Pity Party

by Daisy Buchanan

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Katherine lives by the rules, ticks all the boxes and prepares for the worst, even while she hopes for the best.

Then the worst actually happens and, as she tries to navigate life as a young widow, it turns out she was not prepared at all.

Nothing scares Katherine more than stopping, but everyone insists she needs to take some time for herself. Head to a wellness retreat, they said. Enjoy some me-time, they said...

Except this retreat isn't the pity party she was hoping for. Instead of massages, she has erotic meditation, and instead of spa treatments she has scream therapy.

Katherine has never lost control in her life. In fact, she's fairly certain that if she starts screaming she might never stop.

But she's about to let go, and everyone had better stand back...

Hilarious, heartbreaking and honest, this is a story about learning how to stop playing it safe in a world that feels so dangerous - and showing up to the party, even when it feels impossible.

Release date: July 11, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Ben’s funeral happened on a Wednesday. As I stood in church, between his mother and my best friend, trying hard to think sad thoughts, all my brain could manage was This really feels more like a Friday. I kept drifting off, listing my weekend chores – thinking about sorting the bed linen and laundry, and wondering whether I should go for a run in the morning – before remembering when it was, and where I was. Get it together, Katherine. You’re paying seventy quid a year for the Headspace app, and you can’t stay focused during an actual funeral. What’s wrong with you? It was the saddest occasion imaginable. My brain knew that. But the rest of me wouldn’t play along. Why were we doing this so quickly? Grief came in stages; this was well documented. It seemed all wrong to bury Ben during the shock/denial bit. In six months, I’d be ready to cry my eyes out. Now, I felt as though I was at a very dull pantomime. Every time the vicar referred to Ben in the past tense, we should have been on our feet, bellowing, ‘OH NO HE ISN’T!’

The vicar coughed, and I caught his eye and smiled. It’s OK, I wanted to tell him. This is a very dusty church. Coughing is an occupational hazard. I felt my own cough building at the back of my throat. What funerals needed was a dedicated coughing section. A little pen where we could all sit and pay our respects, while choking quietly. And when I thought about it, ‘paying your respects’ was such a weird expression. It made grief sound like an overdue library fine. I didn’t know how to apply it to Ben. In fact, other than the guest list, nothing about this funeral seemed to have anything to do with Ben.

‘Ben loved sports. But he also loved spending time with his family, and having a laugh with his friends . . . ’ said the vicar. The unironic use of the phrase ‘having a laugh’ should automatically place you on some kind of register – alongside ‘kiddies’, ‘nom nom nom’ and ‘what about yourself?’

‘He was a beloved colleague, and he liked to unwind at the end of the day with a glass of wine . . . ’ I knew that Constance had provided the vicar with a long, detailed essay about exactly who Ben was, as a son and as a person. And it appeared that the vicar had chosen to ignore the essay and read aloud from his own Tinder profile.

I snorted, and Annabel must have thought I was weeping, because she took my hand in hers and squeezed it. Unfortunately, her hand was full of wet tissue. I gulped, not because I was choking back tears, but because I was trying not to think about the fact that I was now covered in Annabel’s cold snot.

The dust motes drifted, pale gold in the winter sun. The vicar was saying something about Ben’s kindness to animals, and his beloved pet rabbit, Buster. Who was Buster? I couldn’t remember Ben ever mentioning a rabbit. Was Ben an animal lover? I suppose he loved to eat them.

Feel sad, I told myself. You’re supposed to be devastated. But it was impossible to focus on Ben, because he just wasn’t there. It felt as though we were all waiting for him to arrive.

‘And now, Benjamin James Ralph Attwell,’ said the vicar. ‘May you rest in peace. Amen.’

Constance sighed, and it was my turn to reach for her hand, warm, in a soft black leather glove. I tried to force my face into an expression of sorrow – knowing the best I could manage was my own version of upside-down mouth emoji – and looked at her. If I couldn’t locate the right sort of sadness at this moment in time, I could be sad for Constance. Her lovely little boy, her daredevil, her darling was up there, and we were here. It was tragic. It was mad. My first tear gathered and rolled as she muttered, ‘I told that idiot a thousand times. It’s pronounced Rafe.’

