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Ayden fell asleep on the journey home that night. I carried him into the house, crept up to his bedroom, placed him gently on the bed, and pulled the duvet over him. I removed his trainers, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and left him to sleep.

***

Sitting in the lounge on my own was boring and gave me time to think about everything that had happened. Drake had left me, he’d left his son, and there had been no contact with me or his family as far as I could tell. Lynne wouldn’t be able to lie to me, I’d see right through her, but she wouldn’t lie for the sake of Ayden. If she knew where Drake was or what he was doing, she would tell me.

The phone ringing shook me out of the thoughts racing through my head.

“Hello…Anna…” the phone line was crackly and I couldn’t hear much of what was being said.

I looked at the screen, having forgotten to check the caller ID before I answered. It was my grandmother, Judi, no doubt calling me to check that we were still visiting her on Boxing Day.

“Grams, is that you? I can hardly hear you!” I spoke loudly into the phone, though I’m not sure why, because it was me that couldn’t hear her.

“Yes, it’s me, dear…just wanted…Boxing Day…dinner…”

I tried wandering round the living room to see if I could hear her better.

“Grams, I can’t make sense of what you’re saying. Where are you?”

“Shop…my dear…last minute…”

The sounds of the shopping mall were coming through as sporadically as her words.

“Grams, call me when you’re home.”

“Just wondered if you…anything while…”

I could scarcely make out what she was on about. I walked around the house trying to get better reception. It was in vain though, as the call ended up cutting out completely. I tried calling her back but kept getting an automated voice that said ‘the person you are calling is currently unavailable.’

Only my Grams could have a phone so bad that it barely ever got a signal. I tried to get her to get a better model of phone several times, but she wasn’t one for touch screens, she wanted—and I quote—good old-fashioned buttons, so that she knew she was actually pressing it. She remained firm that I was not to buy her a newer phone with only a screen to use it with. So I didn’t, which meant that I got garbled telephone calls from her if she was using it when she was out. Trust Grams to be out shopping on Christmas Eve. I had to hand it to her; she was still quite spritely for her age. She would no doubt be out looking for last minute bargains for the family.

I looked out of the kitchen window while waiting for my coffee machine to pour me a cappuccino. It didn’t look very Christmas-like outside. There was no snow on the ground and it didn’t look like there would be any time soon either. I didn’t mind that, but it would make Ayden’s year to have a white Christmas. He’d been banging on about it since the beginning of the month. I took my drink and went to sit by the tree in the dining room. I had a small wingback chair that I sat in to read. I picked up my book from the table beside the chair, switched on the lamp and the lights of the tree, and lost myself in the story for a couple of hours. I might not have a happily ever after of my own, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t live vicariously through the characters. But in saying that, I was reading a book about a motorcycle club with characters with badass names like Cobra and Champ, so I wasn’t sure whether they had happy endings or whether it was all murders and such.

***

I woke on Christmas Day to find myself in my wingback chair with a crick in my neck. I stretched out my sore muscles and went upstairs to get washed and dressed before waking Ayden. I checked my watch and it said 6:45 a.m. He was never awake this early, even on Christmas Day, so I had time to grab a quick shower. But first, I had to set out the big Santa sack full of presents that were left by Santa, not from family. The rest of the presents were already under the tree, but the biggest present was his bike. I went to the cupboard under the stairs where I had stored it since the previous night. Pulling it out was a little harder now it had wrapping paper on, but I got it out and in front of the tree.

After my shower, I brushed my teeth and pulled on the ridiculous Christmas jumper that Ayden had helped me pick. It was a family tradition to wear silly jumpers, t-shirts, or shirts for the day. So there I was in my black skinny jeans and a jumper with a reindeer that had a light-up nose that played “Jingle Bells” when pressed. I was just putting my socks on when my bedroom door creaked open.

For a moment, I thought Drake was coming in with my presents. My heart lurched when I saw Ayden in the door. Of course I was happy to see his handsome, sleepy little face, but for one moment, I had forgotten about Drake being gone and I was a little deflated to see that it wasn’t him.

“Morning, Mommy,” he said as he crossed the room and put his arms around me.

“Morning, sweetie. Did you sleep well?” I asked as I wrapped my arms around him and placed a kiss on top of his head.

“I did. I had a dream that Santa came and left me the bike I wanted and a lot of other presents under the tree,” he said in a voice at least an octave or two higher than his normal voice.

