But she wasn’t telling him how to live his life, he knew – which was what made it so very annoying. She was being sensible, thoughtful, polite, and he felt entirely in the wrong, which was not an experience he liked. That had been the great thing about being married to Lou: she never made him feel as if he was in the wrong.
His brother Tommy was always in trouble because his wife, Siobhan, felt that a husband’s place was in the wrong. Tommy sometimes said Siobhan was one of those women who just needed some PVC clothing, stilettos and a whip to set herself up as a dominatrix specialising in husbands who needed yelling at.
Siobhan’s Den of Pain: Ned could imagine it. Siobhan screaming and belting harmless men because of minor infractions. He shivered with horror.
Emily wasn’t screaming at him. She was just reminding him to talk to her mother.
Grimly, Ned looked in the fridge. There was now almost nothing in it, some tired-looking cheese and wilted salad. When Lou went away usually, which didn’t happen that often because he was the one who went away most to conferences, she cooked things for him. The fridge would be full of carefully labelled meals. She bought him the beers he liked, and nice wine.
Feeling guilty again, Ned closed the fridge, aware that the house was dull and unlived in since his wife had gone. Lou always made it homey. She brought flowers from work and kept all their many plants alive. She lit candles and dusted surfaces, wiped down the kitchen counters in a way he could never mimic. How did she get it so shiny?
Even the garden was listless without her. If Lou had been here, she’d have been out on Saturday or Sunday weeding, tidying and tying up trailing plants, moving the plants on the veranda to make sure they all thrived.
Ned found himself walking around the house a little aimlessly. He ended up in their bathroom, standing at her side of the vanity unit. Some of her creams and ointments were there. Nothing much. She wasn’t vain. She had a night cream that had lavender in it, he remembered.
He could have bought her something with lavender in it for her birthday.
He went into the bedroom. Lou’s books were in a small bookcase beside the bed. There were framed photographs on the bookcase hiding some of the books. There were pictures of him and Emily, pictures of Toni, Lillian, Bob, Gloria and a lovely shot of Mim and Simone.
He sat down and lifted one of the framed pictures. There were none of Lou herself, just the people she loved. Behind the photos were books that Ned realised he’d never really examined: books on anxiety and depression.
He pulled one out; it was about changing the inner voice.What inner voice?he wondered in bewilderment. He read the foreword and it began to make sense. The inner voice was one that criticised endlessly, a voice in a person’s head that derailed them.
He thought at that moment about Lou’s struggle with depression that time, and how Mim had helped her. He had done very little, he realised guiltily. He’d been there for her but not in a really practical way: he’d said, ‘I’m here for you,’ but had he done anything? What did saying ‘I’m here for you’ mean in any real sense? They were just words, he realised.
Lou had called her antidepressant medication her ‘anti-mad tablets’. She was funny when she talked about those things. But it wasn’t really funny, Ned reflected. She’d been trying to share it with him and he, uncomfortable around sharing emotional stuff, had blandly smiled and not helped at all.
He loved Lou, adored her, but he was hopeless at the touchy, feely stuff. Yet that wasn’t an adequate excuse – he spent days lecturing students and teaching them how to extend their learning. That didn’t just apply to engineering. It applied to life.
Lou’s words on the phone flickered in his head;
The problem is that you didn’t think you needed to ... It’s not about the price of a gift, it’s about you making the effort to get one.
The memory of her words made him guilty, so guilty he didn’t know what to do or how to fix things. He loved Lou but he felt helpless at fixing what he’d messed up. He put the book on the inner voice back carefully and then made their bed. He hadn’t been bothering with housework up to now, but he smoothed down the covers and plumped the pillows on Lou’s side the way she liked it.
He would nip out to the shops, grab some groceries, put them in the fridge and then go to college. That way there’d be some food when he came home that night.
He parked the car and was walking down Main Street thinking that he might buy steak from the butchers. He wasn’t a bad cook although he was out of practice, had become lazy. He only ever did very simple things: steak, grilled fish, omelettes.
He was so busy thinking about his repertoire that he nearly bumped into someone.
‘Excuse me,’ he muttered and looked up to find Martin, Mim’s husband.
Ned floundered instantly. He’d seen a lot of Martin when Mim was alive but much less so since she’d died. Lou handled all that. Lou handled everything, didn’t she?
‘How are you?’ said Ned awkwardly, realising in that instant that he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t handle talking to Martin because he never had the slightest idea what to say.
‘Grand,’ said Martin easily.
He’d put on weight. Comfort eating since his wife died? Age?
‘Er ... I didn’t see you at Lou’s fiftieth,’ said Ned desperately.
How would he have seen Martin? Wasn’t he paralytic on Heart Starters. And would Martin have come anyway? Going to the fiftieth birthday party of your wife’s closest friend would just remind you that your wife was no longer around, would never be fifty.
‘No, I couldn’t come. Was it a good night?’ said Martin.
Ned thought wildly of the night. It had been chaos.