The tear evaporated. It felt more like a sitcom than a funeral. Any minute, Ben would turn up at the door, covered in seaweed, saying, ‘Well, this is embarrassing! I fell in the drink and came to on the back of a milk float in the Isle of Wight. I don’t know which poor sod is in that box, but it’s not me.’

I could see him, in his shorts and his hat, holding an almost full box of Peroni. ‘What?’ he’d say. ‘The shop was on the way! It took five minutes! Do you want one?’

Then he’d say, ‘What are you all doing in church? I never went to church! In fact, the last time was . . . ’

‘Our wedding,’ I’d finish. ‘Same people, same venue. No gazebo this time, sorry. No vodka luge.’

As a wife, I’d failed Ben in so many ways, but this was the last straw. He’d really wanted a vodka luge at his funeral. I’d only just remembered, and now it was too late.

Because when your healthy, happy young husband says something like that, you laugh. You try, and fail, to imagine the two of you in your seventies, eighties, nineties. You can’t begin to imagine the reality of living and ageing. You can’t comprehend the evolution of your marriage. I never pictured Ben’s funeral because I was distracted dreaming of the children we’d have, the homes we’d live in, the places we’d explore. I could still see the French farmhouse we’d retire to. I could smell the bunches of dried lavender, tied up and gathered into glass vases. I could feel the warm terracotta tiles beneath my bare feet. That place, and those feelings, seemed much more real to me than this church, and Ben’s coffin on the altar.

I couldn’t remember saying or even hearing the words ‘till death us do part’ on our wedding day. Even though in later moments, I sometimes felt trapped and tested by their meaning. I remember thinking that although marriage was supposed to be sacred, and serious, it was so much fun. Most of the time. And I made a promise. Technically, Ben did not break his. He did what he said he would do. He stayed married to me until he fell out of his boat and drowned.

Constance chose the last hymn. We said goodbye to Ben while bellowing ‘For those in peril on the sea’. She gripped my hand tightly, and before the end of the first verse, she buried her head on my shoulder. ‘What was I thinking?’ she said, sobbing. ‘What was I thinking? He’ll never be in peril on the sea again.’ She was using her ‘outdoor voice’. ‘This song doesn’t work!’ she called out. ‘This is a shit hymn!’

Without looking around, I could tell that people were staring.

Straight away, Annabel swivelled, trapping us under her long black coat in something between a bear hug and a headlock. Constance almost toppled, and pushed against me, to steady herself. The three of us started to sway.

‘FUCK THIS SONG,’ shouted Constance, from under the coat.

‘It’s so sad, so very sad,’ said Annabel, noisily, through tears. ‘So SAD,’ she said, again, drowning out Constance, who was trying to scream obscenities at the vicar. Although it was hard to tell who each noise was coming from. The three of us had formed a solid mass, we were a triumvirate of weeping women, renting our garments and crying over the same man. We must have looked like some kind of Old Testament monster. Or a public demonstration of how to fail the Bechdel test.

Concealed by the coat and under the cover of darkness, I could cry for Ben, and I could cry for me. I felt sick. I growled, I sang, I tried to scream the final ‘sea’. But everything got stuck. Everything felt tight, and hot, and itchy and trapped within me. In approximately 120 seconds I’d have to get out from under Annabel’s coat. I’d have to stand by the door, and smile sadly, and think of something nice to say to the vicar, and shake everyone’s hands, and make space for their sadness. When I hadn’t been able to begin to find room for mine.

The wake was almost festive, all warm alcohol and flaky pastry and ‘Do you remember . . . ’ Ben’s brother Sam was discovered video conferencing with Dubai on the toilet – the telling off from Constance was so evocative of an Attwell family Christmas that I had a brief craving for brandy butter. There was much laughter, followed by panicked apologies. Everyone kept telling me they were sorry, everyone kept reminding me that it was ‘OK’ to ‘feel sad’. After a while, the word ‘tragic’ was used so frequently that it lost all meaning. ‘Tragic’ became the name of a town in Cornwall, or a new kind of cryptocurrency scam. It didn’t sound permanent enough for me to take it seriously. How could any of it be permanent, when I was so certain that my favourite face was about to appear at the door, and I’d hear their voice saying my name?

