Never Close Your Eyes (23 page)

There was a lump in her throat but it would pass. She just needed to make it through the first part of the morning, then the colours would seep through, drip by drip, as they always did, and spread across the canvas.

Alan was still asleep, lying on his back, one arm tucked behind his head. Nic stared. Who was he? Who was she? She shivered. The big, black memory lapses were happening more often now. There was a giant hole right ahead and she was teetering on the brink.

She rose, grabbed her dressing gown from the chair and padded downstairs to the kitchen. She could hardly see. The pain at the front of her head was growing more intense. Dizzy the dog was barking frantically at her heels, but she'd have to wait. Nic made straight for the kitchen cupboard and groped for the painkillers, poured herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge and gulped the tablet down. It left a sickly-sweet aftertaste at the back of her throat, somewhere near where she thought her tonsils must be.

She looked around, waiting for the tablet to take effect, for the first time registering the empty bottles on every surface, the dirty glasses and plates, last night's detritus. The place was a tip; it would take all morning to clear up.

She put some dog food in Dizzy's earthenware bowl. The stench made her reel. Dizzy almost tipped the bowl out of Nic's hands as she bent down. ‘Wait,' she scolded.

She plonked down on the cream sofa against the wall and glanced through the glass doors at the neat, symmetrical patio area outside. It was just as she'd wanted: even, harmonious, balanced.

There must be bottles of half-drunk wine around. She swallowed and licked her lips. It would make her feel better. She had only to look.

Mustn't go there. Must keep the boundaries: never drink before 6 p.m.; always wear make-up. Her boundaries made her feel safe. She was all right, in control.

She closed her eyes again. The Sunday papers dropped through the letterbox and landed with a thud on the hall floor. There was her journalism, of course. And her book. She still had these, her anchors. It was true that most of the old friends from her magazine days who used to commission her had stopped calling. But the market was bad, advertising was down and everyone was doing more articles in-house. It wasn't her fault.

She rubbed her eyes, making them sting. OK, maybe once or twice she'd called a features editor too often and flapped about the problems she was having, the case histories she couldn't find. And she'd missed a few deadlines. But Annabel from
Mums
magazine still commissioned her so she must be all right. Good old Annabel.

Nic rose mechanically and started to collect the plates and glasses. The clank of china on china made her wince. Lucky there was no food left out. The girls from the catering company must have dealt with the leftovers. Weren't they supposed to clear the dishes up afterwards, too? She vaguely remembered paying for it, but she couldn't be sure.

Leftovers. Her stomach reeled. Her face and underarms felt sweaty. She took off her dressing gown so that she was just in her white cotton nightie. That felt better. Cooler.

It's not as if Alan didn't like to drink, she thought, turning away as she rinsed the old food off the knives and forks before putting them in the dishwasher. He almost always had a glass of wine or a gin and tonic in the evening. He never questioned her spending on alcohol or chastised her for boozing, either.

Well, he'd tick her off at parties sometimes if she was embarrassing him. ‘You've had enough, Nic. Stop now please,' he'd whisper in her ear. But at home he didn't seem to notice – or mind. Do what you want but don't get found out.

She thought back to how they'd met. It was at a friend's barbecue. She knew that she was on dazzling form that day: witty, glamorous, extrovert. She'd enjoyed playing with this serious, diffident little man, watching him fall under her spell, reeling him in. He was mesmerised. She tended to have that effect on people when she was in the right mood. And, God knew, she'd needed an ego boost.

She'd been pretty tipsy. Her friend tried to chuck black coffee down her throat. ‘You'll be arrested for being drunk and disorderly,' she giggled.

But no one thought her drinking was a problem back then. She was just a good laugh; always up for a party, always the first girl on the dance floor.

She finished filling the dishwasher. Dizzy was scratching on the glass door. Blast. She kept doing that. You could see dirty little paw marks that infuriated Alan. Nic slid the door open and the dog raced outside. She was in no position to take her for a walk right now.

