Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 28

The first six months after IT has happened are the ideal time to get major dental work done. You don’t care what they do, you even welcome the pain as it’s so much milder than the other sort you’re experiencing. Yeah, bring it on killer driller . . . ~ Sue Ab

Six months.

Ugh.

Actually, despite howling like an unneutered dog living next door to a bitch on heat (not just grief-related: my friend went back to Newcastle on Sunday and Arsenal were thrashed by Manchester United 8-2), I’m hoping that my six-month low came at five months, although of course The Grief Monster could yet hiss in my ear, ‘Thought you’d got the six-month low out of the way early? You stupid, stupid woman!’ before rugby tackling me to the ground and kicking me when I’m already down.

Still.

Six months!

Despite usually being pretty upfront about the accident, today, I can barely bring myself to write: ‘It’s been six months since JS . . .’ Let’s just say it’s been six months since I wore The Bikini of Death.

Clearly, I am no swimwear model. On the internet, the bikini is modelled by a blonde poppet, but I’m told it looks fabulous on someone with olive skin and dark hair, someone exactly like me in fact, or at least that’s what my husband said when he saw me wearing it standing on the stairs in the hall one February evening, bathed in artificial light and with no slap on, rather than on a beach with a team of make-up artists and photographic experts. I laughed and told him he needed new glasses or we needed new lights, but secretly I was thrilled that upping my Pilates sessions (since abandoned) had paid off. I remember thinking that, at 46, perhaps this was the last holiday when I could wear a bikini without looking mutton. I didn’t want people on the beach making baaa-ing noises as I strolled to the water, barely able to breathe for holding my stomach in. Italian women might be able to pull off a two-piece with panache in their sixties, but they’re brought up to look stylish in swimwear. My early beach life was spent behind a windbreak at Whitley Bay, my teeth chattering with the cold. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mother in a swimsuit. I’m sure she had one, but she never took her coat off, not just because of the cold, but because she was too busy handing round tea and soup from a range of different-sized Thermos flasks.

I shall never wear a bikini again – perhaps a stylish one-piece around a pool nowhere near the sea – but never a bikini. The word ‘bikini’ is branded into my brain along with ‘CPR’, ‘ambulance’, ‘siren’, ‘blue’ and ‘dead’.

Six months.

Unbelievable!

It seems like yesterday and yet a lifetime ago.

I suspect that had I been in any fit state to think ahead on that dreadful Sunday morning, I might have guessed that six months down the line I would still be grieving, tearful and so on, but I doubt that I would have had any idea that amongst the constant sadness there would still be bouts of grief so searing, they take my breath away and leave me curled up in pain, or that I would still feel disorientated and disconnected. It seems to me the first few months were about surviving. Now they are about existing.

On 27th February, I had no idea what was in store for me. Six months later, these are just some of the things that I have discovered: That I can be blotchy-faced, red-eyed, gaunt and with zits so large they need their own postcode, yet people will still proclaim, ‘You’re looking really well!’

That I have just enough self-restraint not to punch someone straight in the mouth when they trill, ‘You’ll find someone else and build a new life,’ but not if they add the word ‘soon’ to that sentence.

That I still don’t believe people – even other widows or widowers – who tell me that one day I’ll feel happy again, not unless it’s drug-induced, straightjacket-wearing, manic happy.

That God doesn’t make bargains with people who plead: ‘Please let me die in the night and let someone who wants to live survive.’

That it’s easy to forget that I’ve put soup on the stove or started to run a bath, but impossible to dim the memory of my husband walking away from me into the sea.

That a dog is truly man’s best friend.

That Arsenal losing is even more dismal without someone special to discuss it with.

That finding my purse in the fridge and a can of dog food in my bag is perplexing, but as old walnut face sings, it’s not unusual.

That people who know where and how JS died will still say, ‘Perhaps going on holiday would do you good?’

That even if every fibre of my being wishes that I could spontaneously combust in Tesco, I never end up a pile of ashes in the chilled meal aisle, just a wreck of a woman clutching a chicken-korma-and-rice meal for one.

That so many of the jobs around the house that JS did and I worried about can be fixed by putting an advert on mybuilder.com – in exchange for a heart-stopping bill.

That strangers can be unbelievably kind.

That friends can be breathtakingly crass.

That strangers can become friends.

That widows can be incredibly competitive.

That it really wasn’t necessary to get the roof fixed, the windows cleaned, the Virgin engineer round, a woman to tidy the house and invite a friend for tea, all on the same day so soon after the funeral.

That when I sobbed as a teenager to Janis Ian’s ‘At Seventeen’, I would be sobbing to it at 47, but feeling a million times lonelier than I did back then.

That you can’t get away from watery metaphors about death and grieving: waves of emotion; tidal wave of grief; all at sea; drowning in a sea of grief; pulled under, etc. etc. etc, but that it can be quite amusing to see the horrified face of someone who realises they’ve just said, ‘I suppose you’ve either got to sink or swim at a time like this.’

That when Catherine Deneuve said after the age of 40 a woman must choose between her face or her figure, she had a choice. The Grim Reaper has taken that choice away from me.

How to change halogen lightbulbs.

That my cunning plan of committing a crime and being locked up in prison so that I could run away from my responsibilities, failed to take into account that I found the violence and sex scenes on ITV’s Bad Girls unsettling, or that MacBooks are banned in cells.

That 98% of my wardrobe either no longer fits or feels appropriate for my new life.

Just how much paperwork is involved when someone dies.

That often after laughing, I burst into tears, but rarely do I laugh after crying.

That QVC makes excellent wallpaper TV.

That playing Kamikaze Pedestrian doesn’t kill you, it just pisses off cyclists who have to swerve to avoid you.

That call centres in India are the invention of the devil.

That cooking for one is only fun if you know that you won’t be doing it night after lonely night.

The price of gas and electricity.

That when I go out I want to come home.

That when I’m home I want to go out.

That when friends are round, sometimes I want them to leave.

That when they leave, I want them to come back.

That I still can’t look at recent photographs of JS without feeling my heart is being ripped out without an anaesthetic.

That drinking alone isn’t sad, it’s vital.

That I don’t have as many true friends as I thought I had, but the ones I have I can never thank enough for their love and loyalty.

That if I meet someone in the street who looks like they have constipation, it’s almost certainly caused by their embarrassment at bumping in to me.

That I know JS would want me to be happy again, I just don’t know how to go about it.

That the number of condolence cards and offers of help bears no relation to the number of people still around now.

That if there are too many messages on the answerphone I feel hassled, but if there are none, I feel abandoned.

That life without my husband is hard, but it would be so much harder without the internet and the wonderful men and women I have met through it.

That looking at the photograph of The Hound sitting in my suitcase the night before we left for Barbados, still makes me unbelievably sad.

That I still can’t bear to unpack either of our suitcases.

That life goes on, and that orphan Annie was right when she screeched that the sun will still come out tomorrow, but the sun shines less brightly even on those days when it does shine, and I’m scared my life will always be this dark and cold.

But most of all, at this six-month mark, that I love and miss my husband, the man who thought I looked better in a bikini than a blonde, professional swimwear model.