Losing It Read online

  JANE ASHER

  Losing It

  Dedication

  For Rory

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Now

  Judy

  Then

  Judy

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Judy

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Ben

  Judy

  Crystal

  Charlie

  Sally

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Ben

  Sally

  Crystal

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Ben

  Judy

  Crystal

  Stacey

  Judy

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Next

  Sally

  Charlie

  Ben

  Judy

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Crystal

  Ben

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Crystal

  Stacey (e-mail)

  Sally

  Charlie

  Judy

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Sally

  Charlie

  Sally

  Stacey (e-mail)

  Charlie

  Chipstead

  Judy

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Chipstead

  Crystal

  Judy

  Ben

  Stacey

  Chipstead

  Charlie

  Judy

  Stacey

  Chipstead

  Charlie

  Judy

  Stacey

  Crystal

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Stacey

  Charlie

  Now

  Judy

  Keep Reading

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Now

  Judy

  I couldn’t move. That was the problem.

  I wanted to be quick so I’d decided to take the direct route, rather than going by the back streets. It’s quite a bit longer by the back way, of course, but it does mean I avoid passing – what shall I call it – the scene of the crime? Hardly.

  As soon as I saw that neon sign shining out across the wet pavement I knew I’d been crazy to attempt it and I stopped dead in sudden misery. I’d done it before in daylight, forcing myself to look away to the other side of the road as I approached the dreaded place-I-can’t-name. I even enjoyed the test sometimes: seeing just how much or how little it took to trigger me into going back over it all; watching myself almost disinterestedly for signs of hysteria, regret or anger.

  But this was different. I hadn’t realised how strongly it would make its presence felt once darkness had fallen. I turned away quickly as the old panic began to churn in my stomach, and I looked back towards the way I had come and took deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself down enough to be able to walk on again.

  I was outside the post office, and, as usual, there was a pitiful little huddle of swaddled figures in the doorway beside me. Poor things, they looked more like heaps of old clothes than ever. I pulled off a glove and fumbled in my bag for some change, grateful for the excuse to stand still a little longer. I found a fifty-pence piece and threw it into the battered box they’d put out on the pavement; if they used it for Special Brew or whatever then good luck to them. I felt desperately in need of a drink myself.

  I didn’t get a thank you of any kind, mind you. Not even a grunt this time. I tried not to feel irritated: the joy is in the giving, and all that. But it did make me hesitate for a moment – whether because I was seriously considering admonishing them or because it was still part of my effort to delay moving on again I really can’t say. I’m prepared to find my subconscious capable of plotting just about anything these days: it’s taken me by surprise so many times over the last year or so while it’s been dealing with the unthinkable. Giving me an excuse to avoid facing the painful reminder just a few yards ahead of me would be simple – only sensible, in fact: no point in giving my poor old brain the opportunity for another sand papering unless it had to.

  I did move on, though. The moment of panic had passed and the cold wind and thoughts of the as yet uncooked casserole were enough of a spur to encourage me to walk on towards Dixons.

  As I came nearer to passing the – how can I describe it? – supermarket sounds too cosy and everyday for the place that can still make my heart beat faster in remembered anxiety. Anyway, as I came closer I felt braver, and, without any intention of going in (that would be one test too many, even for my reconstructed self), I stopped outside. I tortured myself for a few moments as I looked through the large plate-glass window and searched quickly for what I half-dreaded and half-wanted to see. Funny, I thought, that here I am, looking with the same eyes, standing on the same legs, wearing – and I glanced down at myself – yes, even wearing the same coat as I did over a year ago, before it all started. So which bits of me have changed? I vaguely wondered. What makes me so utterly different from the woman I used to be, who walked into this wretched place so many times over so many years to do the shopping? Awareness, of course. Memory. Knowledge. Knowing what he did – what the two of them did. Knowing that, even as I pretend to carry on my life as if it still has a point, everything has changed for ever. That, once I’ve completed my pathetic little outing, bought my packet of floppy disks from Dixons and gone home again, he won’t be there. That he never will be again.

  Then

  Judy

  He was at home the evening that started it all. If he hadn’t been there, then perhaps – no, I won’t let myself go through all those ifs again. Not any more: that’s over. I know I can’t stop myself replaying it all like an old film, but I do surely have enough strength now to recognise that it can’t be changed.

  I can still picture him that evening. Or can I? Perhaps I’m imagining it. Maybe it’s another sign of this bloody crafty subconscious of mine inventing the bits that have got lost. I could be conjuring up an image from any one of the thousands of evenings of our marriage. It wasn’t unusual for Charlie to be home first, and that day didn’t feel any different from hundreds of others before it. Why should it? Nothing signalled that it was to be the start of the end. In fact all that strikes me now about that evening was just how extraordinarily ordinary it was: the way I remember it, it was a masterpiece of uneventful domesticity hiding the horrors to come.

