Lifesaver Read Free Page A

spun from a string on the ceiling. No wonder it kept bumping into things—at that speed, how could it possibly see where it was going? And when it crashed into the window, how come it didn’t knock itself unconscious?
    In many of the ‘inspirational’, life-after-death books I’d read in the past six months, people who had lost loved ones were graced with the presence of, say, a rare bluebird, or a butterfly in winter, hovering or fluttering around them and making them feel the spirit of the deceased was with them still. I put the word ‘inspirational’ in inverted commas because those books depressed the hell out me. Why hadn’t I ever got visitations from a beautiful but unfamiliar cat, who would appear just when I was feeling at my lowest? All I got was this big fat irritating bluebottle, and I doubted that it had any messages of wisdom and eternal wisdom with which to succour me.
    I contemplated getting out, but closed my eyes instead and sank back under the water, letting it close over my head and face, feeling the tickle of my hair on my cheek as it floated around me. I had nothing else to do, not until the party that afternoon. I supposed I could have run through the script for my audition the following day, but I couldn’t be bothered. It was only a part in a West Country cable soap, nothing huge.
    The character I was up for was the glamorous but tired mother of twin babies - which was a little close to the knuckle. My agent, Fenella, sounded like she was walking on broken glass when she told me about it, full of apologies and qualifications; she knew I might not feel up to it, but it was decent money for a cable—over fifty grand a year. Which indeed wasn’t bad, and it would probably do me good to have some regular work. But then, having to hold babies…I wasn’t sure.
    I wondered how Ken felt about me going up for an audition. In the old days he’d have helped me go over my rehearsal piece, prompting and encouraging me, bringing me cups of tea and sending me little break-a-leg cards to wish me luck. I couldn’t even remember if I’d mentioned this one to him or not. He certainly hadn’t referred to it lately, if I had. He just told me to ‘take it easy,’ and buggered off to play tennis.
    Ken assumed that because I spent so much time lolling around the house, ‘taking it easy’ was a treat for me. He didn’t realize that it was actually my idea of Purgatory: empty house, time on my hands, frustration, boredom, depression. And the guilt… knew I ought to have gone to the gym, or the supermarket, or for a walk; but I’d rather be bored and cloistered at home than be out during the day, because the daytime was when the mothers roamed. They were everywhere, and with such an array of equipment: prams, buggies, papooses, car seats, scooters, push-along trikes. ‘It’s like being roadie to the world’s smallest rock star’, Ken used to joke, when he thought he was going to be a dad. But I didn’t think that joke was funny anymore. Anything could set me off: the squeak of a pushchair’s wheel, a tiny dropped sock, trickles of melted ice-cream running over a chubby dimpled chin.
    If I went out during the day, my hands felt limp and loose at my sides without anything, or anyone, to push or carry, and it just made me want to crawl indoors again.
    I lay in the bath and watched the bluebottle until my eyeballs ached with the exertion of darting around the room after it, and the water was almost stone cold. Suddenly I really wanted the part in the cable soap. I wanted to have my hands full of baby again. With a watery swoosh I climbed out of the bath and dried myself with a towel which probably ought to have been washed about three weeks ago.
    The phone rang just as I’d got back into our bedroom and was knotting the belt of Ken’s towelling bathrobe around my waist. I picked up the extension by the bed.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hi, Anna, just ringing to check you’re still on for the party today.