She plodded next door to start on the sitting room. That barbecue. Colm. Bloody hell. Him again. Even now his name made her knees buckle. Her sense of self, the essence of her, seemed to slip through the gaps in the floorboards at the mere thought of him.

He was her first husband, the handsome Irish reporter. The big boozer. She'd tried to match him, glass for glass. But he could drink them all under the table. She was desperately in love. They'd married after just six months and then he'd got a job in Australia. It took her a few weeks to sort her visa and pack up. When he collected her from the airport he told her that he'd met someone else. She could still feel the pain, ice-cold, like whiplash.

There was nothing more to say to each other. She spent one sleepless night in a cheap hotel near the airport and turned round and came right back. She wept for most of the flight. She was in her own little world, her back turned to the other passengers, her cheek pressed against the window. By the time she got off the plane the tears had dried up, leaving just an empty hole waiting to be filled.

She managed to laugh when she recounted the story to friends and family. She was so brave, they said. She was coping so well. Except that inside she wasn't coping at all; she was drowning, gasping for air.

The barbecue was a couple of months later. She'd put on her best summer frock and her most glittering smile and Alan hardly left her side the whole afternoon. Steady, sensible Alan who worked for a big firm of City accountants and was surely heading for a partnership. He'd bought a flat in London's Docklands. He just needed a wife and a kid or two to complete the picture.

He reminded Nic of her father: dependable, kind, slightly dull. She grasped at him with both hands, like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a raft.

They started going out and, to her surprise, Nic found herself falling in love. It wasn't the blind, hot, all-consuming passion that she'd experienced with Colm, but something calmer, less demanding. Alan was quiet, cool and reserved, but he seemed to thaw a little in her reflected warmth and she was vivacious enough for them both. Everyone said they were the perfect combination.

She was a slip of a thing, a mere seven and a half stone. She couldn't weigh much more than that now; she'd never had much in the way of womanly curves. ‘A girlish figure,' people used to say. She shuddered, remembering something.

Don't think about those magazines. You never saw them.

Did she drink much then, after splitting up with Colm, after she met Alan? She frowned. Alcohol had always been part of her life; part of his, too. But she didn't think her intake had been excessive.

They moved to a substantial double-fronted Victorian house in Twickenham and Dominic came along a few years later. She was glad to give up freelancing for a while to be a full-time mum, but it wasn't at all what she'd imagined. Alan was kind to her when he was around, but that wasn't often. Of course she'd known he was a workaholic when she married him, but it hadn't seemed to matter when she was free to do her own thing in the evenings and meet up with friends.

Chained to the house with a baby who seemed to want to feed all day and never sleep, she plunged into post-natal depression. They gave her anti-depressants, which helped, then Daddy died unexpectedly. Without drink she didn't think she'd have made it. Wine was her friend, her medicine. As long as she had wine she didn't mind that Alan wasn't there, that he was always working, that he never seemed to want to touch her these days. She self-medicated every night.

As Dominic grew she met a new circle of friends, mothers who all enjoyed a glass or three come 6 p.m. when they collected their kids from playdates. Nothing wrong with that. The house was always brimming with people, a real Mecca. She liked it that way. Keeping busy, busy, busy, throwing parties, organising children's activities, never leaving herself time to peep into that big, black hole.

She carried a pile of plates into the kitchen and stacked them up beside the dishwasher. The pain in her head had gone now, leaving just a dull ache and a tangle of precise and unspecific worries. Snippets from last night were coming back now. Marie hadn't been there. Marie, her oldest friend. She was the only person Nic had ever confided in. Nic couldn't tell Evie and Becca, her family, anyone. The shame.

Marie liked a drink, too. Nic felt weak. Her head started to swim and she thought she might keel over. She went back to the sitting room and sat down on the olive-green sofa which had been pushed against a wall. She rested her elbow on the arm, her head in her hand. That felt better.

She and Marie had had a great time in Paris on their girls' weekend a year ago. Marie had picked a swanky hotel close to the Louvre. It had taken Nic ages to pluck up courage. They were on pudding by then, and their second bottle of wine.

