Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,61

might reveal. Although she had become proficient at lying through necessity, she wasn’t very good at keeping her eyes neutral – she had always had expressive eyes, one of her best features according to her parents.

She approached the bed slowly and Dale reached out a hand to grasp one of hers in his.

“Hey, baby – am I glad you’re here! The nurses are friendly and all but the food.... ugh!”

Elise smiled – that old joke again. She happened to know that he had been fed very well whilst enjoying his short stay courtesy of the NHS but she was grateful at his attempt to lighten the mood. Maybe he was nervous about coming home too, given what he had done to land himself here in the first place.

Elise squeezed his hand in return and then went off to find the nurse to make sure that he was all signed out and ready to go. She wondered how Cole was feeling today – she hadn’t seen him since Saturday morning’s ‘revelation’ and she had not had opportunity to speak to him either. She hoped that he was feeling slightly better now and that he had come to some conclusions about the direction in which his life was heading. Perhaps she would suggest lunch at work tomorrow; then they could have a proper catch up.

Completing all the necessary paperwork with the nurse, she returned to Dale’s bed and proceeded to help him out of the ward and down the stairs to the car park. When they reached her car door, she opened it with the key – her car had the luxury of central locking, just not a remote control, so she still had to use her key to get in and out. It was not an issue for her at all as she was rather attached to her car but Dale always insisted it was a death trap and it was about time she upgraded to something more modern. Ever the image-conscious man. But Dale no longer did the finances so he didn’t have a clue about their money. He spent it mainly on booze and that was about it. On one occasion when he had been nagging her about her car, she had tried to explain their situation to him and suggested that if he cut back on his drinking, they would be able to afford other things – maybe even a holiday. He had just looked at her as if she had asked him to have his right leg amputated and that had been the end of that particular conversation.

Apart from all the violence that his drinking seemed to bring on, Elise was also worried about the general effect it was having on his health. She didn’t consider him to be an alcoholic as there were days when he didn’t drink at all – the problem was that he was a binge drinker, particularly at weekends and she knew from research that, in many respects, that was the worst type of drinker. Overloading his system continually was definitely not doing him any good but as far as he was concerned he didn’t have a problem and no amount of nagging from her would change his mind. She had rather hoped that this stay in the hospital would show up some damage that might force him to re-evaluate but unfortunately for her, the tests had only shown up minor damage to his liver; perhaps because this kind of drinking hadn’t been going on for all that long, relatively speaking. Dale had just dismissed what the doctors had found, saying that he could give up whenever he wanted to and when he did, his liver would get better. In his world, it was as simple as that.

Exiting the hospital car park Elise was surprised to notice that Dale was in a pensive mood – he was usually so loud and in control that pensive just wasn’t in his repertoire – perhaps the hospital stay had had some effect?

“You OK?” she asked.

“Yeah babe, I’m fine – now. Some of the cuts still hurt like a bitch but physically I’m fine.” he paused as if wondering whether to continue.

“Elise?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking. The fact that I lost control so completely scared me – I still can’t remember exactly what happened, but I’ve had a lot of time to think and I reckon you’re right. I need to cut down on my drinking; maybe even stop altogether for a while and see how I get