Another Love (19 page)

‘Listen to me, Rom. You need to calm down and listen to me.’

She felt her jaw tense. In her current state of agitation, being told to calm down had the opposite effect.

‘I told her to stay away because she’s trouble, she’s not good for you.’

‘Why?’ she fired back. ‘Because I’m so weak she leads me astray?’

‘Something like that, yes!’ He paused and she could picture him pinching the top of his nose in regret. ‘I don’t trust her and I don’t like the person you are when you’re with her and have been drinking. That’s the nub of it. And you’ve worked so hard to get this far and you’re doing great.’

His encouraging tone was the last straw. ‘I’m not a kid! This is not the playground, where you get to keep the nasty girls away from me! I can do what I want, with whoever I want!’ she yelled. Her muscles were flexed in angst and her throat was sticking, dry.

David was quiet for a second or two before he spoke. His words were slow and considered. ‘But don’t you get it? I would do that. I would keep the nasty girls away from you in the playground. I would do anything to protect you from anyone that might hurt you. I would do that for you and I would do that for Celeste, because you are the only two things I care about. I couldn’t give a shit about Sara or anyone else. I only care about my family, about you.’

‘I know that, but did you stop to think about how that might make me feel? Imagine if I came into your office and started telling the people you work with not to sit with you or instructing you on how you should do your job?’

‘That would be completely different and if someone at my work was trying to hurt me, I’d be glad of your intervention!’

‘I can’t talk to you because you are far too clever. You obviously have an answer for everything and I can’t respond because I’m too thick and I need you to intervene in just about every aspect of my bloody life!’

‘That’s not true and I need you to calm down, Rom. I need you to just take five, sit down, have a glass of water and call Holly or Carrie for a chat. Or do you want me to come home? I can shuffle a meeting and be home within the hour. Would you like me to do that?’

‘No. What I would like is for you to give me a bit of space and a bit of bloody credit!’ She ended the call and swept through the hallway, jumping over the laundry mountain and its crown of random shoes, boots and the odd stray flip-flop.

*

Romilly parked the car on the forecourt outside the Co-op on Stoke Lane and roamed the aisles. She didn’t want to make it too obvious, so she lingered in the bread section, carefully choosing a brown loaf for its health properties, before making her way to a stack of kitchen roll that was on special offer. She popped two packets in her basket before walking briskly to where the booze was kept and almost nonchalantly throwing in some bottles as though they were an afterthought. She didn’t study labels or peruse special offers, she just grabbed what was to hand and tried to look indifferent.

A woman wheeled her trolley in the opposite direction. Romilly stared at her, watched as she wandered the aisles with a spring in her step, casting items into her trolley with an almost choreographed grace, stopping once to consult a list before smiling, folding it and putting it in her handbag. Romilly nosed at the contents of her trolley: bread, milk, jam, oranges, olive oil, courgettes, loo roll, liquid soap. Regular items for a regular life.

She wanted to tap the woman on the shoulder and ask her a few questions. How do you get to be like that? How did you get to be a regular mum and wife? One that doesn’t wake up with the image of wine behind her eyes, one who doesn’t plan her every action, trip, nap and job around her quest for alcohol? One who doesn’t feel her palms sweat and her limbs shake at the thought of not being able to drink? How did you get to be like that? She wanted to know, she wanted more than anything to learn how to be a mum like that, because this wasn’t living a life, it was more like fighting a battle.

It had been four months, two weeks, four days and five hours since her last drink, but she knew she was about to break her fast and the prospect was as exhilarating as it was distressing. Alcohol had its hooks into her and it was pulling her over the line from right to wrong.

‘Hello!’ the woman chirped, engaging with Romilly, who had been staring at her for a while.

Romilly felt her neck turn scarlet and her chest burn with the embarrassment that was never very far away. ‘Hi,’ she whispered.

‘Are you okay?’ The woman cocked her head to one side, making her ponytail swing across to her right shoulder.

Romilly looked down at her own basket, at the bottle of vodka that nestled between the two bottles of red wine and the packets of kitchen roll that she had placed on top, as a decoy. The sight of them made her laugh. Who was she trying to kid?

