11 p.m. Cannot get to sleep.
11.15 p.m. Oh, Mark. Mark. I know I did all this ‘Will he call, won’t he call?’ when we were going out, before we were married. But even then it was different. I knew him so well, I’d known him since I was running round his parents’ lawn with no clothes on.
He used to have conversations with me when he was sleeping. That’s when I could find out what he was really feeling inside.
‘Mark?’ That dark, handsome face, sleeping on the pillow. ‘Are you lovely?’
Sighing in his sleep, looking sad, ashamed, shaking his head.
‘Does your mummy love you?’
Very sad, now, trying to say ‘no’ through his sleep. Mark Darcy, the big powerful human rights lawyer, and inside, the little damaged boy, sent away to boarding school at seven.
‘Do I love you?’ I’d say. And then he would smile in his sleep, happy, proud, nod his head, pull me to him, snuggle me under his arm.
We knew each other inside out, back to front. Mark was a gentleman and I trusted him completely in everything and I went out from that safe place into the world. It was like exploring the scary underwater ocean from our safe little submarine. And now . . . everything is scary and nothing will be safe again.
11.55 p.m. What am I doing? What am I doing? Why did I start all this? Why didn’t I just stay as I was? Sad, lonely, workless, sexless, but at least a mother and faithful to their . . . faithful to their father.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
Friday 19 April 2013 (continued)
Five years. Has it really been five years? To start with it was just a question of getting through the day. Thankfully, Mabel was too little to know anything about it, but, oh, the flashbacks to Billy, running all through the house saying, ‘I lost Dada!’ Jeremy and Magda at the door, a policeman behind them, the look on their faces. Running instinctively to the children, holding them both to me in terror: ‘What’s wrong, Mummy? What’s wrong?’ Government people in the living room, someone accidentally turning on the news, Mark’s face on the television with a caption:
Mark Darcy 1956–2008
The memories are a blur. Friends, family, surrounding me like a womb, Mark’s lawyer friends sorting everything, the will, the death duties, unbelievable, like a film that was going to stop. The dreams, with Mark still in them. The mornings, waking at 5 a.m., washed clean by sleep for a split second, thinking everything was the same, then remembering: poleaxed by pain, as though a great stake was ramming me to the bed, straight through the heart, unable to move in case I disturbed the pain and it spread, knowing that in half an hour the children would be awake and I’d be on: nappies, bottles, trying to pretend it was OK, or at least keep things together till help arrived and I could go off and howl in the bathroom, then put some mascara on and brace up again.