Chapter 2
THREE MONTHS EARLIER
The terrifying part would be pressing the button on the intercom beside the grimy frosted-glass door.
Before she did that, SJ could have been any other office worker on the busy Soho street with nothing more important on her mind than where to go for lunch: Fat Hippo for a Katsu Sando or McDonald’s for a burger?
Oh, what she would have given to be a normal office worker.
She could still run away. Phone up later and say she’d been ill or had to work. She probably needn’t even phone. These places must get loads of people who made appointments and didn’t turn up. No doubt they were used to it.
Her legs were too rubbery to run anywhere.
SJ glanced over her shoulder. No one was paying her the slightest attention.
Thank God. Her outfit, overloud floral leggings and her hideously expensive Monsoon jacket, red for confidence, had been a mistake.
She should have worn a wig and dark glasses and a huge trench coat.
On second thoughts, that would have attracted a fair bit of attention in the June heat – everyone else was in summer dresses or shorts.
A few hundred yards away two council workers in yellow high-vis jackets had coned off a section of kerb and were digging up the road. The faint smell of tar mingled with traffic fumes on the summer air.
Taking a deep breath, SJ stabbed at the intercom button. Now she was committed – please let them open the door quickly before someone she knew strolled by and spotted her.
A buzzer indicated the catch had been released and she hurtled inside and found herself in a hallway with a discreet sign, SAADD, which stood for Soho Advice for Alcohol and Drug Dependency. Someone had graffitied an O on the end of the acronym in black pen. SJ swallowed. That felt about right.
There was an arrow pointing upwards. A guy in a baseball cap was coming down the stairs. He smiled and she forced a rictus grin and hoped he’d assume she was a counsellor.
Her shoulder-length dark hair was pinned up in a look which aimed to be grunge, but she had a sneaking suspicion looked more ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’, and she smelled of the Miss Dior that Tom had given her for her birthday.
She was not a shambling wreck. She hadn’t even had a cigarette before she came – well, one quick one when she’d got off the tube – but she’d had three mints since then.
Another man carrying a file met her at the top. He smiled too, and she gave him a friendly nod. Pretend you’re here for a doctor’s appointment – nothing to worry about. Just a routine visit to the doctor – no, bad idea: she hated going to the doctor. She realised suddenly that he was speaking.
‘Sarah Carter?’ he repeated.
‘Yep, that’s me.’ Her face blazed with embarrassment. She’d always been hopeless at lying.
‘Hi, I’m Kit. Go straight in – door at the end. I’ll be right with you. Can I get you a coffee?’
‘Thanks.’ She escaped into a cell-like room, furnished with a two-seater sofa, an armchair and a small table, on which sat a box of economy tissues and a wire tray of leaflets.
On the wall was a Van Gogh print, one corner peeling away from the frame.
It showed a small child, supported by his mother and heading towards his father on tottering toddler legs.
It was titled First Steps. Well, even she could see the wry aptness of that one.
In any other circumstances she would have smiled.
A spider plant spilled out of a pot on the table.
The earth around it was bone dry. Poor little plant must be desperate for a drink.
Oh, God, perhaps the spider plant was some sort of in-joke between the counsellors.
That couldn’t be right. They shouldn’t be taking the piss.
They were supposed to be sympathetic and nice.
She remembered the sign downstairs – so it was an acronym, but it was pretty flaming appropriate.
Shuddering, she chose the armchair by the table and picked up a leaflet. How to get help if you or your family is suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse.
Oh, crap! She jammed it back in the stand, opened her bag, switched off her mobile and tucked an escaping Tampax back into its compartment – why did anything embarrassing in your bag always gravitate towards the top, ready to fall out and humiliate you when you opened it?
Fleetingly, she considered escape, but before she could move, the door opened and Kit reappeared with two mugs.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’ He put them on the table and she thanked him numbly.
He didn’t need to apologise; he wasn’t late – she was early.
It still wasn’t quite midday. She’d been so early she’d actually gone an extra two stops on the tube and walked back, not wanting to arrive too soon in case she bumped into anyone she knew and they asked where she was going.
