Ice and a Slice

by Della Galton

  Instead of turning for home, she headed out of London. The one thing she really missed about Bournemouth was the seaside: the flat blue infinity of the sea; the cries of the gulls; the sharp tang of ozone and seaweed. Suddenly she knew where she wanted to go and, glad at least to have a purpose, she drove through the Rotherhithe tunnel, picked up the A13 and headed for the coast. She’d had a friend who lived in Westcliffe on Sea once, near Southend, and while she didn’t remember the beach being all that big, at least she would be able to smell the sea and the place was familiar to her, which felt comforting – and Ash would love the feel of the sand on his paws.

  Forty-five minutes later she was on the coast road. When she’d been here with her friend Carol they’d always walked, and parking was obviously at a bit of a premium. But even looking for a parking space was a hundred times better than sitting at home being tempted to open a bottle of Chardonnay.

  Oh, why had she thought about Chardonnay? For a few moments the idea of an ice cold glass of wine hovered in her mind, calling to her like a lighthouse beacon to a sailor on stormy seas. She could taste its dryness on her tongue and feel the coolness slipping down her throat, and then the delicious soporific effects of the alcohol easing its way around her body.

  Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Shit, shit, shit. Get rid of that thought. Get rid of that thought now!

  Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive blasted out of the radio. It was amazing how many songs had lyrics that pertained to alcohol – not that they were meant to be about alcohol, of course; they were meant to be about love. But it was uncanny how well they fitted what she was feeling now. “I will survive,” SJ sang along in time with Gloria. “I will survive – hey – hey.”

  The song faded. The craving didn’t. The DJ started wittering on about how much he was looking forward to getting home for a cold beer in his garden.

  SJ spotted a parking space. Thank God. She pulled into it and turned off the ignition and the radio, along with it. Somewhere in her head the voice of Alco was taunting her – how had she ever thought she could do this? Even with Kit’s support and encouragement, even with Dorothy’s kindness, she must have been mad to think she was strong enough to beat alcohol. It was all around her – she would never be able to escape its seductive siren call.

  Alco’s voice hammered away in her head like some evil troll with a pickaxe. Tap, tap, tap against the rock face of her mind. How could she be a real alcoholic anyway? Real alcoholics didn’t have jobs and decent husbands. They had ravaged faces and great big bellies and yellow skin and raincoats. Oh God, she was slipping into stereotype land.

  For some reason she thought of Dorothy, with her clear blue eyes and serene smile. “If ever you want any help with anything, hen ...”

  SJ slid her wet hands off the steering wheel, shakily got out of her car and liberated an interested Ash from the back. He pricked up his grey ears and scented the fresh salty air. It was a lot cooler here than it had been on Tanya’s sheltered decking. SJ stared out at the choppy water. The power station chimney was silhouetted against a sunlit horizon and there was a brisk breeze coming off the sea. It whipped her hair around her face and smashed a little common sense into her mind.

  She was not going to listen to Alco. It was tempting to put her hands over her ears – to block him out. Tempting, but probably pointless, as his voice was coming from inside her own mind. Her addict’s mind, she thought bleakly, as she took Ash down on to the shoreline and set him free.

  One day at a time, that was all she had to do. Her feet sunk into the damp shingle. One step at a time if that was easier. She struggled to get back the positive thoughts she’d had all week – the thoughts going to AA had put there.

  That didn’t work either and, walking beside the water with her dog strolling peaceably ahead of her and the mournful calls of gulls wheeling above her head, SJ had never wanted a drink so much in her life.

  Her hands were still sweating – perhaps that was some kind of delayed withdrawal symptom but she didn’t remember sweating hands being on the list. She’d have to check. She wiped them on her jeans. Then, on impulse, she stopped and phoned Tom’s mobile which, his service provider informed her, was switched off.

