Chapter 27
Rather to SJ’s dismay, but not to her surprise, her prayers about the car breaking down went unanswered.
With hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have called God a miserable old bugger.
Neither was there a hold-up at the off-licence.
A spotty-faced youth who didn’t look old enough to be selling alcohol offered to help Tom carry the cases out.
SJ shrank lower in the passenger seat as they loaded the wine and exchanged jokes about drinking it.
Oblivious to her tension, Tom drove on towards Romford, with the wine bottles clinking tantalisingly in the back.
How was she going to get through the next few hours?
Perhaps she should have asked Kit if she could be let off not drinking just for this one night.
She could start the sobriety again first thing in the morning.
It wasn’t too much to ask, was it? She shouldn’t be expected to face Alison without a drink in her hand.
Especially as everyone would be trying to press drinks on her – even Tom probably, seeing as he obviously still hadn’t got the message.
She’d contemplated telling her mother she’d given up drinking, but she knew that such a confession would lead straight to an inquisition and she didn’t feel ready to tell her parents she had a full-blown drink problem.
She knew alcoholism was an illness – she was living it – but deep down, even she occasionally wondered if she was just pathetically weak-willed.
How were her straightforward, totally traditional parents ever going to be able to understand?
With sudden insight, she knew that was one of the reasons Tom didn’t understand either.
He was deeply traditional too. A little old-fashioned – like her father.
He would never get that alcoholism was an illness.
He would never understand the fact that if an alcoholic had one drink it would set off a compelling, impossible-to-resist craving for the next drink.
And for the next and for the next and for the next.
AA had several little sayings like, ‘It’s the first drink that does the damage’ and ‘One drink is too many and a thousand isn’t enough’.
SJ knew she couldn’t blame Tom for not understanding alcoholism. He didn’t suffer from it.
As he pulled into a space directly outside her parents’ house, she touched his arm.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, which was true. She felt sick with nerves.
‘We’re here now.’ Tom didn’t sound in the least bit sympathetic. ‘Come on, let’s take this in and let them know we’ve arrived. They’ll be wanting to get the drinks set out.’
Feeling both trapped and depressed, SJ went ahead of him. Why was he so hell bent on meeting bloody Alison anyway? Did he really have no understanding of how she felt? No, come to think of it, he probably didn’t. She’d already established that he didn’t understand her at all.
SJ trembled as she stood on the doorstep with the gift-wrapped package for her parents.
She and Tom hadn’t been able to think of a suitable joint present for a ruby wedding anniversary, so in the end they’d bought her mum some ruby earrings and her father a bottle of forty-year-old port and wrapped them in a box together.
The port had been Tom’s idea – SJ wasn’t even sure her dad liked it, although Tom seemed to think he did.
SJ didn’t like it much either, but she was so desperate for a drink now she’d have given it a try.
Good job it was gift-wrapped and out of sight.
‘Has no one answered the bell?’ Tom asked her, as he placed the box of glasses on the path alongside the wine.
SJ shook her head, not wanting to admit she hadn’t rung it in case Alison let them in.
‘Maybe they’re all out in the garden then. Perhaps we’d better give it another ring,’ Tom suggested, and did just that.
After a four-second delay, which felt like forever, SJ’s mother opened the door – to her intense relief.
‘Hello, loves – oh, is that for us? Isn’t it beautifully wrapped? Did you do it yourself? Jim, come and give Tom a hand, will you, pet? Go through to the lounge, SJ, love, and tell me what you think of the decorating.’
Scarlet balloons and red streamers clashed horribly with the terracotta walls and carpet. It was enough to make you feel sick, even if you didn’t already. SJ took several deep breaths, which made her feel dizzy, and laid the box on the floor beneath a table that heaved with plates of food.
Mum had really gone to town. There were pork pies, cut into quarters; cheese and pineapple on sticks; vol-au-vents with some unidentified grey filling; a leg of ham; a whole salmon; three bowls of salad – sensible salad, iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and radish and none of what her mother referred to as fancy leaf rubbish.
Several plates of sandwiches were still covered with cling film, and four plates of quiche with little placards announcing they were vegetarian.
Her sister’s handiwork, SJ suspected; Alison had been a vegetarian since she was at school.
Dad had protested when Alison suggested they all try this new way of eating, but Mum had capitulated, as she always did to her younger daughter, her princess.
