Chapter 34
Dorothy came to the rescue by offering SJ her spare room.
‘Thanks, but it’s not just me, I come complete with elderly greyhound,’ SJ said, wanting Dorothy to have all the facts before she committed herself.
‘I like dogs.’
Hugely relieved, SJ didn’t give her another chance to retract her offer and – to Tom’s obvious relief – she and Ash moved into Dorothy’s terraced house, which was in Bermondsey, not that far from where Tanya and Michael lived.
‘I doubt it’s what you’re used to, but it’s big enough for a lass and a wee dog,’ Dorothy had said, as she’d shown her the spare room, which was modern, with fitted wardrobes and a huge double bed with a lemon-coloured duvet that matched the walls, and a bookcase crammed full of Dorothy’s books.
‘I’ll have plenty of bedtime reading,’ SJ quipped.
‘It’ll take you years to get through that lot,’ Dorothy said with quiet pride. ‘There’s a lifetime of experience between those pages.’ She’d hesitated in the bedroom doorway. ‘I don’t want you getting drunk and throwing up on the carpet, mind – it’s new.’
‘I’m not drinking any more,’ SJ had muttered sheepishly, and this had been met with a snort.
‘Well, if you’ve a yen to start it up again, you’d best bear in mind I know every hiding place there is in this house.’
* * *
One evening, over dinner, Dorothy asked SJ if she fancied going to an AA convention.
‘What exactly is an AA convention?’
‘It’s the same as a meeting – except they get outside speakers and they go on for longer – anywhere between a weekend and a whole week. This one’s a mini-convention, so it’s just Saturday.’
‘How much do they cost?’ SJ asked, wishing money didn’t have to be a consideration for everything, but it was. She hadn’t let Tom support her financially; it was time she stood on her own two feet so she’d got a job in a bistro, which she hoped wouldn’t have to be permanent.
Although actually it was quite good fun being a waitress again – Mortimer’s was a lot more upmarket than Pizza Express. It was the lower half of an Art Deco building in Hackney and had stone floors and white lace tablecloths and a gay Spanish bar manager who enjoyed camping it up.
‘Oh, not another recovering blooming alcoholic,’ he muttered when he’d tried to give SJ an expensive glass of wine that had been poured out by mistake and she’d said she didn’t drink.
‘Still, I suppose that means you won’t be necking all the profits.
’ He tossed back his Hispanic curls and minced up and down the floor with the wine on a silver tray.
And in the end SJ had fallen about laughing.
She didn’t put him right one way or the other – as Dorothy had frequently told her, the reasons she didn’t drink were no one’s business but her own. But she got on well at Mortimer’s.
The customers liked her – she got more tips than anyone else because she was always clowning around and making people laugh.
Even on her darkest days she concentrated on making people smile.
Making people smile felt good. It didn’t atone for all the people she had hurt so badly, but it helped somehow.
Dorothy cleared the plates from the table and SJ came back to the present with a start.
‘This particular convention doesn’t cost anything, hen – and you get a free lunch.’
‘Well, that clinches it, then,’ SJ quipped. ‘When is it?’
‘The last weekend in November – the 25th, I think.’
SJ felt a flicker of pain – 25 November was Tanya’s birthday. Whatever else had happened between them across the years they’d never missed each other’s birthdays.
‘What is it?’ Dorothy asked, catching her look. ‘Do you have other plans?’
SJ explained. ‘I’ve known Tanya since uni and we always do cards and wine for normal birthdays and champagne for big birthdays. It’s tradition. And now I’m never going to see her again.’
‘You wouldn’t have taken her wine this year, even if you were still close.’ Dorothy’s voice was gentle.
‘No, I suppose not.’ SJ blinked back tears.
‘I can’t go near wine. I don’t trust myself.
I can’t even bear to look at it in supermarkets.
I have to close my eyes when I go past the alcohol aisles.
’ She grimaced – this had already caused two near-miss accidents, one with a mum and toddler, and one with an old gent with a white stick, who was legitimately allowed to stumble into things because he couldn’t see where he was going. ‘Will it always be like that?’
‘No, it won’t.’ Dorothy took their plates over to the sink, turned on the tap and then came back to the table.
‘I don’t know how long it will take you.
We’re all different. But I can tell you honestly that if someone waved an open bottle of Scotch under my nose now I wouldn’t be tempted.
