I came back to months of heavy drinking. Jason tried to get me sober, but it was much easier to drown my shame and sorrow in alcohol. We lost touch, although he would check in every few months, leave a message, send a text.
I lost my job when a new editor came on board, a new editor who didn’t look so kindly on the long, liquid lunches. Nor did he see the point of separate features and women’s desks. He consolidated, and two of us were left without a job. Everyone there felt terrible, and as a result loaded me up with freelance work. I made more money freelance than I had ever made on staff.
And then, for a while, I stopped drinking. I went to meetings. I took it seriously, and found Jason again, at a meeting, naturally. This time, because I was sober, had been sober for over a year, we found ourselves continuing what we had so nearly started first time around.
From being worthless and awful and depressing as hell, my life turned around. I woke up in the morning looking forward to the day. I woke up feeling alive, energetic, looking forward to whatever the day might bring instead of wanting to stay in bed with the covers over my head, tired, hungover, and dreading doing it all over again.
I had work, happiness, and a boyfriend! Not a handy shag or a drunken conquest, but an actual boyfriend who loved me and treated me well and understood me, for who better to understand an addict than another addict himself.
I was happy, peaceful, filled with hope. Jason’s recovery was so inspiring to me. We, as a couple, were so inspiring. We did, eventually, find our own meetings, separately, but that first meeting, in Paddington, was one we always went to together, and even though we didn’t sit together, and if you didn’t know we were together you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, everyone knew. We were the couple that all the singles aspired to be.
We were happy. Happy enough that one weekend we drove up to Sissinghurst, to see the famous gardens, and in the white garden Jason sank to his knees and pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and my heart exploded with excitement and disbelief as he asked me to marry him.
We married at the town hall on Marylebone Road, and the room was packed, with my friends from the media, and old friends of us both, and tons and tons of people we knew from meetings.
For a while, life was better than I could ever have imagined. Settled, calm, peaceful. I worked my program, we both did, and I knew that I would never go back to drinking again. It actually amazed me, that I could go to a party where the first thing someone would do would be to offer me a glass of wine, and not only could I decline, I could continue a conversation with someone without thinking about that glass of wine, without hearing it whispering my name, over and over, until I had no choice but to give in.
It felt like a miracle, that for the first time in my life the drink wasn’t calling me. We even kept wine at home, for when friends came over. Not a lot, but a couple of bottles of red and white in the garage, just in case we needed it, which we rarely did.
I didn’t miss it. As long as I kept going to meetings, kept doing what I needed to do to keep sober, it seemed that alcohol wasn’t a part of my life anymore, and I was certain it wouldn’t ever be again. The pink cloud of sobriety.
Oh, how little I knew.
When Annie was born, life changed again. I remember, clearly, the night I thought it would be fine to have just one glass of wine. I could do it again, I thought. All these years of being fine meant that I was cured. Also, I hadn’t been going to meetings for a while. Jason still went, but I was so busy with Annie, and she had been such a colicky, difficult baby it was all-consuming.
I think she was four, and it had been a particularly bad day. She had thrown a massive tantrum in Wagamama, where I was meeting friends for lunch. It was the first grown-up lunch in a nice restaurant I had had in ages, and I was really excited, and