The ambulance outside alerted two of the neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Is Janice OK? Mrs Hughes asked. \u2018She\u2019s been looking very drawn.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I saw her come to the door. I think it\u2019s\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Alex?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Janice told me he\u2019s been worse lately,\u2019 Mrs Phillips said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018That overdose. Last summer, wasn\u2019t it? Do you think he\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mrs Phillips clamped her lips together. This isn\u2019t suitable conversation<\/em> her stiffly proper expression seemed to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eirlys was everything to him. He watched her grow as a baby, kept an eye on her schooling. On her reaching puberty he became over-interested, you might say. When she had boyfriends, well he had jealousy like a bridge has rivets. Eirlys\u2019 marriage left him grey somehow, his spirit seemed to have drained from him. But he had the blues in him right from when we first dated, just kids. He was prone to them. Having a daughter gave him some relief, I suppose; her leaving home extinguished that. I tried to help him but his empty heart wouldn\u2019t let me in. I\u2019ve been expecting this ever since last summer. Longer, really, if I\u2019m honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sheila Phillips began making the tea for her and Fred. The final blast furnace at the steelworks was shutting down today. Two thousand jobs going over the next few months. They\u2019d all seen it coming and the workers were now resigned to a town without the smoke or stink. The redundancy money would help. But after? Would Fred work again? He was in his fifties. She hoped so. Some of them, maybe, could end up like Alex Smith. Once Alex had gone on the sick, he\u2019d really spiralled down, hadn\u2019t he? All that time on his hands and his mind like a torch on a mirror, just reflecting on himself. She didn\u2019t want that happening to Fred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the ambulance Janice Smith held Alex\u2019s still hand. She\u2019d popped out from the house to the Spar for a few things and by the time she\u2019d returned Alex had hung himself. The paramedics had tried to revive him, then pronounced him dead, and taken him and her in the ambulance. Now she was in a hospital corridor and he was in the mortuary. Could she have discovered the rope he’d hidden away? Should she have sought help for him early in their marriage when he sometimes sobbed unaccountably and said he felt hopeless? A list of might-have-beens rattled in her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They said something about \u2018do you have an undertaker, a burial plan?\u2019 Well of course not, Alex wasn\u2019t even sixty. Then something about they\u2019d keep his body there, and an undertaker would be in touch. They\u2019d let her say goodbye to that gaunt, unfulfilled body on the slab. Then she\u2019d stumbled out into the car park to find Eirlys, who\u2019d she rung. Above her she saw a huge grey cloud that stretched right across to Swansea. Darkness in the air. Inside Alex too, strangling life from him. There\u2019d be dark days for a while. Just accept. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ambulance outside alerted two of the neighbours. \u2018Is Janice OK? Mrs Hughes asked. \u2018She\u2019s been looking very drawn.\u2019 \u2018I saw her come to the door. I think it\u2019s\u2026\u2019 \u2018Alex?\u2019 \u2018Janice told me he\u2019s been worse lately,\u2019 Mrs Phillips said. \u2018That overdose. Last summer, wasn\u2019t it? Do you think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1129,1408],"tags":[1409,643,114,1412,95,8,7,122,20,1410,116,551,1411,14,11],"class_list":["post-2196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1129","category-oct-2024-defeat","tag-alex","tag-been","tag-but","tag-fred","tag-had","tag-he","tag-her","tag-him","tag-his","tag-janice","tag-like","tag-mrs","tag-phillips","tag-she","tag-was"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sbrNJE-resigned","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2197,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions\/2197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}