LATE AUGUST
Caroline
‘Wine?’ Caroline pushed the bottle along the work surface in the galley kitchen with a wooden spoon. She didn’t want to touch it. This was some sort of sick joke, wasn’t it? She read the note: ‘…someone with whom to share it.’ Ha bloody ha! Caroline had no one, never mind someone with whom to share a bottle of what looked like very excellent – 2007 – Rioja. Caroline preferred white wine, but red would do. Or rosé at a push. Or would have done. But not now. Now, Caroline was giving all that up. Now she’d lost her husband, her son, her job. She was just about holding on to her flat but after this short – hopefully drying out – holiday she would either have to go on benefits to pay the rent or find a job.
Belle, Chloe and Emily. Who were they? Three friends on holiday having a jolly, wine-fuelled time? Or sisters maybe? People who had a future anyway, Caroline decided. She also decided she hated them in that moment, whoever they were.
‘And you are feeling monumentally sorry for yourself,’ she told her image in the tiny mirror on the wall above the work station in the galley kitchen of 23 The Strand. A microwave, a two-hob cooker, electric kettle, toaster. Racks of mugs and plates and bowls hanging from the wall. Four of each. She slid open the drawer and found four of every category of cutlery, plus serving spoons. A door underneath the sink had a little sign on it – Saucepans.
‘As if I’m going to cook!’ Caroline said. She used the wooden spoon to slide the bottle of wine towards her again. ‘But maybe just one glass?’
‘I think you know what’s coming, Caroline,’ Mr Brewer – the manager of the bank where Caroline had worked for twenty-four years, apart from six months off when she’d had her son, Luke – said. ‘We’re going to have to let you go. You’ve been late for work one too many times, drunk alcohol while on duty one too many times, been unreliable one too many times, made too many errors in your work. Your employment here ends as of now and your pension is in question at this moment in time. Here it is, all in writing.’ Mr Brewer thrust an envelope towards Caroline. ‘Get help.’
Caroline shivered, remembering every word Mr Brewer had said and the contempt in his eyes. We’re going to have to let you go. He’d made it sound as though he were giving her a prize for something, not shattering her life, her potential for getting another job torn to shreds. She was never going to get a reference from him, was she?
Christ, but Caroline had needed a drink then more than ever. She had a small bottle that fitted in her handbag… just enough for one large glass but who the heck could only have one glass? She almost took it out and drank it in front of him but something in her made her stop. She knew she’d have to run the gamut of her fellow workers who just had to know why she’d been called into Mr Brewer’s office so early in the day. She knew they’d all be pretending to study the computer screens or papers in front of them, or be interested in whatever whoever was on the telephone line was saying, but they would all be watching her. Waiting for her to fall over, or bump into something. Slur her words.
Caroline had walked through the open-plan office, head held high, looking neither left nor right. No one spoke, called out ‘Bye’, or ‘Good luck’ or anything. They were probably all thinking ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ or some other horrible thing. Fuck off, perhaps? She’d said that to Danny when he’d approached her a few weeks before, told her he knew she had a problem and understood and could he help. What a bloody know-all. He’d only just started working at this branch and it seemed he had the nerve to confront her.
‘When I want your opinion on my life, I’ll ask for it,’ Caroline had said. ‘Fuck off!’
She’d been washing her coffee mug in the sink in the staff kitchen – coffee into which she’d poured a teensy tot of brandy, just to get her through to lunchtime. She didn’t think Danny had noticed because she was so adept at sneaking it in these days after years of practice, but perhaps he had.
Danny had seemed unabashed at her spirited response, and her bad language.
‘Just saying,’ he said, ‘that more than a few in here told me about you before I’d even met you. I don’t listen to hearsay, but now I know they…’
‘…were being bitchy. Bet it was the girls who told you.’
‘Some, yes, but a couple of the men as well. But I’d still have known. Like I said, if I can help…’
‘Fuck off,’ Caroline said again.
‘Fuck off?’ Danny had repeated. ‘I would if I had anyone to fuck with.’ Danny had grinned at her, not shocked at all by her words. ‘But here’s a tip for you – ditch the brandy and drink vodka instead. No smell. It’ll get people off your back, stop them sniffing around you.’
Caroline whirled round.
‘You too?’
‘Nope. And that’s all I’m saying. But anyone with half an eye can see you need a friend around here…’
‘You’re young enough to be my son!’
‘True, but I didn’t mean that sort of friend if – to borrow your terminology – it’s a fucking friend you’re thinking about.’
Caroline had stared at him, stunned at how forthright he was. She was embarrassed now that he might have thought she thought he was coming on to her. She’d never met anyone quite like him and wondered what secrets he might be hiding that had made him say what he had.
But before Caroline could come up with some sort of retort, Danny said: ‘Now then, tell me, which of those girls downstairs would oblige me with a fuck, seeing as you recommend it?’
Caroline and Danny found themselves on the same tea-break rota a few times after that but the conversation they’d had around alcohol was never mentioned. Caroline had taken his tip, though, and it was vodka she slipped into her coffee now when no one was looking. It was good to be drawn into the conversation when Danny was there, but if he wasn’t, well, she was used to being ignored by the rest of the staff.
But that day, when Caroline had walked out, she’d paused at the door and looked back quickly over her shoulder. All heads jerked to look back down at what they’d been doing, instead of at her as they had been. Only Danny had held her gaze, waggling fingers at her, a lips-pressed-together smile. Wishing her well in the only way he could? That finger waggle and the smile had brought tears to Caroline’s eyes. So unexpected. So undeserved.