It was safe to say that he would enjoy Christmas this year. It was just a shame that Drake wouldn’t be around to see it. I made an early New Year’s resolution that it would be Drake’s problem—not mine, not Ayden’s, just Drake’s burden to carry.

“Well, let’s go downstairs and see what Santa left for you.”

I led the way downstairs and into the dining room. Ayden was bouncing on the balls of his feet as I opened the door and let him go in before me.

“Mommy, look what Santa has left for me,” he cried in all his childhood innocence.

If only I could go back to the days of my childhood. Things were so much easier then. We didn’t have the burdens of being grown-ups, paying the bills, getting married, getting divorced. I didn’t want to think about whether Drake wanted a divorce or not. He hadn’t asked for one yet, but then he hadn’t been in contact at all. I wasn’t going to file for a divorce, I was going to wait for Drake to make the first move. If he wanted to divorce me, he could damn well grow a pair of balls and file for it, then pay for it himself.

“Mommy.” Ayden pulled on my sleeve, drawing my attention back to him.

“Sorry, baby, I’m not fully awake yet. Mommy spent the night asleep in that chair,” I said as I went to turn the lamp off on the side table. I left the tree lights on for a bit while we opened presents.

“Why did you do that?” he asked as a giggle burst forth from his mouth.

“Because I fell asleep reading, baby, that’s why. I didn’t mean to, I was just lost in the story.”

“Oh, okay. Well, can I open this one that looks like a bike, please?”

I had to smile at my baby boy, my pride and joy. I couldn’t hide the fact that it was a bike, so there was no point trying to make it out to be anything else.

“You sure can, baby; you can open them in any order you like.”

He flew at his bike and tore the paper off. It was the bike he had asked me and Drake for. It had been hard to get him that on top of everything else, but Grams had helped me out. After Drake left, Ayden lovingly wrote in his letter to Santa that he wanted him to buy him the bike because his Mommy and Daddy weren’t together anymore and couldn’t buy him presents together anymore. I’d been a bit heartbroken by that, but had vowed to get it for him one way or another. So when Grams had offered to help, I had been so relieved.

Ayden rode the bike once around the dining room table before jumping off and attacking his pile of presents. He had a new games console and games, Lego playsets, some DVDs, and lots of POP figures that he’d asked for. I wasn’t sure what one of those even was before he asked. I liked to think of myself as a pretty cool mom, but there were still lots of things I had yet to learn. With the discovery of these figures, I had also come across something called Cosbabies. Contrary to what one might think that is, it’s actually a little figure, a little like a POP, but different. They’re hard to explain but when I heard the name, I thought they were baby dolls and I certainly wasn’t buying him one of those, but he had shown me on his iPad what they were and I was relieved my eight-year-old son wasn’t asking for girl toys. He had also got lots of clothes and a few vouchers for things that he wanted. He wanted iTunes vouchers for his iPad and GAME vouchers to go and buy any games he wanted for his new Wii-U console.

At 9:30 a.m., after we’d had breakfast, we got into a taxi to go over to Lynne’s house for the rest of the day. Ayden was spoiled rotten with so many presents. But nothing from his Daddy had him get a little sad for a while and had me totally pissed off. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, surely his son was in his heart? To have not bought him anything for Christmas had me pissed as hell at him and I would’ve punched him if he had been in the same room right then. I could see on everyone’s faces that they were annoyed at Drake too, and wherever he was, he’d have a lot of answers to find when he eventually came back into their lives.

After Christmas dinner, Lynne took me to one side and gave me a little box wrapped in a ribbon. I opened it to see a car key. She took my hand and led me outside. She opened their two door garage and inside I saw a little black Vauxhall Corsa. Lynne led me to it and taped to the window was a little note.

Annalise,

Hope you like your gift.

Lots of Love

Mummy Lynne, Meghan, Jack, Leanne, and Taylor.

I felt tears rush down my cheeks and turned to wrap Lynne in a hug. She had been a better mom to me in all the years Drake and I had been together than my own mother had in all my life. I’d never got on so well with a partner’s family as I did the Andersons. I looked up at Lynne and saw a beautiful smile on her face.

“Thank you so much. You shouldn’t have spent so much money on me,” I gasped out as I wiped the tears away with the heel of my hand.

“Nonsense! Now, it may not be the newest model, but it’ll get you from A to B.”

