The Will

I was still drunk three days later when Derek rang me to remind me not to show up at his father's funeral. I got the impression he'd drawn the short straw. After unemotionally imparting that gem, he hung up.

Glutton for punishment, I went to the front step and retrieved three days of newspapers. There it was; Dave Brown's funeral at three today. All were invited to the service, but the burial was private.

I may or may not have been sober enough to drive, but I did anyway. I didn't want to make a scene, so I stayed well away from the graveside and watched from a distance. I couldn't miss the opportunity that Dave's soul may be following his body and I could apologise to him. Apologise and ask how he discovered my affair with Brian.

A bottle of something sweet and sticky was keeping me warm and fuzzy. The sight of Jen, Dave's long-term P.A., acting the part of the grieving widow, hurt like hell. The sight of my three children comforting her made me realise they knew she was more than that to Dave.

Like a drama queen, the bitch sank to her knees as the coffin was lowered, Derek helped her up and braced her. She and my children were the last to leave the graveside. I shivered as I moved closer, ready to say my goodbyes.

Not long after I'd closed my eyes in the hope of sensing Dave's spirit, I heard an ungodly shriek behind me. I turned to see Saint Jennifer flying toward me with fingers extended like claws. I backed away as she was subdued and led away by Derek and Anne. Molly stayed behind as rear guard.

She was about to turn away and leave without saying something, when I spoke. "What's that bitch complaining about? She has a million of my bucks from Dave's life insurance."

"Who is calling who a bitch? That woman's love kept my father alive for the last few years. Dad left us a letter. When his strength at putting up with your shit finally gave out, she was the one there for him. I owe her for the last few years of his company."

"But why does she hate me?"

"You can't be so obtuse." Molly looked at me hard. "Or maybe you are. She blames you for taking the love of her life away. She only revealed to Dad she'd held a flame for him for ages a few years ago. Still, their relationship was purely platonic until you reverted to your sluttish ways with that Justin guy. Even then, she said it was ages before he would go all the way with her. She said you'd destroyed his sexual confidence and he had real performance problems with her. She only found out after he died that he'd bought some black-market Viagra and she's convinced that caused his heart attack."

With that, she turned and rapidly followed the rest of her remaining family. I thought about chasing after her and telling her of my suspicions about her father being far from the saint she thought him to be but couldn't bring myself to. Everything Dave became, I caused. I couldn't destroy his children's memories of him when it was all my fault.

Later, much later, I thought of Molly's revelations. Viagra? I recalled some of the things I'd done with my various lovers, then imagined Dave watching them on video. The memories of the things I did with Justin, to keep him interested in my aging body, played out across the movie screen inside my head. That would without a doubt wreck any husband's sexual confidence. This just got better and better! Not only had I destroyed Dave's confidence in me and forced him to live a lie for eleven years. Not only had I to all intents and purposes left him, being the man he was, no choice in denying himself a sex life for years on end. Now I find out that I'd left him with very real performance issues. Issues that contributed to his death. Damn! My bottle was empty, and I badly needed to be drunk.

CHAPTER 6

The next two weeks were a busy blur. I used all the cash we had stashed around the house to buy grog and ate mainly tinned food we had in the pantry. When I bothered to check the mail, it was full of final demands from one utility company or another.

A bailiff knocked on the door one day to serve me with an eviction notice. I left a message with Jack to beg him to allow me to stay. He never returned my call and the process seemed to continue.

Calls to my children went unanswered. Was I really that bad a mother that they'd abandon me for a private matter between myself and their father? Then I remembered the size of my crime and the effects it had caused on a good man and felt I'd be lucky if my children ever spoke to me again.

I was hungover on the morning of the eviction. Some arrogant man in a cheap suit acted like he was doing me a favour by allowing me to pack some stuff to take. Finally, I was escorted to my own front step and told a taxi had been ordered to take me anywhere within an hour's drive. I remember standing there for a while, in a daze, before Jack came up to me and handed me an envelope, letting me know in no uncertain terms he didn't agree with the contents.

