Summer Secrets (35 page)

It was very bad for a while, my catastrophizing, constantly waiting for the worst thing to happen, and then it seemed to go away. What is the worst thing I can imagine happening now? My daughter being involved in a scooter accident is right up there, yet it happened, I didn’t go to pieces, and we all coped.

Which should give me a measure of relief, but I feel the familiar panic rise up as time ticks slowly on and there is no sign of Jason. Where is he and what has happened?

Eventually, close to midnight, I text him. I keep it light. I don’t want him to know I am panicking about him, reverting to old behavior that used to drive him nuts.

u ok?
I type.

There is no response.

Jason? Just wanted to check you’re ok.

No response.

JASON? PLEASE RESPOND

Nothing.

*   *   *

Fuck.

Sam is out. The girls are asleep on the sofa, piled together like puppies. My adrenaline is pumping and my heart is beating fast. There is absolutely no way I’m going to sleep. Even though I haven’t heard sirens, that’s all I can think about.

I have to go and look for Jason.

I know it’s crazy, but, as he always used to point out, rational thought tended to go out the window once I had got myself into a state of full catastrophizing.

I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, go outside, and stop, cursing. He took the car. Shit. I’ll have to cycle, which I don’t particularly want to do at night, but I have no choice.

I wheel the bike out, strap on the helmet, and start to pedal along Cliff Road, wishing I could appreciate the beauty of the velvet night sky, and the smells of salt and ocean, but my heart is pounding, and images of flashing lights and broken bodies are all I can think about.

Town is busy. Busier than I would have expected, the odd groups of people, all of them looking like they’ve been drinking, occasionally careening out of doorways with laughter and noise.

Where would he be? In a bar? Jason doesn’t go to bars, not for years, not since before I knew him. He
can
go to bars, he’s well beyond the point of being tempted, but he wouldn’t go there by himself out of choice.

Would he be by the water? Sitting on a bench, thinking? I hesitate, not knowing which way to go, happy only that there is no sign of any major accident, no sense of something terrible having happened here this evening.

A crowd of people come out of the Club Car, noise and music drifting out with them, and I step aside, letting them pass, before opening the door, something unconscious pulling me inside.

The noise, the heat, the laughter, the piano, the singing. Everything hits me at once in this packed former train carriage, the bar running along one side, packed with people, a huge party, alcohol fueled. Wherever Jason is, he would not be here.

As I turn to leave, something familiar catches my eye. Julia. Seated at the bar, her back to me, leaning in to someone. I can’t move. I freeze, knowing it is Jason, and when she tilts her head I see that I was right.

She snakes a hand around his neck, and pulls him down. As if in slow motion, I watch as Jason’s head moves closer to hers, and they are kissing.

A wave of nausea washes over me. I have to leave. But I can’t move. I see Jason’s eyes closed, remember how it felt to be kissed by him, and I don’t know whether to tear them apart, slip away, or throw up.

They break apart. I don’t see Jason’s face because at that moment Julia turns her head, and as if she knows I’m there, as if she is expecting to see me, she looks straight into my eyes.

And she smiles.

*   *   *

I tear out of there, wanting to disappear, wanting to get as far away as possible. I feel as if I am in physical pain, my heart threatening to rip open and tear, and I gulp out a sob, unable to believe what I just saw, unable to believe the pain I am in.

A bar. More people. Light, and noise, and alcohol. I hesitate by the window and look in, at the polished mahogany bar, the stools, the bottles and bottles of vodka, gin, tequila, everything that is warm and familiar and comforting, and it is like a force field pulling me in.

That will make it all better.

That will make the pain go away.

Thirty-four

London, 2014

This is not my usual meeting. I have taken the tube into town, because I am desperate for a meeting, and not my usual cozy one, where I know all the people almost as well as I know myself, where I will hear them say some variation of what they always say, and it will be as comfortable and familiar as a night out with my oldest friends.

No. That’s not what I need today.

I need to be in a room filled with people I don’t know. A big meeting. One in which I can be completely anonymous. One in which, hopefully, I will be surrounded by people who have far better recovery than I, who know what to say to ease my pain.