I couldn’t say anything, I was too stunned. I was honestly in awe of this magnificent woman in front of me and the rest of the family for pitching in. I got behind the wheel and turned the engine over. It felt so good to have my own car purring to life. Stepping out, I wrapped Lynne in another hug. I was delighted with the love she had shown by buying me a car, knowing I was struggling with having to get taxis or lifts from other people.

We went back into the house and I gave each of them a hug and kiss to say thank you.

“You guys are the most amazing…I just…I love you all so much.”

I was too choked up to say anything more at that moment.

***

After dinner, Ayden set about keeping us all amused with his karaoke skills on a Disney Singstar game that Meghan had brought with her. The very fact that he was keeping up with the lyrics and dancing around the lounge at the same time had us in stitches. By the end of the day, Ayden was worn out and more than ready to go home to bed, yet he didn’t want to leave because he was having too much fun with his aunties, uncle, and cousin. So I took him out to the car and placed him in the backseat, buckled him in, and put a fleece blanket around him in case he got cold. It had turned a little chilly earlier on in the evening, so Lynne had told me to be careful in case it had become frosty on the roads.

The drive home was a quiet one, as expected, because Ayden had fallen asleep in the back of the car. I pulled up on the drive and carefully carried Ayden to the front door. He woke enough to sit on the front step and wait for me to lock the car. Then I opened the door and carried him inside. I took him to bed and pulled the duvet close to his chin. I kissed his forehead and went downstairs to lock up.

Getting into bed, I lay down and let my mind wander to where Drake might be and what he was doing. What could have happened to him to make him up and leave, not just Ayden and me, but his whole family? He hadn’t been in touch with any of them to my knowledge and that had me more worried about him than if it had just been the two of us he was avoiding. Several scenarios played out in my head as I fell asleep.

Chapter Eighteen

Drake

It’s Christmas Day and I haven’t been in contact with any of my family. Why? Well, that’s both an easy question and a hard one to answer. See, the simple answer is, I’m in rehab. It’s what put me here that is a harder—well, not necessarily harder—but longer answer. For the answer to that, we have to go back farther than just these last few months. But as for why I haven’t contacted any of my family, well, that’s something I can answer.

I haven’t phoned anyone today, not even my mom, because I don’t want to have to tell them where I am and I don’t want to have to lie. Its best I don’t get in touch, because then I don’t have to come up with some phony excuse for not being around. I’ve been gone long enough that I probably could have come up with a good enough story to cover my ass but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in rehab, it’s that lies, even the smallest ones, are wrong. Wherever possible, you should always tell the truth. Yeah, that goes for life, not just rehab, but the counsellors here have made me see that even a seemingly small lie can have huge consequences. So I haven’t told anyone except for my bosses where I really am or what I’m really doing. My bosses have given me special leave from work so I can attend rehab, and that’s the only reason I’ve told them, so I’ll have a job to go back to when I eventually return home.

I’ve dropped my family the occasional text to say I’m okay, but I don’t answer when they ask a question that could potentially lead them to find me. For the first couple of months, I didn’t even have access to my phone. They said that we were meant to be there to get away from everything in our everyday lives in order to afford us the best chance at recovery. At first, I thought it would be easy, but nothing was harder than foregoing all communication with the outside world. Especially my wife and son. See, I hadn’t given up on my marriage because I didn’t love her—in fact, it was quite the opposite—and though Anna may not know it right now, I did what I did for love. That’s why I haven’t been in contact with her at all. I can’t lie to her and I simply can’t tell her where I am or what I’m doing. I know she’d understand, I know she’d be there by my side, she’d come and visit whenever she could. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to see the look of pity in the love of my life’s eyes as she looked at me or hear it in her voice over the phone. I couldn’t even drop her the shortest of texts because I couldn’t keep it short and sweet. I knew she’d have questions and I’d have to answer, but as I didn’t have all the answers myself yet, I felt it best to stay out of all contact with her.

Since being here, I have earned four chips. The first was awarded for twenty-four hours without a drink. The second was for thirty days. The third was for sixty days. The fourth was for ninety days, and I was awarded that the day before yesterday. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I had a drink. It hasn’t been easy—in fact it’s been pretty much the hardest thing in my whole fucking life except for walking away from Anna and Ayden. In all honesty, I didn’t have to be here so long, but I’ve had a lot of work to do on getting to the root cause of my drinking. I’ve had my good days and my bad, but the thing that keeps me going is knowing that if I keep drinking, I’ll end up with long-term health problems which will result in my death. I want to be around to see Ayden grow up…if Anna ever lets me have contact with him again. I have a photo of him in my room. The only personal belongings I brought were a photo of my bride and me on our wedding day, a school photo of Ayden, my Kindle, and my wedding ring. I have access to my phone now and my MacBook. The latter has allowed me to get some writing done. I’ve written the odd piece of poetry, but mostly it’s been journal entries.

