Page 82 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
‘Ooooh, what’s this?’ Lucy holds up a padded enveloped to me and I recognise the writing immediately. She reads my reaction. ‘Is this from Will?’ she asks. I nod. Whereas I am filled with uncertainty, Lucy is less so and goes to rip the envelope open. I’m pinned to this sofa with Joe attached to me so have no way to tackle her.
‘It’s addressed to me,’ I say.
‘And…?’
‘That’s mail fraud.’
She doesn’t seem to care, pulling out a CD and a letter and starts reading. As her eyes look across the words though, her expression changes. I can’t tell if it’s sadness or anger. Paddy re-enters the room, holding the tea, and picks up on the tension.
‘Oh, B. He made you a mix CD,’ she says, holding it up in her hands.
‘William?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘He says this was the birthday present he should have got you and he’s sorry and he still…’
‘No!’ I stand up, Joe still on my breast, and reach over, grabbing the letter from her hands, tearing it into quarters. The process itself is cathartic. Paddy looks horrified at my reaction.
‘B, you should listen to him. He’s trying to make amends…’
‘He wants to make amends? Then be here with me. Why send me CDs like some cheap token of his affection?’
Lucy’s face is all scrunched up. ‘It might be decent. You don’t know what he’s laid down here.’
‘And I’ll listen to it and run back into his arms, will I?’
Lucy looks over at me sadly. I know why. I have never been the cynical sister; that was her role. Paddy puts the tea down slowly on the table, his eyes urging me to sit down, cover up and calm down as Joe is still attached to my nipple.
‘Music can be a powerful aphrodisiac. I once slept with someone at a Halloween night because he knew all the words to theGhostbusterssong,’ Lucy informs me.
‘Everyone knows the words to that song.’
‘He knew the dance from the cartoon too.’
‘You should have locked that down.’
‘Well, technically I did. For one night. Shame he had a chipolata for a wanger.’
Paddy chokes on his tea to hear her frankness. I am sure that was me once. Pre-Will, I saw my fair share of sausage too. It feels like a different lifetime, though. Would anyone approach me with their sausage ever again? Of course they would. I’m the baddest bitch alive.
Paddy comes to sit next to me. ‘Betty and I had music, songs – don’t we all? They’re all part of your story.’
Lucy looks sad to hear him talk about Betty in the past tense.
‘Was Betty into hip hop?’ she tries to joke.
‘She had a hip replacement?’ he replies.
Bless them both for trying to make me laugh. Lucy collapses onto the sofa and she comes to put her arms around me and rest her head on my shoulder, stroking Joe’s tiny arm.Thank you both for being here.I look at the CD in her hands. The title of the CD is ‘PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN THE RIGHT CASE’ and it’s decorated with his expert doodles. I smile. Briefly. Will and I came together with an amassed collection of about five hundred CDs. No one ever got it, but for us it was an achievement of sorts. Except he hated my filing system. He loathed that I sorted them by colour and that they were never in the right cases. Paddy has picked up that letter and is trying to piece it together and read it.
‘I’ve seen you and Will from the beginning,’ Lucy intervenes. ‘I want this to have a better ending.’ That she has. Lucy was eighteen and in the first year of university when I was navigating teaching college. She was at the gig and watched as I drunkenly pulled that charming indie kid.
‘You were going to kill him a few weeks ago?’ I reply.
‘Yeah. I still would if you wanted me to. But maybe listen to this mix CD first? If it’s truly shite then at least we can have a laugh before you dump him properly?’
I smile but try to process the words.Dump him. I’ve thought about that to some degree over the past week. You don’t walk out on the mother of your son. He’s left me alone for my heart to become shrivelled and desiccated.
