by Eva Glyn
“It’s OK. I’ve asked Val to cover for you. Let’s find somewhere quiet.”
I follow her along corridors and up stairs, focusing on the way her handbag strap digs into the fleshy part of her shoulder. I feel sick to my soul but I have no energy to run and a strange feeling of inevitability settles over me. She takes me to the small office in the first aid suite used for counselling and to my surprise the school nurse is already there.
“What’s all this about?” I ask.
“Sit down, Bella, please. It’s going to be hard enough without you being aggressive.”
“And do I need to be aggressive?”
She draws herself up to her full height. “You’re not going to like this any more than I do, but it will be far better if we stay calm.”
The nurse intervenes. “Why don’t you both sit down?”
I turn to her. “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”
“To support you. What Fiona has to say needs a witness and she thought someone sympathetic and not on the teaching staff…”
I sit down with a thud. “Spit it out then. Let’s get this over with.”
There is deep sorrow in Fiona’s eyes and she’s clasping and unclasping her fingers. She’s my friend and I’m not making this any easier for her. I wish I could but I barely have enough bravado left for myself.
“Your drinking has become a matter of concern.”
“My drinking? What drinking?”
“I fully accept you may not realise the extent of the problem, but coming in every morning smelling of alcohol and mouthwash is no different to coming in smelling of alcohol.”
“Yes, but I don’t come in drunk. I don’t drink enough to get drunk.”
“How much are you drinking?” asks the nurse.
I am tempted to say None of your business but this is serious so I’d best be honest. “A couple of gins most nights. Bottle of wine at the weekend.” The look passing between them tells me they don’t believe me. “It’s the truth.”
Fiona carries on. “Apart from the effect on your health, you’re making mistakes. It was rumoured that some of the examples you worked through with your revision groups were incorrect and now there’s a glaring error in the assessment you set for the numeracy class so I have no choice but to act.”
“No, that’s not right.”
“I’m afraid it is. I should go down the formal disciplinary route but I don’t want to. You’re a good teacher, Bella, one of the best I’ve worked with, and you’ve had a really shit time this year. So instead I’m asking you to apply for sick leave for the rest of the term and to seek treatment. OK?”
“No, of course it’s not OK. I… I…” I look at her, and then at the nurse. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
Fiona shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls an envelope from her bag. “Here’s a letter explaining it all. Also some leaflets about alcohol abuse. Please, Bella, read them. For your sake and for Claire’s.”
Claire. The fear of her being taken away washes over me like ice and with it a moment of clarity, but just as it’s within my grasp it snaps away when Fiona asks if she should collect my things from the staffroom.
I pull together what shreds of dignity I have left and stand with shaking legs. “No thank you. I’ll do it myself.”
I wake up dripping with sweat because I dreamt the false memory. I was with Robin, in the flat in Shirley, everything dark and grey and stinking of stale booze. But it was him screaming at me because I’d drunk myself out of a job and hadn’t told him.
Claire’s alarm goes off across the landing. I need to get up too, pretend to go to work. Yesterday she went to Sasha’s in the morning to prepare for their French oral so I was able to go out then sneak back. Today she’s revising at home.
My head is enveloped in the fog of nightmare and I can’t look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I clean my teeth then try a cold shower, but after a few moments I’m shivering too much. Mouthwash, makeup, work clothes. How long will I be able to keep this up?
Claire is in the kitchen in her dressing gown, shovelling cereal into her mouth. She waves at the kettle. “I’ve made your tea.”
“Thank you, darling. I’ll just grab a yoghurt then I need to get going.”
“Busy day?”
“I’m invigilating first lesson so I can’t be late.”
I drive to the end of the road then pull over. Where to? I tap the steering wheel, frowning, and then… inspiration. Or desperation. I hear my voice saying to Claire, The last time I saw Robin he was wearing a suit. I knew then it was a lie but now it’s a different one. Either way, Caffè Nero in Winchester was the first time I’d thought of him in ages and it’s as good a place as any to have a coffee and to fight off the dream.
Of course, everything is different. It’s barely half-full and the Christmas carols have been replaced by a soundtrack of smooth jazz. There are still a couple of homeless men around the Buttercross so before I sit down I buy two coffees and two bars of chocolate and take them across. One already has an open can of cider at his side.
I settle at a table at the back of the café where no one will see me. I think about the false memory; I can see it, hear it, smell it even. Robin, half-in and half-out of the duvet, me yelling at him, the air around us foetid with booze. It’s all just so strong. And wrong. I pick up my coffee but the mug almost slides out of my hands. Sweet Jesus… It’s me who’s trying to hide the fact that I’m about to lose my job because I drink too much, not Robin. What if it wasn’t a memory at all but some perverted premonition?