Kit sat opposite her on the sofa, looking relaxed – no closed body language there. SJ put her bag on the floor so it looked less like a shield and made a conscious effort to unclasp her hands, uncross her legs and look natural. She knew all about body language.
Having rearranged herself, she turned her attention back to Kit.
He looked like a young Bryan Adams, dark eyes and a craggy lived-in face.
It had been a waste of time dressing up – he wore jeans and a white T-shirt.
Still, at least he wasn’t some shrink with a load of psychobabble to throw at her.
She wondered if Kit was his real name. Probably not.
She had a feeling people who worked in these places didn’t give clients their real names in case they turned out to be nutcases.
Well, Sarah wasn’t her real name either. So they were on an equal footing. Hah!
‘Anything we discuss in this room is completely confidential…’ His voice was Bryan Adams too – gravelly from years of smoking. ‘…And won’t be disclosed to anyone else without your permission.’
She nodded, relieved he didn’t have a notebook or pen. She didn’t want anything she said put on record on some central government database that might get hacked next week.
‘So where would you like to start, Sarah?’
‘Where do you usually start?’ Her voice sounded normal – hey, she could be at the doctor’s discussing her blood pressure. Good job she wasn’t. It must be sky high. She could feel her heart pounding away in time with the faint sounds of the drill, which had started up again outside.
‘You said on the phone you were concerned about your alcohol consumption. So how about you tell me how much you usually drink?’
‘Sure. Well, I don’t drink in the day. Unless it’s Sunday lunch. Just the evenings. And then I don’t have one until nine or half past. I’m too busy, you see.’ Another lie.
But so far, so good. In a minute he’d ask her why she was here and she could say it had all been a mistake – a phone call made after a particularly bad night when she was feeling depressed.
But that was probably more age than excess.
Everyone got hangovers when they got past thirty-five, didn’t they?
He nodded. ‘So when you do drink, after nine, what would you have on an average day?’ His voice was mild and not at all judgemental.
That was easy. ‘Wine. White wine, usually. With dinner, you know – like everyone.’
Another little nod. ‘How many glasses would you have?’
‘Two or three, it depends on the size of the glasses – they vary so much these days, don’t they?’
‘Would it be easier if you told me in terms of how much of the bottle you had? Would you drink maybe half a bottle, or more than that?’
‘More than that,’ she said without thinking. ‘I mean, half a bottle is nothing, is it? Everyone has half a bottle of wine with dinner.’
He smiled. ‘Three-quarters?’
‘Yes, I’d say it was usually three-quarters, occasionally the whole bottle, but not always. Maybe if I’d had a particularly stressful day, or if I was up late.’
‘Do you drink on your own or with a partner?’
She was ready for this; it was one of the questions on the Are you an alcoholic?
form she’d found online. If you drank alone you were a saddo alky, but if you were sharing the wine with someone else you were okay.
Not that she exactly shared the wine because Tom didn’t like white much – luckily – but he often had a glass of red.
‘My husband’s usually around,’ she said firmly.
‘But not always?’
‘No, he sometimes works late, so I might have the odd glass before he gets in.’
‘But not the whole three-quarters of a bottle?’
‘Well, possibly I might – if he was working very late.’ How had she fallen into that one? ‘I mean, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have a drink at all, would I?’
‘And would that bother you, not having a drink at all?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Her hands felt slippery and she could feel sweat dripping down the back of her neck. Flustered, she stared at a paperclip on the grey carpet just in front of Kit’s trainer.
The truth was she couldn’t remember the last day she hadn’t had a few glasses of wine – so she didn’t know whether not having it would bother her.
After a slight pause she told him this. After all, she wasn’t in denial about how much she drank.
If she was an alcoholic she would have been.
That was a big part of the illness – it was almost the definition.
If you thought you were an alcoholic then you probably weren’t.
She’d been clinging to that little truth for a while.
But instead of condemning her as an alcoholic Kit changed tack. ‘Do you ever drink anything else besides wine, Sarah?’