Chapter 33
AUDREY
‘The worst part is, I’ve been hiding it,’ I said to Maggie’s GP the day she got me an emergency appointment.
‘My friends think I’m recovering from the shock and the trauma and the loss.
I’m back in a job, not one I like, but still.
I’m socialising, exercising—I mean, it’s a full-time activity looking as under control as I do. But it’s an act. Every bit of it.’
‘Look, here are the details of a local group,’ the doctor said, passing me a flyer. ‘I know it’s hard to show up the first time, but I’m certain it will be helpful for you.’
Walking out of the practice with a script for a drug to curb cravings, I looked at the information in my hand. I knew if I didn’t do this immediately, I would push it aside for months, and who knew how bad I’d be by then. Or if I’ll even be alive.
So I stood on the path outside the building and called the number. And ended the call. Called it again. Hung up. Third time around, I allowed a woman to pick up.
‘It’s been six months,’ I explained. ‘I just can’t seem to get past it.’
‘Of course! You’d be most welcome.’ Even her voice was comforting. ‘It’s just a small group at the moment. About eight people. Come on Tuesday?’
Eight people. Each struggling as much as I was. Do they have any idea how much their existence means to me?
That was two months, five million bottles, countless regrettable text messages, and an immeasurable swathe of dropped obligations ago.
I wanted to get better. I did. I just didn’t want to do it without drinking.
In the end, having gone to extraordinary lengths to hide the worst of this from Rach, I opened up to her about how truly bad things had become. ‘Whatever you’re imagining, it’s a million times worse. Maggie took me to her doctor—’
‘Maggie?’ She was affronted. Of course she was. And I get it. I’d trusted Fraser’s ex-wife, with whom little love has ever been lost, over her. My best friend since university. Addiction had taken another swing of its axe.
‘I couldn’t bear to disappoint you, Rach.’
She looked at me across the cafe table, devastated.
‘It’s this giant problem swallowing everything,’ I explained. ‘It’s me. Not you. And the only reason Maggie knows about it is because I did a horrible thing. I made a huge mistake, and she discovered it.’
She leaned forward.
I could hardly dare admit this, I was so humiliated.
‘Rach, I got blackout drunk the one night she let me have Parker for a sleepover. I’m talking almost completely unconscious.
Parker couldn’t wake me and called her mum.
She was two hours late for school, and even then I couldn’t wait for them to leave, because I was that jittery, I needed something to take the edge off … ’
She sat back then. Flummoxed. ‘How have I missed this? What kind of friend am I?’
‘No! I’m a master at hiding it. Or I was.
Oh, God, and there’s this whole other story about Parker.
I’m worried sick. She blames herself for Fraser’s death.
All this time that I’ve been drinking myself to oblivion, I’ve been pushing away this awful, swirling instinct that she’s struggling with something even worse than what she’s already told Maggie and me.
And now I’m not allowed to see her, and Maggie wouldn’t listen to the ramblings of a drunk woman anyway. So I don’t know what to do.’
She poured me a huge glass of water while I tried to fend off the anxiety attack. What I really needed was a huge glass of wine. Alcohol dampens the nervous system. How did she think I’d made it through eight months without him?
Rach reached across the table then and took my hands in hers. ‘I think the best way to help Parker is to help yourself, Audrey. And the best way to help yourself is to let me back in …’
So now we’re parked outside the centre in Rach’s car and I’m shaking.
I’m scared. Terrified, even. ‘These people are about to confiscate the one thing that makes my life survivable,’ I explain, making good on this afternoon’s commitment to be honest with her.
‘There’ll be no protection from this horror. ’
I can’t possibly go in! Why would I torture myself? Give me this messy half-life and the permanent fog of semiconsciousness over burning exposure to the full force of life without him.
I’m desperate for her to throw the car in reverse, when a montage of the life I’m trying to preserve here presents itself: chaotic nights, fractured sleep, endless covering up, and backsliding across every critical area as time folds and shrinks and I slip further from the woman I was.
The woman he loved. Forever telling myself I’ll ‘start tomorrow’: more water, better food, earlier bedtime …
that meaningless mantra that always goes nowhere.
It’s my fault you’re like this, Parker said. Remembering that, I unlatch the seatbelt.
I. Have. Lost. His. Child.
All time exists now, Audrey. You are thirty-seven, sitting in this car outside the meeting. And you are forty …
But I can’t see forty! Can’t make any version of the timeline stretch, which throws me into a deeper panic.
‘The night he died I had a premonition that, if I wasn’t careful, his death was going to kill me.’ And here I am, eight months on, weapon in my hand.
‘I’m not going to let that happen,’ Rach says, as she leans across and pushes open my car door.
I get out and walk towards the building before I can talk myself out of this.