‘Well, that was then and this is now,’ Caroline said to her reflection. God, but she looked terrible. The whites of her eyes, as she leaned closer for a better look, had a yellowish tinge to them. The skin on her cheeks and across her forehead was flaking off, like some sort of suntan that had started to peel off except that Caroline never sunbathed. Well, she might now, now she was at the seaside.
It was Caroline’s GP who’d suggested she get right away from everything familiar.
‘I expect,’ Dr Shaw had said, ‘you could find your way to the Cork and Bottle or the York Inn from your flat blindfolded.’
‘And all the other pubs in between,’ Caroline had said.
‘Quite. If you’re in unfamiliar territory it will be harder to find that comfortable niche in which to drink, where people know you and encourage you to drink more… perhaps more than you really want.’ There had been the hint of a question in the doctor’s voice at the end of her sentence.
Yes, she had it right there. How many times had Caroline told herself she would stop at two glasses of Chardonnay only to go to the loo and come back to find someone had bought her another, placing it where she’d been sitting, her coat draped on the back of the seat? Dr Shaw had been sympathetic enough, and had run all the blood tests to check on her liver – which was just about holding up, thank goodness – but she had no idea really how hard it was going to be. To Caroline, the doctor looked younger than her own son, Luke, who was twenty-six and hadn’t spoken to her for the past five years.
Luke? Not only had he not spoken to her, she hadn’t seen him either, not since her divorce from Luke’s dad, Evan. Luke had taken sides, and Caroline couldn’t blame him for that. She’d embarrassed him in front of his friends one too many times, been sick in public one too many times, forgotten his birthday because she was out of it on drink one too many times, and his fiancée, Sophie, had dumped him because of her. It had reached her on the grapevine that Luke was getting married at the end of the year. Sophie or someone else? Would anyone bother to tell her? Would there be an invite for her? Would there?
Caroline turned her back on the bottle of wine, reached for her bag and got out her mobile. She scrolled down to Luke. Text or voicemail?
As she’d known it would be, Luke’s phone was turned to ‘collect’.
‘Hi, Luke. It’s Mum. I just want you to know I’m trying to sort this thing once and for all. Love you.’
Luke would know what ‘this thing’ was. He was teetotal because of her. Had lost too many friends because of her. Luke had tried in the beginning, often dropping everything to fetch her from hospital or a pub or a shopping mall. And he’d done that just one too many times to his fiancée, Sophie.
But Caroline was grateful Luke hadn’t changed his number and that she was still able to at least leave a message if not speak to him.
Maybe just one glass?
Dr Shaw had advised against going ‘cold turkey’. It would be too huge a shock to her system if she did that.
‘You need to find other things to do to fill what would normally be drinking time for you,’ Dr Shaw had said. ‘A walk. Go to the cinema. Gardening. You could visit an art gallery, perhaps? You’re an intelligent woman, Caroline, and I’m sure you don’t need me making suggestions. I’m sure you’ll find something to pique your curiosity. If you look at what’s out there.’
She turned to her computer screen, clicked on things too fast for Caroline to follow, and then the printer kicked in and a sheet of A4 slid out. The doctor handed it to Caroline.
‘The local Alcoholics Anonymous group will welcome you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Caroline said.
‘You’d be surprised at how mixed the group is, people from all walks of life and all ages.’
‘And local,’ Caroline said. ‘I don’t want anyone who might work on the till in Sainsbury’s or in the pharmacy or Next or something knowing my business.’
Dr Shaw placed a hand on Caroline’s arm.
‘I suspect,’ she said, ‘that many of them already do have an idea. But that’s okay. You can sort it.’
Dr Shaw’s kindness – and her belief in her – had been almost overwhelming to Caroline. When had she last had a walk, been to the cinema, done a bit of gardening or visited an art gallery? It would be alien country for her. She had no idea how she’d cope. And with no one to do those things with her, could she go it alone?
‘I can try.’
‘I don’t know your personal circumstances, apart from your medical ones,’ the doctor had said, ‘but booking into a retreat works for some.’
Caroline had a hunch the doctor had clocked her expensive clothes and shoes and top-end haircut – well, there wouldn’t be any more of that for a while, would there? – and decided Caroline could afford to go to a retreat.
‘Like the Priory, you mean?’ Caroline said.
‘There are others. Some find the group approach works, others prefer to go it alone.’ The doctor glanced at the clock over her desk.
‘And my ten minutes are up,’ Caroline said.
‘For today. But do come back if…’
‘I’ll be fine. Really. Thanks.’
And Caroline had fled before she dissolved into tears. She was on her own with this.
Caroline put the phone back in its slot in her bag. Her fingers found their way around the mini bottle of wine she’d had there since the day she’d got the sack. The snap of the seal breaking was like a gunshot in the chalet, bouncing off the wooden walls and floor and the hard surfaces of the kitchen. Caroline removed the top, inhaled the heady aroma of best Australian Chardonnay. And then she necked the liquid. Bliss.
Bugger. This detox was going to be far harder than she could ever have imagined.
Caroline slept in late on Sunday. When she woke and groped for the travelling bedside clock she’d bought in Waitrose when she’d been in for a few essentials – bread, butter, jam, tea, a box of chocolates (but no wine) – the clock said 10.39. The sun was shining. She’d forgotten to draw the curtains in the bedroom and it was as though she’d woken in a Christmas grotto of fairy lights. There were all sorts of noises going on outside. A child was crying somewhere a little distance off. God, but that had to be loud wherever it was that child was. And gulls. Caroline could hear gulls squawking. A train rumbled by on the line a couple of hundred yards away.