Of course Ben didn’t show up. Funerals weren’t really his vibe. And I’d forgotten the vodka luge.

It’s not over yet. I could still have a good day. Everything depends on the Banana of Portent.

Starting the day with a firm, ripe banana means that everything is going to be OK. I’ll be able to keep breathing, keep smiling, and do some semblance of my job. A stiff, green, crunchy banana is a bad sign. It means a telling-off from Jeremy, a sharp word from Akila, or one of those meetings where I zone out, my briefing notes start to dance before my eyes and I have an inexplicable urge to burst into tears and start singing ‘I Will Survive’.

This week, I really need to turn everything around. Things haven’t been going so well for me lately. So I’d made a plan. As I keep telling Grace the Therapist, I can plan my way out of anything. There is no disaster that can’t be overcome with a brand-new notebook and a pack of highlighters.

The plan looked like this. Get up two hours early. Meditate for twenty minutes. Journal for twenty minutes. Drink some fresh ginger tea while sitting in the garden and contemplating the beauty of nature. Get dressed, in a crisp white shirt and my smartest trousers. Arrive at work an hour early. Get ahead on the research for the Woodland Trust. Or at least, become less behind with the research for the Woodland Trust.

The trouble is that I’ve had to make some last-minute changes to the plan. It’s not a problem. In fact, it shows I’m strong, and resilient, and that I have great problem-solving skills. The new plan is as follows. Meditate for two minutes – then accidentally fall asleep for an hour. Wake up panicking. Sack off the journaling, then waste three minutes thinking of a convincing excuse I can give Grace the Therapist when she asks me about this next week. Try to remember whether I own any crisp white shirts. Empty out drawers and find glorious, smooth piece of clean white cotton. Attempt to put it on. Discover that it is a tablecloth. Waste two minutes wondering why I have a tablecloth, and how it got into the house.

Panic, and wear musty-smelling vintage sundress that is too tight in the armpits. Waste another minute testing the range of the dress by trying to spell out YMCA with arms. Put knickers on. Realise knickers are inside out. Take them off. Put them on back to front. Brush teeth while wondering how many times I can use the words ‘development’ and ‘strategy’ in today’s company catch-up session before Jeremy realises that I don’t know what I’m doing.

The new plan still allows plenty of time for a nutritious breakfast. I never skip breakfast because I’m incredibly good at self-care and because Constance, Annabel and Grace won’t shut up about it. So, I always start my day with a delicious banana. Did you know that it’s possible to chew, swallow and digest a banana while writing an email and running for a bus? Nature is healing. And the packaging is fully biodegradable! I’m not wasting any single-use plastics.

I open my front door. I take a single step out into the world. My right foot is on the outside doormat. My left foot is on the inside doormat. It is going to be a good day. It has to be a good day. I smile, I peel, I bite.

I gag.

And then I stumble off the doorstep, reach forward and throw up.

Trying to forget the fact that I’ve just puked in the recycling bin, I shut the door behind me and start to scuttle down the street, while scrolling through the podcasts on my phone. There must be something here on positive thinking. Something that reminds me that I’m in control. Bananas can’t predict the future. Nothing that happens to me today at work could possibly be so horrible that it makes me throw up in a dustbin.

The thing is, even when I hate my job, I love my job. Admittedly, it hasn’t been great for the last few months, but that’s on me. I feel as though I’ve never worked longer or tried harder – but I’m operating from within a thick fog.

Some people have claimed that this is because I’m grieving. ‘You don’t need to keep battling your way through the fog,’ Grace said, the last time I spoke to her. ‘Why not let it envelop you, for a while. Trust that it will lift when you’re ready. You don’t need to do anything, Katherine. Right now, you can just be.’

Usually, I reply politely, with, ‘That’s an interesting idea.’ I’m sure it works really well for other people. But I’ve always loved to be busy. I was brought up by my grandmother, whose catchphrase was ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’.