  Frustrated, and desperate now to talk to someone – anyone – to distract herself from thoughts of drinking, she scrolled through her list of numbers. Her finger hesitated over her parents’ landline. Was it too early to say she’d contracted an infectious disease and could see no one for at least a month? Yes, probably.

  Dorothy’s mobile was listed below her parents’. She glanced at it, momentarily puzzled, before remembering Dorothy had insisted she have it.

  “Call any time,” she’d said, her beautifully manicured hand covering SJ’s. “Day or night. I’m usually up till the small hours working.”

  At the time she’d wondered why Dorothy had thought she’d need to call. It was difficult enough seeing her at Poetry and a Pint and trying to pretend nothing had changed. Had Dorothy known how hard she’d find this? With a swift glance to check Ash hadn’t wandered too far, she stopped in the shelter of an old wooden sea break and called her.

  Dorothy answered on the third ring and SJ took a deep breath. “Hi, it’s SJ. I was just – er – wondering how you were doing?”

  “I’m good, thank you, SJ, absolutely fine. How are you doing?”

  SJ was tempted to say she was absolutely fine, too, but before she could speak, Dorothy added, “How’s the not drinking going? Are you finding it tough?”

  “Yeah – a bit,” SJ confessed, wondering if she’d always been such a master of understatement. “Well, actually a lot. Actually, ever such a lot. I’m on the beach at Westcliffe on Sea. I’ve been fantasising about a bottle of Chardonnay ever since I got here.”

  “I take it you haven’t got one with you?”

  “No,” SJ said, sighing deeply, and to her surprise Dorothy laughed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to be sympathetic and tell her the craving would pass. Instead Dorothy changed the subject. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was on holiday in Dumfries?”

  “No,” SJ said with another sigh. “I don’t think you did.”

  Dorothy launched into an account of being stuck in a hotel with nothing to drink and how in the end she’d been so desperate she’d knocked back a whole bottle of perfume.

  “Scent contains alcohol,” she explained.

  “What did it taste like?” SJ gasped in fascinated horror.

  “Disgusting. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever poured down my throat – I wasn’t too bad at that stage, you see.”

  The fact Dorothy didn’t consider drinking perfume ‘too bad’ put things in perspective a bit. SJ would never consider any such thing.

  “Did it work?” she asked, breathlessly. “Did it take the edge off the craving?”

  “No, it didn’t,” Dorothy chuckled. “When I looked at the bottle properly I realised it was the kind of perfume that doesn’t have any alcohol in it. So I’d just had myself a very expensive drink, pet. And it was all for absolutely nothing.”

  “My God,” SJ said. “That’s terrible.” She wasn’t sure which was worse – the fact that Dorothy hadn’t satisfied her craving, or the fact she’d been desperate enough to drink a bottle of perfume in an attempt to do it.

  And in the moments of silence that followed, SJ realised to her horror that she’d already prioritised the two things by the order in which they’d occurred to her. It was far more terrible that Dorothy hadn’t satisfied her craving – God, did that mean she was already thinking like an alcoholic?

  The silence went on so long that SJ wondered if Dorothy had hung up. She coughed experimentally.

  “So then, SJ – how are you feeling now? Any better?”

  “Yes, I am. Thank you, Dorothy.”

  “My pleasure. So tell me, hen, what have you been up to today?”

  By the time she had finished talking, twenty minutes later, SJ realised that
her hands were no longer sweaty. The terrible tension in her muscles had eased off. The craving had gone.

  “Thank you so much,” SJ said, rocked with a humbleness that made her want to weep, because she’d just realised that Dorothy had known exactly how she felt, and exactly how long to keep her talking. And she must have been interrupting her work – Dorothy had often said that evenings were her best time for writing. “Thank you so, so much, Dorothy.”

