Authors: Cate Lockhart
As the days passed by, what I found the oddest was that no one seemed to question Carol’s death. It saddened me even more to think none of the press had done any digging around to find out what was behind her suicide. I mean, it wasn’t every day that an MP’s wife threw herself off a top of a church building. Where had all the investigative journalist gone?
Jordan had taken time off work, using my recuperation as a valid reason to do so, but he was hardly home during the day. He had travelled to Surrey for the new piece he was working on almost every single day, leaving me on my own at the apartment. I could not help feeling miserable about the fact that he had used my unfortunate circumstances to profit his own endeavours, but I chalked it up to being overly emotional and not wanting to see me poorly.
Flicking through the television channels had grown tedious and just irritating. Reading a book worked for all of forty-five minutes before I gave up. My laptop was all that was left to entertain me for longer than an hour at a time, beating even the DVD player.
Now and then, I would feel exceptionally dizzy and just keel over for a bit of a rest and wake up hours later with Jordan coming in the front door with the evening sky outside my window. On Wednesday night, he even elected to go to Martha’s social bash alone instead of choosing to stay with me. It infuriated me. He couldn’t choose to stay with his wife for one bloody engagement
she
forced on us?
For once I was going to give in to how pissed off I was, instead of pushing it to the back of my mind.
‘Hello?’ a high pitch voice came through my phone’s speaker.
‘Hey, Pam,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Hey, yourself!’ Pam marvelled. I had decided to call her to see if she would be true to her reputation as an erratic partner in crime. ‘How you doing?’
‘I’m so bored, I’m going to die,’ I said, once again grateful for my fully recovered voice. ‘Listen, what are you doing tonight?’
‘My husband, I hope,’ she said quickly, followed by a howl of laughter at her naughtiness. ‘Talking of sex, I guess Jordan has his hands full with you being bored at home all day, aye?’ she squealed. ‘Are you working on that first baby yet? Now is the perfect time and excuse, you know!’
‘You know, it would have been, had it not taken two people to do that,’ I sighed without trying to hide my annoyance. She was silent, and I knew my statement needed substantiation. ‘Jordan is out, Pam. Out! Always out since I came back from the hospital.’
‘What the fuck?’ she exclaimed. ‘How can he leave you home alone? Where is he?’
‘Where do you think?’ I sneered.
‘Aw, did Mummy need him to move a box or wipe her arse?’ Pam joined in my intended mockery. ‘Jesus, what an asshole! Well, at least he visited you in hospital.’
‘Yes, yes, he did. But I guess now that I’m home my value has depreciated, especially since no one’s here to see what a wonderful caring husband he is.’ I blew out a frustrated breath. ‘Anyway forget about him. I need a favour.’
‘Name it,’ she commanded.
‘Any chance you could bring me over a bottle of whisky or maybe brandy?’ I asked.
‘How about red wine?’ she asked, sounding considerably more grown-up.
‘No, thanks,’ I declined. ‘I really want something potent; something that will warm me up and haze my mind enough to make mincemeat of my demons, ’cause I tell you, I’m thoroughly pissed at the world at the moment.’
‘Alright, but Stanley ain’t gonna be happy about our change of plans. He’s been waiting for a bit all day. Look, give me an hour to make him happy, and I’ll be right over, ’kay?’ she said with mischief in her voice.
‘I’ll be waiting,’ I said and plopped down on my sofa with a hearty laugh. I felt surprisingly well. My inflammation had subsided, taking with it the soreness and swollen throat. In fact, had I not hated Martha and felt the need to spite Jordan, I would have felt perfectly capable of attending her cocktail bash.
Less than an hour later, there was a knock at the door. Pam’s happy face greeted me when I pulled the door back.
‘Are we ready to get sloshed?’ she sang a bit too loudly, so I pulled her inside by her shirt sleeve and slammed the door.
Several bottles clinked inside the bag. Pam sank her hand into the bag like a kiddie’s party magician, her eyes wide at me to see my reaction. I gave her what she wanted, humming in captivated anticipation as she pulled the first bottle up.
