Page 91 of The Mother-in-Law

IfI’d been fertile.

IfMum had given me money for surrogacy.

Ifwe’d inherited the estate.

Ifthey weren’t going to blame my brother for it.

My brother was a lot of things, but I wasn’t going to let him go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. And so, with the tiniest hint of irony, I’m taking the path my mother was going to take.

The problem is, Patrick comes home at exactly the wrong time. I am sitting up in bed, in my pyjamas. After extensive googling to ensure that one bottle of Latuben will be enough to kill me, I have poured it into a coffee mug. It is sitting on my bedside table. According to Google, I’ll be unconscious within thirty seconds and dead within ninety. On my lap is a notepad and a pen. I have just put pen to paper when I hear Patrick’s car pull into the driveway.

I planned to write a note, explaining everything to Patrick, absolving him of blame and guilt and responsibility. I wanted to give him that. Even after all that’s happened, I have affection for Patrick. He tried his best. If I had only become pregnant easily, Patrick and I would probably still be happy. People underestimate the role fate plays in our lives. Silly them.

And so, when I see his car, I lift the mug to my lips and drink it down in one almighty gulp. Then I lie back and close my eyes.

I’m out.

63

LUCY

The present . . .

Dad arrives early on the morning of Nettie’s funeral with a bag of donuts for the kids. He stays to help Ollie and me as we roll about the house like marbles, searching for missing socks and neckties (for Archie, who now, he tells us, has a funeral uniform). The photographers are outside again today. They arrived two days after Nettie’s death, when the whole twisted story had hit the press.MONEY, GREED AND FAMILY: INSIDE THE SOCIETY FAMILY MURDER-SUICIDE. The article didn’t have much in the way of facts, but the police have warned us that more would likely come out. There is something about the uber-wealthy falling from grace—people are insatiable for information, and the more sordid, the better. The police also warned us the media will almost certainly be outside the funeral, trying to get a shot of us crying. (Yesterday Harriet gave the photographer the peace sign and trout-pout lips as she hoofed her way out to the car. It is probably today’s cover story, but I don’t have the heart to look.)

‘How are you holding up?’ Dad asks me. I am ironing Edie’s only clean dress. She will have to wear it with odd socks because I can’t find a pair that match. In light of everything else that’s happened, I can’t find a reason to care.

‘Honestly? I feel like nothing will ever be the same.’

‘It doesn’t last forever, honey.’

I look up from the ironing board, blinking back the tears that come to my eyes with such ease these days. ‘How do you know?’ I ask, a childish question, but then again, he is my Dad.

‘I know because . . . I’ve been there.’

Even as an adult, it’s easy to forget that your parents are people. Now, it occurs to me thatof coursehe’s been there. My mother’s death had come right on the heels of Dad’s mother, my nana. It’s not something I’d thought much about back then, after all, my dad had been a grown-up and I was just a kid. And Nana, as far as I was concerned, had beenold(sixty-one). But it was only a year later, almost to the day, when Papa, Dad’s dad, dropped dead of a heart attack. He had been sixty-seven.

It was a lot of people to lose in just over a year.

I put down the iron. ‘How longdoesit last?’

He offers me a sad smile. ‘It lasts . . . a while.’

‘Muuuuuuuuuuum,’ Harriet calls. ‘Archie’s watching the iPad!’

‘I’ll go,’ Dad says.

The kids are sad about Nettie’s death. All of them have cried, multiple times, even Edie, but their grief is wonderfully fickle—here one moment, gone the next. This too, I’m becoming familiar with.

‘How do I look?’ Ollie says.

He stands in the doorway of the laundry in what I think of as his ‘Eamon suit’. It’s tight-fitting, navy blue. A recruitment suit. He looks handsome in it. I tell him so.

‘I’m going to sell it tomorrow,’ he says. ‘On eBay.’

There’s no point in telling him not to worry about it now, or that we can talk about it in a week or two. Ever since Nettie’s death a week ago, Ollie has been on a mission to do anything he can to make money, save money or reclaim money. We’ve sold our watches, all of my jewellery, a handful of other items that have value. It’s got a frenzied avoidance-of-grief feel to it, but at the same time I find myself comforted by it. As though he’s recommitting to his role in the family, showing us the kind of person he wants to be.

‘Actually there’s a Facebook page for people who want to buy second-hand Hugo Boss suits,’ I say. ‘You’d probably get a better price for it. I can post it on there if you like.’