The Perfect Widow. A.M. Castle

8

       Now

       Louise

      As I glide around town, going about my business, I’m used to feeling eyes on me, tracking me. As often as not, I look up at some man and shake him off with the force of my indifference. I’m a widow. I’m in black. Are they sick?

      But sometimes it’s a woman and then I wonder. Was she one of them?

      I wonder about Patrick and about how many there were, before there was one too many.

      Because Jen was right, he was a player.

      I sometimes wondered if she knew this from the outside in, or whether she had once been one of his, shall we say, playthings herself. I never asked her, and she never admitted as much. But the strength of my love for him made me preternaturally aware. I used to think I’d be able to spot a woman who wanted him at thirty paces, and certainly sniff one out if I was sitting next to her.

      But whatever might or might not have been between them was history by the time I arrived and slid behind the marble desk. If I’d been Jen, I wouldn’t have liked it, the way he started to flirt with me. Even if they had never really been an item, it was asking her to play gooseberry in an outrageous way. And if they once had been together, well, then it was insensitive in the extreme. But what can I say? That was Patrick.

      The girls I see now are Patrick’s type: self-contained and sleek. They look sophisticated, aloof. They are basically just like me, but annoyingly they are ten to twenty years younger. Of course, I have no proof. And it’s so much better, so much more dignified, to turn a blind eye.

      I got very used to doing that, so keeping going is no stretch. Carving out a new role for myself as a widow is much more difficult. I no longer fit into anyone’s dinner party plan. I’m an extra even for drinks, and there’s always the possibility that I might bring down the atmosphere, be sad. Weep, even. Good gracious. Or, worse still, I won’t be sad enough, won’t live up to everyone’s image of what grief should look like, how long it should last, how deep it should go. Everyone has a view about how a woman like me does things.

      As usual, I’m playing a part and it’s tiring. But I don’t really care, at this stage my life has had more costume changes than Madonna. What I do care about is my kids.

      People ask me why we don’t move. ‘A change of scene, that’s what you all need, it’ll be good for Giles and Em.’ To me, that seems ridiculous. Patrick will still be with us, wherever we go. He’s an inescapable fact of our lives. The centre of everything, even if he’s no longer there. So I’d rather stay here, in the home we built together.

      I’ve written letters to the school, I’ve got the kids sessions with a counsellor, I’ve put photos in their rooms of their dad looking his best, and I’ve put a big one of Patrick in the kitchen, looming over us, even though I love my clear surfaces.

      It won’t bring him back, nothing can or will. But it means that the children feel that, unlike Elvis, Patrick hasn’t quite left the building.

       Chapter 9

       Then

      There’s no accounting for taste, is there? I wouldn’t have swapped my shiny marble desk for a thousand beach bars and all the sun in the sky, but the dozy girl I was replacing decided to stay on in Malaga or Portugal or wherever. I was overjoyed when they made my job permanent.

      That left me and Jen, smiling serenely through our days. We were like the figureheads on a ship in full sail. Then the wind suddenly dropped. The company was in the doldrums and there were whispers in corners about economy measures. The talk was of a cull, of people being ‘let go’ from all departments. It terrified me, that expression. I would be in free fall if I had to leave, I knew that. This place was my only solid ground. I dreaded getting the tap on the shoulder.

      Jen had been with the firm for two years and didn’t want to move on either. But by now, we had an even flashier phone system, one which was a nightmare to operate. Jen, who’d taught me so much at the beginning, struggled with the nuances of the new rig. Well, we both did. At first, anyway. It didn’t help that the instruction booklet was nowhere to be found. In those days, you couldn’t just download another from the internet. So it was me trying to give her pointers. It was a reversal of our normal roles and it felt odd for her. Jen had once held all the cards, played them with the effortless élan of a major-league poker champ. Now she kept fumbling.

      I was lucky – I’d just happened to pop to the loo when a crucial call had been booked in for the managing director. Funding. From the States. Jen accidentally cut him off in his prime, the source of revenue went south and no one was amused. I told her we’d just talk our way out of it, blame the machine, mechanical error. But the more we blathered, the stormier the faces grew. The chop. I looked on, gutted, but the chaps upstairs had the excuse they’d needed. Just her, though, not me.

      I owed Jen so much. From my perfect beige nails to my immaculate blouse (now real silk) to my accent, which had been gradually morphing into hers. The desk wouldn’t be the same without her. I hated crying, couldn’t ever afford to start in case I never stopped, but my eyes were stinging the day she left. I felt so sorry for her, exiled from the firm. She had been its serene public face. Now she was gone. For a while, I felt as though everyone who came through that door was searching for her, disappointed that there was only me. I tried to beam more brightly to compensate.

       Chapter 10

       Now

       Louise

      Just when I think we’re beginning to make progress, something comes along to upset all our apple carts, throw a pall over our lives again.

      We managed to stagger our way through Christmas. It was hideous. We spent it with Jill, mourning her son but doing her best to celebrate what she still had – her grandchildren. They’d become all the more important to her. To us.

      We’d had our differences, in the past. In fact, I’d blamed some of Patrick’s wandering ways on his mother turning a blind eye way back. There wasn’t a woman alive, it seemed, who didn’t let Patrick off the hook. And fair’s fair, it was his father who’d done the dirty, upping and leaving Jill for a younger version, begetting another bunch of kids. It didn’t take a genius to work out this displacement was the reason Patrick constantly sought reassurance, acceptance, attention.

      But now Patrick was gone, taking all his faults away with him. We were left with the man smiling from the photos, who was perfect, of course. I much preferred to pretend this was the man I’d lived with and known, and as far as Jill was concerned, it was gospel. Meanwhile, Giles and Em took comfort from seeing him around.

      I was glad once the last cracker was pulled and the dried-up Christmas pudding could be decently ditched. Only Patrick had ever liked it. This year, Giles had solemnly swallowed down a symbolic mouthful and the rest had mouldered until I could bear the sight no longer.

      Chucking all that wrapping paper into the recycling was more liberating. It seemed to promise some sort of renewal, the end of yet another test, like the funeral. But I hadn’t realised, then, that every single day would go on being an ordeal of a sort.

      This time it’s Em, coming home from school with that ominous cried-out look. What’s happened? I instantly want to know, but I resist asking straight out.

      ‘Nice day?’ Sometimes the oblique question nets the answer. Not this time.

      ‘Fine.’ She storms off to her room. I turn pointedly to Giles. He slings his bag on the counter, shrugs his shoulders. I realise, suddenly, that he’s grown again. One day soon he’ll be his father’s height. Every day he looks more like him. I have to be careful, on