  He was sitting reading the paper in the sitting room. And, no, it’s not my imagination: I can see it clearly. He was in the large green armchair on the far side of the fire and I saw his profile silhouetted against the striped wallpaper just before he noticed I was there. He’d already put on his old burgundy cardigan, and he’d loosened his tie and pulled it away from the collar of his blue shirt. (God, it’s fascinating how much I do remember: I suppose, as well as being the opening scene of the impending terrible drama, it was also the last scene of my other life.) He looked up as I came in, and put the paper down in a rustling heap on his lap.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, then, after a pause, ‘What?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I answered, knowing, of course, exactly what he meant. I was quite aware of the hint of weary resignation that I’d allowed to settle onto my features as he greeted me. Although I’ve no idea now which school I’d been inspecting, I do remember I’d had a particularly frustrating and tiring day, but I don
’t think there was any other excuse for taking it out on him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t work just as hard as I did – more so, probably.

  ‘You look tired. Or something.’ Oh, how subtle is the language of the long married! How many layers of subtext lurked dangerously under the innocent words! Why didn’t you say it, Charlie? You, of all people, who were always so good with words in court; how clearly and succinctly you could have put it. ‘You look fed up and resentful. You clearly disapprove of the fact that I am happily relaxing in this chair when you have only just come in from working all day,’ might have been near the mark. But the habit of years allowed us to speak without acknowledging a fraction of what was really being said. What a waste.

  ‘No, just tired. You’re right. I am. Exhausted.’ And I turned and walked out of the sitting room, and the hairline crack, which might just have opened up into a discussion of how we really felt, was safely papered over – again.

  I put my briefcase down at the foot of the stairs while I hung up my coat, and called out over my shoulder to him as I moved into the kitchen, ‘I haven’t shopped yet – I just couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Hang on – I can’t hear you. I’ll come.’

  I heard him grunting as he pulled himself up out of his armchair, and felt a tiny stab of satisfaction at the fact that I’d got him to move. He stood in the kitchen doorway leaning against the frame, the newspaper still in one hand.

  ‘What did you say, darling?’

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have moved – it’s not important. Just that we’re out of everything and I haven’t shopped yet, that’s all. I’ll go in a minute. I’m having a cup of tea first. Do you want one?’

  I looked up and smiled at him as I switched on the kettle. He’d pushed his half-moon glasses up on top of his head, and looked, even more than he usually did, like an eccentric professor. Or how one should look. His eyebrows were tufts of permanent surprise, swooping up at the outer edges in a sort of wild abandon above his ridiculously bright blue eyes. (His habit of twisting and curling the brows upwards with his fingertips while he studied a brief or read the paper used to irritate me, but so many things used to irritate me then.) The arms of his glasses had pushed some of his still thick, greying hair into ruffled wings on either side of his face, and I noticed his cardigan was wrongly buttoned. I smiled at him again, feeling a familiar echo of what I took at the time to be sentimental fondness. Now I know it for what it really was – love, of course.

  ‘Darling, come over here,’ I said. ‘You’re done up all wrong. Here, let me do it. Honestly, you’re worse than a child.’

  I remember I reached a hand up to his face and stroked his hair, trying in vain to smooth it back tidily behind his ears. It was a habit I had, and my fingers miss the feel of it as much as my ears miss the sound of his voice, and my body misses touching his in our large double bed. Such an attractive, confident man he was then – or so I thought. And as for me – so much I took for granted: all of it, at the time.

  ‘The whole point of half-glasses,’ I went on smugly, ‘is that you don’t have to take them off or shove them on top of your head when you’re not using them. You’re meant to peer over them. You look like a startled koala when you push them up like that, you silly old thing.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Charlie laughed. Yes, he did; he laughed, I’m sure of it. He used to laugh a lot, and it was often at something I’d said; I can’t have made that up, can I? And that’s the most important part of a successful relationship, they’re always telling us. A sense of humour. The couple that laughs together stays together. Make your man laugh. Well, yes. But not enough, apparently, in my case.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I can’t bear peering over them at the world. It makes me feel like I’m playing the old fogey. The dull, dusty barrister.’

  And I didn’t answer, did I? I just raised my eyebrows and threw him one of those knowing looks of mine that I used to think were so clever, as I finished buttoning up his cardigan and then gave him a dismissive pat on the belly. A subtle reminder in a look and a gesture that he was older, fatter and greyer than I was, and that his career was, indeed, a little dusty. At the same time, it was quick reassurance for me of my own relatively good shape and tactfully tinted hair. Oh yes, it was – don’t deny it. At least I can be honest with myself now, one of the few comforts I have left.

  Charlie sighed and went to walk out of the kitchen, then stopped and turned in the doorway, pulling the glasses back onto his nose and looking at me over the top of them. ‘And I know I could indeed be considered an old has-been but I’m not quite ready to agree to it. Not just yet.’ And, although he was joking, the acknowledgement of my casual put-down wasn’t lost on me.

