This Charming Man (51 page)

Then Marnie saw new knowledge being visited upon Grace – she actually saw the change in Grace’s eyes as it happened – and Grace lurched from the bedroom, full of dread and purpose.

Marnie realized where she was headed for. ‘No, Grace, please!’ She hurried from her bed, ignoring the electric blue pain that crackled through her ribs – this time she had to stop her – and followed Grace into Daisy’s pink bedroom.

But Grace had already found one. She brandished the empty bottle at her. ‘In your daughter’s wardrobe. Nice, Marnie!’

‘She wouldn’t have found it.’

‘It didn’t take me very long.’

Then Grace went into Verity’s room and found three empties under the bed.

‘Don’t tell Nick,’ Marnie begged. ‘Please.’

‘How can you ask me that?’ Grace said. ‘How can you be so selfish?’

The sound of retching echoed through the house. Again and again and again. Marnie rattled the knob. ‘Please, Grace, let me in.’ But Grace kept the bathroom door locked and didn’t reply.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Grace said weakly. She seemed devastated. Marnie had never before seen her so reduced. ‘You were able to stop the last time you came to Dublin. When you were on antibiotics.’

She hadn’t been on antibiotics, but now really wasn’t the time.

‘You didn’t have anything to drink the whole weekend,’ Grace said. Then she lunged at Marnie because it had obviously just dawned on her that Marnie could have been drinking in secret all that time. ‘Or
did
you?’

‘No, I didn’t. I swear to you!’

‘You swear to me?’ Grace’s laugh sounded bitter. ‘Yes, now I’m really reassured.’

‘I’m not lying, Grace. It’s the truth. I can stop whenever I want.’

‘“I can stop whenever I want,”’ Grace parroted angrily. ‘You know what you sound like?’

‘What?’

‘An alcoholic.’

‘But…’

The truth was that she hadn’t had anything to drink in Dublin – because, inexplicable as it was, it was easier to have no drinks than to have two. It was why she’d pretended to be on antibiotics. Over the previous year – maybe longer – she’d come to know that once she had even one drink, she was overtaken by a raging need to drink to incapacity, to drink enough so she could leave her body, so she could leave her life, so she could abandon everything with glorious freedom and roar towards oblivion. She couldn’t predict what would happen if she started drinking, she could end up anywhere, doing anything, and she couldn’t take that risk while she was away from home.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything,’ Marnie said. She couldn’t bear this – Grace was angry with her. Worse, Grace was disappointed. ‘I’m sorry I’ve kept you in the dark.’

‘This isn’t about me! It’s about you being… an… alcoholic.’ Grace swallowed hard on the word.

‘Not an alcoholic, just a –’

‘Marnie!’ Grace opened and closed her mouth like a fish and pointed towards the bottles on the dressing table. ‘Look at them, please look at them.’

‘It’s not as bad as it seems. Please let me explain. They’ve been in there for ages. Please, Grace, listen to me –’

Suddenly Grace said, ‘Right, that’s it! You’re going to AA.’

… What? Alcoholics Anonymous? No, she wasn’t.

‘I’m going to ring them. Right now. Where’s your phone book?’

‘We haven’t got one.’

In a very soft voice, Grace said, ‘Do not fuck with me any more than you already have.’

‘In the cupboard in the hall.’

Grace left the bedroom and when she came back, she said, ‘There’s a meeting at one o’clock in a community centre in Wimbledon. Get dressed.’

‘Grace, this is mad,’ Marnie begged. ‘I’ll stop, I swear to you I’ll stop, don’t make me go to AA, things aren’t that bad, I just have to make the decision to stop, look, I’m making it, I’ve made it, it’s done!’

She could see that Grace was wavering.

‘And I can’t go like this.’ She indicated her cuts and bandages.

Grace’s face was a picture of hesitancy – then she said with distressing certainty, ‘They won’t care. They’re probably used to it.’

‘What if someone from work sees me?’

‘Maybe they already know what’s wrong with you. In fact, I bet they do. They’d probably be glad you’re doing something about your drinking problem.’

Drinking problem
.

While Grace watched, she got dressed. With every movement, she winced with exaggerated pain – but she wasn’t faking her shaking hands. She couldn’t button her jeans. This was new.

