Chapter 18
After the drunken dinner party with her parents, SJ had rebooked her Tuesday appointment with Kit. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see her. Neither had he given any indication that he thought she was crazy, or unreliable, or any of the other things that SJ was beginning to suspect she was becoming.
He’d been wearing his usual faded jeans with a black T-shirt, which had a small brown mark on the front just below his right breastbone. A burn mark maybe, or spilt food. Somehow it had made him seem more human. And his questions had been gentle.
He’d asked her if she could remember any other specific occasions when she hadn’t been able to control her drinking – and she’d told him that she sometimes drank when she was afraid, or when she was alone, or when she felt worthless – which, to her surprise, seemed to happen a great deal more often than she’d ever previously acknowledged.
She hadn’t told Kit or Tanya or anyone else the full story behind why she’d made her first appointment with SAADD. The memories were still too raw and too painful. But as she got the bus back on Tuesday lunchtime after her latest appointment, the memories had crawled back, unbidden.
Tom had been working away that weekend. He’d phoned earlier to tell her he’d be a day or so later than planned and, disappointed to be spending yet another evening alone, SJ had decided to unwind with a glass or two of wine.
It was easy to drink too much when you were watching television and she hadn’t bothered with dinner – there didn’t seem much point in even cooking a ready meal for one.
As she’d told Tanya, she’d opened a second bottle and then things had got rather fuzzy and hazy, although bizarrely there were parts of the evening that were as sharp and as clear as the stills on a DVD:
Herself – staggering through the hall to let Ash into the garden, fiddling with the catch on the back door, cursing because it wouldn’t open quickly enough and she was dying to go to the loo; Ash, standing beside her, wagging his tail patiently.
Then there was a chunk of blankness, empty as the blue screen on a television when the channels aren’t tuned in.
Another picture: herself again, prostrate on the hall floor, aware of the hardness of the wooden floor against her cheek and the sour taste in her mouth; opening her eyes to see a glint of gold on blackness – one of her gold hoop earrings, not far from her face, coming in and out of focus as she blinked; a hand, her own hand, scrabbling around to reach it.
Another blue blank.
The sound of frantic knocking on the front door – and the awareness that their musical doorbell was chiming softly.
Another blue blank.
Their next-door neighbour’s anxious pale face looming in and out of focus.
‘Oh, SJ, love. I’m sorry to disturb you, but your dog’s been out on the road. He’s been hit by a car. He’s okay. Don’t panic. I think the car just clipped him.’
‘Where is he?’ SJ gulped, the coldness of shock knifing through the alcohol fuzz in her head.
‘I put him in the back of my car. I couldn’t get you to answer the door, you see.’ She tailed off, worried brown eyes quizzical, and SJ wondered if she could smell the drink. There were several feet between them and she had her hand over her mouth, but she must reek of it.
Her neighbour was already turning away. SJ followed her, barefoot – goodness knows what had happened to her shoes – to where her car was parked outside the house.
‘He’s scraped his front leg, but he seems fine apart from that. You never can tell with dogs though; he might have internal injuries. If he were mine I’d nip him down the emergency vets and get him checked over. Just to be on the safe side.’
The neighbour smiled uncertainly and as the coldness of the pavement chilled SJ’s feet, she wondered if it was obvious that she was in no fit state to drive anywhere.
Ash sat in the hatchback, panting. When he saw her, he wagged his tail and held out his injured paw, which looked grazed and bloodied. He’d cut his muzzle too, and flecks of blood spattered his chest.
SJ buried her head in his soft fur, imagining him being hit by some callous driver who hadn’t even bothered to stop. He was trembling and she felt guilt tighten around her heart. Tears gritted her eyes as she coaxed him gently onto the pavement.
How had he got out anyway? Their gate should have been shut.
Calling out a husky thanks to her neighbour, who didn’t respond, she led Ash slowly back to their house.
As they approached the front door, SJ saw that the side gate, which was normally shut, was wide open, and the bins were this side of it.
She had no memory of putting them out, but she must have done.
So it was her fault he’d gone wandering.
She was as bad as the people who’d dumped him on the motorway. No, she wasn’t as bad as them. She was worse. Ten times worse, twenty times worse because she loved Ash and she hadn’t kept him safe.
She remembered being sick again when they got inside.
Then she’d switched on her laptop and tried to find an emergency vet but she couldn’t type properly and Google kept throwing up irrelevant websites.
And the next thing she recalled after that was waking up on the floor of the lounge and seeing Ash on the rug.
The memories of what had happened flicked into her head like the mixed-up pieces of a jigsaw, and she’d crawled across to check he wasn’t dead.
The utter relief that he seemed to be breathing normally had tipped her back into oblivion.
It was only when the dawn light stabbed through the undrawn curtains that she’d woken up again.
Stiff and sore, with a pneumatic drill going off in her head and a foul taste in her mouth, she’d shuffled into the kitchen and downed two pints of water and some Nurofen.
Ash was okay, he was fine, hardly even limping when she’d persuaded him to come into the kitchen and had sponged the dried blood off his chest. But it was no thanks to her.
The remorse and self-pity had kicked in big time.
She would never drink again. She would go one step further than that.
She would make an appointment with someone to talk about her drinking – just in case it was becoming a problem.
Frantically she’d scrolled through the list of alcohol advice websites on the internet; she’d ignored the number for AA, which she already knew didn’t work, and that’s when she had phoned SAADD.