Summer Secrets (20 page)

It became clear that this had nothing to do with Jason, for Jason had always put his daughter before everything, but was about Cara wielding her insecurity through power, demanding he put her first, their relationship. It has put a tremendous wedge between us these past few months.

I hesitate in the doorway. If the poison dwarf—as I have secretly started to refer to her, but to Sam only; I would never let Annie hear—if the poison dwarf is waiting in the car, her usual sour expression on her face, Jason will be out of here quicker than you can say Snow White.

“Annie’s just getting her stuff,” I say. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That would be lovely,” he says, and I almost drop my books in surprise. Clearly she’s not in the car.

I move the glasses up to the top of my head. I know I look good in them, but this is ridiculous, I’ll never find the bloody kettle, while Jason makes himself at home at the kitchen table.

This used to be our kitchen table. It is a scrubbed pine table my mum found at Alfie’s antique market and Jason and I stripped ourselves. It’s a bit eighties country, and not the sort of thing that’s very in right now—everyone I know has sleek modern maple-and-steel tables these days—but I love this. It feels like I’m sitting in an old farmhouse in the country, and I will never get rid of it.

I put the kettle on and turn to see Jason, his legs spread because they have never fit properly under the table, his hair messy in the way that I have always loved, and my heart turns over. I quickly walk outside into the corridor saying I’ll be back in a sec because I don’t want him to see the tears well up in my eyes.

Why did I throw this all away?

For a while, I blamed Jason. Why couldn’t he forgive me? Why was it such a big deal? He was the one to blame.

I don’t think that now.

Now I just wish things were different.

My friends say I’ll meet someone else, but all the dates I’ve been on were terrible. I show up terrified they’re going to think I’m awful, and invariably they’re the ones who end up wanting to see me again, with me coming up with every excuse in the book not to have to endure a whole evening listening to arrogance, or entitlement, or just plain dullness.

“Sorry.” I come back in the room and make the tea. “So how are you? What’s going on?”

“Nothing too exciting,” he says. “Busy, as usual. Work is crazy. You?”

“Pretty much the same. The usual interviews with women who are screwing up their lives.” I realize what I’ve said. “Clearly a subject I have much experience with.”

He has the grace to laugh, ruefully.

“And you’re going to meetings?” he says hopefully.

“Absolutely.” I had long ago found meetings he wouldn’t be at, women’s meetings where I was absolutely safe, didn’t run the risk of running into him, or having to endure cheap pickup lines, what we call the thirteenth step, from the less salubrious men in the program. “I finally get what the whole living in recovery thing is about.”

He nods, and I note the flash of sadness in his eyes, and I get it. Why couldn’t I get this before? Why wasn’t I able to do this when we were still married?

Or maybe it’s just projection. Maybe he’s not thinking that at all.

“How’s Cara?” I find myself blurting out to fill the awkward silence, instantly berating myself for being so bloody obvious.

“She’s good,” he says, and I wonder how on earth things got awkward between us, when they had been so good for so long. How is it that we are sitting here, like strangers, when we slept side by side for so many years, produced a daughter, lived and loved and laughed together?

“Daddy!” Annie bursts into the room, her dark curly hair flying behind her, her green eyes sparkling, all puppyish limbs on the brink of morphing into womanhood. Her entrance saves us both, lifting the energy to enable us both to pretend to be normal, to pretend that things are good.

“Sweet pea! Come on. We’re going out for dinner tonight. A new place in Notting Hill.”

“Great!” she says, coming over and putting her arms round me. My daughter, at thirteen, is entirely unpredictable. There are mornings when she comes into the kitchen with a black cloud over her face. Those days she barely speaks, uttering monosyllabic grunts, radiating contempt for everything and everyone in her life, and particularly, it seems, me.

Other days she is warm and sunny, her arms reaching around me for hugs, as they are now, and I could melt with love and gratitude at those times, my little girl still my little girl, able to forgive me for all I have done.

“Can I maybe keep her tonight?” Jason asks. “It might be late, and I thought it would be easier.”

