The New Mrs D Read Free Page A

open and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was from Smother.
    You’d think after having spent so much money on your daughter’s big day, she’d at least contact you to say how her honeymoon is going.
    I felt myself shudder − not really knowing why − and deleted it. How I needed a mother right now, the kind I could call and cry to, admitting the wedding had been a terrible mistake and all of the reasons why. But I didn’t have one of those. I had a unique and rare kind of mum, the last person I wanted to go to in a crisis. The kind who enjoyed a drama − and none more so than one of mine.
    I clicked the television on, hoping to find any non-romantic or funny programme to take my mind off things, and settled for the three and three-quarter hours epic that is Ben Hur . Sorry, Smother, the guilt will have to go on hold for a while. Just for once, I need to look no further than taking care of me.
    As Judah Ben Hur fought off the desire to start a mass slave rebellion, I rubbed my soggy, swollen eyes and pondered the more ambiguous question of what dress to wear for a solo expedition to the honeymoon hotel restaurant and how to get the ‘tears of my doom’ swelling round my eyes to go down. Marching into the bathroom, I splashed water on my face before drying it with a towel that smelled of David. Then sunk to my knees and cried my heart out, right there on the floor.
    In the background, the television was still blaring.
    ‘Your eyes are full of hate, 41. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive, it gives him strength.’
    Pulling myself up I looked at my eyes in the bathroom mirror, still bloodshot from bawling. All I could do to get through this evening was to stop thinking about how much I loved David and keep reminding myself how angry I was.

    ‘Are you going to jump in the pool with that bloody sarong on?’
    I straightened my shoulders and flushed crimson. It was the first morning of our honeymoon and I was sitting on the edge of my sunbed next to the busy hotel pool, with a towel around my shoulders and the sarong hiding my midriff from view. I could feel people around us watching me.
    ‘Come on, woman,’ David carried on, waving me into the water beside him. ‘Just get up off your fat arse and get in. Nobody’s looking at you, you daft moo.’
    I recoiled at the word ‘fat’ and bit my lip, my eyes welling up. It was our honeymoon and he’d called me ‘fat’. I was The New Mrs Fat. ‘Telephone call for Mrs Fat.’ ‘Hey, how’s married life, Mrs Fat?’ ‘Has anyone seen Mrs Fat today?’
    ‘Oh, don’t upset yourself,’ he laughed. ‘I’m only joking, you know that. Come on, my beautiful, new wife. Get in.’
    A nimble young woman strode past between us, in nothing but a tiny pair of sea green bikini briefs and a pair of flip flops. I watched as David followed her with his eyes, doubting whether he could tell me the colour of her bikini briefs. I felt a familiar lump in my throat. It’s normal, it’s normal. We’re married, not dead.
    ‘I think I’ll just go get another cocktail,’ I told him. ‘Back in a mo.’

    It was half past eight by the time I picked myself up to get ready and pulled on a forgiving, floaty dress I’d treated myself to on the first day of the holiday. Squaring up to my reflection in the mirror, I said aloud, ‘Not bad at all, Mrs Robinson,’ before telling myself ‘That bastard isn’t having my fidelity a moment longer − any more than I had his.’ I was impervious; Ben Hur . . . in a little black dress.
    With my blonde, wavy locks dried and three coats of blotch-camouflaging make-up applied, I swallowed my angst and made for the lift, speeding up past Suck-Face couple’s door. God help me if I bumped into them and they saw it was me who had been doing all of the shouting and screaming during The David Eviction.
    Feeling reprieved at getting past room 718 without incident and, seeing its doors about to close, I dived into the lift. Which is where I joined Mr