Another Love (20 page)

‘Not crying over spilled milk, are you?’ He chuckled at his own joke.

She stood in her pyjamas staring into the wheelie bin and gave a brief smile in return.
No, Mr Rashid, I’m crying for much, much more than that.

When Carrie and Holly turned up later that morning, Romilly joked that she’d always thought she and David lived in a big house until her mother-in-law arrived and suddenly it became the smallest house in the world. It was as if everyone was on top of each other and there wasn’t an inch where you could find privacy or even talk without being overheard. Holly had opened the cupboard in the hallway. ‘What about in here, Rom? This looks like quite a private space!’ Carrie joined her laughter, clearly up to speed on her naked-shame story. Romilly beamed. It felt great to be giggling again. Her own mum was lined up for a stint of Romilly sitting once Sylvia had returned to London. She felt quite trapped. She knew that this informal rota was probably necessary, but that didn’t make her like it any the better.

Literature had arrived that very morning from The Pineapple asking if she wanted to go for a week of retreat, a kind of top-up to her earlier treatment. Without showing it to David, she’d ripped it in two and then did the same again, putting the quarters in the bin. For the first time in a long while she thought of Jasper, who knew how to play the system. She remembered his funny words in group therapy about Brendan and Mary and it made her smile. She really hoped he was doing okay. He was a good man.

It had been five months, two weeks, three days and nine hours since she had drunk alcohol and while the hot flashes, muscle spasms and insomnia had abated, her desire to drink had barely faded. She knew she was in a danger zone, vulnerable, and so did David.

*

It was the day after Sylvia had gone and her mum was arriving at the weekend, leaving a forty-eight-hour period when she would be unsupervised.

‘If you want, I can try and come home at lunchtime and in the afternoon?’ His leg jumped up and down under the kitchen table, dancing with nerves.

‘I’ve told you, I’ll be fine. Please, David.’ She pushed her glasses up to adjust them.

‘Is that “Please, David, leave me alone”, “Please, David, stop nagging” or “Please, David, eat your breakfast and shut up”?’ He tried to make light of the situation.

‘Actually it’s all three.’ She grazed the top of his head with a kiss.

She was aware of him watching her like hawk, gauging the steadiness to her hand as she poured Celeste’s Cheerios into the bowl, saw the way he glanced at the coffee she gulped, wondering if she’d slipped something into it while he was showering.

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay today?’ he asked as he closed his laptop and stowed it into his workbag.

She took a deep breath. ‘For God’s sake! I love you, but you make it hard for me to act naturally. When
you
can’t relax, it makes
me
jumpy and then you misinterpret it. I can feel you watching me and I know you can’t help it, but it’s like living in front of a two-way mirror. You’re making me a nervous wreck and that makes me want to drink. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.’

David inhaled and closed his eyes. He was trying to picture it from her perspective.

She took a step towards him. ‘I spoke to Mike Gregson and I’m preparing to go back to work. I can’t wait! I’m going a bit stir-crazy here. But your expression, the way you look at me…’ She shook her head. ‘It makes me wonder if I’m capable of anything, especially going back to work.’ She heard her boss’s words and cringed as she thought of that day.
‘I have to think about safety, everyone’s safety, not just yours…’

‘I remember when I was young, badgering my mum to let me cut the bread for toast and she kept saying that if she gave me the knife, I’d cut myself. I asked every morning, but she wouldn’t let me. She just didn’t trust me. And then one day I kept on and on so much that eventually she let me have the knife, but as I gripped it, she kept screaming instructions at me, out of the blue – “Not like that!” and “Mind your thumb!” And I was such a wreck I put the knife down and let her do it. I didn’t want to try any more, because she had unnerved me so much. I couldn’t do it.’

David stood up from the table. ‘I will let you cut the bread, Rom, I promise. I’ll try. And you’re right, I can’t help it. I want to watch you and be with you all the time. I guess I’m just waiting to catch you if you fall.’ He stared at her.

‘Yes, I know, love. But I feel like I might fall
because
I’m so busy watching you watching me that I’m not looking where I’m going.’

He pulled her towards him and hugged her close.