And it’s been like that for more years than I can count. ’
SJ sighed. She couldn’t imagine not wanting to drink, which had come as quite a shock. She’d thought the horror of overdosing on alcohol would have been painful enough to make the prospect of ever drinking again abhorrent. But it hadn’t been like that.
The further away that nightmare day got, the more she began to think that maybe one drink wouldn’t hurt after all. Quite often she could smell alcohol, even when there was none around – some weird olfactory hallucination. And to think she’d imagined she didn’t have a drink problem.
Dorothy patted her shoulder and the gesture was so tender that SJ felt the tears come properly now.
‘I don’t think I can do this.’ She could feel her voice husking over the words. ‘I don’t think I can stand it. The thought of never having a drink again is terrifying.’
‘Och! It’s not forever though, is it? It’s just for today. These next few hours, these next few minutes if you like. Just keep it in the day.’
* * *
Over the next few weeks, life at Dorothy’s settled into a pattern: walking Ash, going to work, and meetings. SJ was pretty much left to her own devices. Dorothy spent ages tapping away at the keyboard of her MacBook Pro which lived on a desk in her lounge.
‘I like having the telly on while I write,’ she confided.
‘Doesn’t it put you off?’ SJ asked, surprised. ‘I’d have thought it would be really distracting.’
‘Not at all. If I find something distracting, I allow myself to be distracted and watch it for a while. Sometimes it’s helpful for my story, and I just weave it into the plot.
I find writing is like knitting. The raw material of fiction is life and I reach out for it and knit it into my stories.
You can’t reproduce life without living it a little. ’
Dorothy smiled serenely while SJ digested this.
‘Life for a recovering alcoholic is about balance,’ she went on.
‘We tend to be extremist by nature. That’s often how we got into such trouble in the first place.
You take a look around the rooms, SJ. Most of the people in meetings are self-employed.
That’s because they don’t get on very well working for other people.
They don’t like being told what to do, for a start. They’re far too rebellious.’
‘Mmm,’ SJ agreed. She could relate to that at least.
‘A lot of recovering alcoholics are very successful entrepreneurs,’ Dorothy added.
SJ nodded. That was good news. Some more money would be nice. She smiled at her thoughts. Waitress to successful entrepreneur was probably a bit of a quantum leap; still, there was no harm in aiming high.
‘But going back to what I was saying, we do need balance in our lives. I don’t work because I need to.
I’m sixty-seven – I could have retired ten years ago, financially.
I still write stories because I enjoy writing them.
If I let it take over and didn’t get a little distracted at times, my life would be all out of balance. ’
Dorothy was very wise, SJ reflected, not for the first time. She hadn’t realised she was a pensioner. She didn’t look like one.
‘So have you thought any more about this convention? Do you think it’s something you might enjoy? Or don’t you fancy hanging about with a load of ex-drunks for the day?’
‘I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing,’ SJ replied, realising with surprise that it was true.
‘And will you be sending your friend a card for her birthday?’
‘Yes, I will.’ SJ wished she didn’t feel so upset about Tanya. They’d had rows before, but nothing that had ever come close to this. It still filled her with grief that she and Tanya would never again have a girly chat and swap confidences.
When she’d moved into Dorothy’s, she’d sent Tanya a change of address card. There had been no response – and she hadn’t been surprised. A small part of her still hoped they’d be friends again, one day – but the realistic part knew they probably wouldn’t. Some things could never be forgiven.
Nevertheless, she spent ages choosing a birthday card for Tanya.
Her hand hovered between the My Special Friend cards and the more jokey variety they usually bought each other.
Neither seemed appropriate and in the end she’d chosen a card with a skylark in full flight across the backdrop of a setting sun. Inside, she’d written simply:
Happy Birthday. Hope you’re okay. Thinking of you. SJ x
Then she’d posted it before she could change her mind. Afterwards, she’d wondered if perhaps she should have left out the kiss. But it was too late now. Tanya probably wouldn’t respond to it anyway. Why should she?
* * *
Rather to her disappointment, because she’d hoped he might, Kit didn’t show up at the convention. She told him all about it at her next session, and he smiled at her enthusiasm.
‘What?’ she said, pausing for breath.
‘I was just thinking that if you could see yourself now, compared to the person you were when you first walked in here, you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘What do you mean? I can’t be that different.’
‘Oh, you are, SJ. You’re much more relaxed, happy, confident – it’s great to see.’