Circling Carousels (8 page)

Afterward, the girls were encouraged to explore their new toys and games consoles and just enjoy themselves. Meanwhile, Candice and Marcus retired to the lounge with a bottle of wine and a selection of fruit and cheeses. Candice was eyeing the wine and almost drooling as she was beginning to need a glass or two to take the edge off, having had her last drink secretly about two hours ago. Candice was not sure how she was going to handle living with someone permanently like this and be able to disguise and hide her drinking, but she felt sure that Marcus would be away on business a lot and she would be fine. She had promised herself that she would no longer take the pills she was taking before the move, as when faced with the story of the girl’s haircuts, she realised there was a massive problem. The fact that she had slipped into alcoholism didn’t seem to her to be a worry because everyone had a drink or two, but she had made a decision to begin to cut down soon. This was a new life, and she wanted to enjoy it, not just
exist
in it.

Marcus poured them a drink, and they began watching a movie. Then he moved closer on the lounge and made his intentions clear. This was no surprise, but now it was different, sort of, although Candice was concerned that this may be all he wanted her for. She thought she would test her theory and hold him at bay for a while, finish watching the movie and drink a little wine, but Marcus was insistent, so for the first time,

Candice and Marcus were intimate with each other without any money changing hands. Afterward, they watched the rest of the movie, drank three bottles of wine between them, and ate from the cheese platter. Candice thought it wasn’t too bad and that this just may work out.

When Candice checked on her children, they had fallen asleep on one of the beds, reading together. She simply covered them with a blanket and went to get ready for sleep. Candice wasn’t sure what the sleeping arrangements were to be for her and Marcus, but it wasn’t long before it was made clear. Marcus told her that he snored terribly and felt she should have her own space, at least until they both felt they wanted to sleep together all the time. Candice thought this a good idea, so she went to the gorgeous room he had readied for her. With that, they said goodnight.

Candice got up a few hours later, unable to sleep, and she wandered around the house taking in her new home and getting used to the idea that this was now hers, with a man she really knew so little about. She was sure this had to be better than the life she was living, and she already felt more comfortable, as though she had managed to get away from something that was so wrong for her and her girls. Thinking of her children and wanting to check them again, she went to their room, but upon trying their door, she found it locked, which was very odd. Perhaps she had accidentally locked it when she left them that evening. She turned around and walked back to her room, unearthed her hidden vodka, turned on the television in her room, and quietly watched, under the blankets in bed, and drank until she fell asleep. Her dreams that night were troubled and frightening.

In the morning, Candice woke up, looked at the clock, realized where she was, and panicked. It was ten o’clock and the children weren’t ready for school. She should have been up hours ago. She got up quickly, her head spun and she sat back down. Then she started again. When she was dressed, she left the room and went straight to the girls’ room, but they weren’t there. She hurried to Marcus’s room, and he wasn’t there, either. When she
reached the kitchen, she found a note in Marcus’s handwriting telling her the housekeeper had taken the children to school and he had gone to work. The note also said that he knew how tired she was, so he had let her sleep and he would see her later.

Candice had no idea where Marcus worked or what he did really. She only knew he was a very wealthy businessman. She didn’t know what time he would be home or what time the housekeeper would be back, so she went into her bathroom, had a shower, dressed, and began to unpack her clothes and belongings into her new rooms. Alongside the walk-in wardrobe, almost an entire room of its own, she placed a water bottle. In the water bottle was a liquid other than water, and in this way, when the housekeeper, Elsie, arrived, Candice would look like a normal person drinking water, not a woman who couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without alcohol.

Marcus came home for lunch. He had Elsie fix him a sandwich made from some of last night’s leftover roast meat and ate while reading some work documents. Candice didn’t want to disturb him so she just sat quietly. After he had eaten, he looked up from the paperwork, looked at Candice, and then took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom. They had sex before he left again to go back to work. He didn’t even speak to her. Candice felt a little bit used. She wasn’t sure if she had any right to feel that way.

When Sienna and Crystal came home that afternoon, Candice was there to meet them. She was looking forward to seeing them, but she found herself needing some courage to face them and had drunk quite a lot after her lunchtime rendezvous with Marcus. It threw her a little, his attitude at lunchtime. He didn’t speak a word to her and took her in the bedroom just like he would if she were still a working girl. She worried that this was how he still thought of her, not as a girlfriend, lover, and future wife, but as a prostitute there for his sexual enjoyment and little else. Regardless of this overpowering feeling, Candice wanted to sit down and have a chat with her children about their new life and how
they
felt about it. Right up until they moved out of the big house, Candice had been estranged from them, due to
some of her more bizarre outbursts, so she had never really got to speak to them. She missed them, missed the fun they used to have and the way they banded together like the three musketeers in the old days before she met Bonnie. Now she just wanted to be close to them again and be a better mother. She felt that without the stress of her work, which turned her into a raving lunatic, she would be able to love them again and they would be able to feel the same for her. She understood why Marcus had the housekeeper take them to school on this day, but she would dearly have liked to do it herself if she could and to talk with them about the changes in all their lives.