Caroline put her hands over her ears and then realisation hit her – she did not have a dry mouth. The wine drinkers’ dry mouth she was used to waking with in the night at least three times. One bottle of wine for Caroline meant the whole six-glasses bottle not a handbag-sized bottle. Well… this was news. But wine, and alcohol in the system, was accumulative, Caroline knew that. The more she drank the more she needed to drink for it to have the same effect… that relaxed feeling with her shoulders down, that shedding of nerves when she had to walk into a party or lunch with colleagues on her own – no partner, no special friend to be with. Except wine. Wine was her special friend.
Caroline wrapped the duvet around her, slid from the bed and went to the window to pull the curtains so she could walk about naked until she’d had her shower and found something to put on. She stood there for a moment, the duvet tucked under her armpits, a curtain in each hand. The tide was way out now and the sand, covered in a light film of water, looked as though someone had spread a massive sheet of tinfoil over it. Beautiful. Caroline gulped. She only had herself to blame for the state she was in, she knew that. Oh, she’d done her best to blame her parents, her husband, even her son, who’d been a faddy eater and had had a temper on him when he was younger that had been hard to deal with. But the bottom line was that neither her parents, nor her husband, nor her son – nor any of her friends, ex-friends now – had gone down the grape route, as she’d heard someone, somewhere, in some pub or other, quip. But God, what would she have given now to be able to turn to someone and say, ‘Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’
Caroline’s calves were unused to walking. Unused to not having teeteringly high heels on the ends of her feet, and a tight skirt that made her steps short in those heels. Her calves were beginning to ache. And her ankles. She was barefoot now on the sand. It felt damp and gritty and hard between her toes, and in the arches of her feet when she sank down into it. Her sandals were dangling from her left hand by the straps. In the other she had an ice cream. Pina colada. Caroline hadn’t known ice cream could come in such a flavour but, well… best not to go cold turkey the doctor had said, and besides, pina colada had never been Caroline’s drink.
‘Luke!’ someone called.
Caroline’s heart stopped for a moment at the sound of her son’s name. Surely not? She looked in the direction the shout had come from and saw a tall, skinny young mum, her dark hair piled on top of her head, racing after a small boy.
‘Luke! Stop this minute!’
But Luke raced on as her own Luke had when he’d had fun running through every pore and thought it a game to run away from her, hide from her. He was running and hiding from her now.
Sorrow engulfed Caroline like a particularly soggy and coarse damp blanket. She finished her ice cream and decided to walk through the shallows towards the harbour. Two miles, there and back, it had said on a plaque on the wall on the promenade outside 23 The Strand. And here on the sand, there were no bars calling her in. No Tesco Metro, no discount wine stores, no pubs.
By the time Caroline reached the harbour and sat on the sea wall to get her breath back, the tide had turned. It seemed to be coming in quite fast and she wondered for a moment if it would come right up to the promenade in front of her chalet.
‘Better get back,’ she said to a gull that had landed beside her, probably hoping for some scraps of something. Already the sea was covering children’s sandcastles and people were moving their things further back on the beach. Small waves were forming now, making tiny white horses which some young lads were boogie-boarding on. Caroline had bought Luke one of those when he’d been about fourteen. Did he still have it? Did he remember it was she who had bought it and not his dad? Did he remember it had always been Caroline who had sat on the beach with him while he played when he was little because his dad was always busy doing other things?
Caroline rubbed the sand off her feet and from between her toes. She slipped her sandals back on. She wouldn’t be able to walk all the way back on the beach because, already, she could see the beach being covered with sea in the distance.
The Boathouse pulled her in. She walked up the concrete steps from the beach and along the promenade towards it. There were tables set up outside with huge umbrellas and four bench seats at each table. Tables for friends to share. Each table had a huge umbrella advertising a beer of some sort – Fosters, Stella Artois, Bass. Just about every table had people crowded around it. All happy, all smiling, all with a glass in front of them or in their hands, and many with plates of food. It was noisy with chatter but there was no raucous behaviour. No drunks. This, Caroline thought, is what responsible drinking is all about, isn’t it? Responsible drinking – could she do that? She looked back to where she’d walked from and the sea seemed to be sprinkled with diamonds. Would she have noticed a thing like that had she still been hungover from the day before?
‘A small Pinot Grigio,’ Caroline said to the girl behind the bar. Small wasn’t a word that was usually in her lexicon when it came to alcohol, but she had to start somewhere, didn’t she?
‘One small Pinot Grigio coming up,’ the girl said, placing it down in front of Caroline and holding out her hand for the money. ‘Enjoy.’
Now, this was where she’d normally have hoisted herself onto a bar stool and sat there waiting for someone to come and start up a conversation. Someone who would probably buy her another drink. But there were no bar stools here. And a sign. ‘NO DRINKING AT THE BAR, THANK YOU.’
It was too lovely a day to sit inside so she took her Pinot Grigio back out to the terrace, holding the glass by its stem so as not to warm up the chilled wine.
God, but it smelled divine. And chilled perfectly. Just one little sip.
‘Well, it’s Monday morning and I have survived one day without alcohol,’ Caroline said into the mirror above the basin in the bijou bathroom. Yesterday, sitting outside The Boathouse, just about the only single drinker there, she’d found she hadn’t been able to take that one little sip after all. What a surprise that had been!
