What the header said. Was woken by a fuzzy Greenday rendition of Basket Case, too slow to answer the phone, but thirty seconds later had a text from A;
'gr8 nan in hosp w big C. goin bas. will pick u n D up'
Fun. Here I was, thinking I could have a well earned day off, but no such luck! D's great, great grandmother has cancer, some kind of gastro-intestinal variety, and since she hasn't seen the little one yet and the doctors have given her two weeks (she's already had one now), we have to endure an awkward trip to Basildon with her father.
We're still in touch, but the break up was, well, not messy, but strange. Not really clean. It's only been about a month, but it seems like we've had this arrangement for months, probably a result of A working four nights on, four off. Why did I deprive my daughter of a father? I didn't. He decided I wasn't enough. He needed something more to satisfy him, to make him feel confident about his body. To be wanted. Imagine a typical insecure teenage girl, obsessed with looks and desirability to the opposite sex and that's him. When the equivalent of a washed up thirty-something who couldn't find someone his own age to screw turned up, A jumped. Except this was his ex. Who is a psycho. And no, that's not me being bitter and catty, she really is. For the past three years or so she's been sending him messages of varying wierdness, up to the point where in September she threatened suicide.
While I was in hospital with severe post natal depression A finally snapped. He slept with her. At least three times. Something about she was the only person he could talk to about how he was feeling because all his friends are either self-absorbed or have just drifted away since he (well, we, until recently) moved out of London.
I do understand how he felt, and why he did it (and I do buy the sex addict excuse too, because he genuinely is addicted), but I just don't feel I can trust him anymore and it's far better to be apart and find a way to be happy, resolve things in our own time and possibly resume things, than to stay together for D's sake and become resentful.
Felt sick all the way to the hospital. Sitting in a car with people I know, but aren't related to on the way to see a critically ill woman I've never met is scary. I'm the outsider. Awkward silence didn't help much either. Well, what do you say in that situation? Is it really over with L, or are you lying, again?
It always amazes me how well (if that's the right word) terminal patients can look. A's great nan is the real-life version of Catherine Tate's 'nan'. She was 'being posh' because I was there and hadn't met her, but aspects of the character slipped through in her mannerisms and speech patterns.
Being together with everyone made me realise how much I miss being part of a family. Mine are miles away in Yorkshire, and I don't belong to that one anymore, I feel like sodding Annie. Except my Daddy Warbucks changes every night.
Speaking of which I need to get D to the sitter and go meet him. Day off ruined so might as well make it a work day.
