VIRAGO

Chapter 23

     I'm not one for imbibing prescription medication; I find it dulls the edges of my penance. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption; Galatians I believe.

At 2.17am I force myself to ingest Armitraxine, three to be exact. Eeeny Meeny Miney, each a dry bolus which stimulates my gag reflex, but I push on through. Less a quest for sleep; more to shut down the highways, rammed with speeding traffic for fourteen hours, six minutes and twenty seven seconds. In situations of this extremity, I find myself immersed. Able to hear the roar of each vehicle; smell the exhaust fumes, feel myself shrink back from the glare of headlights. It plays over and over before merging into a constant blur and buzz.

My journey is reaching its conclusion, the effort of pushing ahead and past Lars in the home straight has exhausted me, yet ultimately, it is not responsible for my current state. The conduit for this particular episode was the flashbacks I've endured all night about my first Skype call. It had been scheduled for 7.30am UK time with Meghan; the precise day on which this horror occurred eludes me. Nonetheless, it's truly incredible how fresh the trauma can be after so much time has passed.

Given that Perth was eight hours ahead of GMT, she felt this would give us the opportunity to chat uninterrupted before the children arrived home from school. Her message read that once her two boys entered the house, it was akin to a hand grenade going off. Curious; I don't remember ever feeling disruption of that magnitude when she were of a similar age which begs the question; what type of a ship was she running there exactly? Then I remembered; by the time she eventually got home from all the after school clubs I enrolled her in, she was on her knees, small children tire so easily, don't you think? On the rare occasions any spirit remained, the walk home with the childminder served the purpose of draining the tank, necessitating little in the way of engagement between the two of us.

I scrutinised my features innumerable times during the weeks leading up to that first call, perhaps it was months. I found it so hard to keep track of the days in addition to the tally of checks. In typical manner of preparation for a public facing event, I resorted to social media for some tips on facial slimming. Whilst I get the lateral tilt Mrs. Beckham thing, I believe this is something a novice like me could only pull off in a still. Where I feel it's acceptable I will commit to using it; I suppose it could work for any contemplative angles I am able to engineer during our conversation?

I raised the laptop using a pile of seventy two Cordon Bleu cookery course books, which I imagine sounds rather a lot, but really, they're leaf thin. They belonged to mother, a gift from father to impress upon his new young wife the importance of entertaining with aplomb. Partial thumbprints in congealed cornflour mark some of the pages; fossils I find a tad creepy. I decide these are odd things to immortalise ones existence when you've gone.

I should like something more.

The books are eons old and totally at odds with any pattern of healthy or realistic eating in this century, but I cherish them all the same. They transport me back to an era where I would have been well suited; a time when it was perfectly acceptable for a wife to meet her husband at the door with the sole purpose of relieving him of his hat and umbrella. I'd be happy to slave over Cordon Bleu books and a stove, if it meant when the man of the house came home, he'd worship me, shower me with compliments, gush about how talented and clever I was, how well I kept our home. After all is said and done, who doesn't want to be adored?

I refuse to accept Lars's professional opinion; I'm not deluded, at least I believe that to be the case. I appreciate my needs are greater than most, certain essential ingredients that must be present in order for my life to function correctly. The absences of these are responsible for so many disastrous endings in my history and I have tried so hard to learn from the past. Everyone has their own set of rules, a sense of order in which they go about their day; granted mine are rigid and extreme, but totally necessary for my day to day functioning.