She tried to smile about it now but the smile wouldn’t come. She knew there was a long, long way to go. She’d read warnings about ‘dry’ alcoholics – those who dared not have an alcoholic drink ever again. She wasn’t sure she wanted that. There were times when clinking glasses, sipping champagne, was just so good for the soul. She wanted to be able to do that – should there be something to clink glasses for, celebrate. And someone to clink glasses with. At Luke’s wedding maybe?
Today, shopping was on Caroline’s agenda. According to the little local map she’d found in a pile of leaflets about what to do and where to go in the area, there was a supermarket twenty minutes’ walk away. It would be a test. Could she walk around it without gravitating towards the wine aisle? Could she? Would she?
Caroline put on a pair of white crops (no red wine while wearing those in case it spilled) and a Breton-striped top. She slid her feet into toe-post sandals.
‘Ready.’ Why was there a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach as though she was off to fight a war?
And then someone knocked on the door. Someone from the letting agency, Caroline decided, checking everything was okay.
She opened the door.
‘Oh.’
Danny, with whom she’d worked for a short time and had been the only one in the whole office to have any sort of understanding of what she was going through, stood there, a tentative grin on his face.
‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘You told me to fuck off.’
Caroline felt herself blush. Yes, she had said that. It wasn’t the way she talked when she wasn’t in her cups, or angry, or anxious.
‘And you said…’
‘I know what I said, Caroline. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given like for like. I’ve come to say sorry.’
‘I’m just going out. To the shops.’
She looked at Danny as though seeing him for the first time. He was a good couple of inches over six feet tall. He had candle-straight fair hair with a fringe that flopped on his forehead. He was wearing Levis and a black T-shirt that was a little tight across his chest. He didn’t look that sexy in a suit, Caroline thought, then chided herself for even thinking that. It would be cradle-snatching to start any sort of relationship with Danny and she was pretty certain he didn’t feel that way about her. But why was he here?
‘Ah,’ Danny said. ‘A more polite way of saying what you did before when you didn’t want my company?’
‘No. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I am pleased to see you but it’s a bit of a surprise.’
And she was glad to see him – see anyone actually. Loneliness was beginning to taste like bile in her throat.
‘Not least to me,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve been feeling guilty I didn’t come after you that day you got the sack. I ought at least to have given you a hug goodbye or wished you all the best, or something. In front of everyone would have been good. You know, stood up to that sanctimonious lot who think they’re better than everyone else. God only knows what secrets some of them might be hiding.’
‘It’s okay,’ Caroline said. ‘I never even imagined you might do that.’
‘And I ought not to have encouraged you with my glib comment about putting vodka in your coffee instead of brandy. It was hardly the support I thought I was giving you. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. And it might surprise you to know I’m not putting either in my coffee at the moment. Wake-up call and all that.’
‘Good. Um, well, now I’m here and I’ve got that off my chest and you don’t look as though you want to kill me, I could come to the shops with you. Buy you a coffee en route or something. It’s nice here, isn’t it?’ Danny waved an arm in an arc, taking in the whole bay. ‘Never been before.’
‘Me neither,’ Caroline said. ‘And thanks. I’ll be glad of the company. I’ll just get my bag, and then I’ll lock up.’
‘Great,’ Danny said with a smile. He leaned against the doorpost of 23 The Strand waiting for her to return.
‘So,’ Caroline said. ‘Coffee first? Have you come all the way from Bath?’
‘Yes, and yes,’ Danny said.
Caroline had no idea how he’d found out where she was – or why – but she wasn’t going to ask. Not yet.
‘There’s a café just along here,’ Caroline said. ‘Just teas and coffees and cakes.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Danny said.
Danny held open the door for Caroline to go into The Port Light. Such a caring, nurturing gesture and one she hadn’t expected. There was a warm lump of something in her chest… the start of happiness perhaps? Caroline hadn’t felt like that in a long time.
‘What’ll it be?’ Danny said. ‘My treat for butting in on your day.’
‘Tea, please. No sugar.’
Danny came back with a pot of tea for two and two slices of lemon drizzle cake.
‘I don’t do cake,’ Caroline said.
‘I know you didn’t ask for it but I’m buying. You’re way too thin. You can’t fight this thing on an empty stomach.’ He slid a slice of cake across the table to Caroline.
Way too thin? Who the hell did he think he was saying things like that? Caroline drew in her breath sharply. Well, stuff him and his holier than thou attitude! She had a mind to swipe the tray of teas and the cake off the table and just walk out. Had she been full of alcohol she might have done.
While Caroline was still struggling to think of a sharp retort, Danny said: ‘Shall I be Mum?’
And that’s when the tears fell. They rolled down Caroline’s cheeks, large and hot and very wet and not at all healing. And silently. She struggled not to let the hurt she felt deep down inside escape her lips in a noisy and embarrassing way with much nose-blowing and wracking sobs.
Danny handed her a napkin.
‘Was it something I said?’
‘I am a mum,’ Caroline said, sniffing through her tears. ‘I’ve got a son.’
‘I know. Office gossip gave me that information on, I think, day two.’
‘Oh.’ She began to cry harder, unable to hold back wracking sobs now. ‘Sorry. I’m a mess.’
‘I know that too. That you’re in a bit of a mess at the moment – not that you are a mess, you understand. You’ve got class and style about you.’
‘Stop being nice to me, Danny. You’re making me worse. We ought to go.’
‘No. I dare say this place has seen a few personal dramas unfold over its tables before now. Besides, they’re all so wrapped up in their cake and paninis that no one’s noticed.’
