The Man Who Died Twice (The Thursday Murder Club)

You are simply a little lost, Donna. And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never travelled anywhere interesting.’

Last time she was down she told me off for having the slats of my venetian blinds angled upwards instead of downwards. That was the straw that broke the camel’s hump for me. I said to her, I’d wanted to say it for ages, that I felt I could never get anything quite right, and she said well she felt the same, and I said that’s nonsense, and asked her what she meant, and she said, well Mum, I’m always too fat or too thin, or with the wrong man, or just split up with the right man, or I should wear my hair up or down or I work too hard or I have too many holidays, or I shouldn’t have painted my kitchen that colour. That actually struck a nerve, I can be a bit like that, but I decided to dig in, so I stood my ground and said Joanna, that’s because I care, that’s because I love you, and she said so you show me you love me by telling me I’m too fat? And I said well I know you’re happier when you’re not overweight

‘You are simply a little lost, Donna. And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never travelled anywhere interesting.’

You do whatever you want. But looking forward, not back.

‘Then do that. Keep being scared, keep being lonely. And spend the next twenty years coming to see me, and I will keep telling you the same thing. Put your boots on and climb the next mountain. See what’s up there. Friends, promotions, babies. It’s your mountain.’

The snacks, the numbing release of empty fat and carbs, the long nights, the long years, on his sofa with no one to put his arms around? And now this, the colours, the smells, the sheer, everyday normality of it.

Gone to dementia, then gone for ever. The man who died twice.

She told me that if I didn’t want to be sent an endless tide of photographs of men’s genitals, I should really change my username.

Needless to say, I haven’t changed it.

So Alan will be with me next week!

The rescue centre have to come and visit the flat, just to check that I’m a fit and proper person. I certainly think I am, but it will be nice to have it confirmed.

I am glad they didn’t come round last week. Sue had bled all over the kitchen floor, there were millions of pounds’ worth of diamonds on the kitchen table and Bogdan was storing three guns under the spare-room duvet. I don’t know what the rules are for ‘fit and proper’, but I imagine I would have been breaking one or two of them there.

Sometimes the pieces weren’t where they were supposed to be. Sometimes you weren’t in control. And
perhaps that was OK? He will ask her for a drink, and if she says no, she says no.