4 March 2005
‘How have you been, mate?’ one of the other NA regulars asks as we pull our orange chairs into position.
‘Getting there,’ I say.
He nods. ‘Yeah. It gets easier, mate.’ From what he’s said in meetings, he lived his twenties and thirties at double speed. He’s forty-ish now but looks a decade older, even though he’s been clean a couple of years. Cellular damage, presumably.
I know everything about his downfall, his regrets, his recovery. But he knows nothing about mine. I barely say a word at these meetings.
But despite my silence, I keep coming back. The sessions help me stay off the pills, which is the only thing I seem to be getting right.
‘Take a seat, guys. I’m Anya and I’m hosting today so let’s get Friday started.’
Anya runs through the rules – confidentiality, respect, non-judgemental listening, all the usual – and asks if anyone is new. A handful of people raise their hands.
‘There’s no pressure to speak yet, just listen in and if you’d like to contribute later in the meeting, we’d love to hear from you.’ Anya has the Brighton yoga vibe to a T: wiry limbs draped in grey marl, matching hair, a soulful expression. You’d never guess she used to shoot up in the old sewer entrance under West Pier, among the puddles of piss and seawater.
Of the newcomers, one of the men looks high-functioning, which is how I’d have described myself when I first came. Another guy has clearly travelled further along the road to oblivion. If I’d have seen him in the waiting room in A & E, I’d have nudged a colleague to get him triaged sooner rather than later.
And then there’s a woman with her back to me, spiky black hair cut into the nape of her neck, slim legs crossed at the ankle.
‘So, let’s kick off,’ Anya says. ‘Friday already. How has this week been for everyone?’
I let my mind and my eyes wander: up to the stained foam tiles on the ceiling, down to the double-glazed windows and the rain lashing against the glass.
At least while I’m here, I don’t have to put on a show. Finals are only weeks away and I pretend I am confident but it’s hard work. Mum is distant and cold. For a while, I thought it might be her lupus flaring up, but now I believe she simply can’t forgive me for almost losing Kerry.
Some days I’m not even sure I haven’t lost Kerry after all. She says the right things, encourages me, helps me with test questions, but when she doesn’t think I’m watching, her smile drops and her posture slumps and she looks so tired.
I owe it to them both to qualify. But the idea of what comes next is suffocating.
‘. . . anything to share?’
I drag my eyes away from the window and back to Anya, who is smiling at me.
‘Will they ever forgive me?’ I say.
Anya looks as surprised as I am that I’ve spoken. ‘Who?’
Everyone gawps at me, albeit in an empathetic way. I don’t want to share my innermost fears with these strangers. But who else am I meant to share them with?
‘My girlfriend. My mother.’
More silence. I know this is how it works: give the speaker the floor, let them take their time. ‘My girlfriend put everything on hold for my work and in return, I started using. Lying. Sometimes I think she must really hate me.’
‘Hate is a very strong word,’ Anya says. ‘What makes you think she feels that way?’
It’s nothing she’s done. At New Year, Kerry told me she was as determined as I am to try – really try – to make our relationship work and she surely wouldn’t have promised me that if she hated me. Yet as I picture her face, all I can see is unhappiness. Nothing I do or say seems to reach her. Today is her birthday, and I have bought flowers and the ingredients to cook her favourite mushroom risotto when she gets home from her shift.
Yet already I know I will see something in her eyes that tells me it’s not enough.
‘Because nothing’s turned out the way it was supposed to. We were meant to be high fliers, both of us. Instead, I’m a recovering addict and she’s miserable.’
‘You’re young,’ says the man who greeted me when I first arrived. ‘I don’t mean to patronize you but if your relationship doesn’t work out, there will be so many other chances.’
Except I don’t fantasize about other women. I fantasize about being alone, with no obligation to make anyone better.
There’s coffee after the session. I don’t usually hang around but talking about the situation at home has made me want to stay out a little longer.
‘You were brave.’
I turn towards the voice. It’s the woman, the new one with the cropped black hair. I have never seen eyes like hers: they look black, too, though I know it’s an optical illusion, the merging of iris and pupil in this dark room, against the bright white of the sclera.
‘You mean self-indulgent.’
‘No. I know what I meant. I could see that did not come easily.’ Her voice is low, accented. Italian maybe? I heard it when she spoke in the session. She didn’t say much: that she had moved to the city, was looking for a group.