I ripped it open. Out fell a legal document and a typed single page. The page basically said that Dave had left provision for a small, one-bedroom unit for me and a modest allowance that would stop me starving. Oh, Dave! A good man to the end. The legal document was indeed a title deed.

I threw the documents to the ground and looked inside the envelope, looking for the explanation from my late husband. The one where he let off steam at me for betraying him for eleven years. The one confessing how he'd found out about my first affair, with Brian. The one, heaven help me, where he forgave me my transgressions.

The envelope was empty.

Just then the taxi arrived and tooted. I picked up the discarded documents and realised what they meant. What the lack of a letter meant.

Dave couldn't be bothered writing me a letter. I'd been discarded; I was irrelevant; I was a detail. I don't even think he made provisions for my future through any sense of responsibility or duty. I think he just wanted to ensure my survival so I could suffer for longer. Experience how it felt to lose everything of value and have the choice of giving in or trying to rebuild another life. Ponder how I'd wrecked our marriage and destroyed the best man I ever knew.

EPILOGUE

"Phew, thank god my colleagues managed to get her into the paddy wagon. Now, if the rest of you could please wait on the patio while I talk to, Mr. Burrows, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"While I talk to Mr. Burrows here, I'll take your statements later. Please, no conferring about what happened. Now, Mr. Burrows, are you sure you don't want me to call an ambulance for those scratches?"

"No, I'll be fine thanks, Officer."

"So, Mr. Burrows, you're a medium?"

"I prefer the term spiritualist."

"What's the difference?"

"About twenty bucks an hour."

"Whatever. You speak to the dead?"

"Of course not. I just convince a bunch of middle-aged idiots who were born yesterday and paid today that I can. I give them reassurance that their departed loved ones are happy beyond the veil. They give me sixty bucks an hour to do it."

The spiritualist suddenly realised he'd just admitted fraud and abruptly stopped and looked uncomfortable. The policeman was an old hand at this.

"I don't think we'll trouble you on that. If a bunch of cows want to turn up on your doorstep and pay you to milk them, then good on you, I say. So, what went wrong tonight?"

"Well, Mrs. Brown, Rita, has been coming for a couple of weeks now. It normally takes that long for me to get enough details on what they want to give them a convincing story. I'd found out that she was recently widowed and was having trouble accepting her husband's passing, but, honestly, tonight I was going to concentrate on Mrs. Gillespie, I'd found enough of her story on Google to know what to say tonight. Anyway, we were all holding hands and I'd done the eyes rolling back in their sockets act for them, hits them right in the wallet that one, when I said one of my regular spirit guides had shown up to act as a conduit to the other side."

The con man paused to finger the two long scratches on one side of his face.

"As soon as I mentioned the guide's name, Dave, Mrs. Brown just went off. She started screaming at me to tell her how he found out and other crap like that. I wanted this week to be all about Mrs. G. and I wasn't prepared to guess what Mrs. B. was here for, so I said Dave was fading and another of my spirit guides was coming through.

"Mrs. Brown went berserk. She grabbed me by the throat and demanded I forgive her. Said the guilt and the loneliness was killing her. When I stayed silent cos I was stunned, quite frankly, she started lashing out with her hands. Scratched the fuck out of my face, the crazy bitch. She reeked of booze. Are you going to arrest her?"

"If you want to press charges and the other suckers..., sorry, participants, back up your story, I will, yes. We'll let her out on bail, probably mid-morning tomorrow. If you come past the station, on the way back from emergency, they'll show you how to apply for a restraining order...

THE END

NOW LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP.

An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road. A cop pulls him over.

'So,' says the cop to the driver, 'Where have ya been?'

'Why, I've been to the pub, of course,' slurs the drunk.

'Well,' says the cop, 'It looks like you've had quite a few to drink this evening.'

'I did all right,' the drunk says with a smile.

'Did you know,' says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, 'That a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?'

'Oh, thank heavens,' sighs the drunk. 'For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf.'