The awful thing, the shameful thing, is that I know this can’t be grief, because I’m not sad enough. Of course, I can’t mention this to Grace, or Constance, or Annabel. I really wish I felt too upset to go to work. I should be haunting my own house, brought to my knees with pain whenever I find a stray sock under a sofa cushion. But, in all honesty, I keep forgetting that Ben has gone. Before he died, he spent so much time working late or away at sailing competitions.

Instead of crying, I’m sleeping. I should be lying awake all night, unable to bear the fact that there’s an empty space in the bed beside me. I told Grace I was ‘sleeping like the dead!’ (I laughed; she didn’t.) Before Ben died, I’d usually wake up at three or four in the morning and lie awake with a pounding heart, thinking about the usual things – mostly the climate emergency, whether I needed to start making my own bird food, how to persuade Constance to get an electric car – but now, I can sleep for up to twelve hours at a time. Sometimes I go to bed as soon as I get home from work and pass out until morning. Sleep is supposed to be very good for you, so I must be doing something right.

But during the day, I keep forgetting where I am. Little things keep going wrong. Last week I made Jeremy a coffee, and then I poured it straight down the sink; I got taken off a pitch for a new client, Go Green! – who make domestic compost toilets – because the name of the woman in charge is Marge, and I kept calling her Lisa; and none of my recent campaign ideas have been met with enthusiasm or even mild interest – just blank stares. And the occasional horrified gasp.

It’s strange. I’ve been at Shrinkr for eight years, and I’ve always been able to anticipate what everyone wants and needs from me. It’s my dream job, helping businesses to implement solid sustainability policies and incorporating their ecological credentials into their branding, and I’m good at it.

At first, Shrinkr operated on a small scale. A shoestring. If you went into an early meeting, you would have struggled to spot the CEO – it was just a lot of people in dungarees, saying, ‘Did you read that thing in the Guardian about kitchen gardens?’ We mostly worked with people who went to festivals and sold vegan sausage rolls out of wheelbarrows. Now, we’re working with Marriott and Microsoft. It’s exciting. It’s a lot of pressure. But it’s a calling. In a tiny way, I’m changing the world for the better. I’m part of something important. And I still have a couple of old clients, making power bars out of parsnips.

I’ve proved myself over and over. I’ve had promotions, and glowing appraisals. I have won awards for my work. I was so proud of it. They needed me.

Now, I need them.

I haven’t missed a single day of work since the funeral. I mean, I’m not dead, so I’ve got no excuse not to come into the office. HR weren’t thrilled – we had some painful conversations about ‘burnout’ and ‘overdoing it’ and ‘taking time to recalibrate’ – but I know myself best, and I know that if I stop, I’ll never be able to start again. I have to work through this. I can’t wait until I get back to normal. Who knows how long that will take?

When your husband dies, you hear the same three words over, and over, and over. Not ‘I’m so sorry,’ or even ‘How are you?’ It’s ‘Take some time!’ People are still, constantly, offering me time, as though it’s theirs to share with me, to bestow upon me, like a bowl of roast potatoes. I must make sure I take some time! As much time as I need!

I’d rather have the potatoes, to be honest.

As I told Jeremy and Annabel and Constance and Grace, the only sensible thing to do with grief is to literally work my way through it. Time is the enemy, and I’d rather not have any to spare.

Fortunately, today that is not a problem. When I reach the revolving doors of the Shrinkr building, I’m eight minutes late. By the time I step out of the lift and into Reception, I’m twelve minutes late.

‘Katherine!’ Jeremy is waiting and ready to pounce. He’s in his pale pink shirt, which means he’s about to meet a very specific sort of client. The kind that will say, with a straight face, ‘We’re completely organic – but we’re funky with it.’ The kind that knows Jeremy from family parties, because he went to school with their dad.

‘Good morning!’ I say, smiling. ‘Nice to see—’

He grabs my elbow and wrinkles his nose. ‘What are you doing? What are you wearing?’

‘It’s vintage,’ I say, tugging at the dress. ‘And it’s hot out there. I’m going to make a coffee. Do you want one?’