  “Any time, pet. You can phone me any time you want to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Another thing SJ had noticed since she’d given up drinking was that she’d started to remember things she hadn’t thought about since they had happened – or at least not for a very long time – which wouldn’t have been so bad if any of them were nice. But they weren’t. Sometimes the memories were incomplete – she’d get fragments of the past flicking into her mind; random scenes that weren’t connected would play out in her head like some surreal film. This usually happened at night when she was trying to get to sleep, which was virtually impossible when the only nightcap she allowed herself was camomile tea.

  When she mentioned it to Kit he told her that alcohol was a very good memory suppressant, which was often why people drank, and that eventually the memories would work themselves out of her head.

  “It might help if you talked about them,” he added idly.

  “To you?” she asked, half wanting to talk to him about them, and half afraid.

  “It doesn’t have to be me. You could see another counsellor, maybe a psychotherapist if you prefer?”

  SJ shook her head. She trusted Kit, but she didn’t want anyone else poking about inside her mind.

  There was a small silence.

  “Did you mean now?” SJ asked, noticing with a stab of alarm that they had forty minutes of the session left.

  “If you like?” He gave her a half smile and said nothing else until eventually she said, “Okay ...”

  Kit nodded, his dark eyes interested but not impatient, and SJ went on slowly. “A lot of things I remember are about my parents …” He nodded again. “… This is probably very childish and stupid but I don’t think they’ve really ever loved me.” She bit her lip. “No – that’s wrong. They do love me, but they love Alison more.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “They always take her side,” she said, swallowing hard. “They always did it when we were kids, and they’re still doing it now.” She paused. “Even when she slept with Derek they sided with her. Well, they were shocked for a while, but then as time went on they thought we should move on, put it all behind us. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her. They still don’t.”

  Kit shifted in his chair but he didn’t speak, and after a while she went on quietly. “They’ve never once said that Alison should miss a family gathering so I can go for a change. They don’t blame her for breaking up my marriage. They just blame me for being an unforgiving cow.” She could feel tears sliding down her face, but she couldn’t stop them and she couldn’t look at Kit. “It’s their party in a week’s time and I’ve got to take Tom to meet Alison.”

  “Are you scared it might happen again, SJ? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  She reached for the box of economy tissues and narrowly avoided knocking over the leaflet stand.

  “I don’t think I can do it without a drink,” she said.

  “Yes, you can. You’re stronger than you think, SJ.”

  “I’m not,” she said sadly. “I’m really not.”

  It was only when she had tidied up her face in the loo downstairs with the aid of some cold water and a paper towel and was outside again in the sunshine of the Soho street that she realised she had never answered Kit’s question.

  Was she afraid Alison would make a move on Tom?

  Tom wasn’t like Derek. Tom was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person, whereas Derek had been far more complex.

  As far as she knew Tom had never lied to her – unlike Derek, who’d kept on lying, even when he must have known it was futile. Even when he must have known all his lifelines were used up.

  “I’ve just been to see Alison,” she’d announced on that evening five years ago, as she’d walked back into their kitchen.

  “Oh, yeah – how’s she doing?” There was nothing in his face. Not a flicker of apprehension, not an echo of remorse. She’d felt anger building.

  “You know how she’s bloody well doing – you slept with her on Saturday night.” SJ didn’t recognise her own voice; it was so choked with bitterness, every word twisted with pain.

  Yet still for a moment he hadn’t reacted. He’d just stared back at her, his eyes blank. For an awful moment SJ had thought he was going to carry on denying it. Tell her she was imagining things, being paranoid.

  Instead, he scratched his nose, coughed, and cupped his hand over his mouth, almost thoughtfully. Not thoughtfulness, but guilt, SJ registered, remembering something she’d learned in psychology. People always touched their faces when they felt awkward or were about to lie – it was almost as if they could take some of the power out of their words if their hand was across their mouth. Make the lie not quite as potent.

  “So?” she prompted quietly. “Tell me your side of the story. Is it true? Did you sleep with my sister as soon as I was safely in Dublin? Or has she made the whole thing up?”

  “Um…” He took a couple of paces backwards, half turning so he was facing their kitchen window.

