God Save The Queen

Chapter 3 POV The Queen

POV The Queen

Smell is so important isn’t it? A smell can transport you to a happy time in your life because scent triggers memories. Every time I smell bread being made it reminds me of being a young girl watching my grandmother cook in the kitchen where she worked. The smell of my sons as I put them to bed and kissed their little rosy cheeks was always by far my favourite smell. I can still remember the smell of roses from my wedding bouquet. But when the bomb went off a smell could mean life or death. Men could smell women and we used to smear cow s**t on the walls to mask our scent. We would even spray men’s aftershave on our cloths but they could still smell us. The day the first bomb went off started like any other day. I woke up in our house in Dublin thankful that it was Friday which meant I was going straight from work to our family country estate Sutton Manor for the weekend. Sutton Manor was my happy place and I would sit around miserable all week waiting for the weekend so I could get out of the city. My alarm went off that morning and I sat up and looked at my phone for the weather and I was disappointed to see that it was going to rain all weekend. I literally couldn’t catch a break. I looked over at his side of the bed and he had already left for the gym. I text him to ask what time he was finishing work and by the time I got out of the shower he had text back to say he wasn’t coming to the country house with me this weekend and for the first time in a long time I smiled. Most women would be hurt that their husband didn’t want to spend the weekend with them especially because it was my birthday, but our marriage died the day our sons died in the car accident. My beautiful babies were fast asleep in the back seat as we were in the front seat fighting. He was driving and screaming into my ear and a lorry came out of no where and the accident took both my kids. I can still remember the smell of the hospital room when the doctor told us that both our sons had died. I blamed him for not paying attention because he was too busy picking a fight with me and he blamed me for antagonizing him into a fight whilst he was driving. The loss of our kids shook us both to the core and although we had always had a good marriage the hatred we had for each other after the accident was toxic. We would argue non stop and we even began to physically fight each other. Then to top it off I had met a lovely man called Thomas at a grief counselling meeting and we began an affair. Thomas was nothing like my husband and that’s what attracted me to him. But myself and my husband stayed together for the sake of our place in society, after all, we were Lord and Lady Sutton, but after the bomb went off that day, society as we knew it crumbled and the world was never the same again.