Again, Rachel, page 35
‘Rachel, the break-up with Sienna hit me right here.’ He touched his chest. ‘The crazy drinking, that out-of-control stuff …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not who I am.’
Again, I could have laughed. If only he knew what a cliché he was. Hopefully he would stay long enough to find out.
63
The door of the Huntsman opened and there was Luke, his silhouette – height, hair, shoulders – unmistakeable. He scanned the room, his eyes searching, then made his way through the clusters of chairs and sofas.
Standing over me, he unzipped his leather jacket, shrugged it off his shoulders and threw it on a seat. ‘You okay for a drink?’
I indicated my water and he strode to the bar, returning soon after with a pint of something. Clattering it onto the table he said, ‘So. I left you?’
His mood? Not overtly angry. But far from friendly.
‘You know you did.’
‘And you left me. We left each other.’
‘I don’t really –’
‘Can you just let me tell it from my side?’ He paused, his eyes intent on me. ‘Please?’
It was the please that did it. ‘Okay.’ But I was full of dread.
‘So. It started when you said you were awake all night every night. But I wasn’t sleeping so well myself, either. I used to check on you. A lot of the time you were asleep.’
I stared at him, wondering why he would say this.
‘When you told me Carlotta had given you enough pills for five nights, that was the last time you were honest with me.’
‘Wait –’
‘You, wait.’ There was a flash of anger. ‘You got another prescription from her and more from at least two other doctors and not only did you not tell me but when I asked you straight out, you lied.’
‘Hold on, Luke.’ He was trying to distort the facts. ‘I was going insane from lack of sleep. A doctor prescribed me sleeping tablets. But you were so against me taking anything, ever, that the only solution was to keep the truth from you.’
‘“Keep the truth” from me? That’s just a fancy way of saying you lied. As soon as you started doing it in secret, you were in trouble. You know that. You’re the authority on addiction.’
‘It was only secret because you’d have stopped me – and, Luke, I needed them.’
‘Would you listen to yourself. If a client told you that, you’d reef them out of it. You didn’t need them, you wanted them –’
‘You’re wrong. I –’
‘Can you imagine how scared I was? Our baby had died and now I was losing you. When you said you’d taken nothing’ – he bit out the next words – ‘I. Can. Not. Tell. You how much I wanted to believe you. But I’d been there with you before, back in the day. I knew the signs. Soon after you started on those tablets again, you were taking more than you should. And during the day as well as bedtime. And in the middle of the night. But whenever I asked, you lied.’
I was trying hard to hold on to what I knew to be true. Admittedly, I had taken more than the prescribed amount, and there had been mornings when the pain of a day without my baby was too much. But taking the tablets had always been a choice. I was always in control.
Luke’s version was a distortion. But the solid ground of my conviction was slipping from beneath my feet and I was confused.
‘One evening you were completely bombed, it was fucking horrible, you were slurring and stumbling –’
No. ‘Sometimes I was groggy when I woke up –’
‘It was worse than that. So I went through the apartment and found pills hidden everywhere. Rachel …’
I remembered and even now it made me feel sick. I’d woken to find an array of Ambien laid out on the kitchen counter and Luke pacing in a cold fury.
‘In the box of teabags.’ He’d held up two tablets. Pointing at others, ‘In the freezer. In your coat pocket. Sellotaped to the back of those photos. Have I missed any?’
‘The rice, the basmati rice.’ I rummaged until I found the four pills, then surrendered them to him.
‘That’s it?’ he asked. ‘That’s all?’
I nodded. ‘That’s all. Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I love you, I’m so sorry.’
He’d pulled me onto his lap, then I buried my face in his neck and gave in to the despair. I cried for our baby dying and me being a worthless fuck-up and the horrible suspicion that I was losing everything.
I’d thought my essential brokenness had healed years earlier – how had I ended up back here again?
‘It’s okay,’ he’d murmured, kissing my hair. ‘It’s okay.’
