I’ve kept all this from Tilly and Seb, of course. They can’t know the truth. It’s causing such tension and distance between us. It’s yet another thing I have to keep from them. I don’t know how to make it better between us. Tilly just seems to be getting more and more worried about me. She thinks I’m having a breakdown, andI don’t know how to make her understand. Every time I try to reassure her, she seems to get more suspicious. But there are things I just can’t tell her.
Oh John, I don’t know. Things have been so strange since you died, and they’ve been getting even worse since I met my new friends. But Tilly was the one telling me to get out there and have fun after your accident! She kept telling me to find and make a life for myself. Now she seems upset that I actually am.
I think she had this image of what she wanted from me as a widow. She wanted me to fold in on myself and disappear with grief. But I don’t want to disappear. I feel like I was disappearing for a long time, even before all this. Audrey, Teddy and Ivy have made me want to . . . I don’t know, reappear. I can’t let them go. I can’t.
Paula
21
‘There he is,’ Ivy gasps. The women all flatten against a wall.
Across the road, Evil Bastard, Dominic Shipman, is emerging from the pub.Evil Bastardis how Teddy is referring to him. Paula thinks it’s a bit much.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Audrey whispers loudly from the back. Paula ducks her head, trying to get out of the older woman’s way. ‘No, my darling,’ Audrey tells her. ‘I mean I literally can’t see anything. I haven’t got my glasses on. You’re all blobs.’
‘You’reall blob,’ Teddy mutters childishly.
‘Are they in your handbag?’ Ivy offers more helpfully. She might be the youngest of the group by a couple of decades, but she’s probably the closest to an adult.
‘No,’ Audrey shakes her head. ‘I don’t like how I look in them. I want to be gorgeous at all times.’ She flicks her pashmina over her shoulder and smiles mysteriously.
‘You look more like a hippy art teacher in that scarf,’ Teddy tells her dryly.
‘It’s not a scarf!’ Audrey retorts. ‘It’s a pashmina.’ She eyes Teddy’s pink coat and coiffed hair, up in a loose bun tonight. ‘Better than looking like Barbie with a pink tequila hangover.’
‘You two!’ Ivy scolds as Audrey and Teddy smirk at one another.
‘The point is,’ Audrey continues breezily, ‘I want to make an effort for our special evening outings together.’
‘Special eveningoutings?’ Paula raises an eyebrow. She wouldn’t exactly call these past few days spent following Dominic Shipman around . . .an evening outing.
Plans have stepped up a gear since their discussion last week on Teddy’s rooftop terrace, sitting around on that expensive outdoor furniture. The TLWWC WhatsApp group has been alight with messages. But gone are the memes about ageing disgracefully. Now they’re all murder themed. ‘Feeling stabby’ says one, while another reads, ‘I’m the quiet neighbour with the big chest freezer!’ A third warns, ‘Don’t annoy me, I’m running out of places to hide the bodies.’ That one comes from Teddy, who follows it up with a quick, ‘Actually, that’s not true, there’s still plenty more room in my back yard.’
There are also the messages that Paula mostly doesn’t reply to.
If we go for an overdose, where does one buy heroin these days?
These days? Does that mean you once knew?
Oh darling, I’ve lived a long time. The sixties were a magical era.
What if we just ran up to him in the park and whacked him over the head with a brick, then ran away?
Audrey, you have such a violent streak.
Or I could strangle him with my pashmina!
He’s not worth wasting a good scarf on.
It’s a PASHMINA.
Do we need to make sure the ex-wife is nowhere around or at least has an alibi? I’d hate to kill him and then have her blamed?
I’m seeing Gemma at the support group today. I’ll see what I can find out about her schedule.
Be subtle about it, Ivy, keep your distance as much as you can.
I think we should just go for something simple, like a burglary gone wrong. We break in, smash him round the head with a baseball bat. Get out of there. What do you think?
