Again, Rachel, page 19
Fuckers, the lot of them.
Seriously, though, what the hell had he been at?
Maybe he’d been keeping the water running so it was nice and hot for Kate? In which case, wasteful! Think of the planet! Or perhaps he’d planned to lure her into the shower for some early-morning shenanigans? In which case, bad manners!
This was very, very uncomfortable.
You’ll get used to it.
‘I fecken won’t,’ I muttered.
You’ll see. You will.
‘Parcel for you,’ Brianna called as soon as I got to work. She held a wrapped box up to the light and squinted. ‘Looks like chocolates. Lily O’Brien’s.’
I groaned with longing but the mood I was in, if I ate one, I’d eat them all. ‘Keep them.’
‘Seriously?’ Brianna was delighted.
‘Seriously.’ I opened the attached letter, which was from a man who’d been in for alcoholism about two years ago. I went straight to the end of the letter to see if he was still sober – he was – then folded it into my bag to read later. Right now, Trassa needed to be checked on.
‘I’ll share them,’ Brianna said.
‘Whatever you like, just don’t give any to me.’ Not today.
Trassa was at the breakfast table, holding a cup of tea and staring into space. Apparently, she’d eaten almost nothing of last night’s dinner and had gone to bed at eight o’clock.
Twenty years earlier, I’d been the same when I could no longer outrun the fact that I was an addict – when it was suddenly clear that I wasn’t simply a recreational user, that I couldn’t stop.
The avalanche of truth had been overwhelming. Seeing the damage I’d done to others – and myself – had shocked and shamed me. Worse, suddenly knowing in my bones that my best friend, the thing I loved most in the world, the only substance that brought me genuine relief, could no longer be part of my life, well, it was like a death. The end of the greatest love story ever.
But it had to be gone through. I’d had to do it. Trassa had to do it. There could be no recovery without it.
My new arrival was due this morning. Ducking into one of the small interview rooms, which had a window overlooking the front grounds, I skimmed her file again. ‘Bronte, forty-three, a heroin addict. Married to Eden Tollemarche, Viscount Kilsharvan.’ It wouldn’t be the first time a member of the aristocracy had landed in here: addiction was no respecter of titles.
Has been abusing heroin on and off since her twenties, but it got out of control six years ago. After a year of intravenous abuse, she went to rehab in the UK. Stayed clean until she broke her ankle last June and was prescribed opiate painkillers. She blames them for her relapse. For the past eight months she’s been injecting heroin. At the assessment her husband seemed supportive.
My attention was caught by a muddy Land Rover coming through the gates, slightly too fast. It whizzed into a parking spot and almost immediately a tall, ruddy-faced man jumped out, strode to the boot, extracted a bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder.
Bronte was slower to appear. Reluctantly, she extracted herself from the car. Dressed in jeans, a shrunken jacket and a giant felt scarf wrapped around her neck and shoulders, she looked about fourteen.
She paused to cast the house an apprehensive look. For most people, being checked into rehab is the worst moment of their life. They can’t believe it’s really happening – for a long time their lies and manipulations have kept them ahead of the posse but the game is finally up, and everything is about to change forever.
However, this was Bronte’s second time – and second time round was worse. There was so much shame in a relapse. When an addict first got clean or sober, they had to work hard to win back the trust of the people they loved – but when they got it, it was beautiful. Relationships often became honest and pure, perhaps for the first time ever.
It was infinitely harder to pull it off twice. People were willing to forgive once, but a relapse soured everything.
Outside, Bronte and the husband exchanged a few words. He touched her face and she nodded, then they turned towards the steps which led to our door and disappeared from my view.
Even though I wasn’t needed, I went to the admissions office, where it was all go. Brianna and Eden were processing the paperwork and Priya had Bronte’s luggage up on a desk, rummaging through the contents, looking for contraband.
