She clears her throat and carries on. ‘It might be fun to do something celebratory. I know you have a lot on your plate. Your mother-in-law being so ill, the pressure Simon’s under at work.’
I flash her a look that could freeze breath. ‘What do you know about his work?’
‘Luke made me go along to some corporate dinner the other week. Simon’s name came up amongst the guests there. They just mentioned that…’ she loses her confidence and trails off.
‘What?’ I demand hotly.
‘Well, his workload seems to be getting on top of him. They weren’t gossiping. Just saying,’ she adds hurriedly. Connie blushes. They, whoever they are, clearly were gossiping.
I need this conversation to stop. I need to put an end to this stupid idea of hers. I shake my head. ‘I’ll come to your party, we both will, but we can’t possibly renew our vows.’
‘I just thought it would be—’
‘No, Connie. Absolutely not.’ I’m rarely this forceful. Usually I don’t have it in me to argue with anyone other than Simon. Not the nurses in my mother-in-law’s care home, not the whingy parents of my pupils, not even the annoying cold callers that ring to ask if I’ve been in an accident recently, certainly not Connie who is wily and persuasive. She seems startled by my determination but, to my relief, she nods.
‘OK, I understand.’ She pauses and glances at Millie. ‘But you know if there’s anything we can ever do.’
‘There isn’t,’ I state, plainly.
‘If you ever need to talk.’
‘I don’t.’ I glare at her. I need her to drop this now.
On the whole, my friends and family seem prepared to look in the other direction when there’s evidence that Simon drinks too much. That he’s a functioning alcoholic. Oh yes, I know the label, I just don’t see what it achieves in bandying it around. Of course, I’ve asked him to get help; yes, I’d like him to go to a doctor, a counsellor, but he won’t. So what is there to discuss? My friends are understandably embarrassed, or at least they know I am, and in a truly British way, they don’t want to make a fuss. We’ve known each other since we were students. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t seen every other one of us totally plastered at some point or other, so to date they’ve made excuses for my husband. They laugh when he falls asleep at the dinner table or slips on their front step as we leave their home. As though it’s all one big joke. As though he is a big joke. This has suited me. I don’t know what to do to get him to stop drinking, this is a problem I can’t solve so I’ve been happy enough to ignore it. I thought, hoped, that one day he’d wake up and announce that the hangovers were no longer worth it, that he was going to buy a Fitbit and a bike and start getting healthy, that’s what most middle aged men do. But he hasn’t. Few of my friends get seriously drunk anymore, most abstain from drinking through the week and, other than Simon, I don’t know anyone who drinks through the day.
Now, I no longer know what I want from my family and friends. Do I really still want them to politely look away, to refuse to acknowledge what they evidently see? I don’t know how to ask for help or even accept it when it’s being offered up, as it clearly is by Connie, right now. Sometimes it feels like Simon and I are on a boat, an oar-less boat that’s drifting further and further out to sea. My sister and my friends are stood on the shore, watching us, aware we are in deep and dangerous waters but doing nothing other than waving at us; friendly but ineffectual. If Connie holds my gaze for a moment more I might just tell her. Simon isn’t coping. I’m not coping.
She shrugs, the moment vanishes. Lost. Well she offered. She can tell herself, and Luke too no doubt, that she’s done the right thing. She can congratulate herself on being a good friend without having the awkwardness of me telling her just how bad things are. She brightens up, almost instantly, nothing much depresses her for long. ‘But you’ll come, right? That’s great news. You haven’t been to one of my parties for ages. I’ll absolutely mention that it’s your special day in my speech.’
I don’t say anything, and she takes that for agreement. She often does. I’ll think of an excuse to get out of the party later. I slurp down my iced latte and say, ‘Look, we’ve got to go.’ I stand up, banging my leg into the small table in my haste. It shudders and the glasses rattle on their unnecessary saucers. The women on the table next to ours stare at me. I wonder whether I’ve spoken too loudly, sometimes I don’t judge those things as well as I ought to, not if I’m stressed. I use my school teacher voice, when really that should be limited to the classroom of eleven-year-olds.
Connie looks crestfallen. ‘Don’t you want to stay and make some plans? Talk about menus and things?’
‘It’s not really my forte, I’m sure whatever you decide it will be wonderful,’ I garble. ‘Millie, come along now, Daddy will be wondering where we are.’
This is unlikely, but Simon isn’t the only one who is a bloody liar.
Sunday, 26th June 2016
Simon hated visiting his mother. He thought it was a waste of time. She often didn’t know who he was and, even if she did seem to temporarily recognise him, she forgets that they’d seen one another within an hour of his visit. But Daisy was adamant. She was religious about it. She visited every Wednesday after school and insisted that they all visit every Sunday. She said it was their duty. It was the right thing to do. She argued that even if Elsie’s relief was only temporary, she was cheered while they were there. This wasn’t always true, sometimes Simon’s mother just cried when they visited. Or swore, cussed at them in a way that would make a sailor blush and made Millie giggle inappropriately. Daisy always took flowers, which Millie liked to present to her grandmother with a little over-the-top flourish. Once Simon’s mother tried to eat the flowers. Millie laughed at that too, she thought her grandmother was being deliberately funny. Daisy never took chocolates; chocolate messed with Elsie’s digestive system. Daisy said that dealing with the aftermath wasn’t pretty.
Simon thought that it was a depressing hellhole, the care home. He understood that they tried, he wasn’t saying otherwise. The staff were friendly enough, and no doubt dedicated, conscientious, blah blah blah. But in the end, all he could see was an over-heated institution, where people went to die. You couldn’t polish that turd.
His father had died of a heart attack just a few years after Daisy and Simon married. At the time, his dad being cut down before he’d even retired, seemed like a tragedy. Now, Simon had redefined what tragic was.
‘Hey, do you remember that game show on TV?’ he asked.
‘Which game show?’ Daisy did not quite manage to hold in her sigh of frustration. She didn’t like his non sequential thoughts, his musings. She called them ramblings.
‘The one where people would carry buckets of water over greasy poles or rolling logs, and others would interfere, try to knock contestants off balance by squirting water or throwing custard pies. What was it called?’ Simon was excited by this thought. He really wanted to know