Chapter Thirty-Four
Keera sits in the front of the taxi with Marceline on the way home and listens to the music: Fleetwood Mac are harmonising along to ‘Dreams’.
‘I love Fleetwood Mac,’ explains Marceline.
‘When I was younger, my friends all said I looked like Stevie Nicks,’ she adds happily, navigating the roads out of Corfu Town and speeding into the darkness on the way to Xanthe.
‘My hair was blonde and I loved a long, tiered skirt for sure – but I can’t sing a note! ’ She laughs throatily at her own joke.
The sea glitters to the right of the car and Keera stares out into the silky darkness as Marceline drives towards Dassia and Ipsos. She likes to come into Xanthe from the mountains, she says because she was born in the village of Lafki so loves to be close to the island’s mountain ranges.
Bernard hasn’t spoken a single word, which no longer worries Keera.
If he wants to be a horrible person, then that’s his prerogative. He’s clearly spent his life doing just that.
It’s late and they’re her last drive of the evening, so Marceline is happy to listen to music now and not talk.
Keera sits quietly and listens to the guitars and drums soaring into the opening verse of ‘Dreams’. When Stevie’s exquisite contralto with its hints of vibrato starts, Keera feels an overwhelming sense of shame that she achieved so little in her music career.
She had so many chances and she blew them.
Tonight’s meeting has also made her think back to rehab.
Talking about the worst stuff she’d done while drinking and using. The sheer shame of that too.
She’s proud of what she’s achieved, kicking the drugs and booze. But it’s hard to look back at what might have been …
‘So singer girl, whaddya think? Everyone’s busy. Nobody will notice if we shut the door and make out …’
The tanned, fabulously ripped man in a white singlet and very low-hanging sweatpants gestures to the long bench covered with cushions.
‘We’d just about fit if you were on top. You up for it?’ he says. ‘The doors don’t lock, but we can be quick!’
Oliver (sex addiction) and Keera are cleaning the dining room after dinner.
She glares at him.
‘Fuck off, Oliver,’ she says, scraping the remains of food off a plate.
‘Or – fuck Oliver?’ he says, sidling up close to her, not touching but being way too close.
Oliver is the perfect person to practise boundaries with.
He’s good-humoured and surprisingly unthreatening, so Keera finds it easy to say no to him.
Keera’s sure she’s partnered with Oliver for chores so she can learn how to say no.
She feels as if she’s several steps ahead of him in her rehab – Oliver’s addiction is still pulsing through him relentlessly.
‘No,’ Keera tells him again, even more firmly.
‘I’d make it lovely for you …’ he wheedles.
Oliver’s West-Coast gorgeous, which is why he wears singlets day and night irrespective of temperature, to display his muscles.
He has the face of a movie icon with wavy black hair and eyes that can suck a woman’s soul out.
This is just his outside look, though.
Inside, Keera knows he’s a lonely, desperate man who has the emotional bandwidth of a lettuce.
Group therapy has revealed that Oliver can only feel anything when he’s with a woman sexually.
Otherwise, he’s a black hole of self-hatred.
Now, he trails one hand along Keera’s arm hopefully.
She elbows him hard in the ribs.
‘I said fuck off, Oliver,’ she says as he bends over in pain. ‘Boundaries, remember them? You get thrown out if you step inside anyone’s boundaries.’
‘I didn’t,’ he says now, sulkily, and arranges his beautiful body onto a chair, instantly looking like a male model awaiting a fashion photographer.
‘You did.’
‘Don’t tell,’ he pleads.
‘Get up and help, then,’ she orders. ‘I’m not doing your share of the cleaning-up work too.’
‘You talked about one-night stands,’ Oliver says crossly as he slams plates upon plates. ‘I overheard you talking to one of the other women. It wouldn’t matter to you, just five minutes is all I’m asking.’
‘What part of the privacy don’t you get?’ Keera rages. ‘I was having a private conversation with another person sharing painful past stories and you’re treating that overheard discussion like I’m a menu card showing what’s available.’
‘Sorry.’
Finally Oliver looks repentant.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he repeats. ‘I want to block things out and sex does that for me.’
‘We all want to block things out, Oliver. That’s why we’re here,’ Keera says with irritation. ‘But the numbing never lasts long. It’s a temporary fix. Like drugs, alcohol, food, gambling. It never lasts!’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He shuffles off to the kitchen with a pile of plates, still beautiful but forlorn now. ‘You won’t tell on me, will you?’
‘No but if it happens again, I will.’
‘’Kay.’
Keera follows him into the kitchen with a tray loaded up with cups and glasses. She sees how woebegone he is but knows that hugging Oliver would be a rookie mistake so, when she puts her tray down, she fist-bumps him instead.
‘Another learning experience in rehab,’ she says cheerily.