  ‘Of course not, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re in your prime. As is your wife.’ I walked over to the fridge and put a hand on one hip as I opened it and scanned the contents. ‘Not too exciting, is it? I’ll go in a minute.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I’ll go in a minute,’ I repeated. ‘Shopping.’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you been?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie: no, I haven’t been. I said. I told you when I first came in – I do wish you’d listen, it’d make life so much simpler if I didn’t have to repeat myself all the time.’

  ‘Sorry, I expect I was thinking about something else.’

  There was a short pause, but, although he was still looking at me, he didn’t go on.

  ‘What – work?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Were you thinking about work, do you mean?’

  ‘No. Just life. You know.’ He smiled as he said it, but I felt the tiniest hint of something chilly and – sinister settling into the silence that followed. Neither of us acknowledged it. ‘I’ll go, if you like,’ Charlie went on. ‘You look far more tired than I feel. What shall I get?’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I don’t know what I was going to get, I hadn’t decided. I’ll go. I can’t be bothered to go all the way to Sainsbury’s – I’ll pop round to SavaMart and get a bit of mince and do a shepherd’s pie, OK? Even the ghastly SavaMart doesn’t get mince too wrong.’

  (There. I’ve said it. Named it. Not exactly out loud, but at least in my thoughts. SavaMart: what a drearily unattractive word to be the cause of such pain as I form its ugly syllables in my head.)

  ‘No, I insist. I’ll go. How much do I get? Is it just us?’

  ‘Oh, darling, are you sure? I really don’t mind, you know.’

  Charlie put the newspaper down on the corner of the kitchen dresser and felt in his trouser pocket.

  ‘No, it’s all settled. Just tell me how much mince and – that’s fine, look, I’ve got twenty pounds; that should cover it, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Good God, I should hope so. It’s us and Ben – Sally’s out. Get about a pound and a half of mince and – oh, damn, it won’t say that any more. Just get a couple of those ready packs and a large bag of potatoes. I’ve got onions. Oh, and some bread and a small milk.’

  ‘Right. Put your feet up and drink your tea and I’ll be back in a flash. I’m far quicker at shopping than you are.’

  And I did. I’m sure of it. As he went out into the evening and made his way towards that place where it all began, towards the start of the nightmare – I made myself a cup of tea.

  Stacey

  My feet hurt and I’m shattered. He ain’t looked at me today – not even one fucking glance. It really pisses me off. I ain’t never rung my bell once – not like Sheila, who rings it every five minutes. She takes the bar codes off – I swear she does – just so’s she can ring her bell. Then if Mrs Peters comes over, suddenly she don’t need nothing. Mrs Peters is stood there, waiting, and suddenly Sheila don’t have a problem. But if he comes over it’s all, ‘Oh, I’m sorry to ring again, Mr Chipstead, but there’s no price on this.’ She leans forward and lets him look down her overall at her little pushed-up tits. They don’t exist, her tits. They’re just little bumps pushed up on all that Wonderbra padding. If
you had X-ray eyes you’d see there’s half a tit there, sitting on a shelf of wadding.

  My bum hurts too. There’s a new sore patch on it. I’ll have to rub it later and it’ll hurt more: it’s just like when Auntie Madge spent all that time in bed with her leg and got them awful raw bits on her hip ’cos she couldn’t turn enough. Disgusting.

  There’s a picture in Hello! this week of Dawn French and she looks really pretty. If I could just get my hair like hers I could – no, it’s her eyes. She’s got beautiful eyes. My mum says I have too, and even Sheila once said she wished she had eyes like mine – topaz or some crap, she called them – but I don’t think mine are all smiley like Dawn’s. And why do her clothes always look good? My top always seems to catch and get stuck in those folds round my waist – then it sticks right out at the back until someone tells me. Hers never do that.

  Because you’re three times her size, you stupid fucker, that’s why. She’s normal – she’s big, but she ain’t gross like you. You’re disgusting. Of course Mr C don’t look at you – why should he? You’re revolting.

  My mum gave me that new diet sheet that came with the paper yesterday. Try it yourself, I said. If you’re so clever at telling me how to do it, try it your fucking self. She had a laugh when I said that – she’s got a good sense of humour, my mum, I’ll give her that. But I’ve had a look at it, anyway: it don’t sound so bad. All protein again. No skin. No carbohydrates. It ain’t that different from the one Crystal told me about in her letter last week that all the stars are doing over there. She says Oprah lost half her body weight in three days. Or was it six weeks? Anyway, it must be good if people like her are doing it. They can afford all them personal trainers and that, so if they choose the diet instead it must be really easy. All lean protein, that’s the idea. I told Ma to get a pack of them chicken breasts when she’s down at Iceland tomorrow. No skin – a pack of them skinless ones. ‘You got to be joking, Stacey,’ she says. ‘I’ll get a pack of sausages – that’s half the price. That’s meat,’ she says. I says, ‘Don’t be daft, Mum, that’s not lean protein; that’s bread and stuff. That’s no good. Get the chicken breasts and we’ll do without the biscuits. And no bread, all right? Don’t get no bread and no biscuits.’