Page 45 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

‘Niamh,’ I say, my voice wobbly. ‘I hope you’re okay. You seemed out of sorts yesterday and I’m worried that I’ve not heard from you. If you’re not okay, please phone me or WhatsApp me or something and let me know what I can to do help. Whatever it is we will get through it together, I promise. If you are okay – and by okay, I mean physically able to answer your phone – first of all let me ask you what in the name of all that is holy are you doing not answering your phone or your messages? Don’t you know I worry? I need you, Niamh. I need you to be okay and I need to tell you what just happened with Laura because it was awful and I… I just need you to be okay.’

I end the call and allow Daniel to lick my hand a little in an attempt to reassure him that I’ve not completely lost it. The warmth of his breath on my skin and the softness of his fur are such a comfort. Turning round to look at him, I think about how important he is to me. He keeps me going on the days I just want to lie in bed and hibernate from the world. He might be a ginormous pain in the arse from time to time, but he is loyal and constant and he loves me unconditionally.

‘You’re a good boy,’ I tell him. ‘The best pupper in the whole world.’ He gives me a look that screams ‘tell me something I don’t know’ before resting the side of his face on my hand once more. With him beside me, his ridiculous floppy ears tickling my hand, I feel my breathing come back to normal and my tears stop falling. Dogs really should be available on the NHS to treat anxiety, depression and menopausal breakdowns. ‘Shall we go home?’ I ask and he jumps back to his usual spot on the back seat and lies down. I take that as a yes.

As we’re just short of two weeks from the shortest day of the year, the light is already fading outside even though it’s not yet three in the afternoon. The fact that it’s bitterly cold and the clouds are heavy with rain waiting to be unleashed on the earth doesn’t do much to brighten what is left of the day. Driving home, I try to find some tidings of comfort and joy in the twinkling Christmas lights in the windows of the houses we pass, but they just serve to remind me that when I get home, I will be walking into a festive-free abode, which will be dark, cold and empty. It’s not so much an Unexpected Wave of Sadness that hits me but an Entirely Predictable Tsunami of Depression so large that I don’t think even Daniel can fend it off entirely.

‘Fudge this for a game of soldiers,’ I say to no one but myself. I’m not going to lie down under this. I’m not going to do what I want to do most of all which is crawl under my duvet, pull it up over my head and hide from the world until the boys come home in two weeks. I will not fester in my own misery.

My father’s voice rings in my ears. ‘Just keep swimming,’ I hear him say and although I know he totally borrowed that phrase from Finding Nemo, which he watched on loop with the boys, I decide to adopt it as his very own words of wisdom.

That said, it isn’t so much that I need to keep swimming as need to go out to the spider-infested shed in the dark, get the old ladder and take it back into the house so I can conquer my worst fear and climb up into the attic to retrieve the decorations myself.

I can do this, I tell myself, slipping my phone into the pocket of my hoodie and starting my ascent to the one place in my own home that scares the ever-living Jesus out of me.

‘It’s only a space,’ I remind myself. ‘Just another room of sorts.’ With wooden beams and a partially floored area on which a lifetime of family memories is balanced. I suppose I should be grateful to Simon who insisted on having a plywood floor laid in the loft shortly after we moved in. Death would be assured if I had to try and balance on the rafters instead.

As I reach my hand around just inside the hatch, terrified it will land on a spider, or a rat, or the bloodied hand of a serial killer, I’m also grateful to find the switch for the light Simon also installed. It may be just a simple bare bulb hanging on a wire, which adds to the kidnapper’s lair feel of the place, but it at least blasts light into all but the darkest recesses of the loft. With the light on and my terrified heart relatively confident there are no murderers on the premises, I haul myself inelegantly through the hatch until I am sitting on plywood, legs dangling into the landing below.

It doesn’t feel particularly secure but I refuse to allow myself the luxury of a panic attack. I’m up here now. If I fall, I fall. If God is good to me, I’ll die quickly and not be left to starve to death in a crumpled mess on the carpet until the boys come home for Christmas and find my decaying corpse.

I wonder how long it will take for Daniel to start eating me.