But it wasn’t okay. Because I hadn’t told him about the ones stashed in the lid of my foundation bottle or in the jar of folic acid or at the back of the drawer with all the old chargers. He didn’t understand, he’d never understand because the only person who could get me through this hell was me.
‘That day,’ he reminded me, ‘you cried in my arms and swore you’d stop. But you didn’t. No wonder you were so good in the escape room with Quin – you knew how to find things because you know how to hide them!’
That rocked me to my core. It was such a mad way of looking at things and maybe … Luke wasn’t wrong?
I guess it explained why he had been so weird and alert when Quin had praised my escape-room skills.
‘You know I’m right,’ Luke said. ‘I can see it in you.’
‘No … not at all … you don’t see it.’ But I was scared – I’d had a brief insight that there were two ways of looking at one situation. In the first, my baby had died, my grief was temporarily unbearable and I needed to sleep. The other was that I was an addict who had used her symptoms to legitimately get her hands on sleeping tablets – and then took more than she should have.
Could both be true?
‘Luke, I … I don’t know what to think. I’m … It’s all a bit much … I’m scared.’
He watched me carefully. ‘You’ll be okay.’ He sounded definite about this. ‘Take some time. Let all of this settle.’
‘Luke … listen. I’d better go home. I need to …’
‘Sure. Of course. But should you be on your own? Will Quin be there?’
‘He’s in New Mexico. I’ll be fine, though.’
But as we walked towards the door, my sanity returned. After everything he’d done, Luke had somehow managed to convince me – briefly – that I was entirely to blame.
‘Luke?’
Outside in the indigo night, he towered over me.
‘Luke.’ Now I was angry. ‘You can’t put all the blame on me.’
He blinked. ‘Don’t you get it?’ He looked shocked. ‘I spent nearly six months trying to help you to quit. There was literally nothing else I could do. I had to leave.’
‘… That wasn’t all you did.’
There was a pause that went on for too long. I watched understanding – and something else, something less pleasant – arrive in his eyes. ‘You mean Mia?’
I nodded.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I nearly forgot. I slept with Mia.’
I gulped. At the time he had denied it – denied it again and again. But I’d always had my suspicions. To have it confirmed – even six years later – was excruciating.
He lowered his face to mine, strands of his hair brushing my skin. ‘Fuck you, Rachel,’ he said. ‘Fuck you.’
Wheeling away from me, he swung across the tarmac, vaulted onto his bike and, with the angry roar of an engine, drove off into the night.
64
Shakily, I leant against my car. Six years ago, Luke had sworn nothing was going on with Mia. He’d full on gaslit me and knowing now that I was right was no comfort.
This shouldn’t have made things worse. Mia or no Mia, he’d still left me. He’d still spent several years blanking me.
And even so, I’d survived; I’d made a new life and was happy with Quin. Whatever Luke and Mia had got up to back then shouldn’t matter now. But, stupidly, it did.
I checked the time. God Almighty, it was only twenty past nine – how was it still so early when so much had happened? Quin was on a plane and Nola was at the opera so I rang Claire. ‘On my way,’ she said. ‘Be with you in ten.’
Claire’s ‘ten’ was closer to twenty-five when she finally hurtled into the car park. Stopping with a skid of gravel, she ordered, ‘Get in. I’ll drop you back later.’
She had a lot of make-up on – was she wearing lashes? – and a black leather dress.
‘It’s vegan,’ she said. ‘My dress. Just in case you were thinking of schooling me.’
‘… I wasn’t. But … you’re looking very glossy for a Wednesday night, at home, doing nothing.’
‘Just how I roll, babes.’
She drove like she did everything – fast and focused. But when the turn-off for her house came up, she kept on going.
‘What’s going on?’ I cried. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Town. The club. Someplace quiet to talk.’
Her house was really that noisy? Hmmm …
Then my phone began ringing and both of us leapt with shock.
