Dear Beneficiary by Janet Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

spending time with family, weekends had become precious. I wasn’t prepared to trade my trysts with Darius for the banality of Lakeside consumerism under any circumstances.
    I knew I was denying feelings that had grown quickly and unexpectedly for a man I could never have dreamed I would want to be with. I’ve heard you can’t choose who you love, and I’m certain he wouldn’t have come out top in an identity parade of potential partners. Not dressed, anyway.
    When I closed the door behind him tears welled up and the strength in my legs gave way. Grief took over, more so than after hearing of Colin’s passing. A quick but brutal heart attack had taken him without warning. He’d always passed his medicals with flying colours and, being a moderate man with no excessive hobbies or habits, was expected to live a long and healthy life. Colin didn’t get stressed, either, so couldn’t be seen as a typical ‘heart attack waiting to happen’. Other than occasional palpitations brought on by the council tax demand or the refuse collectors leaving potato peelings on the drive, he was easy-going and pragmatic. It certainly wasn’t the way I expected him to go.
    I’d missed the practical things and the constant daily companionship, but never felt his loss as I did the departure of this delicious and highly unsuitable young man. He’d injected something far more than his enormous manhood into my very being. Darius had got to my heart and I felt bereft.
    I’d looked at the business card he left me and was tempted to call the number, but knew I wouldn’t be able to work all those noughts and crosses you have to put in when calling abroad. Thoughts of when we’d been together flooded back. If I’d known it was going to be the last time I’d be touching him, feeling him, I would have focused more, rather than lapsing into the occasional thought about whether I should get a new duvet cover.
    Knowing wallowing would be fruitless, I’d decided on a practical approach to dealing with the end of the affair. Every rising emotion would be stamped on. Every memory I would erase – either with a few stiff drinks or diversionary tactics. I would definitely take bridge more seriously and join the Ladies Lunch and Pleasant Outings committee at the golf club.
    None of these things had worked particularly well. My heart was in pieces and my ability to conduct myself on a daily basis was almost impossible. Just going to the local shops for a paper involved huge amounts of energy I could barely muster. I watched other people getting on with their lives. They all seemed to be in happy couples, blissfully unaware that the woman walking towards them wanted to throw down her bags and scream at the world for being so unfair. Often I’d go home and just cry, soothing myself with flashbacks to the blissful, passionate coupling that had filled my soul with every single thing that had ever been missing. Is this what I’d been missing out on all my life? Only to taste it and lose it within a few short weeks?
    I would read poetry, hoping for solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only one to feel this exquisitely exhausting and overwhelming pain. Alfred Lord Tennyson had no idea of what a woman could feel when he wrote ‘Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’
    There were times I wished I’d never met Darius at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    I’m not sure how I got to be sixty without really noticing. I’m not particularly worried about it, just taken by surprise. People tell me I don’t look my age. I put that down to keeping a slim, neat figure and moisturising every day, although I have good genes – inherited from my mother’s side of the family. She looked a bit like Vivien Leigh, and some say I do too. I certainly don’t look as old as Mrs Goodwin over the road, who hasn’t retained any youthful looks. I think she