(2013) Four Widows (5 page)

I grunted. “That obvious?”

Kate intervened. “We’ve all done it. But it’s good to poke your head above ground now and then. The guilt thing, you know, like living while others drop dead like flies around you; never quite leaves you. Get used to it.”

I lunged for the prosecco and downed half the glass.

Cece returned from the kitchen. “Look at this menu and tell me what you think. Over-expensive? Does the food sound too…um…complicated?” I obliged while Cece continued talking. “Kate thinks I should go simpler…
comfort
food.” She zapped the word like it was a malarial mosquito.
Comfort
.

“Cece, seriously,
octopus
?” questioned Kate.

“It’s a
delicate
starter. Adventurous! Life ain’t all about French fries, y’know. We used to have a £45 minimum spend per person. Until the curse.”

“Because people don’t like to be
adventurous
during a downturn.”

“Hello, The Kitchin serves pig’s head and langoustine. Y’all tellin’ me
that’s
comfort food?”

“This isn’t about other restaurants, Cece, this is about Ribbons. Focus.”

Cece huffed but Kate wasn’t finished. “Are you talking with suppliers and working out how to reduce your margins?”

“I am. I
am
. Seriously, tell me you eat?” Cece directed the question at me, abruptly, catching me off guard.

“I eat… I do.”

“Coffee don’t count. You need to eat. Turbot, the turbot is good. No, forget about the fish, it’s all about the sauce.”

“If she tells you she eats, she eats,” Kate quipped, handing out more menus.

Cece snorted and changed the subject. “I’ll introduce you to Jun later. He is my sous chef and wonderfully talented.”

Kate nudged me. “Sometimes she
even
lets him cook.”

“HEARD THAT,” Cece boomed.

As it turned out, the menu was genuinely good and I told Cece so. She beamed–genuine lighthouse-bright dazzle. “Contrary to what Kate thinks, I
do
let other people cook, although I’ve had to let the pastry chef go, which means all hands on rollin’ pins.”

She returned with more prosecco and introduced us to another star member of staff, Daisy, maitre’d, who trotted across the floor like a dressage show pony. Daisy offered me a limp indifferent handshake and flashed a whitened smile before trotting off again. I sighed and guessed her to be in her twenties even though she had the polished air of someone older. Perhaps it was the thick photo-shoot make up; cover-girl cheekbones and claret-red mouth. She even sported a supermodel mole.

I felt old and frazzled by contrast but it was the first night since Harrison died that I felt vaguely okay; less traumatised, a little less mute. I stuck to safe subjects. The food, the view, the city.

Over a starter of Orkney sea scallops and pumpkin veloute, I told the girls where I lived; the apartment, its great location and my fashionable elderly neighbour. I even talked about my sister and how she was going off the rails a bit, but more about that later.

Cece, who purposefully tucked in to octopus and pickled vegetables, held court, gregarious and charming. I noticed she pulled the group together, gently fussing to make sure everyone was okay, me included. She talked business, obviously, but more so about her husbands with great affection, deeply rueful that she had only been married to Hugh and Michael for two and three years respectively.

“Suzanne will tell you that I fall in love faster than you can say Yōji Yamamoto but I’m not one to chuck my heart away on a whim.”

“Cecelia,” reprimanded Suzanne, “I
never
said such a thing.”

“Then Kate did.”

“Probably,” said Kate, slugging back the prosecco. She turned to me. “Cece likes her men
older
.”

Cece poked her with a finger. “Heavens almighty, you make it sound like an uncontrollable Hugh Hefner fetish.”

“I’m not saying it’s a
bad
thing.”

“Anyways, sixties ain’t
so
old.”

“I know. I’m just saying it’s your
thing
.”

Cece sighed, clattering down her fork. “I want to remember
every
last detail about them, whereas, my own mother can’t even remember who died first. ‘Alphabetical order, Mom,’ I keep telling her. ‘Hugh first
then
Michael.’ I can’t–won’t let myself forget.”

I made a sympathetic noise and so did Suzanne. I noticed that Suzanne, like Cece, mentioned her husband often, dropping his name into conversation as though he was still with her. This is called moving on, I thought. Progress.

