I didn’t have time to relax for long, as a few moments after I’d parked my arse on the couch and switched on the TV my phone vibrated in my pocket. I flipped it open and glanced at the readout. It was from Lindsay and simply said:
Hi sweetie, I’ve sent u another email, so read it when you get a chance.
Linz xxx
Her system hadn’t failed after all, but I still couldn’t work out how she had co-ordinated all this texting and emailing. I was excited and at the same time apprehensive about what this one would say. I muted the TV and moved gingerly to get my iPad. I made some more toast while it powered up. In reality I should have set up my email account on my phone, but I didn’t know how to do that, and couldn’t be arsed reading the one-squillion page instruction booklet to find out.
I logged on to my email account and opened Lindsay’s email.
Love Byte 3 - 20th October
My gorgeous husband
I hope you are looking after my little girl, and that you are both well and thriving. It’s the middle of the night and I’m up again taking more bloody pain killers. I’m not sure how much longer I can take this, but I put on a brave face for you and Amy – well, mainly for you, thankfully Amy isn’t really aware of what I’m going through and long may that continue.
I know this will be difficult for you to read, but I feel I owe it to you to tell you how it is – or was by the time you read this – especially as you and Amy are sleeping and oblivious right at this point in time.
I want you to know that when the time comes for me to go, it will be a relief. I’m only telling you this because I might be so doped up later that I might not make much, if any, sense. Hopefully though I’ve got a few weeks (fingers crossed months) left in me. By that time I should have finished messing with your life and I can leave you to get on with it, which I am sure will be a relief for you – but I’M NOT FINISHED YET.
OK, so what have I achieved so far? Well by my reckoning I’ve set you up on a dating site, you’ve had some emails from potential suitors and you might even have met some of them by now, in fact you might be deeply in love and ignoring my further efforts here! (BUT I DOUBT IT.) You have to kiss a few princesses before you find your frog!
The problem with you, Mr Hunter, is that you will be looking for the perfect person, and probably comparing them all to me – big mistake. By now I’ll have been
dead for some time and I can do no wrong. I’m perfect because I’m in your memory and cannot blot my copybook in any way. No woman can live up to that.
I’m going to give you another week to sort yourself out. If you haven’t found another woman by then I have one more ace up my sleeve. I will play that card anyway, because even if you have found someone else it won’t do any harm, but if you haven’t then it might just be the perfect last throw of the dice for me.
On another note I guess by now you will have realized that Jamie and Molly have had some problems. I don’t feel great about sending that email I have to say. . . .
I hadn’t realized that my wife was capable of being so devious. The revelation didn’t actually shock me as I should have known Lindsay was behind it. It was a piece of unfinished business from her point of view. She was trying to help Molly. I’m not sure she had but there wasn’t much I could do about it now.
. . . but I felt that Molly deserves better than your friend. I hope you don’t tell him or her it was me. It will only cause more problems and might make Molly feel so sorry for him that she takes him back. She’s a bit soppy like that. She might actually have forgiven him anyway which is very sad but if she has then so be it. I’ve done my best – or worst – whichever way you want to look at it.
Back to me. I don’t know what will happen over the next few weeks. I know we’ve talked about me going into a hospice. I will try and resist that as long as I can but I reckon it is inevitable at some point. By then I will have finished this project. The good thing about this is that I can play with time. I can spend a few hours planning things here but in your world a week, a fortnight or a month can go by, which is weird and kind of hard to get your head around. It’s been a while since I’ve contacted you (in your time). I was deliberately letting you get on with it (or not, which is more likely!).
Not everything I do will work but hopefully you are at least having some fun with what I’ve set up for you. No doubt other things will be going on in your life I can know nothing about but I don’t worry about that. I’m only concerned with the controllables!
OK that’s it for now. I hope that you and my gorgeous wee girl are well and that she’s not missing her mamma too much. I’ll be in touch soon.
Your gorgeous wife
Lindsay
PS Hope you like the texts, I thought that was really clever of me!!
It was very clever of you Lindsay and, much too clever for me. Of course she couldn’t know anything about me losing my job, or that Jamie had been given an ultimatum by Molly and rejected her. The ‘ace’ up her sleeve worried me somewhat. A week was not a long time, and after the Jamie/Molly situation, anything was possible. Internet dating hadn’t really worked for me yet but it was early days and I still had Amanda waiting in the wings. I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted from Amanda, if anything, but I hoped whatever Lindsay’s ‘ace’ was ultimately didn’t interfere with it. I was more than capable of messing things up on my own.