Page 40 of Daydreams & Doughnut Cake

‘I deserve it,’ I muttered. ‘I’m as guilty as sin.’

‘No.’ She shook her head, not wanting to believe it. ‘Who’s written this? It’s so horrible.’

‘I don’t know.’ My voice sounded choked. ‘But I guess they’ve somehow discovered my guilty little secret and they’re trying to make me feel bad.’ Tears were flooding down my face now. ‘But they really don’t need to bother because I already hate myself so much anyway.’

Ellie was gazing at me worriedly, clearly not knowing what to say. She took hold of my hand and squeezed it gently to show she was on my side.

‘It might be a horrible letter but I’m a horrible person, Ellie. And it’s high time I faced up to it.’

‘But I know you, Rosie. So I know that’s not true.’ She looked at me in bewilderment. ‘You’re kind and caring and a brilliant mum...’

‘Maybe. But all that’s cancelled out by the shocking thing I did. Oh, Ellie, I’ve no idea who’s onto me but they’ve every right to be angry.’

‘But what did you do?’ she asked softly.

I looked at her through eyes blurry with desperate tears. I’d never told a single soul my dirty secret. I was so, so ashamed.

If I told Ellie, she would be appalled. I would probably lose her friendship because I knew beyond doubt that she would never have behaved in the way I did.

But her eyes were kind. Maybe she’d understand.

Even if she didn’t, I was so exhausted... so bone-weary of holding it all in... pretending it had never happened.

So I drew in a deep breath.

And I told her . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I was at an all-time low on the day of Mark’s funeral.

My recovery from postnatal depression had taken the best part of a year, and it seemed I’d no sooner put that behind me than Mark started feeling ill and was eventually diagnosed with MS.

His life expectancy was a huge shock. The doctors were predicting no more than a few years. That’s when we’d decided to get married and I would always be so thankful we did. It was such a precious day – just a small ceremony at the registry office with close family and friends around us – and it was a memory to cling to when the going got really tough.

And it gotverytough.

Although the doctors had said Mark could have a few years to live, we didn’t even have that. In the end his decline was so dramatic, even his GP wasn’t prepared and I definitely wasn’t.

It was such a heart-breaking, horrible time. Putting on a happy, cheery face for little Amelie while watching my darling Mark dying before my eyes was such a strain, I used to have to drive out into the country sometimes and just scream and scream at the empty fields to let out all the anguish.

‘None of this is in any way an excuse for what happened,’ I told Ellie. ‘It’s just how it was.’

‘Of course,’ she whispered, giving my hand another little comforting squeeze, and I could see sympathy mixed with sadness in her eyes.

Then I told her about the day of the funeral.

I’d moved through the day feeling numb and empty inside.

It was as if the whole thing was happening to someone else and I was just watching it all from a distance.

Mark’s family were in bits, of course. Jackie, Mark’s twin, was trying not to cry... to hold it together for their dad – they’d lost their mum to a stroke a few years earlier – but at one point, I saw Jackie running round the side of the crematorium, sobbing her heart out.

I followed her and we clung to each other desperately. And that’s when I felt the first choke of emotion in my throat.

After feeling so numb, the tears started and I couldn’t seem to stop them. Luckily, Amelie wasn’t there to see me break down. Mark had requested that she stay with her childminder for the funeral.

I remember sobbing as quietly as I could through the ceremony and praying for it to be over. But then there was the ordeal at the local pub to get through.

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