“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