Caroline looked around The Port Light to see if Danny was telling the truth and no one had noticed her having a mini breakdown. No one, it seemed, had. God, but she could a use a drink right now – any drink would do, any colour, and a big one. She didn’t think it would be sensible to tell Danny that though. She was feeling a bit shaky. The emotion of what she’d just told Danny or alcohol-withdrawal symptoms? Who knew?
‘What’s your son called?’
‘Luke. Yesterday, someone called out “Luke!” on the beach and I thought for a second it was my Luke and my heart almost stopped. I haven’t seen him for five years. He’s denounced me as his mother. I leave messages on his mobile but he never gets back to me. Someone left a message on my phone to tell me Luke’s getting married but when I tried to ring the number back it had blocked me. I don’t think for a minute I’ll be getting an invite to the wedding. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’
‘Because I’m here, perhaps?’ Danny said. ‘And I’m a son. Is that an okay enough reason?’ He picked up the slice of lemon drizzle, licked off the lemon rind and icing top and then bit a large chunk, and Caroline noticed what lovely teeth he had – large and straight and very white. Danny’s teeth, before he closed his lips over them to eat the cake, made Caroline conscious of the fact her dentist had told her alcohol was eating away all the enamel on her teeth. She ran her tongue under the top set. Still there.
‘How did you find me?’ Caroline asked. She hadn’t told a single soul she’d booked 23 The Strand.
‘Ah, now there’s a question! The short answer is Mr Brewer asked me to go through your computer history and clear your email address and all your emails the second you walked out the door.’
‘I thought he might do something like that. And the long answer?’
‘I’ll précis that for the moment. I was worried about you and no one else – and they’d all worked with you a lot longer than I had – seemed to care. I thought you could use a friend. But, guess what? Naughty, naughty…’ Danny wagged a finger at her. ‘You’d been using your bank email address to send private emails. And there it was. The booking and confirmation and everything.’
‘I’m not the only one to take advantage of a business email address for private messages. I could name a few famous names who have.’
‘And got caught out!’ Danny smiled. ‘That hardly exonerates you though. Does it? But don’t worry. Everyone does it and Mr Brewer is never going to know that you did. So, Sherlock, that’s how I found you’d booked to come here. And like I said, I fancied a day at the seaside. And as I’ve got no one to, you know what, as I told you…’
‘Well, I’m not doing that!’ Caroline said.
‘I’m not suggesting you do. Saying that is just a euphemism for I’m on my own, you’re on your own, so how about we spend the day together? Not the night. And another reason for me coming here is that my father drank himself to death. If anyone understands how your Luke must feel, then I do.’
On the walk into town to pick up some groceries Danny told Caroline how his father – a barrister – had struggled with his alcoholism.
‘It wasn’t pretty,’ Danny said. ‘He blamed pressure of work, of course. My mother stood by him far longer than she should have done and she just stopped loving him in the end, I know she did, although she never said as much. As for my brother and me, we never stopped loving him because in his sober moments he was a wonderful father, but we did wonder if he ever loved us.’
‘Oh, Danny,’ Caroline said. What else could she say? She was doing the selfsame thing to her son, wasn’t she? And her husband had probably stopped loving her long ago. Well, she knew he had.
‘And now the violins bit,’ Danny said. ‘It was me who found our father hanged in the detached garage at the end of the drive.’
Danny’s revelation stopped Caroline in her tracks and Danny took a few steps forward before noticing she wasn’t beside him. He turned back and reached a hand out towards her.
‘Come on. You don’t want a blubbering wreck on your hands, do you?’
Caroline could see the pain, still, behind his eyes, which were glossy with unshed tears.
‘You just did. In The Port Light.’ Caroline took the hand he was holding out towards her.
‘That’s okay. I’m an expert on tears. Thanks for listening.’
Danny patted the back of Caroline’s hand and then let it go.
‘You too.’
‘It’s easier to walk and talk,’ Danny said. ‘Don’t you think? Your turn.’
‘I could, but my story’s not half as harrowing as yours, apart from the wrecking of my marriage and relationships.’
‘Can you pinpoint what made you dally with alcohol in the first place?’
Caroline had asked herself that a thousand times and the answer was always the same.
‘I chose the wrong man to marry. But I’d made my vows and I did my best to stick to them. We both knew we were on sticky ground and when we had a child together I thought it would unstick a bit, but it didn’t. By which time I was…’
‘Trapped,’ Danny finished for her.
‘I felt it was a duty that Luke should be able to say “Mummy and Daddy” in the same sentence. So, seeing as you’ve asked, alcohol became my crutch before Luke could talk even. Just a couple of glasses a day. Once he was at school it escalated, but when I failed to collect him at three o’clock a couple of times, the headmaster gave me a right rollicking and threatened me with all sorts of things. So I stopped. For a while. I was back working in the bank by that time, and that helped. But you know how it is – there’s always someone asking if you fancy going to the pub after work.’
‘No is such a little word, but very often it can be the hardest to say. Shall we keep walking? Keep talking?’
‘Both,’ Caroline said.
Danny was right. It was easier to say stuff when they were walking and talking. It didn’t seem to matter that people might overhear them.
‘I asked my dad a million times why he felt he had to drink himself senseless, what he was trying to escape by doing that, and apart from the pressure-of-work excuse he trotted out on almost a daily basis, he couldn’t say.’
‘I think we lose the reason for it as our habit bites deeper. You know, people who drink too much on a daily basis.’
