Except there wasn’t.

Melissa

SUNDAY 1 OCTOBER

I tried to move my head, but it seemed impossible.

In the end, I stopped trying.

Where – what – who was I?

Face down, bum up, dribbling: on top of the duvet – my duvet apparently. A sick and sweaty mess.

Memory beginning to creep in, guilt pervading reality… And what was this, I thought eventually, as I managed to sit up: on my arm? On my thigh?

Oh. Yeah. That’s what this was.

The imprint of ignominy. I felt sicker than I had for decades.

How the hell did I get this wrecked?

I stumbled to the bathroom.

Threw up. Twice.

Stumbled into the shower.

Turned it on so cold it nearly killed me.

Turned on the radio so loud it nearly deafened me.

‘What doesn’t kill you makes you—’

But I couldn’t sing today; my voice was hoarse; the scratchy bones of itself.

Instead, I sank into the corner of the shower and cried.

Not cried. Wept.

Not wept. Bawled, mouth a silent O like that horrible screaming painting Rex insisted on buying a print of when we went to the Tate Gallery once.

Not my natural home, the Tate, and I hated that print.

Oh. God. The party.

I heard the home phone ringing somewhere and crawled on hands and knees to the door. Then I gave up, flopping down again onto the floor.

Rex came in.

‘Dear God.’ He looked down at me, and it wasn’t even hatred that I could see in his eyes. ‘You look worse than something the cat dragged in.’

‘Who was on the phone?’ I managed.

‘Nella Jackson. Wants to thank you, or something.’

‘Oh?’

‘Call her back ASAP.’

‘Yessir.’

I tensed – but he just left the room, the door banging behind him.

And I knew it wasn’t even disdain or contempt I’d seen reflected back at me: it was just emptiness and boredom.

He’d finally seen the deficit in me; the deficit that made me choose men like him. That had made me ignore the obvious, right at the start, when he told me he didn’t like the dress I’d spent a week choosing, especially for our engagement do. ‘You look like a boring old tart,’ he’d said.

Something was troubling me; something about last night, but I couldn’t think what.

And it felt like too much effort to stand, so I stayed where I was.

I must have passed out again because, an hour or so later, I woke with a horrible start, still curled on the carpet, wrapped only in a towel.

Someone was knocking, no, hammering, on the door.

Slowly, awake now, I pulled myself up, freezing cold.

Which door though? The front door, I thought, befuddled.

‘Hang on,’ I said to no one.

Queasily, I dragged my dressing gown on. The hammering continued.

God – was it Ceci?

Having covered the evidence for outsiders, I staggered downstairs, plucking back the front door to find someone I wasn’t expecting to see on my doorstep.