Free (2013) Four Widows by Helen MacArthur Page A

to kickstart my heart.
    Suzanne, on the other hand, will tell you that the truth never comes close to killing you. Faith and forgiveness make a great bullet-protection vest, she argues. The truth can shake you, knock you down even, but can’t break you.
    It can’t break you, she repeats.
    I still don’t know how to answer that.
     

Chapter Thirteen
    Widow Be Damned
     
    I write down times and places whenever I get a feeling I’m being watched or followed. It’s all there in a reporter’s notebook. The audacious stranger following me home from Ribbons seems ever present but never shows his face again. One look at the notebook and people would conclude I was paranoid. Do you see what death does to you?
    Darkness, I decided, was a contributing fear factor so I made sure I lived a floodlit life and also jumped in the car where once I would have walked.
    Jim said we encourage spirits. I rubbished this. Then I thought about it so much I was convinced I’d given myself a cerebral aneurysm. Had I brought this on myself? I had to stop the blood flow to these thoughts, otherwise I wouldn’t make it through another week. My head ached and I even had blurred vision at times–all brought on whenever I wondered if Harrison was trying to tell me something; communicate from the dead. You could argue with hindsight that this is exactly what he was doing or believe it was simply the truth working its way to the top.
    I soon fell into the routine of meeting the girls twice sometimes three times a week–breakfast or lunch. Occasionally, we’d meet for dinner, hoping our presence in Ribbons would draw a crowd.
    The heat seemed to suck the life out of everyone. There was an ongoing lethargy that not even the most sophisticated air conditioning could shift. Babies took on the permanent appearance of bright pink boiled sweets, hot and bothered. People shuffled, exhausted.
    There was a lull in the world and even the anonymous envelope failed to deliver a follow-up, although, I suspected unfinished business on that front. I was more concerned at this time with lack of sleep, which was infuriating me with its persistence. Insomnia is a formidable force; it learns to control you–not the other way round. No matter how much pressure you apply, it doesn’t break unless you drill deep into your consciousness with persistent force and excavate the problem causing the problem.
    I talked to Cece, Kate and Suzanne, to Jim, anyone who had thoughts on a cure for sleeplessness. The answers varied from sex to counting sequins and “there is no bloody cure, you just get over it .”
    My sister helpfully pointed out that insomniac rhymes with maniac for a good reason and offered me enough pills to tranquilise ten thousand men. True, you can flatten it with drugs but it peels itself off the floor and slips back into the bedroom the next night and the next. It has strong-man arms to shake you awake until your teeth rattle before it abandons you abruptly in the dark, on your own, until first light. Then you sleep for an hour or so. You might not.
    Unlike me, Jim thrived on insomnia. He managed it more efficiently than me. He was a wind-farm manager of sleeplessness; harnessing its power for creative output. He liked to list leaders and winners–the talented ones who thrived on just four hours’ sleep each night. Vincent Van Gogh, for example. Look how well that worked out for him, I said.
    Jim glued Corset together and I saw ambition in him as well as perfectionism at work: fact-checking, spelling people’s names with care, confirming ages and relationship connections over and over. He also liked to take a chance on new designers, which was why he was so approachable when I pitched Suzanne’s collection to him.
    I had a great relationship with the team but also had dead-spouse baggage, which caused an acute state of embarrassment for everyone in the office at the time of Harrison’s death. Radioactive sadness is considered to pose health risks to the