‘Alcoholics, you mean,’ Danny said.
Alcoholic? That’s what I am. Caroline knew that but it still came as a stinging blow to her heart to hear Danny say so.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.
Danny shrugged.
‘We’re both jigsaw pieces of the same puzzle, perhaps. I searched the net endlessly for information about alcoholism and poignant quotes and so on. The one that seemed to sum it all up goes something like this – “Alcohol is a very effective dissolving agent. That’s a chemical fact. But it also dissolves families, marriages, friendships, jobs, and bank accounts. But it never dissolves problems.”’
‘I wish I’d seen that,’ Caroline said. ‘A long time ago.’
‘But you stopped looking?’
Caroline nodded. How wise and kind Danny was for one so young. And how damaged. But not bitter, not that she could detect anyway.
‘So,’ Danny went on. ‘I know what your Luke must feel like having lived with a drunk for a parent, and I think you and my father had the same demons, whatever form those took.’
‘Ouch!’ Caroline said. Danny had just called her a drunk, which seemed even worse than being called an alcoholic, but somehow she didn’t feel insulted. Well, how could she? – it was true. ‘You’re telling it how it is.’
‘I’m not judging though,’ Danny said. ‘And dinner is on me. When we’ve bought the wherewithal from the supermarket that is. Nearly there.’ He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a wallet, opened it, and handed Caroline three twenty-pound notes. ‘You cook, I’ll wash up.’
‘I don’t cook.’
‘Fine. I’ll cook, you can wash-up.’
So that was what they did. Danny cooked chicken wrapped in pancetta with some lightly steamed greens and a tray of ready-prepped sweet potato fries. Tiramisu for pudding courtesy of Tesco Finest. No wine. Although there was brandy in the tiramisu, but Caroline told Danny how Dr Shaw had recommended she shouldn’t go cold turkey.
‘A child could eat this,’ Danny had said, spooning up a portion of tiramisu and holding it out towards Caroline.
And now, the washing-up done – which they’d done together, Danny washing, Caroline wiping… and how companionable that had been – they were sitting outside on the deck. It was still warm. There were people swimming still, and a few families still on the beach, the children racing about, coming back now and then to eat a sandwich or take a biscuit before running off again.
‘It’s not the best coffee, I’m afraid,’ Caroline said.
‘Anything that someone else makes for you is the best,’ Danny said, and Caroline had a feeling there was more to Danny’s story than he’d already told her. A failed marriage perhaps? Or was it that he was just so scarred from his heartbreaking memories that he couldn’t make relationships of whatever sort work? Caroline wasn’t going to spoil the day by asking. Who knew? Only Danny.
What Caroline did know was that it was very easy to talk to him. He’d said he didn’t judge her and she knew he didn’t.
‘What’ll you do for a job now Mr Brewer’s given you the old heave-ho?’
‘Nothing for a bit. I’ll probably have to get Job Seeker’s Allowance or whatever it’s called now. But I’m too raw to put myself out there. Not everyone’s like you. The second I have to say why I left my last job I’ll be judged.’
‘Don’t tell them then,’ Danny said. He drank his coffee almost in one go. ‘And don’t even think about looking until your two weeks here are up. Just enjoy. Let the sun warm you, and those lovely people in The Port Light feed you cake and coffee. And now I have to go.’
‘Oh,’ Caroline said. ‘Back to Bath?’
‘Nope. The Redcliffe Hotel. You can see it from here. Like I said, I had a few days’ holiday owed me.’
‘How many days?’ Caroline asked. ‘God, but scratch that – I’m sounding needy. It’s just that it’s been lovely spending the day with you, possibly because you wanted to spend it with me, and…’
‘Don’t think too much,’ Danny said. ‘Just be. But think on this – how does breakfast at the Redcliffe grab you? Eight-thirty?’ He looked at Caroline, tilting his head to one side.
Caroline hadn’t eaten breakfast for years and she had a feeling Danny had guessed that.
‘It grabs me around the wrist and drags me there,’ Caroline laughed.
‘In that case, I’ll say goodnight.’ Danny stood up and leaned over to kiss Caroline on the top of her head before running down the steps and back to his hotel.
Caroline stood up, leaned over the rail of her deck and watched him go until he was just a speck as the sun dropped in the sky and her eyes couldn’t focus at that distance any more.
And then Caroline went inside. Two whole days without alcohol.
‘Eggs Benedict,’ Danny said, reading from the breakfast menu. ‘My mother was wizard at these. I always have them in hotels to remember her by. Know them?’
Caroline knew what eggs Benedict were and roughly how many calories were in them – a whole day’s worth of calories for someone like her who got all their calories from a bottle.
‘Of course I know them,’ Caroline said. ‘If that’s what you’re having I’ll join you. And toast to follow. With honey.’
‘Ah. Honey. Three sorts here apparently – clover, acacia and local.’
‘Let’s go for local,’ Caroline said.
Danny ordered from the waitress who had suddenly appeared at their table.
‘Four rounds of wholemeal toast?’ Caroline queried as the waitress walked away.
‘Yep. You’ll need sustenance for today’s walk.’
‘I will?’
‘Three options. The whole seven miles from here to over there,’ Danny said, pointing out across the terrace and across the bay. ‘Or we can go as far as Sugarloaf and walk back. Grand name that, Sugarloaf. I have no idea what it is or what it means but it’ll be fun to find out. The third option is on to Elberry Cove, cut up through the bungalows at the back of the beach and get the bus back. Whichever option, it’s about the same distance. You’ll need stout shoes.’
