, they knew for a fact that they would be in bed under sedation, not careering around the Algarve in running shorts. They certainly wouldn’t be bothered about their appearance.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

I was reminded of this recently because I bought Kate McCann’s book, Madeleine; I had read an extract of the book in a newspaper where the McCanns talked about how valuable they found trauma counselling, and I wanted to read more about their experience. Kate McCann doesn’t write about her earrings, but she does talk about going running as a way of coping. But even if she had changed her jewellery, what did that prove?

In my experience, absolutely nothing.

The Monday after my husband’s Sunday morning accident, I went back to the hospital to register his death. The day before I had been wearing a bikini, flip flops and carrying a beach bag. I couldn’t help my outfit, but it all felt so wrong, so undignified. JS was an elegantly understated man who looked good in casual clothes, but was really more at home in the formality of a jacket and tie. Dead or alive, he deserved dressing up for. I put on a short, flippy dress that I had brought to wear to dinner, all the jewellery I had with me, some blusher; a slick of Bobbi Brown ‘Buff’ lipgloss and my pretty patent-leather ballet pumps.

With shaky legs and accompanied by the undertaker, I walked along those hot sticky corridors of the administration wing in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, towards the woman sitting at the desk who needed my signature confirming my husband had died. My world had ended. My life felt over. My heart was shattered. But to anyone looking at me, blinged-up and made-up, I probably looked as if I was ready for a good time.

Those women judging Kate McCann’s innocence or guilt on how she behaved and what she wore hadn’t got a clue. I suspected that the days when Mrs McCann was so physically sick and drained she couldn’t even get in the shower or change her clothes were yet to come, as they were yet to come for me.