  SJ followed his gaze. On their patio the rotary clothes line was strung with a line of his socks and pants, the Armanis amongst them, stirring slightly in the evening breeze. She could see the line of tension in his jaw.

  She trembled. “For God’s sake, Derek, just tell me what happened.”

  “I was off my face. I don’t really remember.”

  “Well, Alison does.” She moved across his line of vision so he was forced to look at her. “Alison remembers all the gory little details. She even remembers what boxers you were wearing. And what sheets…” she broke off, haunted by fresh images.

  Derek shook his head and stared at the floor. A muscle was twitching in his cheekbone. His brown hair was ruffled like the feathers of a bird after a dust bath. He had never looked so beautiful. She had never hated him so much.

  He cleared his throat again, spreading his hands in front of him; his wedding ring glowed dully in the golden light.

  “I’m sorry, okay. I’m really sorry. Like I said, I don’t even remember it – I was really pissed.”

  “But you still managed to do it. Was it good? Or did you just think, well I’ve tried one sister I’d better try the pretty one. Is that what you thought?”

  “No. No, of course I didn’t.”

  For the first time he looked shocked. When she raised her hands to slap him, hardly aware of what she was doing, wanting only to hurt, he didn’t even try to defend himself. He just stood there mutely, letting her vent her rage and pain and grief.

  She’d bloodied his nose and he hadn’t tried to stop her. Afterwards, she’d sat at the kitchen table while he cleaned off the blood with a wet dishcloth at the sink. Then he’d turned back to her, his shoulders straighter now as if he somehow thought that it was done with. An eye for an eye, a bloodied nose for the worst pain he could have inflicted. SJ had felt wrung out, all the fight and anger gone. But she’d known he could never make up for what he’d done.

  All through their marriage she had ignored it when he flirted with her friends because she had trusted him utterly. She had felt secure in the knowledge that he’d chosen her. That she came first in his life and always would.

  But now that trust was shattered. She knew it could never be rebuilt.

  While Alison had gone back to her adoring husband and been forgiven – sometimes SJ thought Clive would put up with anything for a quiet life – SJ had thrown Derek out and filed for divorce. The unbearable pain had slid slowly into black depression,
but she couldn’t take him back. She couldn’t risk letting him do it to her again. She couldn’t risk letting any man do that to her again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There were twenty-four hours to kick off, and all SJ’s fears about seeing Alison were swirling around in her heart. There was still time for something to crop up and detain her – but she’d had her hair done at Oliver’s, just in case. He’d chopped off loads – SJ had watched in horror as it fell in chunks to the salon floor, but it did look better, she had to admit. To her surprise it didn’t seem that much shorter, but it no longer turned witchy five minutes after she’d dried it.

  She had a feeling she’d lost a bit of weight too. That was probably because she’d eaten very little lately – she was too nervous to eat. Or perhaps her wine-free evenings were beginning to make a difference.

  “What are you going to wear?” Tanya had asked when she’d phoned the previous evening, and the question had sent SJ into a panic.

  A frantic search through her wardrobe had increased the panic tenfold. It was ages since she’d been anywhere that required dressing up. Her old party clothes were all too small. Her Monsoon jacket needed cleaning and it was too late to get it done. Anyway, it wasn’t really party wear.

  When she’d mentioned it to Tom he suggested she buy something. Then he’d put his money where his mouth was and had given her his credit card. Her guilt at spending more of his money overridden by desperation, SJ had nipped into town and returned with two outfits, neither of which she was sure were suitable. She never had been able to make up her mind where clothes were concerned.

  Now she laid them out on the bed and wondered whether she should phone Tanya and ask for advice. Finally, she did.

  “I’ve got this long black skirt from Next, which sort of skims over my bulgy bits and hides my legs, and a floaty white gypsy-style blouse to go with it.”

  “Right …” Tanya didn’t sound very impressed. “Don’t tell me – the other outfit includes black leggings?”