Passively, Bronte sat on a chair, her arm bent at the elbow as Nurse Moze took a blood sample. She was as pale as milk, except for a cluster of delicately broken veins in the middle of each cheek. Not a scrap of make-up – her eyebrows and eyelashes were so fair they were invisible and her wispy, faded hair was carelessly caught up in an elastic band. I itched to tell her that she should use a proper bobble, that it was no wonder her hair was broken and flyaway, the way she treated it. But sadly that wasn’t part of my remit.
Her clothes were really quite something – her jeans looked as if they’d time travelled from 1973, where they’d last been seen on a ten-year-old boy haring around on a Chopper. Was this an aristo thing? Long, elegant fingers, no nail varnish, but there was no avoiding the ring on her wedding finger, a monstrously ornate Victorian-style gold and ruby affair.
‘What are these?’ Priya had found a card of tablets in Bronte’s wash bag.
‘Her birth control.’ Eden’s voice was too boomy for the small room.
‘Are they, Bronte?’ Priya asked.
‘Oh? Um … yes.’
Priya examined the brand name, made a note in Bronte’s file and moved the tablets to an in-tray.
‘She needs to take them.’ Eden’s face darkened.
‘We need to check what they are.’
‘You think she would try to smuggle …?’
Wouldn’t be the first time, buster.
Pleasantly, Priya repeated, ‘We need to check them.’
‘Give her her birth control. She’s my wife and I insist.’
Coolly, Bronte followed the exchange.
Frankly, I was delighted I’d gatecrashed! This sort of insight was priceless.
‘Bronte is in our care now.’ Priya was firm.
‘Eden …?’ Bronte shook her head at him. ‘Please …’
‘Okay.’ Visibly trying to calm down, he said, ‘I should go.’ He flicked an angry look at us. ‘May I have privacy to kiss my wife?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s in rehab now.’ Christ, were they all in denial? You’d expect the clients to be, it was part of their condition. But when the very people who were checking them in were also at it, you’d seriously wonder.
Incredulous, he asked, ‘You think I’m going to slip her something as I kiss her?’
‘It’s happened!’ Moze, Priya, Brianna and I exclaimed, simultaneously.
In foul form, Eden Tollemarche departed.
It was time to start group and as Bronte was here, she might as well come with me.
‘The bloods that Nurse Moze took?’ I asked her. ‘Are they going to come back clean?’
‘I don’t know … I mean, I was detoxed, I haven’t taken anything since …’
‘Okay. Let’s go.’
In the Abbot’s Quarter, as Bronte sat down, Harlie gave her a thorough scan – and I could read her mind. A lash and brow tint, some red-cancelling primer followed by a decent coverage foundation. Maybe even a handful of hair extensions to give those poor, broken strands some body.
Bronte removed her jacket to reveal a T-shirt that said ‘I’m Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want To Come’.
‘Morning, all,’ I said. ‘As you can see, a new member has joined us. Bronte, would you like to introduce yourself?’
‘Um. Okay.’ In a low voice, she said, ‘My name’s Bronte. I’m …’ She cleared her throat. ‘… addicted to heroin. I was clean for over four years. Nine months ago I broke my ankle, got put on Vicodin and … relapsed.’
Chalkie was checking her out – the humongous ring, her slender, elegant limbs, all of it.
‘Nice T-shirt,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Bronte barely glanced at it. ‘It’s my daughter’s.’
‘You’ve kids?’
‘Three. A daughter, eighteen. Two sons, sixteen and thirteen.’
‘What age are you, Bronte?’ Dennis asked. ‘Yourself, like.’
‘Dennis!’ Giles hissed. ‘You crass oaf! You should know better than to ask.’
‘It’s okay.’ Bronte shrugged. ‘I’m forty-three.’
‘How do you make ends meet, Bronte?’ Chalkie asked. ‘Feed your kids? Pay your rent?’
‘So … my husband … It’s his money.’
‘What way does he … earn a crust?’
‘He – well, we run a farm.’
‘He’s a farmer?’ Troubled eyes roamed over her. ‘You don’t look like any farmer’s wife I’ve ever seen.’