He frowns. The colour on his cheeks and his forehead deepens, turning from vermilion to carmine.

‘Oh my God. Have you forgotten? You’ve forgotten!’

‘Of course not,’ I say, slowly. ‘There’s no way I would forget! In fact, maybe you’ve forgotten that I’m really good at remembering!’ What am I saying? I sound ridiculous. I force a laugh until it becomes quite clear that Jeremy wants to kill me.

‘Mayburn,’ he says, menacingly. ‘The Mayburn team is expecting us, in the boardroom, in fourteen minutes. They’re really looking forward to seeing your presentation, which you assured me, less than twenty-four hours ago, was finished, and polished, and triple checked.’

‘Mayburn. Absolutely,’ I say.

Oh, God. I do remember Jeremy saying something, yesterday. He was very stern, and very intense, but even though I could sense the meaning behind the words – he definitely wanted me to do something – I didn’t quite catch the task itself. He was standing by the window, and there was a butterfly behind him. The poor thing had somehow got trapped between the layers of glass. I think it was a red admiral. I didn’t know how to get it out. Maybe I should check to see if it’s still there. I wonder if I could get hold of a chisel, and make a small air hole . . .

‘Absolutely,’ I hear myself repeating. ‘Totally prepared.’

Mayburn. May Burn. Is that . . . cars? I think that’s cars.

Now I remember. Because when the project came in, and we were invited to pitch, I said that I didn’t think we should be working with a car company at all. But I was shouted down with phrases like ‘flexible’ and ‘open-minded’ and ‘six-figure budget’.

‘I’ll be with you in three minutes,’ I say, and walk to my desk. The very worst part of my job is lying in wait for me. My assistant.

‘Morning, Lydia!’ I say, cheerfully. ‘How are you?’

‘All ready for Mayburn?’ she replies. ‘You’re cutting it a bit fine. And that’s a brave outfit choice for the big meeting!’

Lydia is mean, but accurate. However, this is a bit rich, given she’s wearing red salopettes and a lime-green beanie. All the better to clash dramatically with her trainers, which are road-traffic-accident orange. Apparently, they were made by a group of period poverty activists in Guadalajara. They have a Velcro fastening. They don’t look like the kind of shoe you could buy from a shop. They look like the sort of thing that would be prescribed to you, after a horse stood on your foot. They cost £400. (I found this out when she spilled kombucha on them.)

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So ready. Really excited, actually. Do you have any revisions for the deck before I go in?’ Just because I can’t remember making a presentation doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Just because Lydia has never completed an assigned task on time before doesn’t mean she won’t surprise me today.

‘You didn’t send it over, remember?’ she says. ‘I asked you about it yesterday, and you said it was all sorted.’ There’s a gleam in her eye, and I don’t like it. I suspect she knows exactly what she’s doing – or rather, what I haven’t done. And she has no plans to help me out. Even though I’ve lied to save her so many times that I’ve started to think of her ‘dentist’ as an imaginary friend.

‘Ah, yes,’ I say. ‘Of course I did. Sorry.’ This isn’t Lydia’s fault. I can’t hate her for not reading a deck I didn’t send. I am a good person, and when other people challenge me, I respond with compassion and patience. Lydia is a human being. May she be well. May she be happy. May she be free from suffering. May she be less insufferable. Oh, hell. Never mind.

‘You’ve been forgetting a lot of stuff, lately,’ Lydia says, her voice pregnant with concern. ‘Do you think you have early onset dementia? I saw this YouTube series about how your brain cells start dying, once you’ve turned thirty . . . ’

The thing about Lydia is that she’s the rudest person I’ve ever met – but whenever I call her out, she gets offended. On this occasion, it’s easiest to pretend that my old age is also making me hard of hearing.

I lean over my desk, without sitting down, and take a deep breath. There must be a presentation here somewhere. There has to be. The mental fog is thickening. I try to picture myself doing the work, coming up with ideas. I look around for open notebooks, scribbled memos. I retrieve a large piece of rice cake from the leaves of a cheese plant. Now is not the time to panic. If I keep a cool, clear head, I’ll be able to deliver something. To be honest, with the bigger clients, the messaging tends towards the generic. I can do this in my sleep. It’s an hour of smiling and chanting. I know the magic words Energy, synergy, strategy, integrity, liberty. Harrods. Selfridges. John Lewis. Shit. Focus, Katherine.