‘Did you find this morning useful?’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugs, it’s very Gallic, very nonchalant, so perhaps she’s French. I can’t stop looking at her eyes, which dominate her angular face. No one would ever describe her as pretty. But still, she’s so striking that I feel she should be on a movie screen, not here, in real life.
‘Will you come back?’
She smiles for the first time. ‘Will you?’
‘I’m part of the furniture,’ I say.
She’s older than me, I think, but not much. I have this sudden urge to know her story, what she struggles with and why she’s here right now, ready to make a change.
But even thinking that feels like I’m being disloyal to Kerry.
‘Well, until next time.’ She finishes her coffee, throws the cup in the bin and walks out of the conference room.
I realize I never asked her name, and I have no way of knowing if I’ll ever see her again.
I am stirring the risotto and sipping wine – Kerry and I have agreed that alcohol is not off-limits for me – when I hear the snap of the letterbox and the whisper of something landing on the mat.
It’s another card, in a silver envelope. The post came already this morning, a stack of birthday greetings ready for Kerry to open when she gets home from work.
I pick up the card. No stamp, but properly addressed. I open the front door and see a figure sprinting off into the twilight, as though they’ve just lobbed a grenade into the bungalow.
When I recognize him, an irrational irritation takes hold and I step out of my house.
‘Oi!’ I call out. He doesn’t look back, so I ram the card into my pocket and run after him. ‘Oi, Joel Greenaway, wait!’
Where’s it coming from, this roiling, acidic sensation in my abdomen? He’s only sending a card to the person who helped save his life.
Isn’t he?
The last time I saw him, the final time he sold me pills, he was so wrecked I wasn’t sure he’d survive the summer.
I catch him up. Not only has he survived, he looks well. It’s more than his clear skin and the heft of his chest under a show-off triathlon T-shirt. There is a certainty about him that I envy far more than his looks.
‘What is this?’ I hold up the card.
‘A birthday card, that’s all. It’s today, right?’
My fingers burn where they’re in contact with the envelope. It’s heavier than a card should be and there is something about Joel’s eyes as they dart from my face towards my hands and back again that makes me feel like it contains a threat.
I could open it now in front of him. Or take it home and give it to Kerry at the end of her shift, watch her as she reads, ask her to show me whatever he’s written.
‘Look inside, if you don’t believe me,’ he says.
It’s not sealed. I can read it and put it back, and Kerry won’t know. But he’ll know and that would give him power over our relationship.
Except he’s always had power, hasn’t he? Since millennium night, Joel has come between Kerry and me.
And then there was Marilyn’s wedding. But that was just a drunken kiss, before Kerry and I were even engaged. Wasn’t it? My head tells me she wouldn’t cheat, but my heart . . .
What do hearts know? Nothing. The brain is the processing organ, and my brain can overcome this disproportionate response to such a trivial event. I take three deep breaths. Yes, they kissed, years ago. But it can’t have meant anything, or she’d never have chosen me. Despite all the ways I let her down, she always came back.
‘Nice of you to remember, after so long.’
‘Oh, you don’t tend to forget that sort of thing. You both OK? And your mum?’
‘Mum’s fine. I’m almost at the end of med school but Kerry will be next. It was always the plan, I don’t know if you recall, that we’d both get to be doctors? Well, it’s finally happening.’ I’m blathering now. ‘How about you?’
He shrugs. ‘All right. Not a doctor or anything, obviously, but I’m taking a course to become a personal trainer.’
‘Ah, that explains the muscles. And the triathlon thing.’ I gesture at his T-shirt.
‘She told you?’ His voice is quiet.
I stare at him. ‘Told me what?’
Everything freezes: Joel, under the streetlamp, me in my stupid kitchen apron. Ridiculously, it makes me think of the moments before a duel. Are we fighting for Kerry?
He shrugs. ‘I bumped into her in town a while back, told her about my course. I thought she might have mentioned it. She was pleased, considering how I could have ended up. A vegetable. Worse.’ It’s like he’s deliberately putting himself down now.
‘Hope it works out for you. I must go. Got something on the hob.’