They often say that in meetings you will hear exactly what you need to hear at any given time. I need that to happen today. I need someone or some reading, something that will show me how to get through this day without wanting to drown everything out in a sea of vodka.

I came so close, that night in Nantucket. I didn’t go into the bar, but I wanted to. I didn’t drown my pain in alcohol, but I came the closest I have come since I got sober, and it was terrifying.

It has set off a craving, one that I thought I had let go of long ago. Pain has always been a trigger. I don’t want to feel, which is why I drink: to numb, to make it all go away.

The pain of seeing Jason and Julia together has continued, as has the wanting to drink. I haven’t, but I think about it all the time, and I am filling my time with calls to my sponsor, meetings, reading literature, writing the steps; anything to stop the white-knuckling.

I need a meeting that isn’t filled with strange strangers, as has sometimes happened when I’ve tried a new meeting. I don’t want one filled with homeless people—forgive me—and nor do I want one with creepy guys that come up afterward and ask for my number.

I know there is a good meeting here, in Soho, and I walk in, a few minutes late, glad the room is packed, every seat taken, both around the table and the second circle pushed back against the wall.

Someone grabs a folding chair for me, and there is a shuffle as they make room. I glance around, see that it’s mostly men, a few women, one I have seen before in a couple of meetings. She raises her hand and gives me a smile. I’m not sure of her name. Andrea? Amelia? Something like that.

I close my eyes during the reading from the daily reader, Thought for the Day. Martin, a middle-aged cheerful-looking alcoholic, reads:

“
Roselle says: I used to try to deny or excuse the things he did that hurt, but that didn’t do anything to heal my hurt. When I came out with my true feelings and honestly ‘told’ him I was hurt and angry, he came back with his true feelings. The wrongs are never made right, but the love and forgiveness puts them in the past and out of today’s ‘processing memory.’”

My true feelings. I’m still trying to process what my true feelings are, although I’m pretty sure I know.

I know because I haven’t been able to talk to Jason since the night I saw him kiss Julia. I took Annie to Sconset the next day, just us girls, and when we got home I went straight up to bed with a pretend migraine so I wouldn’t have to go out for dinner with them. Anything to avoid spending time with Jason.

I couldn’t stand it. That moment, him kissing Julia, keeps spinning round and round my head, on a reel, and each time it does I have to fight the tears. And the anger. And the knowledge that Jason was just a pawn, that Julia’s smile told me everything. Had I not happened to walk into the bar and see them, she would have found a way to let me know. She would have found a way to rub my nose in it, for she could see,
anyone
could see, how I still feel about Jason, and she had waited years for revenge.

I had always thought that Ellie was the bitch, that Julia was the one I had so much in common with, but Ellie, despite everything, was at least honest. Julia had been holding her secret poisonous grudge all this time, and I never saw it. I didn’t know.

Did she even care about Jason? I doubt it. I doubt this had anything to do with Jason other than being the perfect way to get back at me. And Jason was stupid enough to be carried away, to be flattered into seduction, to lose himself in the moment thinking I would never find out.

At least I presume that’s what he thought. I haven’t seen him since. We had different flights home, and in the three weeks since we’ve been back I have managed to avoid him completely, out of the house when he comes to pick Annie up, clicking his phone calls over to the answering machine, texting him the briefest, curtest texts when I have no other choice.

Love and forgiveness. How I wish I were in a place of love and forgiveness. But I’m not. I’m in a place of hatred and murderous thoughts.

Martin closes the book and starts to speak, as I wait with bated breath.

“I’m Martin, alcoholic.”

“Hi, Martin,” from the rest of the group.

“Great reading.” He shakes his head slowly, as if unable to believe the magnificence of what he just read. “So much food for thought. So, here’s what’s going on for me today.”

My heart sometimes sinks slightly when someone starts with apologizing for going off topic, or announcing what’s going on with them today. It can mean fifteen minutes of something that’s totally irrelevant, at least to whatever the topic is supposed to be.