Even in my befuddled state I know that is just so much bullshit. Someone has left a newspaper on the next table so I grab it and start to flick through the pages. It’s full of the internal machinations of the labour party as Tony Blair prepares to step down so on I go past the Wimbledon gossip and ads for Pimm’s and Gordon’s Gin. God, I could murder one now…
My hand freezes. The thought collides with a quote in bold below a picture of Jamie Lee Curtis: recovery is an acceptance that your life is a shambles and you have to change. Painkillers, booze, she’s done it all, but she quit when she started to worry about the effect it was having on her daughter. Her words, they’re speaking directly to me. I know they are. I can’t swallow – I can barely breathe. Before I change my mind I whip out my phone and text Gareth.
I have a drink problem. Please, please help me.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, Izzie.”
“Just shut the fuck up and leave me alone!” I watch as Robin shrugs his shoulders then lopes along the landing to the top of the stairs. For good measure, I slam the bedroom door behind him.
Not my bedroom. Jennifer’s bedroom. Or rather, the temporary guest room for the temporary guest. Claire refused point blank to go Newquay until Robin cooked up this plan, which basically means he becomes my jailer for a week.
No. That’s unfair. I know I’m being unreasonable and unfair. And angry when I should be grateful. And all sorts of other inappropriate emotions. Gareth says that’s OK; it’s what recovery’s like. He also says it’s OK if you slide off the wagon sometimes, as long as you recognise it as a mistake. And at first I did, more than once, but now I’ve been completely clean for six whole days. It feels more like six months.
Telling Claire was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I waited until after her last exam then sat her down and showed her the letter from the school and told her I was getting help. I don’t deny I had the largest possible gin before I did it but worse than anything was watching the grey pallor of fear grip her features. I shoved my phone across the table.
“Gareth’s number is on there. Call him. Ask him anything you like.”
She nodded and took it up to her room.
Later that evening she went through every cupboard and drawer in the house and emptied every bottle she found. I stood by mutely, more ashamed than if I’d been dragged naked through the school by my hair. My voice shook whe
n I asked if I was allowed to hug her and she barrelled into my arms and told me how proud she was I was trying to stop drinking and she’d do everything she could to help.
It was only later I heard her sobbing in her room, and that was the moment I properly vowed I really would stop.
In the last ten months my child has experienced more heartache than most youngsters can even conceive. She’s lost her father and has had to stand by while her previously reliable and competent mother dissolved into a waste of space incapable of holding down a relationship or a job. But I will beat this, I will. I kept the Jamie Lee Curtis interview from the paper, and when Robin saw it in my handbag he told me she was the only woman on the planet sexier than me.
Robin. Time to eat humble pie. I slink down to the kitchen where he’s scraping new potatoes. He turns and smiles. “Claire says you need regular feeding. She practically gave me a list of times.”
“Robin, I’m really sorry I spoke to you like that.”
“Wasn’t the first time and I’d be very surprised if it’s the last. Regard me as your safety valve. And your butler. And your chef, laundry maid, bottlewasher… Well, maybe not bottlewasher.”
“How come you’re so patient?”
He leans against the sink and dries his hands on a tea towel as he looks at me. “Living with someone with Alzheimer’s would do it. At least, underneath it all, you’re still you. And more importantly, we’ll get you back. I can put up with any amount of shit in the short term if I keep my eye on the prize.”
“It’s a small miracle you want me back, the way I’ve treated you. Or do you want the me you knew twenty years ago?”
A smile flashes in the centre of his beard. “For a start, a man of my age going out with a twenty-three-year-old would feel seriously perverted. But honestly, Izzie, there have been plenty of times this year when I’ve seen the best in you. Plenty. But it isn’t just the best I want, it’s the whole package. I don’t ever want you to feel you have to pretend to be something you’re not.”
Tears catch in the back of my throat but I swallow them down. “Then I don’t have to pretend I’m not gagging for a glass of wine?”
“I’d actually rather you didn’t pretend, but either way you’re not getting one. You’re on day six dry, remember? Gareth told you it begins to get better after a week and you’re so very nearly there.”
“He said three to seven days.” I fold my arms.
“And is it easier?”
“Not with Claire hundreds of miles away doing goodness knows what.”
“On the holiday you insisted she went on because you’re such an unselfish mother.”
“Go on, make it all my fault…”
Robin turns sharply and starts to run the tap. Have I finally riled him? But when he faces me again he has a glass of water in his hand. “Now, are you going to drink this or throw it over me? The choice is yours, but if it’s the latter, would you mind doing it outside? I’ve already mopped this floor once today.”
And in that moment all I want to do is kiss him. But that isn’t part of this deal and I need the time to be right. Instead I ask if there’s anything I can do towards supper.
“You can pick some broad beans. And if you root around enough you’ll probably find a courgette or two as well.”
There is a heaviness in the air and grey clouds fill the sky over the river. I pick up the trug from the decking in front of the dilapidated summerhouse then cross the lawn. I might spruce it up this week. It looks so sad and neglected, and it would give me something to do. But then I remember it isn’t Robin’s to spruce and I start to wonder when Stephen will put the house on the market. And what Robin will do when he does.
It doesn’t take much to tip me into feeling I need a drink. At first I despised myself every time I did but Gareth has taught me to roll with the punches by grounding myself in the here and now. I close my eyes and listen to the birds chirping in the hedge, and down in the woods a dog barks. Don’t think, Izzie, just be. Just be.
