A chilling moment in the playground today. Anna, Claire and I are sitting like tricoteuses on our favourite bench, watching our little treasures testing the law of gravity on the new climbing frame. We're busy playing dream homes. “I've always loved those teeny Queen Anne cottages where you eat off three-tier bone-china cake stands and sit on bitsy, bow-legged chairs,” I sigh.

They burst out laughing. “You'd never get your husband through the door, let alone balance him on a spindly chair,” snorts Anna. True, he is six foot fourish, with a tum that starts at his collarbone, and he was never, even in the faraway days when he wanted to please me, given to nibbling dainty cupcakes. When I think of him on a lovely gilt chair, the image is quickly superseded by one of a large purple hippo balancing on a marble. “No, we wouldn't get a house like that now,” I say patiently. “It's for when he's gone.”

“Gone where?” asks Anna. “Oh, he's not going anywhere - yet,” I say. “I meant it's for when he's...well, no longer around.” They look blank. I try again. “You know - departed.” There's a pause. “Oh my God, you mean dead, don't you?” shrieks Anna. “Well, er, yes,” I say, flummoxed. Doesn't everyone think like this? Apparently not. Both stare at me for a long moment and then one of the children falls off the climbing frame and we all rush into action.

So now I know. It's officially Not Normal to anticipate the death of your spouse so keenly. I'm worried: all my dreams have the same prerequisite. I'll move house / buy a new car / take up painting - when he's dead. I can scarcely think of buying a pint of milk without thinking it would be so much better if he were dead first.

The actual demise is never gone into in any detail. He certainly doesn't suffer. I, however, have been through the most terrible agonies. Is it really still de rigueur for the widow to wear black these days, or could I get away with a splash of red?

It is not until midnight, when I wake and look over at the sweetly sleeping hippo, that I know for sure that death just won't work. Black makes me look completely ashen, everyone else at the funeral will be wearing it and, when all's said and done, the hippo is a protected species.

But, just when things look really bleak, with his tragic demise off the cards for ever, I realise that there is still a glimmer of hope. Divorce!

Anonymous

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