I know what my problem is. Call my problem X and solve it. Too many Xs for a simple equation: quadruple equation either.
Ex-virgin, ex-pop star, ex-wife, ex-socialite, ex-convent girl, ex-everything, ex-everyone, that’s me: primarily ex-daughter of a radio ham. Daddy, Daddy, speak to me! I can’t, my darling, my angel, I’m saving ships at sea. What ships, Daddy, what sea? I don’t know, my darling, my angel, but sooner or later, if I search the airwaves long enough, I’ll rescue someone, somewhere, and you’ll be proud of me. In the meantime, sweetheart, just leave Daddy in peace.
Are you Daddy’s darling or Mother’s little helper? God knows.
I feel as Zeus must have before Athena burst out of the top of his head. The pressure on poor Lady Rice, trying to contain so many different natures inside her, is tremendous. Velociraptors, velcro-raptors prowl within. A black band as if the head itself were a hat, confines and tightens. The whole bulging swarm of identities is getting a terrible headache. Something has to give.
I repeat: I can’t live for ever in an hotel room, under a false name, growing alternative personalities as if they were pot plants, feeding them, nurturing them for lack of anything else to do, while I wait for my husband to commit my sins to paper: my fantastical adultery with my best friend Susan’s husband Lambert. Lies, all lies!
Or look at it another way: I am the twisted cord of a telephone wire: dangle it and watch the rapidity with which it untwists itself; so rapidly indeed that it then twists the other way, almost as badly, and who then has the patience to wait for it to settle? Not me, whoever I may be. I’d rather wrench the whole thing from the wall and go cordless.
Too much unravelling can’t be good for you. Of course I have a headache.
A bath, I think, may soothe me. The baths at The Claremont are deep, wide and marble. They are also, I notice, difficult to clean. I take the scouring powder from the cupboard beneath the basin, and with the help of a damp face cloth, stretch to reach the section the maid has failed to clean and, when I straighten up, catch my head on the shower fitment.
I stagger to the bed. I lie down. My headache is worse.