‘You know,' she said, leaning across the white tablecloth, ‘I think I might have a drink problem.'

Marie threw back her head and laughed. ‘You're not serious?'

Nic felt her face and neck go red. ‘I am.'

She could picture Marie now, suddenly sombre, her head on one side, her brow furrowed. ‘Do you ever wake up and reach for the whisky bottle?' she asked.

Nic shook her head. ‘I never drink before six p.m.'

‘Do you have the shakes?'

‘No.'

‘Well,' said Marie, digging into her sorbet. ‘My father had binges that would go on for days. He'd close the bedroom door, draw the curtains and lie there, morning, noon and night, consuming bottle after bottle of whisky. He couldn't function without a whisky first thing. You're not an alcoholic, you silly cow. You're nowhere near it.'

Nic smiled, relieved, and they toasted not being alcoholics with a large brandy each.

Her arm was beginning to hurt from the weight of her head. She lay down on the sofa, drawing her nightie round her. The grey silk scatter cushion felt pleasantly cool against her cheek.

There was her GP, Dr Kelly, of course. Nic had been round there a lot recently, about her periods, her achy shoulder, that mole she was convinced hadn't been there before. About lots of problems, except the one thing she really needed to discuss.

Once, she'd been twice in the same week. She walked in the room and Dr Kelly looked up, surprised. ‘Hello again. What can I do for you this time?'

Nic showed her the tiny, speckled mole on her left thigh.

Dr Kelly glanced at it through a magnifying glass. ‘Do you drink?' she asked, putting the glass down. Just like that.

Nic's heart missed a beat. ‘Yes.'

‘How much?'

‘Oh, two or three glasses of wine a day.' She couldn't tell the truth.

Dr Kelly looked back at her notes. ‘Well, you should stick to no more than two drinks and have a couple of alcohol-free days each week.' She jotted something on a notepad. ‘I'll make an appointment with the dermatologist about that mole but I'm ninety-nine per cent sure that it's benign.'

Stop worrying, Nic told herself. If Dr Kelly thought that she had a problem then she'd have said so.

Nic must have dozed off. She woke disorientated. It took a few moments to work out where she was. She sat up; she was supposed to collect Dominic from his friend's at twelve-ish. She checked the clock on the console. It was pretty hideous: gilt, an early-nineteenth-century French carriage clock with a brass dial and Roman numerals. It didn't fit with the contemporary feel of the room but it had been given to her father as a retirement present when he left the Army. It was of great sentimental value.

Nic was relieved to see that it was only 10 a.m. There was still no sound from Alan. She was lonely. She drew the curtains and plumped the cushions on the sofas before heading back into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

‘What are you doing?' Alan asked when she plonked a mug of tea beside him.

She'd deliberately made a noise. She wanted him to wake up.

He raised himself on one elbow and looked at her suspiciously.

‘I've been clearing up downstairs. There's still quite a bit to do,' she said brightly.

He didn't speak. Worry seeped through her. She wasn't sure why.

‘Nic?'

‘Yes.' She waited, hovering.

‘You were totally pissed last night. You made a complete fool of yourself.'

She couldn't move. She was made of stone. He'd never spoken to her like that before.

‘I didn't feel great yesterday,' she prattled. ‘I told you I had a dodgy tummy, remember? I hadn't eaten all day. The drink must have gone straight to my head.'

‘You were waving your bum in the air,' Alan replied.

‘Was I? How awful.' She laughed. ‘I hope I had knickers on.'

‘Nic?'

‘Yes?'

‘I can't cope with this any more.'

Had she heard properly? She was lost, flailing. ‘What?'

‘If you don't cut back on the drink I can't answer for the consequences.'

Her eyes were full of tears. She couldn't see. The ground swooped and swirled. She slumped on the bed.

‘I will cut back, I promise,' she said. ‘Don't leave me.' Not that. Anything but that.