‘Red wine?’ I moaned. ‘I told you explicitly ...’
‘No, no! That one’s for me, honey. The other one is for you, and the third one is
for us!
’ We shouted the last two words in unison because we knew each other so well. Just before Pam poured my first brandy; she hesitated, haunted by some subliminal sense of responsibility. ‘Are you sure you can drink this hard while on medication?’
I tapped with my nail against the tumbler, urging her to pour.
‘Listen, with what they prescribed for me, alcohol is the most bloody least harmless substance I could possibly swallow down, come on. Hit me!’
Her pretty eyes glinted with the need to be naughty, but I could see some internal reprimand going on inside her.
Tap-tap-tap.
‘Oh, alright, alright!’ She chuckled and poured the brandy a quarter of the way up before pouring herself some wine. We reached an astounding amount of drinking within the first hour but then slowed down a little to talk. It was inevitable, I suppose, that Pam would start investigating my call for alcohol when I normally hardly drank.
‘So?’ she said as we settled in after I put some music on.
‘So?’ I repeated, knowing very well what she meant.
‘Why are you in such a state? I know that mother-in-law of yours has always been a pebble in your boots, babe. But there’s something else behind your gorgeous green peepers. Is it the baby thing?’ she asked nonchalantly as she started on her third glass of Primarius Pinot Noir.
‘The baby thing?’ I answered hopelessly. ‘He doesn’t even know about the baby thing. I haven’t had the chance to tell him with everything that’s been going on.’ I peered at her with large saucer eyes to convey the ludicrous nature of my situation.
‘Well, you need to make the time to tell him. You really do,’ Pam reminded me sincerely.
‘I know, but you don’t know how sensitive the dynamic between us is right now. Believe me, if I dropped that bomb on him now, he would bury me alive or burn me at the stake,’ I speculated in my rapidly inebriating possession.
‘No, he wouldn’t!’ she dismissed me. ‘You have to start some sort of dialogue about the matter sooner or later, and the sooner you do, the more time he’ll have to get used to the idea.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought too,’ I told her. ‘But you know, every time I’m about to discuss something serious with him, he starts addressing things that have nothing to do with our life together.’
Pam thought long on it, sipping at her drink in a lazy fashion, but I could see that her wheels were turning. I had to keep her from thinking on it too much and giving me her less than favourable opinion on the case.
‘But that’s not all that’s been hounding me,’ I slurred a little. No matter how I tried, my mouth threatened not to utter what my brain formulated, the wondrously crippling symptom of intoxication.
‘Oh?’ she asked, genuinely interested.
I wasted no time. ‘My last conversation with Carol just won’t let me go.’ I almost shouted, finally relieved to speak to someone who did not dismiss everything I said.
‘Your last conversation with Carol ...’ she repeated with a frown, trying to figure out what I was on about. Pamela slowly leaned toward me and placed her free hand on my forearm. ‘What part of the conversation is exactly bothering you?’
I went off on a tangent, painfully detailing how Carol’s last words drilled into my chest and my very soul, those moments I relived during my days in hospital and how I was terrified of ending up childless and suicidal.
‘I’m going to die alone, like poor Carol!’ I finally wept into my hands. ‘You should have seen her face, Pam. Sh—she was so l-lost! S-so ... so empty!’
Pam kept quiet. It was her technique to force people to keep talking even when they thought they were done. Like wringing out that last bit of water from a dishcloth that felt dry enough, her silence pushed out those last words, thoughts and sentences that usually came after one had completed one’s rambling.
Finally, when I was done lamenting Carol’s departure, Pam said something in conclusion. She wiped my eyes with her thumb and said gently, ‘Katie. Listen to me, Katie.’
I forced myself to look in her eyes, and she smiled a little. ‘Carol is gone now. She’s out of her pain and misery. I hope you don’t think I’m being insensitive, but life is for the living. Not the dead. You did your best. Now you’ve got to move on. Out of respect for her memory, let her go. Let her be free.’