‘Oh my God!’ Claire said. ‘Who’s dead?’
‘No one. It’s Luke.’ I hit decline.
‘He rings? Who rings when it’s not a fatality! Total Luddite.’ Then, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sending a text.’ I clicked out, Stop calling me.
Then a second one: Never call me again.
‘Now I’m blocking his number. See how he likes it.’ I took a bitter pleasure in doing what he’d done to me, then threw my phone back in my bag.
‘So. Tell me,’ Claire said when we were in a plush booth, in a low-lit lounge. Then, ‘Large Ardbeg,’ she rattled off to the hot, beardy waiter. ‘In a warmed glass. Just-out-of-the-dishwasher warm. And my sister here will have a –’
‘– glass of tap water,’ I said.
‘No, you won’t.’ Claire looked disgusted. ‘She’ll have a Silver Mountain.
‘It’s mineral water,’ she informed me when the young man had departed. ‘Horrendously expensive. So, go on, tell me.’
‘I was right about Mia.’
‘Oh, babes.’ She clenched my hand. ‘I’m so sorry. The fucking fucker!’
‘But he tried to make it my fault. Said that I was out of my head on sleeping tablets the whole time.’
‘So what if you were?’
‘Yeah, but I wasn’t.’
‘But who’d blame you?’
Wait, though. This was confusing. ‘Claire. Remember after he left me? And you came to New York? How was I?’
‘In absolute bits.’
‘But was I … coherent? I mean, did I seem … you know, like I’d been taking sleeping pills?’
‘Oh God, yeah.’
‘I don’t just mean at night –’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, you were taking them round the clock. But your baby had died, your husband had left you. Wouldn’t anyone?’
Oh. Kay.
‘He was the worst,’ she mused. ‘He used to ring me – this was before he left you – complaining about you taking too many tablets. And not just me, he called Anna, Brigit, your friend Nola.’
‘I remember.’ Because soon after Luke rang the person, they then rang me and I’d have the job of putting them right. ‘You know Luke,’ I’d say. ‘Mr Straight Arrow, freaks out over me taking literal aspirin.’
‘Until then,’ Claire said, ‘I never knew he was so judgy.’
In the silence that followed, I heard myself ask, ‘After he’d left me, were you ever … worried about me?’
‘Of course! Your baby had died, your –’
‘I mean, worried that as well as the sleepers, I might … slip back into taking other drugs?’
‘Or that you’d overdose? I mean, yes, but we talked about it. You explained.’
‘What did I say?’
‘That you knew everything there was to know about addiction. That you needed the Ambien until the worst pain about Yara had passed, then you could stop. And then, what – a month or two later? – you did stop. Point proven. Oh, would you look at who it is! Piet! Hi!’
Ah, for the love of feck! Piet the Swinger, here obviously by appointment.
Claire hopped up and she and Piet kissed on the cheek, then exchanged a smouldering, silent stare.
Eventually Claire remembered that I was there. ‘… Ah, you know Rachel? My sister?’
And cover story, I wanted to say.
Poor Adam at home, thinking his wife was out ministering to the needy. When, in fact, his wife had kidnapped the needy, whisking them to a members’ club, a thirty-euro taxi journey away from their car, to provide a paper-thin veneer of plausibility for a meet with a slightly thuggish, shaven-headed, sexy-in-a-sinister-way man.
By way of a greeting, all Piet got from me was a smile-free rise of my chin. For a moment he seemed to be considering coming in for a double kiss but I killed it with a look.
It wasn’t that I was pissed off with Claire – I mean, Claire was Claire, great in countless ways but this stunt was straight from her playbook. The problem was that far too much was going on in my head. I simply wasn’t able to ignore the simmering sexual tension and soldier on with the production of small talk.
I managed to endure almost seven minutes of the bullshit before I left and got a taxi back to my car.
