A Touch of Frost

[Frost's wife has just died]

Frost: The other night I sat there. All night I sat there, trying to feel something. She was my wife, and she was dying, and I couldn't feel anything for her. Things started to go wrong for us God knows how many years ago. When we found out she couldn't have kids, I don't know, she just changed. We changed. She suddenly became all house proud. Everything had to be clean and neat and tidy. Well, you've only got to take one look at me. With my job. I'm a street copper, that's where I belong. But that wasn't good enough for her now. She wanted me to go for promotion, to be ambitious, to make something of myself. She wanted something to be proud of, you see. And what the poor cow got was me. She came to despise me in the end. I know she did. I used to dread going home, to see that look of disappointment in her face. So I stopped going home. You know, it was any excuse. Anyway, I, uh... I met someone else. When don't you? I made up my mind to leave her. On the very day that I plucked up the courage to tell her, her doctor phoned me at the station. "She's got cancer. Eighteen months to live", so they reckon. She always had trouble with her stomach. She thought it was nerves, or one thing or another. Anyway, she wanted to know. She hoped she could cope. She went to pieces. She clung to me for the first time in years, her whole body shaking. "You will look after me, Billy? You will look after me, Billy? You'll look after me, won't you?" I said, of course I'll look after you. Of course I'll stay and take care of you. I went out and I got so drunk, and I was still drunk when this call came through about this nutter with a gun. And before they could stop me, I was moving in on him. Do you know what I was thinking? All I was thinking was, "Go on, you bugger, shoot me. 'Cause I don't give a damn one way or the other." And for this outstanding act of heroism, I got a medal. I think that was the happiest day of her life, you know. She was standing next to me in my top hat at Buckingham Palace. At last I'd done something to make her proud of me. And I wasn't even there when she died. She would have liked that. "You even let me down on that, Billy. Can't trust you to do anything."