Friday 19 April 2013 (continued)
Five years. Has it really been five years? To start with it was just a question of getting through the day. Thankfully, Mabel was too little to know anything about it, bu
t, oh, the flashbacks to Billy, running all through the house saying, ‘I lost Dada!’ Jeremy and Magda at the door, a policeman behind them, the look on their faces. Running instinctively to the children, holding them both to me in terror: ‘What’s wrong, Mummy? What’s wrong?’ Government people in the living room, someone accidentally turning on the news, Mark’s face on the television with a caption:
Mark Darcy 1956–2008
The memories are a blur. Friends, family, surrounding me like a womb, Mark’s lawyer friends sorting everything, the will, the death duties, unbelievable, like a film that was going to stop. The dreams, with Mark still in them. The mornings, waking at 5 a.m., washed clean by sleep for a split second, thinking everything was the same, then remembering: poleaxed by pain, as though a great stake was ramming me to the bed, straight through the heart, unable to move in case I disturbed the pain and it spread, knowing that in half an hour the children would be awake and I’d be on: nappies, bottles, trying to pretend it was OK, or at least keep things together till help arrived and I could go off and howl in the bathroom, then put some mascara on and brace up again.
But the thing about having kids is: you can’t go to pieces; you just have to keep going. KBO: Keep Buggering On. The army of bereavement counsellors and therapists helped with Billy and later Mabel: ‘manageable versions of the truth’, ‘honesty’, ‘talking’, ‘no secrets’, a ‘secure base’ from which to deal with it. But for the soidisant ‘secure base’ – i.e. (try not to laugh) me – it was different.
The main thing I remember from those sessions was, bottom line: ‘Can you survive?’ There wasn’t any choice. All those thoughts that crowded in – our last moment together, the feel of Mark’s suit against my skin, me in my nightie, the unknowing last kiss goodbye, trying to recapture the look in his eye, the ring at the doorbell, the faces on the doorstep, the thoughts, ‘I never . . .’ ‘If only . . .’, they had to be blocked out. The carefully orchestrated grieving process, watched over by experts with soft voices, and caring upside-down smiles, was less helpful than figuring out how to change a nappy whilst simultaneously microwaving a fish finger. Just keeping the ship afloat, if not exactly upright, was, I thought, 90 per cent of the battle. Mark had everything arranged: financial details, insurance policies. We got out of the big house full of memories in Holland Park, and into our little house in Chalk Farm. School fees, home, bills, income, all practical matters perfectly taken care of: no need to work now, just Mabel and Billy – my miniature Mark – all I had left of him to keep alive, and to keep me alive. A mother, a widow, putting one foot in front of the other. But inside I was an empty shell, devastated, no longer me.
By the time four years had gone by, however, the friends were not having it.
PART ONE
ONE YEAR AGO . . .
These are the extracts from last year’s diary, starting exactly one year ago, four years after Mark died, which show how I got myself into the current mess.
2012 DIARY
Thursday 19 April 2012
175lb, alcohol units 4 (nice), calories 2822 (but better eating real food in club than bits of old cheese and fish fingers at home), possibility of having or desire to have sex ever again 0.
‘She HAS to get laid,’ said Talitha firmly, sipping a vodka martini and glancing alarmingly around Shoreditch House for candidates.
It was one of our semi-regular evenings which Talitha, Tom and Jude insist I attend, in an effort to ‘Get Me Out’, rather like taking Granny to the seaside.
‘She does,’ said Tom. ‘Did I tell you, I got a suite at the Chedi in Chiang Mai for only two hundred quid a night on LateRooms.com. There was a Junior Suite for 179 on Expedia but it didn’t have a terrace.’
Tom, in later life, has become increasingly obsessed with boutique-hotel holidays and trying to make us tailor our lifestyles to fit in with Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog.
‘Tom, shut up,’ murmured Jude, looking up from her iPhone, where she was on DatingSingleDoctors. ‘This is serious. We have to do something. She’s become a Born-Again Virgin.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘It’s a total impossibility. I don’t want anyone else. And anyway, even if I did, which I don’t, I’m non-viable, completely asexual and no one will ever fancy me again, ever, ever, ever.’
I stared at my stomach, bulging under my black top. It was true. I had become a Born-Again Virgin. The trouble with the modern world is that you are bombarded with images of sex and sexuality all the time – the hand on the bum on the billboard, the couples smooching on the beach in the Sandals ad, real-life couples entwined in the park, condoms by the till in the chemist – a whole wonderful magical world of sex, which you no longer belong to and never will again.
‘I’m not going to fight it, it’s just part of being a widow and the process of turning into a little old lady,’ I said melodramatically, hoping they would all immediately insist I was Penelope Cruz or Scarlett Johansson.
‘Oh, darling, don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ said Talitha, summoning the waiter for another cocktail. ‘You probably do need to lose a bit of weight, and get some Botox and do something with your hair, but—’
‘Botox?’ I said indignantly.
‘Oh God,’ Jude suddenly burst out. ‘This guy isn’t a doctor. He was on DanceLoverDating. It’s the same photo!’
‘Maybe he’s a doctor who’s also a dance lover and just covering all the bases?’ I encouraged.
‘Jude, shut up,’ said Tom. ‘You are lost in a morass of nebulous cyber presences, most of whom don’t exist and who simply turn each other on and off randomly at will.’
‘Botox can kill you,’ I said darkly. ‘It’s botulism. It comes from cows.’
‘So what? Better to die of Botox than die of loneliness because you’re so wrinkly.’
‘For God’s sake, shut up, Talitha,’ said Tom.