‘How would you know?’ Giles rounded on Chalkie. ‘Have you ever left the, quote, “impoverished inner city”? You told us you wouldn’t sully your man-of-the-people lungs with the “oxygen of privilege”!’
‘Where’s your farm?’ Chalkie kept his eyes on Bronte.
‘County Meath.’
Dennis interjected. ‘How many acres?’ This was one of his areas of interest.
‘… Two thousand.’
‘Fuck!’ Chalkie almost levitated.
‘Is that a lot?’ Ella asked Dennis out of the side of her mouth.
‘’Tis fecken huge.’ Dennis leant towards Bronte. ‘That’s a fierce big amount of land ye have. Are ye dairy? Tillage? Mixed?’
‘… Most of it is leased. We breed horses.’
‘Horse-breeders?’ Chalkie was delighted. Here was a chance for real outrage. ‘Lady Bronte.’
‘Actually, I’m a viscountess –’
‘– you’re joking!’
‘Chalkie,’ I asked. ‘How relevant is any of this?’
‘If I was living in privilege,’ he spluttered, ‘because I’d stolen land from other people, the guilt would have me racing off to buy heroin. No wonder Lady fucking Bronte here –’
‘Lady fucking Kilsharvan,’ Bronte interrupted.
Dumbfounded by her arrogance, Chalkie swivelled to stare at her.
‘But there’s no need to use my title.’ Her tone was tart – but her smile was minxy.
29
‘Ella, you’re reading your life story,’ I said.
‘Sure!’ Perky as can be.
She’d been here a week now and, other than with Harlie, she was popular. In fairness, she put enough effort into making everyone love her. She was funny, kind and, even though one of her arms was still in a sling, she did her chores without much complaint.
A week of lectures, NA meetings and immersion with twenty other people who were at various stages in their recovery process meant that the erosion of her denial was already well under way. But writing and reading out her life story should move her on further.
Off she went. The youngest of three, her early years had been fine. Ella was a much-longed-for girl, so after having had two boys, her mother had doted on her. She’d liked school but not sports; there had been enough money but not loads; her dad was firm but fair; her brothers teased her but not too badly.
As with everyone, I’d asked Ella to relate happy and unhappy memories from her childhood. There were lots of happy stories – when she’d been snuggled up in bed, recovering from the chicken pox, being fed flat Seven-Up by her mum; a Christmas Eve when it snowed; the whole family going to London for her tenth birthday.
Yes, yes, lovely. I was impatient to hear the less happy stuff. Always far more telling. Finally we got there – the unhappiest time had been in her last year in primary school. ‘Over the summer, my periods had started and –’ She flicked a look at the men in the room and hesitated. ‘And my chest had got …’ She stopped and began again. ‘I’d started wearing a bra. My three friends wouldn’t hang out with me any more. They said I was showing off –’
‘That’s hard,’ I interrupted. ‘How did you cope?’
‘I, ah …’ Tears started to spill down her face. Shocked, she wiped them away. ‘God, I wasn’t expecting this … I just got through it. But I had to do everything on my own, get the bus by myself, eat my lunch … I never had a … an ally, I guess is the word. I never got used to it. It was a long year.’
‘You didn’t make new friends?’
She shook her head. ‘My ex-friends were bitching about me, saying they could smell period from me. Everyone kept away.’
‘Jez …’ Dennis looked faint.
‘What about afterwards?’ I asked.
‘When we started secondary school, everything was different anyway. Maybe everyone had caught up? A friend of my mum’s had a daughter in my class and we started hanging out. After a while things just got more normal.’
‘Did your ex-friends ever apologize?’
‘No.’
I’d picked up her hesitation. ‘But?’
‘One of them, we ended up being friends again, sort of. Like, there were five or six of us, hanging around together. She and I, we never talked about that year. I sort of … hated myself for not having it out with her. But at the time it was just easier to go along with things.’
‘Are you in touch now?’
‘Instagram. And only because I’m hoping something really, really shitty happens to her.’ She giggled, then stopped abruptly and scanned the faces in the room, wondering if she was being judged.
