Dressing appropriately for the occasion can be really difficult sometimes, especially when the occasion is sprung on you. But then, what is the dress code for when the police arrive on your doorstep to see whether you’ve knocked off your husband?
On the couple of occasions the police have come knocking on my door I’ve always instantly assumed the worst: someone close to me has died. In the second or two before they put my mind at ease my heart leaps into my throat, I go clammy and my eyes begin to well up in anticipation of the axe falling.
But when the police arrived on the doorstep of a friend of mine today, she reacted a little differently – she went rigid and then she slunk through the house trying to avoid being seen through the glass.
She’d just finished putting on tanning lotion – so she was braless, in just knickers and predominantly orange.
“I looked like an Oompa Loompa,” she told us.
She made it to the bedroom and threw on the first thing she could find, which happened to be black leather tights and a black singlet.
“So now I was Sandy at the end of Grease,” she told us. “Only orange.”
Which was not the look she’d have gone for if she knew why they were there. This is a woman who won’t step outside to garden without a face full of glam and matching accessories. But the thing which horrified her most? No bra.
When she answered the door the officers wanted to know if her husband still lived there, and then where he was.
“He’s not here. He’s at work,” she told them while simultaneously thinking, ‘What the hell has that man done? I’ll kill him!’
Which was when she discovered they wanted to question her in relation to a John Doe recently discovered in the region.
“They thought I’d done him in!” she told us. “I told them he was definitely at work and they could call him.”
“Hmm-hmm,” they said, looking unconvinced. “When he arrives home,” they went on, in a tone which said this scenario seemed unlikely, “we’re going to need him to come down to the station so we can identify him.”
“He will,” she said. “I haven’t killed him, you know,” she assured them. “Not that I’m saying it’s unlikely. Never say never,” she added cheekily.
“It could have been worse,” she told us. “If they’d arrived twenty minutes earlier they’d have found me loading suitcases into the car. We’re about to go on holidays.”
Yeah, you know what? I’m guessing if they’d caught her doing that she could have waited at the station with them for hubby to show up.
Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his Big Family Little Income Facebook Page
”Raising a family on little more than laughs.”