When Paula arrived home from her visit to the café and pushed open her front door, she registered that a rather large bundle of mail was building up behind it. She closed the door behind her and stared at the pile of envelopes on the floor, as if doing so might magically sort them into separate piles – those she should pay attention to and those she should bin.
She was tempted to just pick the lot up and throw it away. Trouble was, she often received mail regarding the charities she was attached to so she would have to keep it and look through it. But some other time.
She nudged the nearest one with her boot. It displayed the logo of a well-known optician on the front. She couldn’t even be bothered to bend down and pick them all up.
Gin.
That was the medicine that was required.
In the kitchen she threw her bag and her phone on top of the island.
Then she found a glass, got some ice from the dispenser at the front of the giant black fridge-freezer that used to tickle Thomas so much. Ice clinking, she located the bottle and poured herself a generous measure, added some tonic and sipped.
Getting up onto a stool she hunched forwards over the glass of gin, momentarily overwhelmed by a weight of loneliness. She looked around the kitchen. So much space. This room had been her pride and joy when they first moved in. Now, looking around it all left her with was dull ache and souring in her jaw as if she’d eaten something that had gone off.
She took another sip of her gin.
She hadn’t turned to drink when Christopher died and it certainly wasn’t going to happen now. But still.
Another sip.
Remembering that she had still to hear back from Joe, she picked up her phone. Nothing.
Placing the phone beside her glass, she contemplated topping her drink up. But then she heard herself asking Joe about his drinking when they were last in the sacristy, and pushed the glass away from her. She climbed off the stool, made her way over to the coffee machine and switched it on.
She looked at the clock on the oven. It read 20:15 in blue light. If she drank coffee at this time, she’d be up all night. She’d be up all night anyway.
A full cup of coffee warming her hand, she made her way through to the lounge, switched on the TV and curled up against one end of the sofa. A thought of what had happened the last time she’d been in here hit her – an image of Bill half naked. She cringed away from it. Thomas’s brother, naked and aroused. What was she thinking? It would be too easy to blame the booze and she hated it when other people shunned responsibility for their actions. It was simple: she shouldn’t have let it happen.
She ran over that evening with Bill and what happened afterwards. Was there anything she could have done to stop it? Who was her big brother-in-law anyway? Was his talk of always fancying her just a line? Did he want the notch on his mental bedpost? Some sort of sick ‘I slept with my brother’s wife’ thing? He had been rude and dismissive to her all these years, after all. Did he really love her, or was he just being an idiot? Whatever he was, the thought of being alone with him ever again made her feel decidedly uneasy.
Shame made her retreat from her thoughts and she studied what was happening on the TV as if that might scour her brain. Someone was singing. Well, trying to. They did manage to hit a few of the notes to be fair. People behind a desk looked on in judgement.
She turned it over to the news. Hate crimes were up. A woman in a headscarf was recounting how she was abused almost every time she left the house.
Turning the TV off, she stared out of the window. It wouldn’t matter what she looked at in this mood. She was beyond distraction.
Her phone rang in the background. Joe? It had to be. He was the only person who would call her at this time of night. He must be phoning to tell her that he was okay. Just the ringing tone was good enough for her – the effort required in going through to the kitchen for her phone was temporarily beyond her.
The phone stopped ringing. She sighed with relief.
But then it started again. So it wasn’t Joe, she thought, he was always able to take no for an answer.
‘Oh, bugger off,’ she shouted through to it. ‘Whoever you are, bugger off.’
It stopped.
And started up again.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled through to the kitchen. By the time she arrived it had stopped again.
Then it bleeped a text alert. With a sharp shock, she saw it was from Daphne. She grimaced:
Need to talk to you about Bill. I’m REALLY worried. Come over to mine now? PLEASE?
Oh, Christ, she thought. Could this be anything to do with their brief moment of…?
She thought about just going to bed, but if she did that this text would haunt her through the night. What did Daphne know? Had Bill told her? What kind of state was he in now?
Actions had consequences, she thought. It was time to acknowledge hers.