She cast an involuntary glance at the wardrobe, repository of at least one bottle that Grace hadn’t found. A mouthful, maybe two, might settle her. But even if Grace left her alone for three seconds, she couldn’t chance it today. Apart from the likelihood of vomiting, if she got found out, she’d be packed off to rehab by dinner time.

Grace drove. Marnie let her get snarled up in the one-way system in the hope that they’d waste so much time driving around in circles, they’d miss the meeting. But she’d forgotten – how could she have, considering she’d lived with it her entire life? – how capable Grace was.

‘This is the street,’ Grace said, driving slowly, peering at a low building. ‘And…
that’s
the place.’

Marnie wasn’t concerned: they’d never get parking.

‘Are they coming out?’ Grace asked. She rolled down the window and mouthed at the occupants of a car: Leaving? Nods and smiles and thumbs up, and Grace was sliding into the space.

How could it have happened?

Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it.

‘Out,’ Grace ordered.

Marnie unclicked her seat belt and slid to the ground. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else; this was the first time she’d walked
since she’d woken up in hospital and it felt like an entirely new activity. Actually… ‘Grace, I think I might faint.’

‘Breathe,’ Grace urged. ‘And lean on me if you need to.’

‘No, really… I feel really –’

‘Marnie, you’re going to this AA meeting. I don’t care if you keel over and die.’

Marnie didn’t think her heart could get any heavier, but when she realized that this was the same place as the last time, she could hardly move because of the weight of dread dragging her down.

In the room, there were eighteen, maybe twenty chairs in a circle. People were chatting and laughing and tea and biscuits were set out on a table.

As Grace led her to the top table, Marnie could see she was unsure, almost nervous.

‘This is Marnie.’ Grace presented her to some woman who looked like she was in charge. ‘It’s her first meeting.’

Actually it wasn’t her first meeting, it was her second, but she wasn’t telling Grace that because then she really
would
think she was an alcoholic. She cast a furtive glance around, hoping that the Jules woman wasn’t there, the one she’d seen that time at the cinema. If she showed up and said hello, her cover was blown.

The people – the
alcoholics
– were very friendly; she remembered that from the other time. They didn’t embarrass her by mentioning her injuries and they kept giving her warm, welcoming smiles.
Dying
for her to be in the gang with them.

‘Cup of tea?’

Marnie accepted. The heat would be nice; she was so cold. But to her shock – and to Grace’s evident horror – her hands couldn’t hold the cup. The hot liquid trembled and slopped over, scalding her fingers. The man who’d given her the cup retrieved it without fuss and placed it on the counter.

The loss of control was so unprecedented Marnie decided that it simply hadn’t happened.

‘We’ve all been there,’ the man said kindly.

Maybe you have, you drunken loser, but I haven’t.

‘Biscuit?’ the man offered.

‘Okay.’ Her stomach was begging for food, but it felt as if the signals
were coming from a hundred miles away. She bit a tiny corner off the biscuit but it was so long since she’d held a morsel of food in her mouth that it felt unnatural. She swallowed, forcing the crumbs down her closed throat and her stomach juices squirted with joy.

‘Let’s sit down,’ Grace suggested.

Flanked by Grace, she sat on a hard chair.

This isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening.

She broke small pieces off the biscuit, letting them dissolve in her mouth, and zoned in and out as the alcoholics whinged on. ‘Sharing’ they called it, what a cringy word. Surely Grace would hate that? Surely she wouldn’t have any time for an organization that used that sort of term?

‘… drinking was a full-time job for me. Sneaking alcohol into the house, hiding bottles, pretending to walk the dog so that I could dispose of the empties in my neighbours’ bins. Then they started charging for rubbish collection and I got caught…’

‘… when I had dinner parties, I always kept an extra bottle in the kitchen cupboard, so that when I brought the plates back in or whatever, I could help myself…’

‘… I was self-medicating. I thought I was drinking because I liked drinking but I was drinking to kill the pain of my feelings…’

‘I had bottles stashed everywhere. Even in my wardrobe.’

Dispiritingly, this confession moved Grace to elbow Marnie.
See,
the gesture suggested,
you’re just like them, you’re meant to be here
.

‘I kept bottles hidden in the pockets of my winter coats,’ the woman continued and Marnie felt Grace tense with sudden suspicion.

Fuck fuck fuck.

