I was on my side, facing the window.
The sound of a bicycle bell.
I opened my eyes and winced. A slight crack in the curtains, a shaft of sunlight crossing my face.
I turned over.
On other days I deleted Lou’s messages and I dumped Amelia over Instagram, imagining her crying into a large, oversized cocktail. And dumping her solidified the thoughts that had been building inside me for months. The reason I’d wanted the meeting with Linda. That night Dan died in the kitchen ignoring me as I simmered with rage, sploshing red wine around as I ranted.
The next morning I headed straight into work, bursting in on them in Linda’s filthy office after they’d sent Jas out for the bloody pods.
“Gemma,” Arthur said, his voice oily with condescension.
“It’s Emma,” I rounded on him. “Which you should know being that I’ve worked here for seven years. Seven fucking years, Arthur.”
Linda made a strange squawking noise, fluttering already to appease her client. “Emma, this is unacceptable!”
“No, Linda.” I rounded on her, “No, do you know what’s unacceptable? You sitting there listening to this hideous misogynist! How can you represent this guy? He’s disgusting. We should have got rid of him after that bullying claim, someone who was finally brave enough to break the silence about him. And we swept it all away. We’re a joke for keeping him on, worse, because it’s not actually funny.”
Linda was so shocked she simply sat there and stared at me as I warmed to my theme. “I was going to ask for a pay rise, a role for Jas, who by the way you barely notice unless she hasn’t replaced the handwash or fixed your fucking printer, but who has worked tirelessly to discover new ways of making you money. But I don’t want a pay rise, or a new role for Jas, or freedom over my own list. I want out. I want to leave and take my clients with me. And because your filing system is a joke and you don’t believe in paper I’ve checked and I can. So I will.”
Linda was spluttering now; Arthur had stood to defend her honor. “This is the tragedy of hiring women, Linda. So emotional.” The office was cramped; books looked to be teetering over us all, ready to bury us.
“It’s not being emotional, it’s being a decent human being, you selfish, corduroy-wearing prick. And do you know what,” I added, spinning around, “we have to be nice to you because we’re professionals. But there is no justice in the world when your shitty, lazy books full of bad tropes and clunky exposition that you refuse to edit ‘because the work is done’ are still selling.”
“Emma, apologize to Mr. Chumley!”
“Absolutely no way. I quit. And also,” I said, “you better start to learn how to use your printer because I will be taking Jas with me.” I finished, leaving them both, mouths gaping. Jas stood frozen in the doorway, eyes round, a box of coffee pods hanging loosely by her side.
“My books do not have clunky exposition . . .”
Jas followed me out without a sound. That night I don’t know how Dan died because I stayed out by myself, ignoring his increasingly frantic calls and messages.
I was on my side, facing the window.
The sound of a bicycle bell.
I opened my eyes and winced. A slight crack in the curtains, a shaft of sunlight crossing my face.
I turned over.
On one of the very worst days when messaging my parents was not enough, because they never gave me the satisfaction of replying, I phoned them.
Mum answered the call with a puzzled expression on her face as she squinted at the screen from their balcony in Valencia.
“Emma,” she spoke over her shoulder, “it’s Emma.” Turning back to the screen she said, “Your father is doing the crossword.”
Apparently enough of a reason not to walk the few steps to the phone and speak to his only child. “Could you put me on speaker, please?”
“And I can’t be too long,” she added, just to remind me she’d rather not be on the call either.
“This won’t take long.”
“Is this about Christmas?” my mother continued, oblivious to my dangerous tone. “We’ll be out here. Did we not say?”
“You didn’t,” I said, my nails biting into my skin. Years of trying to act nonchalantly, enacting Dan’s advice, in the hope that that approach might work, a hard habit to break. I broke it.
“You didn’t say.” I took a breath, “You never say. You don’t even think about it, Mum.”
“There’s no need to be so difficult about it, Emma, it’s only one day in the year.”
“It’s not, Mum, for some people it’s not just another day. Some people want to see their grandchildren over Christmas, think it’s sad if they don’t—”
“Well, if we could be in two places at once,” Mum bristled.
“Then I’d imagine you’d choose Spain and somewhere else. Anywhere else. Because you never choose us.” I could feel my throat thicken but pushed on, needing to say this stuff, to tell them. “You know you have two grandchildren? They’re growing up so quickly and they barely know you, and maybe one day they’ll never want to know you. You don’t know Dan.”
Mum’s mouth had puckered as I ranted.
I gripped the phone in my hand. “You don’t know me. You show no fucking interest in my life, my family, my work, my friends.”
“Emma,” Mum finally seemed to react. “This is not called for!”
“It is called for. I’m done, Mum. I’m done, done, done.”
A noise behind her. “Emma, this is your father,” seeing his face appear over Mum’s shoulders, his bifocals pushed up on his forehead. “This is no way to speak to your mother.”
“I wish I wasn’t speaking to either of you like this,” I shouted, finally breaking down, finally allowing the tears to flow. “Do you think I want to feel like this? That the two people who were meant to love me never noticed me? I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be needed because ultimately I thought no one ever would. Well, I am needed and loved and liked and I need you both to know that is not because of anything you two did for me. Happy bloody Christmas,” I finished, and I pressed “End call,” leaving them both gaping at the screen. That night Dan died next to me in our bed, my hand over his heart as he took his last breath.
It was on days like that one that I missed Hattie the most. Sometimes I wrote messages to her: long, rambling messages I then deleted. I missed her, I hated her, I hated this. I couldn’t even tell her the hell I was living in. When my missing her overwhelmed the rest I cried. I felt like I’d lost both of them that night, the two people I loved best. But no matter how much I missed her, I couldn’t forgive her, couldn’t forget that without her recklessness I wouldn’t be stuck in this endless loop where the very worst thing happened to Dan, to my children, to me, again and again and again.