‘Humour me. I’m dying. You have to.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘God, no. I’m going to be with your father again. How on earth could I be scared of that? It’s about bloody time.’
That sends me over the edge. The idea that Mum and Dad could soon be together again on some parallel and unseeable plane of consciousness. I bow my head and shake with emotion. ‘Tell him I love him, will you? Tell him I miss himsomuch.’
‘My darling girl. He knows that. But I will. Now.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘Pick a sign.’
‘I don’t know… a unicorn?’
‘Too easy. They’re everywhere.’
‘All right, then. A… turquoise unicorn with… purple stripes. And an orange horn.’
‘Good grief.’ Mum’s practically dead, but her aesthetic sense is still easily offended. ‘Sounds ghastly. But if you do it, I’ll send it. And you’ll know how happy I am for you.’
CHAPTER 36
Honor
‘How are you feeling about tomorrow?’ Jackson asks as he tops up my glass of flawless Puligny Montrachet. He’s also cooked me my favourite supper: hake on a bed of chorizo and lentils. He’s a good boy, when he wants to be.
But it’s not enough.
And I’m not sure why I ever thought it was.
I’m not trying to reinvent history here, to tell myself I’m a wronged wife. I’m not. I have a lifestyle that only a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of the world’s population enjoys, and I’ve made the necessary choices at each step of the way.
I suppose, with hindsight, those choices were forks in the road, but I never treated them like that. With my tunnel vision firmly in place, I’ve treated the direction of my life like one of those long, dead-straight, dusty roads you see in American movies. I’ve blithely ignored any turnoff that might deviate me from my desired destination.
That destination has changed, and one hell of a fork lies ahead of me. And I’ll take that fork without a backwards glance.
I glance down at my speech notes for tomorrow and answer my husband’s well-meaning question.
‘I’m ready. I’ve practiced this speech a million times, and I trust Miles to have everything ready at The Montague’s end.’
‘That’s great, babe. But how do youfeel?’
Jackson’s been a bit freaked out by my apparent ability to keep my shit together in the past ten days since Mum died. I’ve gone into my preferred coping mode: over-functioning. So the private cremation a couple of days ago went off without a hitch, and I’ve planned tomorrow’s memorial to the last detail.
I’ve also worked my arse off this past week, partly because so much stuff piled up while Mum was in her last days, and partly to keep myself from thinking too much. I’ve avoided Noah—Good Vibes was kind enough to courier Mum’s stuff over so I didn’t need to face him—and while Jackson’s been around, I’m aware I’ve held off on leaning on him too much emotionally. I’m preparing to cut my emotional ties with him, and while he’s been sweet this week, I’ve had years to practice living my daily life without having him around.
‘I feel good about it. The cremation was the bit I was dreading; now that’s over, we can have some fun celebrating Mum’s life. I think she’d love it.’
I know she would. Miles has everything in hand, and we even have her favourite florist doing the blooms for the function room. It will be beautiful.
‘Good for you, babe. I look forward to toasting her.’
I can’t avoid the conversation anymore. In my head, it needs to happen tonight because I know Noah will be there tomorrow, and I can’t bear to see him and not tell him how I feel, what I want. I’m suspended in this terrifying chasm between the present I have and the future I’ve chosen, but I can’t have the latter without severing ties with the former.
I take a sip of wine and swivel on my bar stool to face Jackson.
‘I need to talk to you.’
A sour, sick feeling hits my stomach as I say it. This is it. It’s so hard to do this without resorting to cliches.It’s not you, it’s me. I can’t do this anymore.But cliches are overused precisely because they’re universal truths.
‘Honey.’ I take his hand. There’s no point in beating around the bush. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching these past few months, and I don’t want this life anymore. This—ridiculous fame thing. I don’t want it for myself, and I don’t want it for the kids. It’s far too high a price to pay for whatever we’re trying to achieve.’
