A Thousand Tiny Disappointments by Sarah Edghill

Author:Sarah Edghill [Edghill, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

23

Claudia came back to the table with a bottle of wine in one hand, two glasses in the other.

‘I said I only wanted one small glass!’ said Martha, moving her bag onto the floor. ‘I really can’t be late back; I’ve hardly seen Simon recently.’

‘Forget Simon,’ said Claudia. ‘You need a night out. And you need a proper drink.’ She set the glasses down and sloshed wine into them. ‘Right, here you go. Happy days!’

Martha picked up a glass and clinked it against her friend’s. ‘Happy days,’ she echoed. The wine was great: dry and perfectly chilled. The first mouthful slid down her throat and she could feel the tension ebbing away as the alcohol trickled through her body. She’d been drinking too much recently, but life had been so stressful. She felt guilty every time she opened the fridge and reached in for another bottle. But she would then remind herself that nothing was normal right now. Her mother had died: she was going through a traumatic experience, and the occasional glass of wine wouldn’t do her any harm. In fact, possibly the opposite – if drinking wine made life more bearable, surely it was a good thing? It’s amazing how easy it is to lie to yourself about things like that.

‘So how did it go with the solicitor?’

‘It was fine, better than I’d expected,’ said Martha. ‘I was really worried about it. I’d convinced myself that Mum would have gone to see him to make that codicil official. I was so nervous, sitting there waiting for him to announce she was leaving the bungalow to Alice.’

She desperately needed to share this with someone. Simon should have been the one she confided in, but he was hardly around at the moment – the IT problems at work had been solved but there was an ongoing impact on everything else: clients were furious, projects had been delayed, Simon and his colleagues were up against it. When she did see him in the evenings, he was moody and short with her and took himself up to the office as soon as they’d eaten. In such a charged atmosphere, it hadn’t been possible to find the right time to tell him about any of this. But she kept picturing herself back in the solicitor’s office, Patrick’s body rigid in the chair beside her, the solicitor’s yellowing fingernails grasped around the sheet of paper.

‘But he didn’t?’

‘No, it was all fine. That handwritten note was all there was.’

‘How did you destroy it? You never told me the nitty-gritty,’ said Claudia, leaning forward, her eyes wide with anticipation.

‘Does it really matter?’ asked Martha. Claudia wasn’t the right person to be talking to about all this; she seemed to be enjoying it too much, turning the whole thing into a spectacle. She took another mouthful of wine.

‘Yes, of course it does!’ said Claudia, slopping more wine into their glasses. ‘You had to make sure you did it properly, so go on – tell me! Did you burn it?’

‘No,’ said Martha, miserably.

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