XLVII
The shock of losing Maisie hit Emma harder than she could have ever imagined. She lost the will to get up in the morning, to care for herself, and even to go to work. Every venture into the world beyond her house was a struggle. She hated the looks she got from other people, and imagined that everyone was aware of her loss, whereas, of course, most people were simply trying to establish what it was she wore underneath her loose clothes. These visits were almost always brief ones to fill her fridge with food that most often she had lost the appetite to eat, and just once to see Charlotte and her new baby at the hospital. This depressed her even more as she felt so inadequate to express to her best friend how pleased she was that the child-birth had been so successful.
She didn’t tell anyone at work for over a week she wasn’t coming in, and was extremely upset when she got a very brusque and angry phone call from Amelia who demanded that she return to work immediately. She went to bed with the full intention of returning, but when she awoke she was too depressed to carry her resolution through. Instead, she went to a doctor and got a sick note to excuse her from work. Her next communiqué from Harlot TV came as even more of a shock. She was told in no uncertain terms that her recent work was simply not of the high standard that the station had come to expect from her and was frankly totally unsatisfactory. She was given three months notice, which started retrospectively from the first day she had failed to turn up to work, and informed her that she was not expected back at the studio.
Her depression exploded into tears and cries which darkened even further the clouds which gathered in her head and made normal life impossible for her. She returned to bed where she stayed all day, wailing her misfortune, comforted only by thoughts of self-pity and tortured by rage and anger at Tanya. She had been betrayed by one who had taken advantage of her good nature and stolen the love of her life from her, and now she was left to fend for herself. And not very well either.
The days passed by, each one indistinguishable from the one before, Emma’s rests in bed often lasting all day. She lost the ability to concentrate on literature or any reading matter at all. In fact, other than weep and flagellate herself with her regrets and despair, all she could do was watch the most mindless and undemanding television programs. No programme was too banal, no show too hackneyed: quiz shows, soap operas, chat shows, and news programmes. She lost all appetite for sex television whose content only served to remind her of what she was missing. She read the mail that arrived with more attention than ever before, though most of it was junk mail, and most of the rest were bills. She lost the appetite to check her e-mails, and the only music she felt inclined to play was as despondent as the mood she felt.
It was while she was sitting on the sofa, listening to a requiem, that she heard her doorbell ring. She wasn’t expecting a visitor: in fact, she lived quite some way from her friends and was never used to calls anyway. Her heart began beating in foolish anticipation and hope. Was it Maisie? Had she had enough of Tanya? Had she come to realise that it was only with her that she’d ever find true love? She hurried to the door, and peeked through the eyehole, half-expecting Maisie and half-expecting a postman.
What she saw, distorted by the magnification of the eyehole, was Charlotte and Josephine standing at the entrance: Charlotte with Thomas clinging to the bare breast she uncovered under the long coat which was all she wore. She hesitated. Could she let her friend see her like this. A perverse sense of self-worthlessness almost persuaded her to pretend she wasn’t in, but her love for Charlotte, and her regret that she’d not seen her best friend since she’d left hospital, got the better of her, and she carefully opened the door, forgetting that she was still naked, and would once again scandalise the posh neighbourhood.
“Emma!” smiled Charlotte. “How
are
you? We were so worried. We heard you’d lost your job. And we heard about Maisie. Can we come in?”
“Of course! Of course!” said Emma, unable to smile and feeling wretched for her lack of friendliness.
Charlotte and Josephine entered the house; Charlotte immediately feeling guilty that she’d not come to see her friend sooner. But it was not easy being a mother. Thomas was so demanding, and it was only recently she had recovered sufficiently to venture out of the flat herself. Emma was clearly not herself. Her home showed the signs of neglect. Nothing had been cleaned, polished or even tidied away. An untidy row of empty bottles lined the hall-way, and some magazines had been left on the floor in an untidy heap where Emma had dropped them and had never bothered to throw away. The living room where Emma took them to was similarly untidy. Cushions lying on the floor, a rug turned up at the corner, records and books scattered about randomly. Normally Emma was so tidy. Almost obsessively so. And now everything was untidy and unclean. Even her long hair was tangled and unwashed, and Charlotte couldn’t help noticing there was the slight smell of mustiness from her unshowered skin. She handed Thomas over to Josephine, who was wearing a sobre blue blouse and white skirt, and grabbed Emma around the shoulders and pulled her towards her.
“We’ve been
so
worried!” Charlotte cried. “We haven’t heard from you so long! We thought you might be busy at work, but Maisie told us how you’d been sacked. Is it because you’re sad that Maisie’s left you?”
Emma nodded and sniffed bitterly. “It was that cow Tanya! She picked me up, exploited me and then just threw me away. And then, as if that wasn’t enough she took my Maisie away from me!”
Charlotte smiled sadly at Josephine, as if to say that it was as they’d suspected. “You must forget about Maisie now. She’s gone. I don’t know what this Tanya’s like. I’ve never spoken to her; but Maisie’s made her choice and what’s done is done. It’s you that you should think about. Did you lose your job because of Maisie? Or was there some other reason?”
Emma sank her head onto Charlotte’s bare shoulder, tears bursting through and onto her friend. “I was so depressed. I
am
so depressed. I just lost the will to go to work. Or even, sometimes, to live. It’s been so hard.”
