Free Mrs Whippy by Cecelia Ahern

One
    My name is Emelda. Describe myself in twenty words? I can do it in less. There’s really not much to me. Forty-six years old. Soon-to-be divorced. Mother of five. Five foot three. Two hundred and twenty pounds. Fed-up and mightily bored with my life. Five words that define me? I hate my ex-husband. That’s only four words, but you get the point. I tend to fall short of my targets.
    I can almost hear my mother in my head. “Hate is a very strong word,Emelda. You don’t
hate
– you
dislike
.” She does that a lot now since she died. She pops into my head and reminds me to do things. I like it when she does that. It’s nice company in my lonely head. Well sorry, my dear departed mother, hate is not a strong enough word for me. I
detest
him and dream of ways he can die a very painful death.
    Perhaps that’s too evil, but he does deserve my bad thoughts. He deserves my mother to tut and shake her head disapprovingly. She did that when she was disgusted at me. He recently ran off with a twenty-three-year-old Russian lap dancer the size of a broomstick. He left me with five sons: a twenty-five-year-old, a twenty-one-year-old, a sixteen-year-old, an eight-year-old and a five-year-old. The remnants of our once-upon-a-time sex life.
    I live in a three-bedroom semidetached house with patternedwallpapers, curtains, carpets and borders. They haven’t been changed since we moved in twenty-five years ago. My kitchen is shabby. My bedroom is a depressing disappointment that, over the years, has seen more depressingly disappointing performances than the West End. Romeo, oh Romeo, my husband was not. Juliet, I certainly am not. The only where-bloody-art-thous uttered from my gob were at four a.m. when he still hadn’t returned from a night out. The only standing on a balcony and calling I’ve done is to hang from our bedroom window while throwing his clothes into the garden. All the neighbours could hear me cursing him.
    I was seventeen when I fell in love with the beast named Charlie. “Fell” is the appropriate word because it was indeed my downfall. I remember the exact moment this fall happened. Wewere having dessert in the cheapest restaurant he could find. We chose delicious vanilla rice-pudding with poached pears and chocolate ice-cream. I looked up from my plate to take a breath from scoffing. I caught his gaze over the flickering flame of the candle. My heart melted like the ice-cream meeting the hot pudding. I can still remember the sweet taste of that chocolate ice-cream on my lips when he kissed me. It was the sweetest kiss I had ever had.
    Every moment of my life is marked by ice-cream. I associate moments with tastes, textures and smells. Sweet sugars that pumped into my blood, lifted my heart and made my special moments even more special.
    I recall the passion-fruit ice-cream in our wedding cake. I remember it touching my tongue and sliding down my throat as Charlie fed the food intomy mouth. My first spoonful of married life. That taste always reminds me of that look on his face. The adoring look that made me think I was the most special woman in the world. I once was in his world.
    I remember the vanilla and strawberries on the first night of our honeymoon. I’ll never forget how the vanilla felt against my skin as it slid down my stomach and formed a pool in my belly-button while we rolled around laughing.
    Knickerbocker Glory reminds me of a time spent watching the sunset on a holiday in Spain. Tones of red and orange decorated the sky over a glistening sea while we watched with sunburned noses and peeling shoulders.
    I recall eating mint ice-cream and chocolate Flakes with my mother in the back garden on summer days. I was heavily pregnant, hot and bothered.The cooling effect of the mint mixed with the familiar smell of my mother’s perfume was a wonderful combination.
    I remember my father bringing me to the beach as a child and tasting orange Popsicles. That