People think if you’re a man, you automatically don’t keep a journal. Well, that would be true of most men, I would guess. But just because I don’t have a paper one, bound in some frilly, girly, fancy shit doesn’t mean I don’t have one. I just keep mine on my laptop. It’s easier to type than to sit and write by hand for hours.

My routine in here is fairly bland; the days seem to drag on. I wake up, grab breakfast, then have a session with my therapist Zeke Michaels. He’s a pretty decent guy. He’s a bit older than me, well, maybe around ten years. I told him when I first met him that I didn’t know Zeke was a popular name back when he was born. He told me it wasn’t as cool as I thought as it was short for Ezekiel. It was Zeke that had got me into the art therapy programme at the centre. We got to choose our medium in which to work and mine had been sketching. I’d not been too bad in school, although I hadn’t picked a pencil up much over the years. But getting back into it had been easier than I’d thought. Sure my first few sketches were a bit rusty, but now I’ve been doing it every day since my second week here and I’ve been sitting outside with a sketchpad and pencil for a couple of hours a day. That’s what I usually do after my session with Zeke. I sit outside sketching. It whiles away the hours in between my session and dinner time. Then after dinner, I retire to my room, where I write or listen to music. Then I sleep, rinse and repeat.

Today has been slightly different in the fact that it’s Christmas Day and a lot of the others here are spending time with their families. I don’t have a session with Zeke today, it’s his only day off. There are other therapists here, so maybe some people have sessions to attend, but my day has been extra-long because of it lacking the hour or so that I spend in Zeke’s office. So other than to go and get my Christmas dinner from the canteen, I haven’t left my room much. I tried to sit outside and draw, but I just couldn’t get in the zone. I tried listening to music, but that was also a no-no today for some unknown reason. All I could seem to do was write. I spent an age staring at the photos of Anna and Ayden, then decided to sit and write about them: how much I miss them and how much they mean to me.

I like how I don’t have to pretend to be anyone except me when I write. When I sit with my MacBook open and just get into the zone, I can sit and write without noticing how much time passes. I can be honest, earnest, the real me.

Some of my journal entries from when I first came here are short and not really much detail or depth to them. But the longer I’ve been here, I feel more able to write down details, the honest truth about how I really feel about certain situations.

September 1
st
2013

Dear Journal,

Okay, do people really start these things with “Dear Journal”? I’m new at this, I guess I’m not sure. I have been told that writing down my feelings helps. I can’t talk about my feelings. I’ve never been an open kind of guy. I guess it’s because of the way I grew up with my family; they’re not very tactile and so I grew up keeping everything on the inside. I wish I knew how to be more open about the way I feel about certain people, certain situations. Especially my wife and son. I want to put pen to paper and tell her why I left. I am such an ass. I can’t believe I left her without so much as an excuse—no matter how poor of an excuse—I didn’t have to tell her the truth, but I should have told her something.

The truth is, even I’m not 100% certain why I left. It was my drinking that toppled me over the edge, that’s for sure, but even before that got to where it did, I still had secrets. Not secrets from Anna. I have never kept a secret from her. But I have kept things from the rest of my family. No doubt that’s what’s eating me up, but I can’t tell them. If I tell them the whole story, they’ll be so hurt. I know they wouldn’t disown me—what I did doesn’t warrant that—but they would be mad that I hadn’t told them. To make matters worse, my dad is now dead, so he will never know. He’ll never get to…no, I’m not going there. Not yet.

You’re a journal and if I can’t tell you the secret, then I damn sure can’t tell my family. This is going to be such a long process, I can tell.

That’s all, for now.

Drake.

