as Annie walked through the door I burst into tears, as though her arrival was some kind of absolute proof that it really wasn’t all a ghastly nightmare. I left a full set of grubby fingerprints up the back of her lavender Liberty cotton shirt.
She hugged Jasper too, something which he would normally go out of his way to avoid, even though he is fond of her. Then we all just sat around in a fuzzy cloud of disbelief and damson gin.
It was the sheer unreality: Tom had gone missing so many times, it was hard to believe he wouldn’t just walk through that door at any minute with the TV remote control in his hand (he secreted it away somewhere in his workshop when away), and sit watching endless films on Sky, which he’d had installed soon after he got the giant TV.
He’d always been supremely selfish. Even the Tom I fell in love with, charming though he’d been, really only thought about himself for at least ninety-five per cent of the time, which is why he always did exactly what he wanted and apologised afterwards.
‘Yes, I know,’ Annie agreed when I shared this gem with her, together with the rest of the bottle of gin, after Jasper had gone up to bed (or at least, back up to the Batcave). ‘But when he was around he seemed to cast a spell of charm, so people didn’t realise it until later. Or if they did, they didn’t mind, because they thought he wasn’t doing it intentionally to hurt anyone, it was just how he was.’
The gin might not have been such a good idea after all, for my past life seemed to take on a darkly ominous pattern. ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Why do I have to lose everyone? I know I didn’t love Tom any more, but I didn’t want any harm to come to him either!’
‘We all have to die,’ Annie pointed out soothingly, passing me the plate of ginger parkin she’d found in the fridge while looking for something to blot up the alcohol. I must have sliced and buttered it earlier, on automatic pilot.
‘Yes, but why don’t my loved ones die naturally of old age? Look at my parents! OK, Daddy was a diplomat, but of all the British Consulates in all the world, why did they have to be sent to that one? And having got there, why did they have to immediately sit in the wrong restaurant and get blown up? Couldn’t they have settled for baked beans on bagels at home, and then lived nice, peaceful lives and been more than a few faded snapshots and some stored furniture to their only daughter?’
‘But you had nothing to do with it – you’d just arrived for your first term at St Mattie’s,’ she pointed out. ‘You weren’t even in the same country. Stop imagining you’re some kind of Angel of Death! What would Daddy say if he could hear you?’
From past experience I could confidently predict that Annie’s father would go wandering off into a scholarly monologue on angels of death, the existence and symbolism of, which would be soothing, but not precisely helpful.
Annie gave me a hug. ‘It’s not your fault that Tom was killed and you did your best to save your marriage. I know what it’s been like the last few years, and you’re a saint to have stayed with him.’
‘I’m not a saint. I stayed for Jasper, really, and because we both loved living here.’ A tear rolled down my cheek and landed onto the half-eaten slice of parkin I was holding, though I didn’t remember taking a piece.
‘I’m sure for the first few years Tom did love and need you, Lizzy. He wandered off, but he always came back again.’
‘Perhaps, but there were always other women. I tried to shut my eyes to it, but it hurt, Annie.’ I swallowed hard. ‘But I think I’m grieving for the Tom I married, even if the man I thought he was never existed. And I still feel guilty for being so relieved that it was Tom, rather than Jasper.’
Annie comforted me as well as she could, and I have a vague recollection of her helping me up to bed, where I must have passed out.
When I staggered down next morning, feeling like Lady Lazarus, everything had been cleared and tidied and washed up.
There’s probably a Girl Guide badge for coping with a friend’s bereavement too, together with the Advanced Award for staying in control of your faculties while under the influence of damson gin.
Chapter 7: Loose Nuts
Candied citrus peel makes a good gift and although the traditional process is messy and time-consuming, there is a quick method, which I have used with some success. When candied, the pieces can be dipped in good dark chocolate for a tasty treat.
The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes
‘Oh, my husband was really selfish,’ I said to PC Perkins, when she came back again later that day for what she called ‘a little background detail’. This, oddly enough, seemed to consist of asking me what Tom had been like, but I expect she’d been on some kind of Dealing with the Victims of Bereavement course, or something.
I’d finished quick-candying the orange peel left from yesterday and today’s breakfast juice, and was just writing the recipe up for the latest Perseverance Chronicle, so even the sitting room, when I led the way into it, still smelled enticingly of citrus and hot sugar.
I seemed to be going through the motions of normal life, but most of the time my brain was entirely absent, so I must have been doing it on automatic pilot.
Jasper, who had phoned up the dig earlier to explain his absence, followed us in and loomed about protectively. After the previous night’s hair-down, damson-gin-fuelled wake with Annie, I had given up trying to hide things from him. I don’t think it worked in the first place.
‘Oh, really?’ she said encouragingly, seating herself on the armchair Tom had favoured for his telly watching. I made a mental note to do something about that giant blank screen, which was like having a dead eye in the room …
I shuddered and she eyed me speculatively.
‘You don’t make your husband sound terribly attractive, Mrs Pharamond!’
‘Actually, he could be very charming, and when I fell in love with him I thought the way he used to vanish for days without a word was endearingly absent-minded and eccentric. But really, he was just too wrapped up in himself to bother doing anything he didn’t want to, a bit like a cat.’
‘But you can still love a cat,’ Jasper pointed out. ‘Most cat owners seem to think their cats love them back, too.’
‘He did seem fond of me, in his way, until the last few years – and of you, too, Jasper, when you were small,’ I assured him, wiping a runny tear away. ‘Some men just aren’t good with children.’
‘I expect we’d have got on better if I’d surfed, or was interested in weird folk-rock music and stuff – fitted into his interests,’ Jasper agreed. ‘History and archaeology bored him.’
‘Yes, and he wasn’t even interested in food, was he, except from the eating it point of view?’
The police officer, who’d been listening in a sort of fascinated silence, now broke in, notebook at the ready. She seemed to have an agenda of her own. ‘Just a couple of questions, Mrs Pharamond – and I’m sure you have a few you would like to ask me.’
She gave me a reassuring smile, though it contained no warmth. Yesterday she’d seemed so kind and sympathetic, so maybe she could switch a façade on and off at will, like Tom. She also had coral-pink lipstick on her