‘I’m fine. Thank you. Just picking up…’ She paused and looked at the woman. ‘Just picking up my booze. I need to drink it, it’s like my medicine, except it’s not because it doesn’t make me better. It makes me worse. I haven’t drunk for a while, but I want to and I’m going to.’

The woman stared at her, her eyes darting from the bottles that clinked in the basket to the spots of colour on Romilly’s cheeks and nose. ‘Do you need me to call someone for you?’

‘No I don’t.’ Romilly felt her tears bloom at the woman’s kindness.

‘Are you driving?’ She looked concerned.

‘Yes, but as I say, I haven’t had a drink in a long time.’ She nodded assertively.

‘Well, I hope your day’s good,’ the woman offered gently as she made her way to the checkout.

Romilly drove home with the bag of groceries on the passenger seat. As she turned into the cul-de-sac she was dismayed to see David’s car in the driveway. Pulling up behind it, she applied the handbrake, killed the engine and unclipped her seatbelt, but she didn’t move, preferring the quiet of the car, which cocooned her, kept her from the outside world. It was some minutes before David spotted her from the sitting room and rushed outside. He bent low, peering through the windscreen, clearly trying to judge her state. He tried the passenger door handle and was frustrated to find it locked.

‘Can you open up, Rom, please?’ His eyes darted over the road to the Rashids house, which was quiet.

She pressed the little key icon above the door handle and all the locks jumped.

David opened the door and lifted the plastic Co-op bag from the front seat. The unmistakeable clink of glass bottles knocking against each other rang out like shots. He peered into the confines and then looked at his wife, who stared ahead.

‘I haven’t had any.’ She spoke without facing him. ‘I wanted to drink it, more than I can tell you, and I probably would have downed the lot if you hadn’t been home, but you are and so here we are.’ She bit her lip.

He placed the bag in the footwell and climbed into the passenger seat. ‘I am really, really proud of you. I am. Proud of you for not just opening it and drinking it and proud of you for being honest with me.’

‘You cleared the house out, removed all the drink.’ She looked up at him. ‘You found my secret stashes.’

‘Yes. Lorna told me that you would probably have hidden alcohol around the house and I laughed at her. I thought it was highly unlikely. But then there it was.’ He shrugged.

‘I’m sorry, David. Sorry about the way I spoke to you earlier. I know you meant well. I just wanted to shout at someone. I wanted a proper excuse for how angry and wound-up I was feeling.’

‘I understand. I do.’ He took her hand and held it in his lap. ‘More worrying to me is how close you came to drinking. So, the question is, what do we do now? I can’t be rushing home from work every day to check on you. We need to figure out what we can put in place to help you.’

Romilly sobbed noisily. ‘Do you ever… do you ever wish you were married to Ponytail Mum with the shopping list? I mean, you must regret being married to someone like me who’s such a pain in the arse.’

He raised her fingers to his mouth and kissed their joined knuckles. ‘I don’t know who Ponytail Mum is, but I know that I love you, Rom. Proper, proper love. I don’t want anyone else, I never have. It’ll all be okay, we can do this, you and me, the team without secrets.’

She nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

I could feel that things were on the slide, sense it. Dad picked me up from school one day, which was unusual. His tie was loose and he smelled a bit sweaty, like he had been rushing. I clipped in my seatbelt I asked him, ‘what’s a p’zedd?’

He twisted the key and looked in the rear view mirror, trying to navigate the school entrance.

‘No idea. Come on! Come on!’ he shouted at the sudden burst of traffic that held us up. I wasn’t done and tried again. ‘Billy and Hamal said that Mummy is a p’zedd and I don’t know what it is, I was going to ask my teacher but I remembered when they told me that swear word, that word for poo that starts with sh…’

‘Yes! Thank you Celeste!’ he raised his hand to stop me ‘I remember.’

I told him I didn’t want to get into trouble and had saved my question up all day. He seemed to calm and turned to me, sighing, resigned ‘what’s the word again?’