***

15
th
September 2013

Dear Journal,

I’ve been attending regular sessions with Dr Michaels—sorry, Zeke—for a couple of weeks now and he really encourages me to be more open, even if it’s only in my journal. I feel like I’m wasting the guy’s time. I haven’t really told him much. I haven’t even told him what put me here in rehab in the first place. It’s not that much of a big deal—well technically I guess it is, but it’s not a major thing compared to the reasons some of the others are in here. We talk in group therapy, everyone opens up about why they’re here. Everyone except me. I’m too embarrassed, too closed off. Zeke has let me get away with not saying anything though. His motto is that everyone is here for a reason and they will open up eventually. It may take hours, days, weeks, or at worst, months, but we will all open up in the end. Why else would we be here if we didn’t want help, if we didn’t want to get better?

I guess writing it down wouldn’t be so bad. Certainly not as bad as voicing it out loud in front of the others. Here goes nothing…

The night I left Anna, I asked my brother Jack to come and pick me up, telling him I’d had a drink and couldn’t drive myself. Leanne had driven him over and he’d thought nothing of driving to his house for me to stay the night. I had plans the following day that involved leaving the car with him and going on my way. Why? Well…I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ve been disqualified from driving for twelve months.

After coming back from Paris, I was contacted by Rachel Lane, the mother of my daughter Morgana. She reached out to me on Facebook to talk about Morgana but I just couldn’t face the conversation. I didn’t know what she wanted and I didn’t want to know. So I’d made an excuse to Anna that Jack wanted to meet up and I had gone to the pub. I’d sat there ready to drown my sorrows. But if I’d known what was coming next, I would have done things differently.

I ordered myself a Jack Daniels or three and by the time I left, I felt like I still had all my faculties intact, although my sorrows felt on a back burner thanks to the ‘thought quietening’ effects of the alcohol. So I drove myself to a bed and breakfast to see if they had any rooms. I wasn’t going to knock on my mother’s door at three a.m. But on the way to the B&B, I got pulled over by a cop. Knowing I had the scent of whiskey on my breath, my hopes plummeted even further than they had been before I got to the bar. The police officer got out of his car and made his way to my window. I rolled it down, waiting on the inevitable.

The officer asked to see my licence and registration. I handed them over and waited while he looked them over.

“Do you know why I pulled you over tonight, Mr Anderson?” he asked as he looked from the name on my licence to my face.

“No officer,” I replied as I looked at his face beyond the glow of his torch.

“You have a broken tail-light, Mr Anderson, sir. I suggest you get it fixed first thing in the morning.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, being careful not to exhale in the officer’s direction.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

Thinking I had got away unscathed, I began to wind my window up, but was stopped short when the officer asked me to get out of the car. I did as he asked and stood beside my car.

“Have you had a drink tonight, sir?” the officer asked.

“Yes, Officer.”

There was no point lying.

“How much would you say you have consumed, Mr Anderson?”

“Umm…I had a couple of glasses of whiskey.”

The officer looked at me and I was certain he didn’t believe me. He told me to stay where I was and walked back to his car. He retrieved the dreaded breathalyser test and I knew I was done for. I was breathalysed, blew over the legal limit, and was arrested on the spot for drink-driving. I was breathalysed again once I arrived at the station and they told me I had failed the test, which I knew already. To cut a long story short, I was instantly disqualified from driving for twelve months and made to pay a £500 fine. To my surprise, I wasn’t given any points on my licence, but that didn’t matter much, considering I wasn’t going to be allowed to drive for the next year anyway.

After my release,
I checked myself into rehab. It wasn’t mandatory, but I knew it was about time I did something about my drinking. I’ve never really been a heavy drinker, I usually just drink the odd bottle of Budweiser or glass of Jack Daniels. But just recently, a culmination of events had led to me drinking more and more. I had tried to hide the limits of my drinking from Anna and Ayden, but she’d noticed my mood swings and irritability. I hadn’t told her about Rachel trying to contact me, though looking back on it now, I know I should have. I’m not looking to blame anyone else for what I’ve done, but it was Rachel’s recent contact that made me go to the bar that night. Well, it’s not like I’d needed my arm twisted to drink. I could have dealt with things differently, but that was my reason for being in the bar.

My head was all colours of fucked up, so rehab was the only sensible answer. I’m not a reckless person, I wouldn’t normally get behind the wheel of a car after drinking, the only answer I have for doing so this time was that I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m damn lucky I hadn’t drunk more than the three glasses. I had “only just” been over the legal limit, hence why my punishment wasn’t as severe as it could have been. I’m just so glad that I didn’t get into a crash that night and hurt some innocent bystander. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if my actions had resulted in the injury or even worse, death, of someone.