I search my emails for MAYBURN. Here we go. Mayburn Presentation. Aha! I sent this to myself three weeks ago. I’m ahead of the game! I completed it, way ahead of schedule, and then moved straight on to my next task. Of course I did.

‘Wish me luck!’ The relief is coursing through my body. As if I’d have forgotten! Everything is going to be fine.

When I get to the boardroom, Jeremy is waiting for me. He stands up when I enter. He’s flanked by a pair of white men, in identical pale pink shirts. ‘Katherine, finally!’ he says. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes – in fact, it barely reaches his teeth. ‘The woman of the hour is gracing us with her presence. Katherine, I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure of meeting the Mayburn team in person!’

‘Arlo.’ Arlo says his name, then looks me up and down, and I know he’s thinking, Six. Possibly a seven if she was wearing a bit more make-up, it’s hard to tell what her tits are like. He lingers on the hem of my dress and spends a good twenty seconds shaking the hair out of his eyes before he deigns to shake my hand. His trousers are cut to reveal quite a lot of bare ankle. This man is more tassel than loafer, figuratively and literally.

‘And this, would you believe it, is Jeremy!’ says Jeremy. ‘Har har har!’

I stare at Jeremy, trying to find something on his face to connect with. He’s completely nondescript. His hair is neither grey, nor black, nor brown. There is nothing of interest here. No spectacles, unremarkable eyebrows, nothing in the plane of his cheeks or the curve of his lips that would make you look twice. And yet I know all about him, or I could certainly make a few educated guesses. His great-grandfather invented the petrol pump. He lives in Richmond but keeps a five-million-pound apartment somewhere in the city. He’s never done his own laundry. If he wanted to, he could probably send out a company-wide email with the subject ‘You’re invited to a naked cocaine orgy. Bring guns’, and he wouldn’t get fired.

‘Jeremy, goodness!’ I say. ‘Another one! Hello! What a coincidence! Did you know that we have three Jeremys working in Shrinkr senior management?’ And they’re all white. There’s only one woman, and one black person, and they’re the same person. Akila – the person I’d like to be when I grow up. And she’s a reason to get it together for Mayburn. If I can be half as confident and composed as she is, I’ll nail this.

‘Right, the presentation!’ I dim the lights, open my laptop and click on the email attachment. The word ‘MAYBURN’ fills the wall. I’m relieved to see that the Shrinkr branding is present and correct. I’m sure that the contents will come back to me, any minute.

‘So, we’re thrilled that you’re potentially interested in partnering with us to deliver both an internal Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, as well as some new environmentally focused branding,’ I say, and click to the first slide. This also says ‘MAYBURN’ and under it ‘something here’.

‘Katherine, are you sure this is the correct presentation?’ says Jeremy.

‘Absolutely.’ I smile. ‘Because “something here” obviously means . . . ’ I think quickly . . . ‘Yes! Planet Earth. There is something here!’ I sweep my arm across the room to indicate the table, the chairs, the gurgling water cooler. ‘Nature’s beauty is all around us. And . . . ’ If I keep talking, I’m bound to say something with a bit of substance. ‘ . . . and a key Mayburn brand value is appreciating the Earth. People buy your cars in order to explore the planet. They want to be brave and drive to beautiful places. So we think “something here” really underpins that value. It’s about protecting our greatest shared asset, while enjoying the asset of a Mayburn car.’

Jeremy – Mayburn Jeremy – looks perplexed. ‘Well, a car can’t be an asset, because it always depreciates in value . . . ’

I click to the next slide. It’s a quote. ‘ “Look at situations from more angles, and you will become more open” – the Dalai Lama.’

Oh my God. I have absolutely no idea what this means. I don’t know what I was thinking. I breathe in and breathe out. If I concentrate really hard, I can travel back in time to the moment when I put this mad draft together – and wor. . .