‘P’zedd’ I repeated it best I could, I even tried to imitate their Bristolian accent, which was a bit stronger than mine. He stared at me and took his hands off the steering wheel. He looked floppy like the strength had left his core. He turned his head to look out of the driver’s window, facing away from me then and he whispered, ‘It’s piss-head and it’s a horrible word and it means someone that drinks too much wine.’

I nodded, instinctively knowing it was something not to be repeated and that my mentioning it had somehow wounded him. ‘I think Aunty Sara is one too.’

‘She’s not your Aunty.’ He looked at me again, his eyes blazing.

The rest of the car ride passed in silence. I wished I hadn’t asked him and decided that next time anyone called my mum a horrible word I would keep it secret from my dad.

She noticed a certain edginess in her husband as time went on. It felt like he was waiting for her to mess up and that made her jittery. Every night when she climbed beneath the sheets and the day had passed without incident it felt like a small victory, as though she had passed a test. Only for her it was a test that never ended, more of a continuous assessment, and with the dawning of each new day she could only hope that she would make it through to the next round.

Romilly trod the stairs with a tray full of glasses, mugs and toast plates that she’d found by the sides of beds and on the desk in the study. She cautiously navigated the stairs in her socks and headed for the dishwasher, which she was surprised to find was already whirring away.

‘Oh!’ She set the tray on the countertop and looked at the machine with her hands on her hips, as though this might bring her closer to understanding why it had been activated.

‘You should have brought those down earlier.’ Sylvia marched in from the garden and nodded at the tray and then the machine. She had been staying with them for a fortnight and was driving Romilly nuts.

Romilly bit her lip and felt her pulse quicken and her cheeks flame, as they always did when she was being criticised. ‘I didn’t know I had to.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘It was more or less empty a minute ago. Thought I’d shove these in.’

‘I prefer to get it going.’ Sylvia flicked the switch on the kettle and reached into the cupboard for a mug.

‘It’s rubbish for the environment and expensive to run it with just a few things in. I always fill it right up and try and use it just once a day.’ She hoped she sounded both firm and friendly.

‘Oh gosh, that would drive me crazy!’ Sylvia flipped her hand in front of her face as if swatting an invisible fly. ‘I don’t like the thought of all those germy dishes lurking in the corner, I’d rather put it on as and when, keep things fresh.’

Romilly couldn’t think of a single retort other than,
‘This is my kitchen, not yours! Why don’t you piss off and go waste water, time and electricity in your own house!’
So she stayed quiet.

But Sylvia wasn’t done. ‘And since when did you care about the environment? You have the heating on and the window open in the bedroom. I mean, that
is
crazy! Where are you trying to warm, Mars?’

I want a drink. I can feel the need swirling in my tummy. So I shall have a coffee…
Romilly reached over her mother-in-law’s head to find her mug. She pulled a couple of cups from the front of the shelf and looked behind them, then flicked her head to the draining board and the table.

‘I can’t find my mug,’ she said, trying to think of where she might have left it, knowing it wasn’t in the almost empty dishwasher.

‘Which one?’ Sylvia looked up.

‘The one I always use. It’s a half pint, huge, with blue and green stripes around the bottom and a bumblebee on the side. David bought it for me a couple of years ago and it’s my favourite morning mug—’

‘Oh, darling, I threw it out. It had a huge crack in it and I thought it might go at any time, so I threw it.’

‘You threw it?’ She tried to keep the edge from her voice.

‘Yes! It was broken!’ Sylvia tutted, as though Romilly was being petulant.

Racing out to the wheelie bin, she threw back the lid and lifted out the leaky bin bag and a Sainsbury’s bag full of trash. And there, nestling in the bottom, sitting in a grimy, oily soup of dripping waste, sat her mug or at least what was left of it. It was in pieces: the eye of the bumblebee looked up at her. Romilly felt her tears gather. She knew it had had a crack in it, a teeny hairline crack that had fractured the glaze and had been present for some while, if not always. She’d had plans for her china companion; it was to be promoted to pen holder once it lost its handle or became chipped. But that was before Sylvia had decided to stick her oar in and take the decision to end its life there and then.

‘Okay, Romilly?’ Mr Rashid called. His lilting Indian accent turned her flat ‘R’ into something to be rolled, enjoyed. She loved the way he said her name.