I hesitate. I don’t particularly like last-minute changes, and I am not sure if Annie wants to go, for she isn’t always thrilled about sharing her father with Cara, but one look at her face and I see she does.

“Sure,” I say, giving her one last squeeze. “I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They leave, the flat settling into the silence. In the old days, I would dread the silence, the times Annie would be with her father and I would be alone. After all those years of living by myself you would think I would have gotten used to my own company, but I was never entirely on my own when alcohol was involved.

Sober, without my daughter, without my husband, I had no idea who I was anymore. I had no idea what to do with myself without anyone around, without the ability to drown my fears in drink.

I became, in those early months, a television addict. I had never been a big telly watcher, but suddenly it became my salvation, allowing me the ability to lose myself by binge-watching an entire series, sometimes numerous series, without having to think about my life at all.

Whole weekends would pass with me lying on the sofa, consuming giant bowls of popcorn and endless cups of tea as I glued myself to the small screen. I had no idea how life should be, how to live a life. I just knew I needed to get through the days, one day at a time. I went to a lot of meetings, and met program friends, and tried to keep busy, but in my flat, on my own, it was the television set that saved me.

Today, things are different. I cook. I listen to the radio instead of the TV—plays on Radio 4, the show
Desert Island Discs,
which is the highlight of my week. I garden. I have a small garden but have discovered a love of planting things, the rigorous discipline of learning the Latin names of the plants I buy, learning what they need to survive. My happiest moments in the last eighteen months have largely been spent at Clifton Nurseries, where I can browse for hours, testing myself with my plant knowledge, daydreaming of the day I might have a garden big enough for everything.

I go out to the garden now, with a glass of iced tea. In the old days, it would have been a bottle of wine, but as long as I have something cold, I am fine.

I dug up the old paving stones that made the terrace, and created a Japanese zen garden with gravel, a water feature, and long exotic grasses. A large stone Buddha reminds me to be mindful, and even though I am not a Buddhist, not an anything other than a recovering alcoholic with faith in a Higher Power, I take enormous comfort in my serene, beautiful Buddha.

There are two wicker chairs out there, where Annie and I often sit with our books, where I try to meditate a few times a week, although I am still a work in progress. More often than not, just as I close my eyes to meditate, I will have spied a few weeds, and how can I possibly relax and meditate until I have pulled those weeds out, and nine times out of ten, before I know it, an hour of weeding later, I no longer have time to meditate because I have someplace to be.

Tonight I have no place to be. Tonight it is just me, with the evening stretching ahead of me. I put my drink down, take a few deep breaths, settle into the chair, and close my eyes, focusing only on the breath coming in through my nostrils, cool and sweet; going out, warm and soft.

And I feel hopeful that life can be good.

Nineteen

The buzzer rings and I go to the door, expecting Sam, only to hear my mother’s voice ringing through the intercom.

“What are you doing here?” I ask when she walks through the door.

“I was just passing on my way home from Hampstead. I saw a scarf there that I thought you’d love.” She passes me a bag, and I pull out a beautiful shimmery blue scarf that I do, instantly, love.

“Mum! You didn’t have to do that! It’s gorgeous!”

“Of course I didn’t have to do it. I wanted to do it. Where’s that delicious girl of mine?”

She isn’t talking about me, she’s talking about Annie, and I call for Annie, who whirls down the corridor and into her grandmother’s arms.

One of the gifts of my newfound sobriety has been my relationship with my mother. It was always good, but when I was drinking, when I was married, it was marred by the disappointment and judgment I saw in her eyes.

For a very long time I would try to avoid her. No one could have hated me more than I hated myself, and I really didn’t need to see that reflected back at me. I knew I was a terrible wife, a terrible mother; the more I felt judged by someone, the less inclined I was to see them.

Now, not only do I delight in my own relationship with my mother, I delight in Annie’s relationship with her. I never realized how much my mother loves children, how warm she can be. For most of my childhood she was in a deep depression, but now, as a grandmother, and despite having lived in the UK for years and years, her American warmth comes out.

