What Goes Around... by Carol Marinelli Read Free Book Online Page B

same point. The hospital’s not far away, but I can’t get there and now the traffic lights are red and I sit there and wait for the green arrow.
    I’ve thought about this day.
    Not often.
    But I sort of wondered what would happen when he died or what he’d do if first it was me.
    Women think like that I think – I’m sure he doesn’t.
    Didn’t .
    I’m not ready for him to be past tense.
    He should already be past tense – I mean he’s been my ex for years. It doesn’t work like that though.
    I think, when he left, he thought that was it.
    But when you’ve had children together, it never is.
    I hear a car toot behind me and then another one and I look in the rear view mirror and I realise they’re tooting me. I’ve missed the light change and now we’ll have to wait.
    I catch sight of my newly arched eyebrow in the rear-view mirror and I know there is a God.
    You see, I’ve thought about this day, not just about him dying, I’ve thought about facing Lucy again. It’s ironic that I look the best I ha ve in years, in decades in fact, and I’m pleased that I do.
    I am.
    I’m really pleased.
    In the days when I used to plot my revenge, or his come-uppance, when I made up scenarios in my mind, I always looked amazing. I was always a lot thinner and a lot more glamorous than I am in real life. I had a camel coloured coat on, that was knotted at the back and lots of jewellery from Marcel, my sexy French lover - his car is waiting in their carriage driveway, as I stop by to let them know that I’m leaving the country today and no, I’m not taking the children. ‘But who’s going to look after Alice?’ Lucy begs.
    ‘And Bonny!’ I remind her, because even though she’s older she still lives at home. ‘And I have Eleanor’s kids two days a week,’ I tell Lucy and I just hand the whole sodding lot over to her and she starts crying because she can’t deal with them. ‘You knew he had kids when you took him,’ I tell her and she’s really crying now and not prettily either.
    ‘Shut up,’ h e snarls to Lucy. ‘It’s not just the kids. Gloria, I’ve been thinking…’ he looks at me with those green eyes that once melted, that could always get me to forgive. ‘I’ve been thinking about us,’ he says and I whip my dark glasses off and shoot him an incredulous stare. He pleads with me not to go and live in the lap of luxury in the South of France with Marcel, then he pleads with me to take him back and says that he’s made the most terrible mistake…
    I’m approaching the hospital and I remember another one.
    I was in a coma – there was a car accident on my way back from a week at a health farm where I’d gone to shed those pesky last two pounds. I’d had loads of massages and treatments and things, so I was fortunately looking amazing when the accident happened. My Coma Buddy has made sure that I stay smooth skinned and without visible roots, just as I have promised to do for her. I don’t have any visible injuries. There’s not a mark on me, apart from a slight bruise above my eye. As I lie there his finger touches it and he thinks I can’t hear him, but I’m in one of those comas where you can hear - tee hee hee. I lie there all pale and dying as he pleads with me to just live. He shouts to Lucy to get the hell out and then he returns to me. He tells me how he can’t go on without me, how sorry he is, what a terrible mistake he made leaving me for her.
    I could never decide how the fantasy ended though - if I woke up enough to see him weeping in a chair beside me, or if Marcel walked in and there was a fight.
    So, that’s why it’s brilliant that today I’m looking fantastic.
    I don’t care if you think that I’m vain.
    I know what that bitch did to my life.
    I know what she says about me.
    I park in the sta ff car park and I race over to Emergency. It’s starting to be real – I haven’t rung the other girls, it’s the middle of the night there. I really need to get to