Epilogue
London, a year earlier
The words just flowed out of Dotty once she began to write, it was as if there was no stopping them.
She would have to go back over it all again, wouldn’t she?
Words. Words. Words. So many things to tell her after over forty years.
Chipo would be pleased, although Dotty had no intention of showing these letters to her counsellor.
She would tell her, everything. Soon. But this was just for Constance.
In fact, if she was completely honest, she had no intention of showing them to anyone.
She had a plan. If she could just remain sober for another one hundred and seventy-one days, she would take a taxi to Heather’s flat and explain everything to her daughter.
She would ask for forgiveness, even though she really didn’t expect it to be granted.
But she would tell her the one thing she should have said over and over to her child many years ago.
She’d been practising in the mirror. It felt positively ridiculous, sitting there at the kitchen table with her compact mirror in her hand, eyeballing herself while she said those words.
Every morning. Every night. I love you, Heather. Always have. Always will.
Dotty took her cup of green tea to the kitchen table.
Green tea, strange days indeed in the little house in Fulham.
She had written what she wanted to say in an old notebook she’d found at the back of a drawer a few days earlier; this had to be just perfect, Constance deserved her very best attempt.
Now, it was a case of transcribing it, or a close version to it, at any rate.
Not that she intended to actually send it, not if she made it one hundred and seventy-one more days sober. She would go back to Pin Hill.
The idea had seemed impossible at first. There were so many reasons why she couldn’t make the trip, chief among them the fact that she was seventy-eight years old and she hadn’t taken a long trip in over forty years.
The last time she’d been there, she swore she’d never return.
But never, it turned out, was a very long time indeed.
She longed to go there now, had yearned for it for years, if she was honest. She had missed Constance, more than she had ever thought it was possible to miss anyone.
She had truly, deeply missed her friend Constance Macken, but she would put that right, very soon.
As an alcoholic, she’d always thought that being sober would be too hard to bear; it was a revelation that actually the opposite was true.
A clear head, that was what made the difference.
She was beginning to make out the individual trees from the woods and it was a cornucopia so rich, it was hard to understand how she could have missed out on it all before this.
She’d wasted so many years, so much time and love and kindness, cast aside because she’d allowed the fabric of her life to blend together.
Instead of a rich tapestry, she had lived something that was little more than a jumble of ragged ends stitched together hastily between gulps.
The first rule of her new life, accept the things you cannot change. She sighed, there was still time.
She was digging up the courage to change those things she still had the power to change.
Carmelita was a great help. She’d been sent her way quite by chance, by an agency Heather employed to look in on her, to make sure she had bread and milk and eggs in her fridge.
Carmelita took her to her first meeting, she’d been the one to help her pack her bags when she went to rehab, the only one who knew she’d gone there.
Carmelita would help her book her flight to Knock airport.
Dotty had made up her mind; she would leave one year and one day exactly after she had taken her final drink.
Even now, so far away in time – but just a whisper really when you were seventy-eight – thinking of it made Dotty’s stomach turn in excited but nervy somersaults.
She looked out her kitchen window. Not much of a view, but she could see the sky, just the tiniest patch of blue, the colour of her notepaper, almost. That very same sky looked down on Ocean’s End, such a small world really, when you thought about it.
She picked up her pen, straightened out the pages on the table before her and breathed deeply the morning silence that she was growing at last to love.
Dearest, dearest, Constance,
I’m sitting down to write this letter to you in some small attempt to make amends or perhaps just to clear the air, because I’m not sure that I can ever truly make amends to either of us.
That day, that last day we spoke, deep down, I knew that you needed to confess – the truth was, I’ve never been sorry for what we did, but I had no right to stop you from doing what was the decent thing, probably.
Maybe, if I was brave enough, or honourable enough, both our lives might have turned out differently.
You might have stopped blaming yourself for every bit of bad luck that blew your way and I…
well, who knows, maybe I could have had a happy heart, something worth sharing with Heather and Bobby.
Maybe we could have been best friends forever.
Maybe we have been best friends forever in a way – I’ve never had a truer friend, Constance, I could never replace you. That’s what I wanted to tell you more than anything before it’s too late. I hope I’m not too late.
If I can manage it, in one hundred and seventy-one days’ time, I will be sober for one year exactly.
It’s important that you know this, because I’ve felt for a long time that I need to make amends, but what good is the word of a drunk?
I needed to be clear and clean, you deserve that, at the very least.
There have been so many times over the years when I’ve picked up the phone, dialled your number and quickly replaced the receiver.
You see, it turns out that I was never the brave one.
Real courage is facing up to your deepest fears and I’ve always run away from mine.
You, on the other hand, for all your meekness and modesty, showed your great mettle that day in Galway.
You came to save me, even though you thought it might mean facing up to Lickey Gillespie, even though it meant going into Mr Morrison’s garden and, in the greatest act of boldness, you went back down that well – you, my friend, have always been the one with a lion’s heart.
I simply ran away. I ran first into the oblivion of alcohol, then to London.
My dancing career lasted all of two seasons, my job in the local corner shop lasted fifty years.
I’ve lived a small life, made no great difference to anyone, Constance, but I want to change. I am changing for the better every day.
I’m forgiving myself, with the help of a counsellor called Chipo and a cleaning lady called Carmelita, I’m accepting myself.
I’ve finally understood what’s been at play my whole life.
Tasting poitín in a garden shed when I was twelve years old was the second step on my road to addiction.
Drink was in my blood, generations of it on my mother’s side and God alone knows what my father’s contribution was – it certainly wasn’t abstinence or valour of any sort, in spite of the war medal.
The good news is, I’m taking the third step now. Every morning I wake up and put my feet on the floor next to my bed. I am walking in new shoes, sober shoes, at this late stage, dare I say? Courageous shoes.
Chipo, my counsellor, says I have unresolved issues to face up to with my father.
I haven’t told her everything, but I will.
I trust her, you see, even though I haven’t told her that yet either, it’s another thing on my list of things to do.
Instead of getting shorter with each day, my list seems to only lengthen, which is both depressing and invigorating – I’m putting a lifetime to rights, one small day at a time.
So much to cram in to the years that are left to me.
So much to cram in to the years that are left to both of us.
I close my eyes at night with memories of Ocean’s End. Of sitting in the bay window with you, looking out across the sea at night, watching the lighthouse in the distance pick out the ever-changing sea. I sleep soundly, thinking of it all, remembering.
I’d like to sit there, even just one last time.
I’m coming back to you, Constance.
I’m coming home.
Wait for me,
Your friend always,
Dotty xx