‘Urgh!’ Celeste shouted her disapproval as she raced into the kitchen and skidded across the floor tiles in her socks. She came to a standstill at the table, where she sat down and started shovelling her breakfast cereal into her mouth. Romilly laughed at her and kissed her husband again.

‘Go to work and don’t worry about me,’ she whispered. ‘Call any time and if I need you, I will shout, okay?’

‘Okay. I love you, Bug Girl.’ He nodded, kissed her nose and left.

Romilly spent the day cleaning the house and changing the linen in the spare bedroom in readiness for her mum’s arrival. She still had an hour before Celeste needed collecting from school, so she picked up her phone and pressed the contact she hadn’t used for a while.

‘Rom!’ Sara was evidently pleased to hear from her.

‘Hey, you, I was just wondering how you’re doing?’

‘It’s good to hear from you. Is this allowed?’ Sara half laughed.

‘Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.’ Romilly giggled.

‘I’m okay. You know… Same really. I’m actually in Torquay, coming home tonight.’

Romilly smiled and for the second time that day thought of Jasper. ‘Have you been on holiday?’

‘Not exactly, more a little dalliance, a diversion, by the name of Greg. A barrister, who is promising to keep me warm on a cold winter’s night. He’s rather lovely.’

‘A barrister? Wow! From dentist to barrister – you can’t half pick ’em!’

‘No! No!’ Sara roared her characteristic laugh. ‘A barista – he makes coffee!’

Romilly also laughed long and loud and felt some of the knots slip from her muscles. It felt good to chat to her friend for so many reasons, the main one being that she didn’t treat her like a fragile thing, like something that might fall or someone that might break.

*

Pat arrived, hauling her suitcase up the driveway with tight-lipped determination, as though she had come to make good, clean up and generally fix everything. She was like a cross between Mrs Doubtfire and Inspector Gadget, but with less electronic wizardry and more knitting.

‘Right.’ She stood in the middle of the kitchen and Romilly could see it was with a flicker of disappointment that she cast her eyes over the pristine surfaces, organised fridge and fruit bowl that shone with succulent, organic fare. She correctly suspected that her mum had hoped to find a much less orderly set-up that was crying out for her steady hand and the swish of a bleached mop.

Pat clapped loudly. ‘Cup of tea!’ she announced, as if this at least was something she could do.

‘It was really lovely to see the twins last week. We had a good old laugh.’ Romilly smiled as she thought about her sisters and how they had commandeered the sitting room, drinking coffee, chatting and generally teasing each other, as they always had. It had felt good, like old times.

‘Yes, well, everyone is worried about you, Romilly.’ The way her mum’s voice went up at the end told her this was a somewhat inconvenient state of affairs.

‘I know, Mum, and I’m sorry I’ve upset everyone.’ She swallowed.

Her mum wrinkled her nose as she studied the box containing the green-tea bags that Sylvia favoured. ‘I don’t know what it’s all about really, love. I am trying to understand, but it’s like Aunty Karen, isn’t it?’

Romilly shook her head. ‘In what way?’

‘Well, she was always bloated, felt a bit poorly, had problems with her back passage and so on. Eventually her doctor sent her for tests, which all sounded a bit hippyish, if you ask me – she had to hold a piece of metal and chant, or something. Anyhow, turns out she’s a coeliac!’

‘Are you saying I might be a coeliac?’ She was really confused now.

‘No!’ Her mum tutted. ‘I’m saying that Aunty Karen loved bread! She did. She was the first with her hands in the sandwich tray at any family event. Loved her bread, but she can’t have it, so she doesn’t and that’s that. And surprise, surprise, she feels a lot better for it.’

Romilly stared at her. Her mother had only been over her threshold for approximately fourteen minutes and Romilly was already looking forward to the day when she would be heading home again. She shook the thought from her head, knowing her mum was only trying to help. An image of her dad, coming in from the shed at that very moment, abandoning his greenhouse and sprawling uninterrupted on the sofa, smiling and taking full control of the remote, made her realise that he too probably needed this break.

‘I see what you’re saying, Mum, and you’re right in a way. I just need to not drink and everything will be okay.’

‘That’s right!’ Pat turned to her with her palms raised, as though this was a breakthrough moment. ‘I mean, you’ve never known your limits, have you? And before you get huffy, I’m not going to mention that horrible day with Viktor the Russian—’

‘Even though you just did.’