A ton of bricks fell on my heart, but somehow the impact felt uplifting.
Pam continued, ‘If her death has proven anything, it’s that life is too short to be hanging around waiting. I know it might not seem like it at the moment, but you’ve got an amazing husband who worships the ground you walk on. If you want to honour Carol’s memory, be happy.’
It was only when Pam stopped talking that I dared to smile. As usual, she was absolutely right.
Since Pam’s pep talk, the black cloud above my head dispersed, and I felt less bleak. I stopped wolfing down copious amounts of brandy, so that by the time she left in the small hours of the morning I was past tipsy, but far from stupor range.
I waited for Jordan to come home.
It was well past 3 a.m. when I finally heard his car pull up outside. I’d already brushed my teeth, put on make-up and slipped into a sexy negligee; the red one that was somewhat see-through, the one Jordan liked best.
When he opened the front door with great care not to make a noise and wake me, Jordan was downright astonished to see me sitting on the couch, waiting with a lick of brandy on ice for him. In fact, he was beyond shock! I still don’t know if his expression and his awkward body language came from surprise that I was awake or from the way I looked. Hesitantly, he put down his keys, and I relished his reaction when I walked up to him, latching my lips passionately over his in a deep kiss.
‘Christ, is it Christmas already?’ he grinned when my lips released his.
‘I have something you might want to unwrap,’ I purred as I slowly pulled down Jordan’s zip. ‘But you can’t tell Santa because we are going to have to be very bad.’
Jordan obviously approved of my slutty look and behaviour. I had not seen Jordan grin like that since our honeymoon. For the time being, I was weary of my negative feelings, and all I wanted to do was to forget Martha, Jordan’s selective support and conditional love, Carol’s death and the whole baby business.
‘What’s got into you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Are you complaining?’
‘Oh, hell no,’ he mumbled on my skin. As Jordan kissed my shoulder, moving his soft suckling toward my neck and chest, I surrendered. Nothing was going to bother me until I was ready to be hassled again. For once, I was going to just take life one day at a time and just be a thirty-year-old childfree woman. I still had three days off work, and I intended to use my body to enjoy my marriage while I had no stress and strains from work in the evenings. I owed it to myself.
‘You feel so good,’ I heard him say, forming words from his heavy breathing as he peeled off my underwear. Although I expected Jordan to be tired from the party, he was remarkably hot-blooded.
‘So do you,’ I replied without even thinking. I was amazed at the sound of my newly recovered voice. ‘Now shut up and make love to me.’
In response, he growled like a hungry animal. It was real and raw as it spilled from him, not some sexy come-on or an erotic charade to set the stage. The sound of his unadulterated lust almost unsettled me. My every suggestion, my every direction where I steered him sensually with my hands, was attended to. It was a side of him that had been absent, or perhaps had been just diminished a little, for quite a while. However, I wasn’t going to look a gift boner in the mouth, especially that night.
I smiled as Jordan rocked his buttocks under my hands. Of course, he thought my glee was from the pleasure of our dirty, wild copulation, and he wasn’t entirely incorrect in that assumption. But the brunt of it was for my absolute tenure of him, however brief. As the other Mrs Winston, I held a place in his life she could never have. I don’t know why it had never dawned on me before that I dominated this part of his life no matter how he revered Martha.
‘My God, woman!’
I thought to myself in Jordan’s usual exclamation.
‘You’re having sex, yet your thoughts are with Martha? Come now!’
I had to concede that I was right in that reprimand. Martha would win if I granted her any more consideration. How damaged a wife was I, that I spent this much time thinking of someone as inconsequential as I claimed her to be? No, no. I had to change my thoughts to something completely different, and I did.
Blissfully, I drowned in the passion of Jordan’s vigorous lovemaking, and for the first time in my life, I moaned as loud as I wanted. There would be no place for inhibitions and constraint until I was done making myself happy.