Dear Beneficiary by Janet Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

was born old, welcoming a future full of uni-slippers and Steradent. I’m rather pleased to retain a youthful appearance which happily includes pert breasts, which considering the four children I’ve had are something of a testament to the benefits of swimming.
    Marriage to Colin had its positive points. I have a comfortable home, and since his death I’ve learned a few things about DIY and rarely cried. Except the time I set fire to myself after trying to change a socket in the kitchen. It taught me the value of calling a professional when electricity and water are involved in the same place at the same time.
    I had routines. Colin liked them and they gave my life structure. Mr Hartworth, as he was known within the diplomatic service, was particularly good at routines.
    Too good, I’d say. Compared to Darius, who likes the element of surprise, I might even go so far as to say that Colin was so predictable his mental health could be called into question.
    I still have a fair amount of the good wine he laid down for special occasions but have demolished many of the other systems we had in place when domestic life ran very smoothly. It was just habit. Years of corporate socialising with Colin’s ‘very important’ colleagues demanded it. I didn’t question it at the time but I often wonder why I put up with so many boring bastards, each with very elevated ideas of their worth in society. I suppose I was just doing the right thing – in their opinion rather than mine, but I hadn’t thought I was entitled to one.
    I didn’t need much entertaining. Even my TV still sits in the same small and unobtrusive corner, resting beneath an old G Plan cabinet of indeterminate years, bought by Colin without any discussion with me. It’s covered with numerous gilt-framed pictures of my children: Jonathan, or Jonjo as I like to call him (much to his wife’s disgust); Patrick, who I call Paddy in deference to my Irish ancestry; Roberta, or Bobbie; and Titch. Well, Kathryn is her real name but she was always very small and the youngest, so the name stuck. I also have nine grandchildren of varying ages with such a variety of names I wonder who thought of them all. It is hard work remembering which one is which. After the first, Tom, they seem to meld into variations on a theme. I get their names wrong sometimes. Still, it causes much amusement at family gatherings – which I stopped going to soon after the funeral.
    Don’t get me wrong, I adore my family and they seem to like me up to a point, but I do find large parties, with lots of people, tense and irritating. My children think I’m ancient and my grandchildren think I’m deaf. One way or another they patronise me, usually in very loud voices, and I seem to be able to say things to my children that upset them, while everything I say to the youngsters seems to be funny and I’m not sure why.
    I didn’t want to waste whatever time I have left to me, so I would often leave get-togethers early and then I’d have to wait some days before calling Bobbie in the hope that any resulting angst had gone. I did feel guilty about my waning interest in maternal responsibilities but I’d done my time looking after that lot and it was time to live a little.
    Once I’d extricated myself from most maternal duties I enjoyed taking on new activities even if they may not have been what was expected of a widow of a certain age.
    My upbringing did equip me to some extent to follow the patterns of traditional married life, but with no one to ‘keep me in line’ I decided there was no harm in letting loose a little, even if I did have to do it in private. Without the need to be a role model as a mother or wife, I was free to have a clandestine affair with a shiny black management consultant I’d met on an Advanced Driving course. And why not?
    Darius intrigued me with his deep, dark voice that night at the driving class,