‘You’ve thought all this out, haven’t you?’ Caroline said.
‘I have. Courtesy of the internet and Google Maps. The shop in the foyer sells rather snazzy walking trainers. And socks.’
‘And how did you guess I owned neither of those things?’
‘Hunch,’ Danny said. ‘My dad never did either.’
So, they were back to that, despite the friendly banter. Caroline ate slowly through her breakfast, allowed Danny to buy her trainers and socks from the shop in the foyer, and then they went for their walk.
When they got back to Hollacombe in the early evening they shared a portion of fish and chips sitting on the sea wall, throwing the scraps to the gulls that always congregated whenever there was food about. And then they went their separate ways.
Three whole days without alcohol.
Caroline had invited Danny to eat breakfast at 23 The Strand the next day. She got up early and went into town for fresh croissants, blackcurrant and apricot jams, and fresh strawberries.
Danny arrived on time. He waved a brochure at her.
‘How are you on art?’ he asked. ‘Only there’s an exhibition by a local sculptor in a deconsecrated church about a mile away. And paintings by “other artists” it says here. I’ve bought a map. Easy to find.’
‘Art has never figured hugely in my life,’ Caroline said. ‘But then neither has not drinking wine for three days – at least not for a very long time.’
‘It doesn’t say it’s a “private view” exhibition – when wine and nibbles are usually provided to get punters to part with their cash – so I doubt alcohol will be involved. It’s easier when there’s no temptation. Interested?’
‘I could be,’ Caroline said. She still didn’t quite understand what Danny’s agenda was with all this or if he had an ulterior motive. ‘More coffee? Before we go.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Danny said. ‘If you’ll forgive the rather inappropriate pun.’
‘All forgiven,’ Caroline laughed.
Laughed?
The walk to the exhibition involved a trek up over the hills behind the seafront, via a short pathway through a narrow strip of woodland. As they came out of the wood into a field the wind suddenly got up and blew Caroline’s hair across her face.
With a bag containing her purse, sunglasses, tissues and umbrella in one hand, and a fern she’d picked to swat away the gnats that seemed to be everywhere in the other, Caroline struggled to remove it.
Danny stepped forward, turned and faced her. He lifted her hair very gently off her face and tucked it behind one ear.
‘Never let it be said I do not rescue damsels in distress.’
‘I’m hardly a damsel,’ Caroline laughed. ‘But thank you all the same.’ When Danny didn’t step away to walk beside her again, Caroline said, ‘What?’
‘What what?’ Danny said.
‘You’re looking at me a bit funny,’ Caroline said.
‘Funny ha ha or funny peculiar?’
‘Uncomfortable,’ Caroline said. She didn’t feel threatened by Danny but there was something.
‘Well, that would be because I’m wondering if you’d like to come to the cinema with me tonight, and don’t know how to ask.’
‘You just have!’
‘No ulterior motive in case that’s what you might be thinking. No holding hands in the back row or anything.’
‘It’s a long time since I’ve been to the cinema – holding someone’s hand or not.’
‘Yeah. And I think it’s the saddest thing, going to the cinema on your own when everyone else is in couples or groups. So I don’t. So shall we? Go together? Tonight?’
‘I’ll give it some thought. But I’m just wondering if you know my doctor, Dr Shaw? She suggested I fill my life with different things to take me away from the bottle – a walk, a gallery, the cinema. Gardening.’
‘Nope. I’ve met plenty of doctors in my time, both for myself and on behalf of my father, but I’ve never met a Dr Shaw.’
‘I just thought I’d ask,’ Caroline said, sad for Danny that his father, and what he’d been, and how it had affected him, was still at the forefront of his mind really, despite his cheeky banter and his sometimes irreverent way of saying things.
‘That’s okay. But I can’t help with the gardening, I’m afraid. I haven’t got a garden, not even an indoor plant in a pot. Just for the record I’d say Dr Shaw’s advice must be standard for doctors to dish out to their alcoholic patients. A doctor I consulted about Dad said much the same.’
They couldn’t get away from this shared experience of bad experiences with alcohol could they?
‘Possibly,’ Caroline said. ‘But before we go to the cinema – if I do decide to go that is – there are things I need to tell you. After we’ve been to the exhibition.’
Caroline loved everything about the exhibition – the life-sized bronze figures, the miniature abstract ones. They were all out of her price range but it was wonderful to be among such creativity. The paintings, too, were wonderful, if pricey. But the ceramics were less so and Caroline treated herself to a small, blood-red bowl incised with dragonflies on the inside. It would be a memory of her day – a good memory, something she could remember that didn’t have the blur of alcohol fuzzing the edges. But now they were outside again, Caroline felt impelled to tell Danny what she’d said she would.
‘I’ve had inappropriate sex more times than I probably remember because of alcohol. Sometimes it was because I badly needed another drink and didn’t have the money for it, and sometimes it was because I was just so damned lonely and needed to feel another person close to me.’
Caroline, arms folded, leaned on the fence outside the exhibition looking down over the hill and out to sea. Danny was standing beside her, so close she could feel his body rising and falling as he breathed.
‘We all do things we’re ashamed of. For the record I’ve not treated the women in my life well.’
Caroline shrank into herself.
‘You don’t hit women?’ she said, not believing for a second that Danny did, but she had to ask.
‘God no. Never that. I saw my dad use my mother as a punch-bag too many times. I saw what it did to her as she stayed to keep a roof over our heads – her, my brother and me. And I was on the receiving end of his fists more times than I want to remember as I tried to protect my mother.’
