Gracie stretched herself out luxuriously on the bed and admired the effect of her new negligee in the dressing table mirror. She lifted the glass of claret in her hand and her mirror image did the same. Together they drank a silent toast. They licked their lips. A nice drop. Chateaux Haut Brion. Expensive. Frank had been saving it for a special occasion , and wasn’t this a special occasion? If one was going to die, it made sense to do it in comfort and style. Not that Gracie had any real intention of dying. It was just that the pills, even by the handful, took such a long time to take effect. She knew that from the last time. On that occasion it had really seemed to be the only way out although, thinking about it now, she decided that she must have known that Frank would find her before it was too late. Anyway, it had turned out better than she could ever have hoped. Frank had been so worried and ready to forgive that she had sensed the opportunity of a general amnesty. The problem had been that she had found herself pregnant and, almost certainly, the child was Phillip’s. In which case, it would be recognised as such not only by Frank but by the whole stinking town. Phillip was supposedly the friend of them both. Her tearful confession from a hospital bed had limited the liaison to a single aberration, blaming it on alcohol and her desperate longing for Frank who had been away on business. She had put on a convincing display of distress at having let him down even this once. She was rather proud of that effort. Maybe she should have been an actress. Or did they call them actors now? Frank had been only too eager to believe and had somehow rationalised it all as being entirely his fault. He had been trying to make amends ever since. In the event, she had miscarried. Perhaps the pills had helped. The community’s moral arbiters had had no opportunity to make the appropriate connection. Now, circumstances dictated that she push the erase button again.
She had never really broken with Phillip even though he had left town within days of her first missed period. It had been easy enough for them to get together again. Frank was so gullible. Gracie’s former employer, Joyce, had moved up to the city and it took very little imagination to invent the new beauty salon that she now supposedly ran there. Leading on from that, what more natural than that she should ask Gracie to help out when girls were sick or on holiday. Frank had readily approved of this arrangement. It gave Gracie an interest and a change of scene, And if she blew the money she earned on jewellery and clothes, so what? It was her money. It was enough for him to see her happy. But this time, ‘Mr and Mrs Phillip Conway’ had , by the worst of luck, shared their hotel with another guest who knew them both well. Someone who would take the greatest pleasure in spreading this interesting piece of news. It was disgusting the way that some people enjoyed making trouble for others. Gracie had rushed home to forestall the denouement with her own dramatics. Talk would still get around, which was a pity, but the important thing was that she should hang on to Frank. Although he was as stodgy as they come, he was, never-the-less, someone of consequence in the local community and an excellent provider. It would be wrong to say that she didn’t love him. The carefully crafted suicide note on the bed-side table which expressed her unworthiness to be his wife was inspired, to some degree, by genuine guilt. Phillip was just icing, an irresponsible hedonist and fun to be with only because the lack of commitment on both sides was understood. “Just live for the moment,” he would tell her and proceed to follow his own advice with reckless abandon. No worry over consequences or costs seemed to cloud his horizon although he must have been constantly hounded by creditors. Fortunately, she could walk away from all that. He’d be hell to live with. It surprised even Gracie realise just how far she had drifted from her strict upbringing. Her
mother would never have dreamed of missing early Mass and there was a time when Gracie’s biggest worry was to find some new and plausible sin for confession. She had not been to confession or indeed set foot inside the Church since her mother’s death and yet the belief remained ingrained. She was always aware of an accumulating burden of sin but left it for some future all-embracing confession that would eliminate the entire debt at one go. After all, there had to be some limit on the amount of penance that a priest could impose. A drop more Claret would go nicely but the hand that she commanded to reach out somehow would not respond. She tried again and found that she could not move. The chemist’s label had warned against alcohol, and rightly so it seemed. It didn’t matter though. Although she would almost certainly lose consciousness within the next ten minutes, she was reasonably safe for an hour after that. She had the timing precisely worked out. It was now about ten to five and Frank would be tidying up his desk in his usual fussy way. He would be home at exactly quarter past. That left him nearly forty five minutes to get her to the hospital and a stomach pump. Ample time. For years she had cursed Frank’s predictability but for once it was being put to practical use. Whether she was at home or away, it was always the same, he would arrive home dead on quarter past. The only variation in this routine being on the first Tuesday of the month when Rotary had their dinner. That night, Frank cleaned up and changed at work and didn’t arrive home until some time after nine. And the realisation came. Today was the 4th…Tuesday the 4th…Frank would not be coming home….She was tied to the rails by her own hand….and the train would be on time.