The craving fades and I carry on to the vegetable patch. Gareth explained that the here and now is tough because of the way alcohol affects the brain – it actually causes symptoms similar to depression – and we had a long conversation about which came first for me in those long, dark nights last winter. For the first time I really talked about how it felt to suddenly be a lone parent and to know I wasn’t coping.
Once I’d sealed losing Robin into a box all those years before, I’d coped with everything. I was the family’s coper – the breadwinner, the serious one. In that I’d become very like my own mother, something I swore I would never be. Life came easy to Connor and while it was probably what attracted me to him, I had also envied him for it. Sometimes it felt as though I was on the outside looking in while he and Claire had all the fun. I’d never really looked at it that way before – not consciously. It’s strange what you find out about yourself when you know the person listening won’t judge. And I’m beginning to realise that the biggest falsehood of all was telling myself I wasn’t drinking too much.
I crouch next to the beans and feel for the fattest pods. In just five sessions with Gareth I’ve found out quite a lot, especially yesterday when the fog really started to clear. First, I judge myself too harshly (I judge others as well, but that’s too uncomfortable a thought so I push it away) so I need to cut myself some slack. I don’t have to be perfect all the time. And I don’t have to hold something of myself back in case others don’t like me and I get hurt.
Suddenly, the total abandonment of making love with Robin comes into my mind. The truths we hold dear about ourselves aren’t always what we think either. My head’s beginning to whirl again, but by focusing my attention on the beans I ground myself. The leaves brushing my fingers, the snap as I break off a pod, that wonderful fresh green smell. I can’t resist but open one and pop a bean into my mouth, rolling it around. These little moments of now are priceless.
My meditations are interrupted by my phone. Claire.
“How are you doing, Mum?”
“Fine. Picking broad beans for supper.”
“Yum! We’re having pizza as it’s the first night. With salad of course,” she adds. “I’ve just chopped up about a gazillion tomatoes.”
“So what’s it like?”
“Raining! But Martha says it will clear up overnight. And Sasha and I have a really neat room with four other girls – I haven’t slept in bunks since I was in the Brownies.” I tuck my phone between my shoulder and chin and listen to her bubble and bounce while I continue to pick.
Robin appears at the far side of the lawn just as she hangs up. “I thought you’d disappeared down a giant rabbit hole,” he laughs.
I wave my phone. “Claire called.”
“Great. How is she?”
“I’ll tell you while we pod the beans. I just need to ferret around for some courgettes.”
“I’ll help you. They’re quite small still.”
Somehow, under a cloak of leaves, our hands brush. His warmth floods through me and once again I am filled with longing, but it is only for a moment because he pulls away, shattering the moment.
I sit back on my haunches. “Did you do that because it isn’t what you want anymore?”
He looks at me sideways and brushes the hair from his eyes. “No, because I want it too much.”
I nod. I smile. “Me too. But not yet. I’m not ready for it yet.”
He squeezes the tips of my fingers then goes back to his task.
Chapter Seventy
“So, I was thinking, we could go to the Mayfly for lunch.”
Claire’s eyebrows disappear into her fringe. It’s a recent habit she’s cultivated and it’s actually quite sweet. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I think… it’s what Dad would have wanted, isn’t it?”
“To be remembered with a pie and pint.” Claire’s Irish accent is far broader than anything I ever heard Connor utter and we crease up laughing.
“Except neither of us is going to be hitting the Guinness,” I add.
Claire puts her hand over mine on the table. “That’s what he would have wanted too. You’ve done ever so well, Mum. He’d have been proud of you.”
It’s a year to the day since Connor died. The day when my phone rang at five in the morning. The day when the orchestra pulled every string they could to get us on a flight. The mad dash to Heathrow. All for nothing.
We sit in silence as we both remember him. Her treasured memories will be different to mine. I can still see his face, the moment he first held her, cautiously juggling this most precious bundle, eyes wide with wonder. Jesus, Isobel O’Briain, did we really make this little beauty? Before long he was so confident he was throwing her up in the air when he changed her, blowing bubbles up her nose in the bath.
I free my hand and pick up a slice of toast from the rack between us. “So, what do you miss about him the most?”
She screws up her face. “That’s hard. There are so many things. The hugs, for sure. I’d kill for a daddy hug right now.” Her chin wobbles.
“It’s OK, you can cry.”
“No. We’re celebrating. That’s what we said. Celebrating his life.”
“We should have bought some fireworks for later. He loved fireworks. He nearly took his eye out with a rocket one year.”
“He was a bit of a liability with anything practical, wasn’t he?”
“Do you remember when he put petrol in the hire car instead of diesel when we were in the middle of nowhere in Galway?”
Claire giggles. “And when all the hanging baskets fell down one after the other about half an hour after he’d put them up so he just dumped the plants in the middle of the flowerbed all muddled up?”
“That’s what I miss the most – the laughs.”
“But you were furious with him!”
I look at the table. “I know. And I was like that far too often. I missed out on so much of his fun and that’s the saddest thing of all.”