Inside, the waiting area is full of public health brochures and posters about loneliness and breastfeeding and sexual health—finally a problem of no concern to my present monastic lifestyle.
The group meets in a room down a carpeted corridor.
To get to it, I’m forced to walk past one labelled Mums & Bubs.
My gut clenches with that confusing cocktail of loss and fear, laced with endless sadness that, even though I’d made my decision, the choice was terminally ripped from me when Fraser died. Triggers everywhere.
When I arrive, there’s a motley gathering.
A couple of people around my age, some older.
One shockingly young. People in business suits.
Jeans. A gorgeous woman in a floral dress with puffed sleeves and a pixie cut.
People checking phones. Someone stirring a cup of instant coffee from the table in the corner.
Laughing. Chatting. Talking about football scores and politics and grandkids.
Normal people, all of them. Carrying on as if this is a social occasion. And then there’s me.
‘I’m Audrey.’ My voice is shaking minutes later as the meeting begins, heart pounding, skin tingling as I’m metaphorically stabbed by the fork in this road. Lapsed musician. Reluctant admin officer. Widow. Ostracised stepmum. Veritable wreck. ‘And I’m an alcoholic.’
Everyone was right. Admitting it was hard but also a relief. The undeniable fact is that somewhere, in the space between that first glass in the shower the night he died and arriving at this community centre, I have become miserably, intensely, and what feels like irrevocably dependent on alcohol.
I can still see Jess passing that wine through the bathroom door. Still hear the flimsy objection in my mind. Surely I can make it through the shower without alcohol … Fast-forward to tonight, and there’s barely a minute of any day that I’m not strategising my next sip.
I’m embarrassed to say I thought alcoholics were people who sidled up to a bar all day, or I pictured a reclusive writer, tucked away in some attic, brilliant words lubricated by red wine or whiskey.
At absolutely no point did I see myself—an administrative officer from a nice family, with a beautiful late almost husband and a precious stepdaughter—just as dependent as anyone else.
But I have to admit that I am. I just said so in there. And the sky did not fall.
‘Audrey?’ It’s a woman from the group, Ali, about my age, trailing me out. ‘Well done.’
‘Thanks?’ The people pleaser inside me is giddy at the praise until I remember I’m being congratulated for admitting I have an addiction. Doesn’t that make me a failure?
‘It’s not easy to do what you did tonight. How are you going to celebrate?’
Champagne? It’s as if the two notions are married at the hip.
‘Er … I hadn’t thought it through.’ Not in any palatable way that I could explain to this woman. And I guess that’s why she’s asking.
‘Would you like to grab a bite?’
I imagine perusing a menu, looking for nonalcoholic options to accompany the meal. It’s been so long since I’ve had dinner out without wine—most nights my dinner is wine—I can’t even imagine what the point would be. It would feel like half an experience.
Wow. Every unfolding idea illuminates just how far down this pit I have crashed.
‘I should probably just go home and have an early night,’ I say, only for the two bottles of chilled wine in my fridge to spring to mind.
Yes. And I was still considering going to the bottle shop?
I wouldn’t have drunk all of that in one night.
Would I? But if my supply gets too low, I feel anxious.
Now I’m wondering how I allowed it to spiral this far without admitting to myself that I have a problem.
And when I started referring to it as my ‘supply’.
‘It would be really positive if you could go through this night, after your first meeting, sober,’ Ali says.
I agree. It would be. The idea of failing so fast is almost as worrisome as the concept of no wine. It would unleash a massive tumbling into an abyss from which I couldn’t claw my way out. Is this the ‘slippery slope’ everyone talks about, or has that been overtaken by events?
‘The way you’ll feel in the morning will be worth it,’ Ali adds. ‘I’d be happy to keep you company.’ I’m meant to call Rach for a lift, but maybe I should spend some time with someone who really gets this, from experience.
‘I’ve got two bottles of wine at home,’ I blurt out.
I don’t mean for it to sound like an invitation.
If it was, two bottles for two people wouldn’t be enough.
‘It’s not far from here, and I know we just met, but would you come with me and hold me accountable while I tip them down the sink? I’ll cook you dinner?’
She takes my arm the way characters do in Enid Blyton novels when they’re about to skip to the shops and purchase cakes and sweets.
Except what we’re doing is the opposite of Enid Blyton.
It’s dark. It’s terrifying. I can feel myself sweating and shaking at the mere thought of trying to get through even one evening without that magical softening of the edges.
‘It’s just tonight,’ Ali assures me.
It isn’t just tonight, but I can see why tonight is all that we have to handle right now.
‘Audrey, you can still have a beautiful life,’ she promises as she unlocks her car. ‘This is the start. Not the end.’