“You moved from London because your husband got a job at an Edinburgh hospital?” Cece turned her attention on me. We hadn’t gone into details earlier at the Art Bar and I didn’t elaborate, keen to keep the conversation focused on others, not me. It seems, though, that some people can sense a secret.

“He worked in Dundee. Studied in Edinburgh, though. It wasn’t such a tough decision for him to return.” Smooth and effortless answer. And true.

“Are you sleeping?” asked Kate.

“That obvious?” I lowered my eyes. Self-conscious.

“I didn’t sleep for two years. I guess it’s part of the process.”

“If I get four hours it’s a good night,” chimed Cece.

When I go to sleep, I feel someone’s breath blow over me in the dead of the night; an exhalation that creates a silvery trail of condensation. No, more than that: hot breath leaving a vicious steam burn on my skin. It shakes me awake with such vigorous fear that I sit up punching the darkness, pushing someone’s weight off me. This is how insomnia regularly rears its head throughout the night: me throwing shadows across the room.

I thought about my timeline throughout the night: taxi doors banging at 03.32; first birds chirping, 04.15; the whirring sound of the electric milk float as it stops, starts, stops down our street, 05.00, which usually coincided with a motorbike vroom. I didn’t bother to check the clock with this one because he was unfailingly on time within a three-minute window. A courier in the city, I guessed. Finally, bin lorries eating their way up the street, the sound of dinosaurs, at 06.42, signalling that now the world was officially awake.

“Touche Eclat,” whispered Suzanne, making a clicking motion with her thumb. “Widows’ magic wand.”

Cece continued to pass on her opinions over dinner. “This place ain’t so enormous. You tend to bump into people you know
all
the time,” explained Cece. “Good when you’re in a sociable mood, not so good when people are talkin’ about your business.”

“Don’t get her started,” groaned Kate. “Have you properly explored Edinburgh?” she asked me,

The girls approved of my address. I lived in the Old Town, which was conveniently close to work. And the novelty didn’t wear off. While Harrison championed our show-home apartment with its flawless finishes, I was more smitten with its location in the heart of a vibrant city where I could walk to the office instead of shoehorning myself on the Tube from Kings Cross to Oxford Circus.

“You must visit me in the New Town,” Cece demanded. “Michael was obsessed with architecture.” Cece thrust a forkful of langoustine macaroni at me to try. “
Obsessed
. Georgian aficionado.”

“Cece lives in an incredible Georgian town house,” Kate informed me.

“Yeah, I do,” agreed Cece, abruptly forlorn. “On my own.”

Kate took this as her cue to reach for the prosecco bottle again. “Top up?”

Suzanne turned to me while Cece and Kate started bickering about organic butchers and costings. “You live in a tenement apartment?”

I nodded. “I believe my neighbour owns the
entire
building.” I was starting to sound like Cece.

“Yup, she sure does,” Cece stopped mid-sentence with Kate to confirm this. “Rosalind Thomson–never met her, but it sounds sooo Barbary Lane. OH! And she’s
seriously
loaded. Old money.”

“I don’t see her much but she does seem to have an enormous affection for Ralph, the guy we…” I quickly checked myself, “…I’m renting from. I think I’m a bit of a…disappointment.” Plural. Singular. Past tense. Present tense. It takes some getting used to.

Chapter Seven

Adderall to Aberdeen

Dessert was cream caramel pie: moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips stuff. Kate opted for the cheese trolley and dished out the dessert wine.

Harrison resurfaced in conversation. “He was a heart surgeon,” I told them, which garnered the usual response: respect and admiration.

“Was it hard for you to leave London?” Kate wanted to know. “
You?
”

This time I was truthful. “Yes, it was.”

I explained about
2Glam
but kept it reasonably light, stressing that it was a great career move for Harrison and how I wanted to support him. The good wife.

I skipped over how much I upset the publisher; not a good move in intimate British press circles. The office was in shock too–no one saw this coming. No one saw me leaving, either. I abandoned leaving drinks and made it a mission to get out of town fast before I changed my mind and wrecked a marriage. I’d made up my mind to do this for Harrison. Help him move on.

