A Touch of Frost1992

[Frost's wife has just died; Frost is having a drink with Shirley who nursed her to the end]

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, overnight she just changed. We changed. She suddenly became all house-proud: everything had to be clean and neat and tidy. Well, you only have to take one look at me. My job. I'm a street copper - it's where I belong. That wasn't good enough for her now. She wanted me to go for promotion - be ambitious, to make something of myself. She wanted something to be proud of, you see. All 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 on her face. So I stopped going home - you know, it was any excuse. Anyway, I, er... I met someone else. When don't you? I made up my mind to leave her. On the very day that I plucked up courage to tell her, the doctor phoned me at the station - she'd got cancer. Eighteen months to live, so they reckoned. She always had trouble with her stomach - thought it was nerves. Anyway, she wanted to know. She thought 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." I said "Course I'll look after you. Course I'll stay and take care of you." I went out and I got so drunk, I was still drunk when the call came though about this nutter with a gun. And before they could stop me, I was moving in on him. All I was thinking was "Go on you bugger. Shoot me. Cos I don't give a damn one way or the other." And for this act of outstanding heroism, I got a medal. It was the happiest day of her life. 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. I can't trust you to do anything."