When they arrived home, the girls were chatting to one another and laughing, but when they saw their mother, their mood turned more sombre and they even looked a little frightened of her. Candice so wanted to show them that she had changed and that things were going to be good again, so she led them to the kitchen bench, sat them down, and got them all a bowl of ice cream from the freezer. To this she added chocolate sauce, and she sat down with them with a smile they hadn’t seen for many months. She began the conversation, asking them about their day and all the usual things, and then she carefully began discussing how they were feeling about Marcus, the new house, the move, and all the things that had happened in the last few days.

Sienna, always the first to speak her mind, was happy with the new arrangement as long as her mother was happy. Crystal thought Marcus was nice enough and that he had been lovely to them that morning when they sat down over breakfast. Candice was interested to know what they had talked about, and the girls just said that he didn’t want them to talk to anyone about their new life, that it would be better if no one knew where they lived for now, and that until they settled in and felt safe that he was happy for them to call him Marcus. Apparently, one day he hoped they would call him daddy, but for now, Marcus was fine. A small frown crossed Candice’s forehead as she thought about this man, who had confused her with his coldness at noon, even after he had told her children he’d like to be their daddy. It was
early days yet, so Candice just nodded and said it sounded like he was lovely to them.

Sienna and Crystal were eight years old now and were aware of many more things than before. They just wanted to be sure that everything would be all right, so they asked Candice if she was okay now. She said she was much better and that they didn’t need to worry about anything. The girls knew differently. They could see that their mum had been drinking, and they could tell by the way she was talking that she was not quite fine. It concerned them, even though she did appear much improved.

The girls went off to play with their new toys in their room, and Candice mulled over their words, went through the events of the day again and again, and waited for Marcus to come home. She figured that he was getting used to the new arrangement, so she would give things some time before worrying too much. Marcus didn’t come home until very late that night. When he did get home, Candice was drunk and lying on the lounge. He picked her up with a certain amount of disgust at her state and put her into her bed.

The next morning, the girls were again at school long before Candice awoke, and when they arrived home, Candice was in her room in bed feeling sick. She had phoned Marcus, wanting to talk to him and feeling very disturbed by the way things seemed to be going. He told her he would come to her, talk to her, and help her to feel better. When he arrived, he had brought her some medicine that he claimed would ease her worries and settle her concerns. He had taken her into the shower, helped her in, had sex with her while they showered together, and then offered her pills to help her forget the things that made her feel so awful. In her state of half drunken helplessness, Candice agreed to the pills and truthfully wanted to have something to make her feel more like she used to, alive and happy. This is what Marcus promised her, so she took the two he gave her. He dried her off, helped her dress, and put her to bed until she felt better. When Candice came into the kitchen that evening, Marcus and her children were happily eating dinner together, and Candice was feeling quite hungry and better than she had in a
while, so she ate a little with them and they talked, laughed, and shared stories. She felt a little odd in her head, but for the most part, she was floating on a cloud of joy. She did wonder what he’d given her to make her feel this way, but she liked it, so she allowed him to give them to her quite a lot.

She was still drinking, but to be honest, she didn’t really feel the need so much these days. She was fun again, according to the girls, a little hazy, but fun. They liked this new person, and Candice liked this new person. For quite a long time, they enjoyed life again. She and Marcus became closer. They talked now, and when they were together in bed, it seemed more like they were enjoying one another more than just having sex. Things were so much better, and when Bonnie and the other girls from the big house called, they were able to tell them with honesty that things were good. Bonnie was pleased, and she felt she had made the right decision in letting Candice, Sienna, and Crystal go with Marcus.

Candice would spend quite a lot of time without realising where the days went, and although this worried her once in a while, she was blissfully unaware of the truth. She didn’t realise that Marcus was giving her higher dosages of the medicine that made her feel euphoric, and she didn’t realise that she had become quite dependant on the tablets to maintain her happiness. On occasions, when he ran out of the pills, she would slip into a very deep depression, and very quickly, Marcus would go out and return home with different-coloured tablets.

Every night, Marcus would lock the girls in their room, and Candice could never fathom why, but it did them no harm as far as she could see, so she allowed it to happen. They seemed to be happy, so Candice was pleased. Although Marcus and Elsie, the housekeeper, did most of the parenting, Candice was only concerned with the smile on their faces and the clouds in her mind that made her feel soft and fluffy.

Chapter 13

A
significant change occurred following a party Marcus had taken Candice to one night, several months after she and
her daughters had moved into his house. This was one heck of a party, and many of Marcus’s friends and colleagues were there. Even now, Candice really didn’t know what exact line of work he was in, only that he was away until the early hours of the morn- ing sometimes and he seemed to have a very flexible schedule. He was able to spend time with her during the day and was usu- ally home at lunchtime. She liked his company. She also enjoyed Elsie’s companionship, and they would often talk and laugh with one another during the day when Candice was up and well.

At the party, Candice met a young woman about her own age, called Kimberley, and she liked her from the first moment. She had one of those sweet dispositions and seemed to be very similar to herself in the way she behaved and talked. It was good to find someone else to talk to, and Candice in her innocence found herself spending hours with the girl. She shared some of her secrets and sometime during the night, accepted some small white pills from her, after which they danced until four o’clock in
the morning. This was quite a feeling, and in her drug-induced state, Candice felt she had found a soul mate.