As the table talk continued, I discovered that a good way to get off the subject of Harrison was to talk more about my sister, an ideal distraction. Actually, she was a complete distraction at the moment.

“My sister is going through a rough patch,” I said. I remember having a similar conversation with Harrison although it was much more direct:
my sister’s scoffing Adderall like there’s no tomorrow–should I be concerned?
Fortunately,
she dumped the addictive stimulant drug before I intervened but it was a messy break up; I suspect she still hankers after it with the same forlorn longing one reserves for a first love.

“Where is she?” asked Suzanne.

“Aberdeen. Moved there from London–her husband’s work took them there.”

“Older or younger?” asked Kate.

“Four years older.”

I definitely handled leaving London better than my sister did. What’s more, her two-year-old son seemed to plunge her into a worse state of despair instead of filling her with new life and enthusiasm.

Postpartum depression,
suggested Harrison when we visited her in Aberdeen and she was monosyllabic uncivil. I was embarrassed by her behaviour and exasperated at Harrison. Yet, I couldn’t blame him because there had been no love lost between them. Gwendoline, or Gee as we call her, made it clear when she sided with our mother: Harrison was a scandalous man.

She sent out electromagnetic radiation waves of disapproval. He should never have got himself in that situation; got too close to the patient; tried to play God. Maverick bulldozing Harrison was too much for my career-driven sister.
Player
, she said.

“Does she work?” asked Cece, making sure everyone was finishing the food on their plates.

“She’s a paediatrician…” I hesitated before continuing, “…who’s on a career break, of sorts…”

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” asked Kate, sloshing more prosecco into glasses.

“I’m not sure. She was so good at her job.”

She was. Gee made the perfect paediatrician because she could nail down her emotions until there was no flow: no tears for small children with incurable tumours on her watch. Unlike Harrison, and perhaps even our father, she was an efficient realist: a surgeon sociopath who wasted no time on tears. She steamrolled through fixing people. Her success rate was impressive although, I’m quite sure, she would be astonished if someone reminded her that patients were people. You know,
real
people with families, birthday parties and routines.

“I went crazy for a while after the kids were born,” said Kate sympathetically.

“Who you kiddin’?” Cece snorted like a horse. “You’re
still
crazy, girl.”

Kate and Cece continued to banter while Suzanne attempted to mediate in her gentle, mild manner. My head was elsewhere.

“TEA, COFFEE, TIA MARIA?” Cece’s foghorn call made me jump and brought me back to the moment.

Kate and Suzanne opted for mint tea while Cece and I had espresso, both agreeing that a sledgehammer hit of late-night caffeine wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to hardened insomniacs like us. Sleep was never on the cards.

“Your sister…” continued Cece, picking up on my thoughts, “… has she thought about a new direction at work–something completely different?”

Kate looked amused. “Here comes the work experience offer at Ribbons.”

“Now there’s a thought,” replied Cece tartly. “Could use all the help I can get.”

I quickly explained before Cece got an idea in her head. “She has got something going on–part-time phlebotomist work.”

“What in the world’s a phlebotomist?” Suzanne’s eyes stretched wide.

“Someone who takes blood samples from patients–a conveyor belt of bottling bloods is the impression I get.”

Kate winched. “Ouch.”

Cece looked thoughtful. “I
hate
needles.”

I spared them the details of how Gee’s decision left everyone truly shocked–colleagues and seniors and our poor baffled mother. No one could understand why she had done such a thing, effectively throwing away her career.

Suzanne suggested that Gee visit Edinburgh for a couple of nights.

I shrugged. “She won’t come. She didn’t even visit me after the funeral. I’ve learned not to take it personally–death doesn’t daunt her.”

I thought back to when Harrison died and how the shock knocked down family and friends, incapacitated them. It made them wretched, which I could understand but what I couldn’t figure out was why
I
was expected to support everyone in this time of need.

His mother would call and sob hysterically down the phone, and I had to bite back my tears and comfort her.

Even
my
practical mother, who always managed to deliver succinct words of advice, struggled to comfort me. It was a belated coming-of-age-moment when I realised even my own mother couldn’t help me out with this one.