‘But only to tell you that I’m not going to. Anyway, my point is, you have never been good with drink. I can’t count the times I’ve had to remind you that a drunk girl is not a pretty girl.’

Romilly stifled the giggle that wanted to burst from her throat. She knew this was far from funny.

Her mum wasn’t done. ‘So, what I’m saying is, you need to pull yourself together, love. You need to think about what your little episodes are like for Celeste, and what you’re putting poor David through. And your work can’t be too happy that you’re loafing around at home…’

Romilly was aware that her mum was still speaking, but she’d tuned her voice out. Her tears bloomed and slipped down her face. Her mum, making the tea, didn’t notice.

I can barely stop thinking about what I’m doing to Celeste and David. And I’m desperate to go back to work. I’ve got research to see through, projects to monitor. And I wish… I wish I had something wrong with me that people could see, because then they wouldn’t feel like you do, that I just need to try and pull myself together. I could not be trying any harder. It takes all my strength not to give in, every second of every minute of every day.

Both my grandmas are completely bonkers, but in different ways. My mum’s mum is comical. She never stops talking, not for a second. She’s always busy and if there isn’t a chore to be done then she’ll find one, like organising the peg bag. And I’m not even joking. She came to stay with us for a while and I remember her taking all of the clothes pegs out of their bag on the washing line and putting them all back inside, in neat little stacks!

She says she likes to feel useful, but I think she just doesn’t like to sit still, doesn’t want too much thinking time, maybe. She always loved my mum, but I don’t think she ever understood her or her illness. She’d often say things like ‘A month in a bloody luxury retreat, I should be so lucky!’ Now I’m older, I can see that’s quite a horrid thing to say, as if Mum had been living it up. She just couldn’t get her head around how Mum could have a loving family, a beautiful home and a good job and yet choose to throw it all away. But that’s the thing, she didn’t have any choice. No choice at all. She was sick.

Granny Sylvia always treated me as an equal, even when I was seven or eight. That was great in some ways, she got how I was feeling. We talked about how scared I was and she said that was fine, as everyone was probably a bit scared but that adults were better at hiding it. I asked her if she’d ever been scared and she spoke in a voice that I hadn’t heard before, softer, ‘I was once so scared I thought my heart might stop. My husband, Cole, your Grandpa, he was the finest man ever to stroll down Main Street. The day he married me I thought all my ships had come in and I was happy, so happy. We moved over here and had lived a wonderful life. Then one day he told me he was leaving me, and the life I lived was going to come to an end. And even though he was talking, I couldn’t hear his words, like on the TV when the sound and picture don’t quite match and I remember thinking, how do I carry on? How do I do this? I was mighty scared then, more afraid than I had ever been.’

‘What did you do?’

She sat up straight as if remembering that it was me she was talking to.

‘I got my house in order, toughened up, swallowed my fear and dusted myself off!’

And just like that her stern voice was back. She kissed me and said ‘Keep at ’em!’ and I wished then that she were more like Nanny Pat, who would tuck me in and plump my pillow and linger in the doorway until I’d nodded off.

Ten months, three weeks, six days and three hours. This was how long it had been since Romilly had last had a drink. She’d been back at work for two months and she felt good. Returning had been strangely nerve-wracking: being handed her car keys, wallet and bag and waved off as though it was just any other day at the office. She’d been as nervous as if it was the first day of school.

David had put on his ‘everything is fine’ face. She hadn’t confessed to him that there had actually been something rather comforting about being supervised, even though it had driven her crazy at times. It was a similar feeling to falling asleep knowing someone was down the hall keeping an eye on you. Her fear of having the freedom to go out and source a drink was acute. She hoped beyond hope that she wouldn’t act on it, as though the choice wasn’t hers to make.

There was also a strong sense of embarrassment about walking back into the lab where Tim had cornered her on that horrible, horrible day. His words still made her cringe.
‘This is really awkward, Rom, but have you been drinking?’
She needn’t have worried. As soon as her hand touched the handle, he shouted, loudly, ‘Oh, finally! Here she is. Just as we’ve nearly finished all the hard work, she turns up to tell us what we did wrong and grab all the glory and probably have a quick tidy-up as well!’ He downed his pen and strode over to the door.