‘… I could stop, that wasn’t the problem. I could manage a week, maybe ten days without a drink. The tough thing was staying stopped. I couldn’t do that…’

‘… I lost everything to drinking, my job, my family, my home, my self-respect, and I didn’t care, I just wanted to drink…’

‘… Marnie…’ Grace murmured.

‘Hmm?’ Emerging from torpor, Marnie found a buzz of attention around her. The focus of the entire room seemed to be on her and the leader woman was smiling kindly.

‘Marnie, would you like to say something?’

‘What? Who, me?’ She looked down at her feet. ‘Oh no.’

‘Go on,’ Grace whispered at her.

‘… My name is Marnie.’

‘Hi, Marnie,’ the room chorused.

God, she felt so
stupid
.

‘And… well, here I am.’

‘Say you’re an alcoholic,’ Grace whispered.

But she wouldn’t. She didn’t. Because she wasn’t.

‘Just so you know,’ Grace said, her mouth a grim line, as she drove them home, ‘you don’t have to drink every day to be an alcoholic. The woman said lots of people stop drinking for long periods of time, just like you do.’

Ignore her ignore her ignore her.

‘So what did you think of the people?’ Grace asked, after a period of silence.

‘They’re nice.’ They’re freaky.

‘You’ll go again?’

‘Mmm, next week.’

‘How about tomorrow?’

‘
Tomorrow
? Isn’t that a bit… extreme?’

Grace didn’t reply, and when they got home she went straight up the stairs and into Marnie’s bedroom, where she flung open the wardrobe doors and rummaged in the furthest reaches. Within moments, she emerged with a half bottle of vodka and demonstrated it with a silent flourish, like a magician whisking a white rabbit from a hat. Back in she went again, like someone diving for pearls, feeling about in the deep pockets of winter coats and emerging with another bottle.

When the number of bottles had reached four, she said, ‘Extreme? No, it’s not fucking extreme.’ She sank to her knees and dropped her face into her hands, then she clambered to her feet.

‘Grace… where are you going?’

‘To the bathroom. To throw up again.’ She stopped at the doorway and whirled around and demanded, ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

Marnie recoiled from the aggression.

‘You’re the one who drank yourself into a coma,’ Grace cried. ‘But

I’m the one who’s puking!’

∗

Grace returned from the bathroom and curled on the bed beside

Marnie. They lay in silence.

‘What were you doing in Cricklewood?’ Grace suddenly asked.

‘What?’

‘Cricklewood. Nick says that’s where the ambulance picked you up.’

‘… Yes, I know.’ But I don’t know what I was doing there.

‘What happened that night?’

‘Nothing. I just went to the pub after work with Rico.’

‘Not in Cricklewood?’

‘No. Wimbledon. Near work.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know London very well.’ Was Grace being sarcastic? ‘Is Wimbledon near Cricklewood?’

Not even remotely. It was the other side of the city. ‘No.’

‘So you and Rico…?’

‘We had a few drinks.’

‘And then?’

‘I met some people, they were going to a club, I went with them.’ I think.

‘Where was the club? In Cricklewood?’

Please shut up about Cricklewood. ‘In Peckham.’
Peckham
? What had she been thinking? Peckham was a ghetto.

‘Is that near Cricklewood?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know anyone who lives in Cricklewood?’

‘No.’

‘So why do you think you were found in Cricklewood?’

‘Grace, if you say Cricklewood again, I’m going to the off-licence.’

‘Cricklewood, Cricklewood, Cricklewood. Which off-licence? The one in your wardrobe?’ Grace slung her leg across Marnie’s to stop her from moving. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘I was joking.’

‘I know. Look at me, I’m in hysterics.’

They spiralled down into gloomy silence, then Grace said, ‘Don’t you think it’s kind of…?’

‘What?’

‘You were lying alone on a roadside, injured, poisoned with alcohol,
in a part of London you didn’t know, with no memory of how you’d got there or what you’d been doing there.’

Before Grace had got more than five words in, Marnie had stopped listening and was preparing her response. When she saw that Grace had finished she said, ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘But –’

‘I agree with you, it looks pretty bad when you put it like that. But it was an accident, a one-off and it won’t happen again.’

‘It’s three o’clock.’ Grace swung herself off the bed. ‘I’m going to collect the girls from school. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’

‘Thanks, Grace.’ Melodie had finally walked; they were currently without a nanny. If Grace wasn’t here, Marnie didn’t know how the girls would get home. Perhaps one of the other mums…