‘No point in worrying,’ I tell myself as I twist my body around to survey the boxes of memories and long forgotten household gems such as the twins’ cots. We’d never planned on having any more children. The boys were more than enough, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to give their cots away either. Maybe I should do that now. Yes, they still haul at the old maternal heartstrings but I have to face facts. My babies are all grown up. Their cots are just gathering dust and quite possibly woodworm. I should probably go through the bags of their old baby clothes too. I can keep one or two of their favourite little baby-gros and donate what is still fashionable. Someone could be getting good use out of whatever isn’t hideously out of fashion.

But I’m not here to lose myself down memory lane. God knows I’ve done enough of that this last week. I’m here to prove to myself that I am a bad ass who doesn’t need anyone else to help her get the Christmas decorations down from the attic and who is perfectly capable of putting them up all by herself.

It doesn’t take me long to locate them. The tree – which of course is the bulkiest item – turns out to be relatively easy to manoeuvre through the hatch and drop the short distance to the floor below. The boxes of breakable lights and baubles are a bit trickier. Of course, there’s no one to hand them to, and while the top step of the ladder is wide enough to rest them on, that leaves me without the top step of the ladder to rest my feet on as I try and get down.

I refuse to be defeated, eventually deciding to put all the remaining boxes as close to the hatch as possible, reverse my way out in the hope of getting a good footing at the top of the ladder, and reaching up to grab a box. I’ll have to make several trips up and down the ladder. My thighs are already crying at the thought of it, but I will be prouder than proud can be if I achieve this on my own, and while going through an exceptionally intense mental breakdown.

With shaking legs, I manage to get the first two boxes out of the attic and onto the landing floor relatively easily. The fear of climbing a ladder doesn’t lessen though, I just start singing ‘I Will Survive’ to gee myself on. Before I know it, I’m on the last box and my singing has reached an ear-splitting crescendo when my phone suddenly vibrates in my hoodie pocket, scaring the living bejaysus out of me and sending me hurtling backwards. In the briefest of interludes when I am toppling down, tinsel flying into the air like fireworks being launched into the night sky, I swear I see my entire life flash before my eyes.

Dear Reader, sadly the montage of the life of Rebecca Louise Burnside, aged forty-six, is really quite unremarkable.

Let’s just say if Clarence the angel came to visit me in this moment to show me all the joyous things I’ve experienced and the lives I’ve touched in a positive way, he would have to add some creative flair to his storytelling.

My ass hits the floor first, I think. It’s all happening so fast I can’t quite process it, but I do process the shock of pain that runs right from my bum to my lower back and I think I might have heard a crack – no pun intended. The noise could be from my head hitting the floor, or any one of the remaining baubles raining down on me like a hail of bullets while I cover my face to minimise the damage. My singing is no more. All that I can hear is a buzzing in my ears, and the frantic barking of a dog. It takes a moment for me to realise the buzzing sound is my phone which is still vibrating. At least that means I didn’t drop it, or land on it, and it’s not broken.

Gingerly, trying to assess my injuries, I pat my stomach and locate my phone still safely tucked away in the kangaroo pouch-like safety of my hoodie pocket. Ignoring how my arm feels achy and my head a bit spinny, I reach for it, hoping I’m able to answer before it rings off or I pass out. Not that I’m sure I’ll get peace enough to pass out, not with Daniel barking up a storm at the living room door desperate to get up the stairs to perform his best Paw Patrol moves and rescue me.

My tumble, which of course I should’ve known was inevitable given my history of being accident prone, has, however, distracted me enough that I’m not even thinking about who might be on the other end. I’m so dazed I’m not sure I’d know my own name if I was asked, never mind remember if I was waiting for someone to call.

‘Hello,’ I answer, my mental assessment of my pain levels continuing. My arse hurts. Can you actually break your arse? If so, do you go to A&E and tell them you’ve a suspected broken bum or?—

‘Becca.’ It’s Niamh. And there is something in her voice I don’t like at all one tiny bit. No longer thinking of my injuries, I pull myself up to sitting, something I immediately regret as a fresh wave of pain shoots up my spine.

‘Sweet baby Jesus!’ I call out, with a loud gasp. Just keep breathing. Just breathe through the pain, I tell myself. I’ve never heard of anyone ever dying from a broken bum so this is not life threatening it just hurts like a motherfu?—

‘Becca, are you okay?’ Niamh asks.

‘I think I’m supposed to ask you that?’ I stutter through the pain.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks.

‘I feel off the ladder when the phone rang.’

‘What in God’s name were you doing up a ladder? You know better than that! We don’t do ladders! You don’t do ladders!’

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