SJ glanced around the room, which led out on to a conservatory, which in turn led on to the huge back garden.
Aunt Edie, Dad’s sister from Barnsley, and Uncle Simon were installed in cane chairs, already getting into the swing of things by the look of it.
They both held giant glasses of red wine.
Beyond them she could see more relatives and some of her father’s darts team, milling about admiring the geraniums. A red and white striped tent blocked out the light at the end of the garden.
Dad was right; it was more like a marquee than a gazebo.
She was never going to get through this without a drink.
Still, at least there was no sign of Alison – perhaps God had decided to answer her food-poisoning-her-sister prayers instead then. Good old God.
Catching her glance, Aunt Edie heaved her plump, flower-patterned body out of the chair and gave her a beaming smile. ‘Oh, look, there’s Sarah-Jane, love. Da-hling, come and give your Auntie Edie a hug. Don’t you look smashing? Doesn’t she look smashing, Simon?’
Please don’t say, ‘Hasn’t she grown?’
‘Hasn’t she grown, Simon?’
At the same moment, her mother appeared in the lounge doorway and, sensing escape from one of Aunt Edie’s strongman hugs, SJ turned towards her.
‘Isn’t Alison in here, pet? She popped out to get some tonic. We were worried about running out with you around. I hope she won’t be too much longer.’
With luck she’d be caught up in a multi-car pile up and be eternally detained. SJ was horrified at her thoughts. Surely she didn’t wish her sister dead? Just permanently absent would have done.
‘Isn’t that dress a little short?’ her mother added before withdrawing.
SJ’s confidence dropped another notch. Oh, what she would have given for a nice gin and tonic.
She had her mobile in her clutch bag. Perhaps she should call Dorothy now.
No doubt she had a few more perfume stories tucked up her sleeve to warn SJ of the evils of drinking.
She contemplated dragging Tom out to the garden. They could hide in the marquee. Hey, perhaps it would be possible to hide from Alison for the entire evening – even if they were in the same place. That was an idea she hadn’t considered.
She hugged Aunt Edie dutifully, kissed Uncle Simon, and denied that she’d grown very much in the last ten years – except perhaps outwards.
‘Nice dress,’ Simon leered, his beaming red face so close she could smell the wine on his breath. She’d never noticed alcohol on anyone’s breath before. How odd.
Then, excusing herself on helping-her-mother grounds, SJ bounded into the kitchen, the suggestion of hiding on her lips, just in time to see her father popping a slice of lemon into a glass already brimming with sparkling liquid.
‘There you go, love – a nice gin and tonic to start you off, complete with ice and a slice, just how you like it. And to say thanks for bringing the wine – it’s a lovely gesture.
’ He beamed at her, but SJ was too busy staring at the glass he was holding out.
He didn’t need to tell her what it was – she could smell the juniper berries from here.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. What should she do now?
If she said she didn’t want it, he’d get very suspicious.
And it would be ungrateful and selfish, wouldn’t it? Like saying you didn’t want a slice of someone’s birthday cake when you were on a diet. She hesitated, hoping Tom would rescue her. Fat chance. He was flirting with her mother by the cooker.
‘Go on, love – we got that in special. No one else is on the gin.’
So it would be wasted as well. She looked back at her father’s beaming face.
She took the glass. It wouldn’t hurt to hold it, after all.
She could pour it over the roses when they went outside.
Yes, good plan. The roses could probably do with a decent drink.
No doubt they were sick to death of the horse manure her father shovelled over them every Sunday morning.
The front door slammed and, as if from a long way off, she heard her mother’s over-bright voice. ‘Ah, I expect that’s her now, Tom. You must come and say hello, she’s been dying to meet you.’
Was SJ not even going to be allowed to introduce him herself? If it had to be done, she should be the one to do it. She could hear Alison’s voice in the hall.
Feeling as though things were sliding out of her control far too rapidly, SJ stared into her gin and tonic.
She raised the glass to her lips, sniffed it and was swamped with an overwhelming compulsion to down it in one.
No one was looking at her – no one cared if she was sober or not.
Mum, Dad, Tom – they were all looking towards the door.
Waiting for Princess Alison to make her entrance.
SJ had one final battle with her conscience, and lost. She took a sip at the same moment as her sister walked into the room.