‘Did you learn anything from that year?’ I asked Ella. ‘Good or bad?’
She thought about it. ‘… Feeling safe isn’t real. It can be taken away with no warning. It doesn’t take much for a person to end up totally alone.’
She read on and it was all pretty tame: good results at school, a year spent travelling in Asia followed by three years in college. She moved to Dublin, got good jobs, met her boyfriend and her friend Naaz. Until the mugging which had set her on the path to addiction, her life had been close to perfect.
‘Your doctor told you that sleeping tablets must not be taken for longer than two weeks?’ I asked. (But I already knew. I rarely asked a question to which I didn’t already know the answer.)
‘But I was badly messed up after being …’ She dropped her head and whispered, ‘Attacked. I kept having flashbacks.’
‘Did you go for counselling?’
‘… Um … well, no. Counselling is expensive. And getting time off work to go, you know …’
‘Well, if you’re sacked – and you will be if you don’t get a handle on your addiction – you’ll have plenty of time.’
She looked devastated – then rallied. ‘I’ve been off them for ten days now, I can’t be addicted.’
Internally, I sighed. Every patient I’d ever met gave me some version of that. ‘Easy to be clean while you’re in here, Ella. Your every movement is monitored. It’s very different in the outside world, where you’ve stresses and pressures – and choices.’
‘But if I was addicted, wouldn’t I be craving them?’
Another internal sigh. ‘That word “craving” has a lot to answer for.’ People think that addicts rail around, weeping and pleading for their drug of choice. ‘Addiction isn’t just a physical thing, it’s emotional, it’s mental, it’s spiritual. Those are the aspects that drive almost every relapse, not a physical craving.’
She shrugged, not interested.
‘Tell me why Jonah, Naaz and Boyd said you were addicted.’
‘I think Jonah just wants to break up with me.’
‘So he said you were addicted to tablets and made you go to rehab? That’s a bit extreme.’
She shrugged. ‘Guys.’
‘And Naaz? What’s her reason?’
She squirmed. ‘There was a … moment, with her boyfriend. It was nothing. Just a … Seriously, it was nothing. But Naaz didn’t see it that way. She’s hella possessive of him.’
‘And Boyd’s reasons?’
Her discomfort worsened. ‘Boyd … I think he had … Sorry if this sounds whatever, but I think he wanted to be with me. And when I … wouldn’t, he decided to come after me.’
‘So he sexually harassed you at work? Because that’s a serious allegation.’
‘No,’ she gasped. ‘I wouldn’t say that. I just think he liked me – then he didn’t.’
‘Were you sleeping with Boyd?’
‘No!’
‘No?’
Better get him in here, get them all in.
While I’d been quizzing Ella, Trassa had started to cry. Giles’s chair was the nearest to the tissues and fistfuls were being passed from hand to hand like buckets of water in a medieval-town-on-fire drama.
‘Trassa, why are you crying?’
‘Because … because … I’m a very bad person. I can’t believe that I’ve saddled Ronan with a second mortgage and him with a young family.’
‘Okaaay?’
‘I did it to Keith too. And Michael, my eldest, he lent me fifteen grand to pay Collie Byrne another time and I never paid him back. It’s so much money,’ she gasped. ‘How did I not see?’
Michael, my eldest. Something twanged in me – I’d have to come back to it.
‘Did you not know how much Ronan had to borrow?’ Ella asked.
‘I did!’ Trassa turned a tear-stained face to Ella. ‘I did! But it didn’t bother me. I don’t know how it didn’t.’
When people emerged from denial, it wasn’t as if they suddenly remembered things they’d conveniently forgotten. The facts had always been there in plain sight, but the addict had managed to blur their importance. The details of Trassa’s addiction were the same as they’d always been, but for the first time she was seeing them for what they actually were. She was in shock.
‘I knew it was a lot of money,’ she said. ‘But my lads are educated, they have opportunities that I’d never had, they own their own houses. I knew they could afford it.’