Look at you all functional and helping another addict, she thinks with a sliver-thin slice of pride. That’s got to be something.
‘Join me outside for a cigarette after we clean up?’ he asks.
Keera thinks about it.
Nicotine is the only addictive substance available to the people in the rehab centre but she realises that she only liked to smoke when she was drinking. Without alcohol, she doesn’t actually like nicotine. It was merely a bad girl accessory.
‘Nah. I’ve enough addictions going on right now,’ she says.
The next day in group is Keera’s fourteenth day in Little Rock.
Today’s group leader is Sasha, the scariest of all the counsellors. Sasha makes people cry every time she runs group.
‘Sasha’s an excavator. She digs the pain out of you,’ explains Lexi, Keera’s favourite counsellor.
‘What if I don’t want anything dug out? Can’t she use an anaesthetic?’ Keera sobs to Lexi.
‘Funny,’ says Lexi. ‘Anaesthetic, right!’
Now the group are assembling, all eighteen of them, all trying to sit in nice chairs but also position themselves so they aren’t in Sasha’s direct eye-line. Oliver, Kat and Jordy (eating disorder and cocaine) sit quite close to Sasha so she’ll have to turn her majestic head to see them.
Last into the room is the most recent newcomer, Tyrone.
He’s an imposing man. Basketball-player tall, he towers over Keera but he’s a gentle giant at heart.
Talks about his four small children and nightly bemoans the fact that they’re not allowed their mobile phones in rehab so he can’t look at their photos.
He’s been in for two days and Keera has no idea what addiction he’s in for.
‘I am a good man,’ he says to everyone who tries to winkle it out of him.
‘Drugs?’ asks Oliver, who likes to sit beside Keera.
‘Don’t think so,’ says Keera.
‘I think sex addict,’ whispers Jordy.
‘No,’ says Oliver. ‘I can tell. He’s too … pure-looking.’
‘Not meth or crack, for sure,’ Jordy says.
They all avoid looking at Sketch who is wraith-thin with a frightening rictus of a smile because of having so many decayed teeth. Sketch has been in the group a week now, after two weeks in the detox unit of the facility. He speaks to no one and Keera feels both sorry for him and scared of him.
‘Welcome,’ says Sasha cheerily. ‘How are you today, Tyrone?’
Keera, Jordy and Oliver sink lower into their chairs.
Tyrone’s on the rack and they don’t want to get involved.
‘Good,’ beams Tyrone. ‘Still dunno why I’m here but I’ll go along.’
Keera winces.
Sasha will murder him. But Sasha makes no more comments to Tyrone. Instead she turns to Keera.
‘Keera, do you know what day today is?’
Keera shakes her head.
‘Your rock-bottom story.’
Keera’s heart feels like a solid lump of ice has been dropped on it. She feels rather than sees Oliver and Jordy pulling their chairs away from her.
‘Fourteenth day’s the killer,’ mutters Oliver.
Keera glares at him. He could have told her.
She pulls her feet up from the floor and curls them under her.
‘Stop cocooning, Keera,’ says Sasha. ‘We need the story. You’ve been here fourteen days and you’re playing along nicely, but we haven’t got all of your story yet.’
‘Yeah, we haven’t,’ says Hank, angry and young: alcohol, steroids and drugs.
‘I drink,’ says Keera in desperation. ‘I drink when I’m sad and when I’m happy and no matter what, it can always be celebrated with a drink. I do drugs too. Mainly prescription but sometimes coke if it’s around.’
Sasha looks unimpressed. ‘Why do you drink and do drugs?’
‘Numbing, I suppose.’
‘What’s it been like being here and not having any substance to take you away from yourself?’
Without thinking about it, Keera exhales long and deeply. ‘Strange,’ she says. ‘I have nothing to make things feel better. I can’t sleep at night because my mind won’t stop …’
‘Ah,’ says Sasha. ‘What goes round and round in your mind at night? Your rock bottom?’
And Keera tells them. The day of the interview appearing in Empress, drinks and lunch with one of her mother’s friends.
Keera had sneaked off to a nearby bar and ordered tequila shots when the friend was paying the bill. Dr Bobbi arrived as the taxi pulled up to drive them all to a drinks party.
‘My mother was angry with me,’ she says. ‘I felt so low. She’d said I should have stuck to a diet.’
‘What happened at the party?’ asks Sasha.
Keera has talked about so much in rehab: she’s told drinking stories, drugs stories and about that time she was so hungover she licked the inside of her cosmetics purse to get at any cocaine remnants left there in order to go onstage.
She feels that she has already been laid bare – yet she’s always kept something back.
It shames her so much that she can feel the sweat on her back at the thought of saying this out loud.
She doesn’t want to be judged.
Yet, in here, people are more judgy when inmates lie.
Not facing the truth is the big sin in rehab.