It can mean, often, venting about the problems in their life, and so it is with Martin, who spends about fifteen minutes talking about some problem at work with his bastard of a boss, and it has nothing to do with the reading, and nothing to do with AA, or recovery, in fact, until he talks about forgiveness. And then I listen.

And when he is done, I realize my hand is up in the air.

Wouldn’t you know it, the first person he looks at is me.

Shit. I hate it when this happens. Putting my hand up is like an involuntary reaction when something is bursting out of me, and I sigh and roll my eyes.

“Shit,” I say out loud. “I was hoping you wouldn’t pick me.” And everyone in the room laughs. “I’m Cat, alcoholic.”

“Hi, Cat.”

I take a deep breath. “Thank you for your lead, Martin. I’m completely unprepared, but I think in today’s reading I may have heard what I needed to hear. I definitely needed to hear about love and forgiveness because right now I’m about as far away from loving and forgiving as I have ever been, and that, as we all know, is a recipe for disaster.” I grimace and continue. “I just got back from a holiday in which I flew to America, essentially to make amends to my half sisters. It’s a very long story, but the last time I saw them I was in my twenties, wreaking havoc wherever I went, blackouts being the norm, and one night, back then, I went out with my sister’s boyfriend, we both got completely shitfaced, and the next morning we were found in bed together. By her, obviously. As if it could have been worse.”

There is a murmur of pain around this room. However different their stories may be, most have drinking stories of equal horror.

“Clearly, doing my ninth step, this was the big one, so I decided to do it in person. The amends seemed to go okay. One sister, Ellie, wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy, but honestly, who can blame her. She didn’t want anything to do with me, but the other one, the one whose boyfriend I slept with, said it all happened long ago and she had forgiven and forgotten years ago. I believed her. Why wouldn’t I?” I snort. “She was as warm and lovely as she had been years ago. I remember when I first met her I instantly felt that I’d come home. I knew her. This was my family. And I felt the same when I saw her again. So we forged a friendship, and her niece and my daughter, who are very close in age, became instant best friends, and everything seemed to be great.

“While I was there, my daughter got into an accident, and my ex-husband ended up flying out too. If it all sounds terribly complicated, it’s because it is. Sorry. My daughter was fine, a broken wrist, scratches and stitches, but fine. So my ex-husband…” I take another breath, a deep one. “We split up a year and a half ago. Like so many of us, I was the one who fucked up my marriage. The first time I got sober, I got sober for my husband. Every time I got sober after that, I got sober for my husband, because I loved him, and I wanted him to be happy, and proud of me. And because I was never getting sober for me, it never lasted. A few weeks, a few months, I could never get it to stick. So my marriage was a roller coaster. Fantastic when I was sober, and then I’d start drinking, and raging, and we’d start fighting, and I never ever thought he’d leave. I thought we would just carry on like that forever. And one day, he had enough, and he left. And took our daughter with him.

“I got sober, properly. It felt different. I was finally doing it for myself. I have stayed sober for eighteen months.” There is a round of applause, which I pause to acknowledge before continuing. “And I have tried to move on with my life. We now split custody with my daughter, and things were pretty great between us, in that we got on, we were coparenting. I think he knew how different it was this time. And then he got this horrific girlfriend. The poison dwarf.” Another ripple of laughter around the room. “And he pulled back. She was jealous of the good relationship we had. And maybe she realized something that I hadn’t even realized, not on a conscious level anyway, about how I still felt about him. She hated me, and things were difficult for a while, and I didn’t see him much, and then he flew out to Nantucket, just now, after our daughter had the accident.

“And having him there was amazing. It felt like we were a proper family again, only without it feeling precarious. Every time I was sober before, I always knew, in the back of my head, it wasn’t going to last. I would white-knuckle through it until I couldn’t do it anymore. I had no idea what it meant to live in recovery, to live a peaceful and serene life, until this time. And being with my hus … ex-husband, in the place I am today, was amazing. And after a few days, it hit me that I still love him. I’m still in love with him.” I pause, my eyes welling up, as someone slides a box of tissues over.