65
Thursday morning dawned bright and blue. On my drive to work, clumps of yellow daffodils blew in the breeze and newborn lambs were literally springing in the fields. The world looked sparkly clean and hopeful – but my head was dark.
So much had happened last night and the worst thing, the most worrying, was Claire saying I’d been taking tablets day and night. I mean, yes, I had – for a very good reason. But for the first time I could see things from Luke’s perspective: I’d been taking sleeping tablets, more than the prescribed amount and at the wrong times.
I saw my side and I saw Luke’s side.
I was in the right, but maybe he hadn’t been in the wrong?
Then I remembered Mia and changed my mind. He had definitely been in the wrong.
That whole episode had been horrible. The first inklings had come late one night, when Luke sauntered in home, giving off an unusually defiant energy.
‘Where were you?’ I asked.
‘With Mia.’
‘Mia?’ That was a surprise. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Me and Mia?’ He swung off to the kitchen and, uneasily, I followed. With an insolent smile over his shoulder, he said, ‘Talking.’
‘Talking?’ I was startled.
He’d got a block of cheese from the fridge, then slapped a couple of slices of bread on a plate.
‘You and Mia were talking?’
He looked up from the sandwich he was making, stared me in the eye, literally stuck his tongue in his cheek and said, ‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘What are you … Luke?’ What was he telling me? ‘Is there something going on? With Mia and you?’
His giddy mood of mutiny vanished. ‘No.’
But it wasn’t long after that I saw them together – staring into each other’s eyes, Mia tenderly stroking Luke’s hand, neither of them even pretending to hide it. I almost vomited in the street.
When I’d called him on it, Luke had looked me in the eye and sworn that nothing was going on. I hadn’t been sure whether or not he was telling the truth. For the longest time, even years after we’d split up, I’d flip-flopped back and forth over the line, shifting from believing him to hating him. The combination of humiliation, grief and doubt meant it was the one thing about my marriage that I’d never told Quin.
And last night, I’d finally got the truth.
At work, I stared out of the office window, worrying that Caleb, Harlie’s ex, might not show. It had been such a triumph to have persuaded him in here and if he let me down – hold on! Someone was walking up the long drive; please God, let this be him.
Even from a distance, his clothes looked ridiculously fashionable, from his bang-on-trend Harris-tweed peacoat to the four inches of bare ankle between the bottom of his trousers and the start of his shoes.
In the entrance hall I met him as he shouldered the door open. He was huge.
‘Rachel?’ His smile was nervous.
Such grooming! His eyebrows were boy-band tidy, his teeth were dazzlingly white and his hair obviously got a lot of love. So much in common with Harlie.
In the drawing room he refused tea and biscuits. ‘I have this.’ He indicated his black Myprotein shaker. His hands trembled. ‘It’s good she’s in here.’ He was talking too fast. ‘It’s been a nightmare, though. It all got so dark, so fast.’
‘Save it for when we’re in the room.’ I felt desperately sorry for him.
He stood up. ‘Can we start? I just want to get it done.’
When we walked in, everyone stared, wondering who this good-looking man belonged to.
Lowry Cooke – who’d obviously just understood what was going down – was gleeful and alert, practically rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can. Wait until Sienna, his ex-girlfriend, was here to spill the beans on his antics!
‘So, shithead?’ Harlie said to Caleb. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Caleb was waxy with pallor. ‘Your ma told me,’ he stuttered. ‘I wanted to help.’
‘I don’t want your help.’
‘Harlie …’ I silenced her with a look.
Caleb took his chair. ‘Can I …?’ he asked, and began removing his jacket, revealing huge shoulders and bulky biceps which strained against his sleeves. We were all rapt.
Caleb was objectively hot, but his oversized biceps made me sad. It was bad enough that women angsted about all the ways their bodies were wrong. But now it seemed that the young men were getting in on the act, going to the gym, living on raw eggs and boring on about ketosis, God love them.
‘I’m Harlie’s ex-husband,’ Caleb said. ‘We’re still married, but separated –’