I turn back, jog towards the bungalow, through the door I left wide open. I place the card in the middle of the pile on the dining table. There’s a smell of burned rice in the kitchen and I have to jab the wooden spoon against the bits of risotto that have stuck to the bottom of the pan.
An hour before Kerry gets home. Enough time for me to make the risotto again? Yes. I won’t let some blast from the past spoil our celebration meal. I tip the congealed rice into the kitchen bin, fill the pan with soap and water, scrub away the remnants and measure out another lot of ingredients.
Enough.
The new rice starts to bubble but it still doesn’t feel right. Bloody Joel turning up like that has brought up all those bad feelings from the night on the Lawns.
Well, I won’t have it. I snatch the silver card from the pile and bury it in the burned risotto, before taking the bag out to the wheelie bin outside, tying knot after knot in the top.
‘Hello, my name is Dr Palmer and I understand you are having some problems with your testicles.’
Kerry allows herself a sly smile and stretches out on the sofa. She’s been quiet since last night, though I know she enjoyed the risotto. I did the right thing, making it again. Afterwards, I watched her as she worked her way through the pile of cards, but she obviously wasn’t expecting to get one from Joel.
‘Oh, yes, doctor. The most awful trouble with my crown jewels.’ Testing me with the worst scenarios I might get in my practical exams always cheers her up.
I give her a pained look. ‘Seriously, Kerry?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘It’s Mr Plum to you.’ But her teasing is gentle. ‘Doctor?’ She nudges me. ‘I’m waiting and the throbbing is giving me so much gyp.’
‘OK. I’ll need to examine you, is that all right, Mr Plum? And I am going to invite someone else to sit in the room for the examination.’
‘As you wish, doctor.’ She reaches for the wine glass and takes a sip. Turns back into Kerry. ‘All right, we’ve got a chaperone with us to see Mr Plum’s gonads. What do you do now?’
As I describe the process I’d follow during examination, she tells me what I will find, based on the book of scenarios she’s working from. I try to think about Mr Plum’s pretend symptoms instead of the birthday card that still sits in the bin outside, waiting for the rubbish collection tomorrow.
‘So what you’re going to see is testicles that look like a bag of worms. Which is nice. What’s your diagnosis?’
I close my eyes, trying to imagine the picture from textbooks, as I’ve never seen this in real life. ‘If I ask you to lie down, does the appearance change?’
‘Good call. It does. What else?’
‘Um . . . how old are you, Mr Plum?’
‘I’m sixty-one.’
I diagnose varicoceles and suggest that radiotherapy is likely to be the best treatment if confirmed.
Kerry nods. ‘Is that all?’ She looks at me steadily.
I close my eyes. What else could it be, at this age? Cancer? I try to picture the vessels and tracts and imagine what else might be lurking. ‘I think we’d also want to get him tests to rule out invasive renal cell carcinoma . . .?’ My voice rises uncertainly.
She closes the book and drops it onto the carpet. ‘You’ve passed.’
‘Thanks to you. You’re going to be the top of the class once you get to medical school.’
Her smile tightens and for the first time, I notice black rings around her eyes. What am I not seeing? For diagnoses, we have these endless mnemonics – from DR GERM for abdominal exams to SOCRATES for evaluating pain.
If only there was one to diagnose the problem in an ailing relationship.
‘Tim?’
When I look up at Kerry, the blush the wine had given her cheeks seems to have disappeared.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she says. ‘A decision I’ve made.’
Is it about Joel? Was that unsettled feeling I had something I should have analysed further?
‘Yes?’
‘I’m going to defer my med school application for the year. Well, I already have. It’s nothing to worry about. I just think that with all the uncertainty around which deanery you’re going to, it might be easier for the three of us if we have an extra year to get ourselves organized, save up a bit of spare cash.’
I stare at her. Of all the things I was expecting her to say, it wasn’t this. ‘But you worked like crazy to get your A levels so you could start this September. I don’t get it.’
She stands up. ‘It makes perfect sense to me. Anyway, there’s no point arguing. It’s done. Another year is neither here nor there, really, is it?’
As she leaves the room, I am certain I am missing something. Maybe it relates to Joel, and his card, and whatever secrets it contained. Or could she have lost her nerve about medicine? No. Not Kerry. What I do know is that if Kerry’s decided not to tell me, I have no chance of working out what it is.
But if it was definitely over between us, she would have said so. I have to cling to that.