I know that sounds odd, but I have always felt that the English love children as long as they are polite, quiet, and well behaved. Americans seem to love children however they behave. There have been plenty of times I’ve been in restaurants and seen American children run screaming around the room, and all the English people are filled with horrified indignation, while the Americans just smile indulgently as if to say, oh, aren’t they cute?

However Annie behaves, my mother adores her, and accepts her. If Annie is in a bad mood, my mother still loves her, is still loving and affectionate, waiting for it to pass. I, on the other hand, am a disaster. If Annie is in a bad mood, I struggle not to take it personally, not to strike back, not to berate her for not being happy.

“Something smells good,” my mother says, poking her head into the kitchen, where she sees the table set for three. “Oh! You have dinner plans. I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Don’t be silly.” I pull her into the kitchen. “Sam’s coming for dinner, and there’s more than enough for all of us. Why don’t you stay?”

“Really? You’re sure you have enough?”

“Absolutely. Stay.”

*   *   *

Sam adores my mother. Everyone adores my mother. Sure enough, when he walks in, as handsome as ever in his slick shorts and polo shirt, his face lights up as he spies her.

“Audrey!” He envelops her in a hug, pulling back to give her the traditional double kiss. I have become accustomed to hugging, me, who never liked anyone to touch her. It’s a program thing, hugs being doled out at the end of meetings like candy. It took me a while to get used to, the all-embracing hugs. I have come to not only accept it, but actually welcome it.

“Sam! So lovely to see you! It has been much too long.”

We take the pitcher of iced tea outside to the terrace, as Annie tempts the neighbor’s cat to come and roll around on the gravel with us.

“You look gorgeously tan,” says my mum to Sam. “Have you been somewhere dreamily exotic?”

“The spray-tanning place off South Molton Street,” says Sam with a smile. “Not quite dreamily exotic, but I can’t seem to get my act together with a summer holiday this year. I wanted to go to Lamu, but I’m worried it’s not very safe anymore. Also, summer’s not really the time to go to Africa anyway, even if I decided to risk it.”

“There’s always the South of France,” says my mother.

“There is, always, the South of France.” Sam rolls his eyes, which I find hilarious because only Sam could find the South of France boring, which he does; he says everyone he has ever met is always in the South of France and it’s the most stressful place he ever visits.

“What about you?” Sam turns to me. “What are you doing this summer?”

When Jason and I were married, we did great holidays. Winters saw us in the Caribbean, and summers renting lovely old stone houses in Provence or Tuscany. Now my budget is something I’m constantly aware of, and even though we are always fine, we are just on the edge of fine, and I never think I have enough money for extravagant things like holidays.

“I’m hoping to find a travel piece,” I say, for I am friendly with the travel editor of the
Daily Gazette,
and every now and then he will send a piece my way, often a fabulous and free hotel, and sometimes even free flights too. Last Christmas, Annie and I left on Boxing Day for Antigua, an all-inclusive, all-paid-for holiday. I had to write a thousand words on how fantastic the place was (which it was), and we had a brilliant time, with yacht trips and spa treatments provided to seduce us into writing a decent piece. As if we needed seducing. “The travel editor often knows of a villa somewhere knocking around.”

“What a great idea,” Sam says. “I should ask our travel editor if they have anything going. Why don’t we go away together?” I nod enthusiastically as he turns to my mother. “Audrey, you should come too!”

“I’m already going to Greece,” says my mother. “A friend’s boat. If there was room I’d invite you.”

“We’ll miss you,” he pouts, “but I love the sound of you, me, and Annie going somewhere together. Let’s both speak to the travel people we know and see what we can come up with.”

“Deal,” I say, and pour them all some more tea.

Twenty

I try very hard to have something punctuate my day so I have to leave my house. If I don’t have something, even a coffee at the dingy little caf
é
next to the tube station, it is quite possible that I would never get out of my pajamas, and that isn’t healthy or productive for anyone.

Often I go to a noon meeting, and today I am on my way when Maureen’s number flashes up on my cell.