Caroline turned to look at Danny but he was staring into the distance, hands in the pockets of his shorts.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘About what you’ve been through.’
She waited for Danny to tell her how it was that he’d not treated women well.
He shrugged.
‘All in the past but up front.’ He took a hand from his pocket and smacked his forehead. ‘Right there in the forefront of everything. It’s meant I haven’t been able to commit. I’ve been in love a couple of times. In love enough to marry a couple of times. One of them in particular I loved like it was a disease. I should have married her but I got out. I didn’t mean to break her heart but my own heart was still breaking. I was afraid I’d turn into a drunk like my dad and I didn’t want to be open to the danger of hurting her like my mother had been hurt. I was faithful to all my girlfriends until I moved on.’
‘Are you still moving?’ Caroline said.
Another shrug from Danny.
‘I’m making a pig’s ear of this but I think I’ve been trying to make amends for how my dad was, how I’ve been, how things were for my mum.’
‘By trying to help me?’
‘Only you can help you,’ Danny said. ‘But if something I’ve said, or might say, sends you down that path, then… well, my dad’s death and what I went through won’t have been entirely in vain.’
Danny put his hand back in his pocket, and continued staring into the distance. A shadow went over them as a buzzard swooped low overhead and Caroline and Danny looked up at the same moment before looking down again.
‘I don’t deserve help,’ Caroline said. ‘Everything that’s happened to me has been self-inflicted. Stuff happened to you, not of your making. I lost it when Evan had an affair but I know now I pushed him to it. He got fed up making love to a woman who had alcohol seeping from every pore and who often fell asleep in the middle of it. Or passed out.’
‘I don’t know about you,’ Danny said, ‘But I think we’ve both got to forgive ourselves. Then perhaps others can forgive us.’
Caroline felt herself welling up. She’d thought she was dead to any sort of emotion but it seemed she wasn’t. She made a strangled sort of snorting noise as she tried to sniff back tears.
‘You’re very wise for one so young,’ Caroline said.
‘I’m thirty-four, but look older.’
‘I’m just older,’ Caroline said, and her tears halted as she laughed. ‘I’m fifty-two.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I think we should scratch the cinema. I noticed the fair was setting up on the green this morning. It’ll be noisy and busy and heaving with people. I think we should go.’
Caroline was fast forwarding in her mind and the cinema would open up all sorts of feelings inside her: they would probably hold hands, go for something to eat afterwards when Caroline would do her level best to avoid alcohol, and then perhaps they’d saunter back along on the beach. And then it would be comfort sex for both of them at 23 The Strand or Danny’s hotel. Sober sex, and Caroline could use some of that, but she wouldn’t use Danny.
‘You’re on,’ Danny said.
‘And that girlfriend you should have married? Is she married?’
‘Divorced.’
‘So, she’s still there somewhere on the periphery of your life?’
‘Yep. Good old Facebook. It’s not that I’ve stalked her, but I couldn’t stop myself checking now and then that she was okay. At first she was and it felt like something was squeezing my heart tight to know someone was making her feel so good when it should have been me. And then that all went pear-shaped for her. Same old story – he fell for someone younger and bailed out.’
‘Do you know where she is? Other than on Facebook, I mean?’
‘Not her actual address, no. But it wouldn’t be too hard to find.’
‘Then find her. I’d bet my life on it that you won’t turn into your dad.’
‘I will. Find her I mean, not turn into my dad.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Good.’
‘And I’d bet my life on it that you’ll sort your alcohol problem.’
‘I’m going to give it my very best. But first, the fair.’
‘First one to scream on the big dipper buys the chips,’ Danny said.
Danny stayed in the area two more days. Two more days when Caroline didn’t touch a drop of alcohol despite testing herself to the limit, sitting beside Danny, who was nursing a pint of local ale while she sipped on tonic water with ice and lemon. Caroline and Danny spent the days walking and talking and eating fish and chips – ‘Is it worth eating anything other than fish and chips when you’re at the seaside?’ Danny said every time – out of the paper packaging sitting on the sea wall, their legs dangling over the side as the tide came in. Caroline felt years of anguish and self-hate slipping from her as her shoulders dropped. Danny put out some feelers, and through the friend of a friend of a friend got hold of Debbie’s mobile number and rang her. She was wary but agreed to meet.
‘Be happy,’ Caroline said when Danny came to say goodbye.
‘You too. And thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘Listening. I took a risk barging in on your holiday but I had a hunch you needed someone to talk to. I never really had that person but you’ve filled a gap. I’ve never said as much about how it was for me until these past few days with you.’
‘Meant to be,’ Caroline said. She felt sad now because she didn’t think she and Danny would stay in one another’s lives for ever and she knew she was going to miss him.
‘And one last tip,’ Danny said. ‘Drink gallons of water to replace the fluid you usually get from wine or whatever. It’ll help disperse the toxins as well. It helps with the withdrawal, so a doctor told me once when I was trying to help Dad.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘Good. Over to you now.’
Danny cupped Caroline’s face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips. A chaste kiss; the sort of kiss a child might give a mother, or a mother a child. A kiss Caroline knew didn’t taste of alcohol. She had a long way to go but she’d made a start. And so had Danny.
One whole week without alcohol.
And one whole week here still without Danny to guide and support her. Could she do it?
On her last evening, Caroline succumbed – as she’d guessed she would – to the lure of her old demon… one glass of chilled Pinot Grigio, sitting outside on the terrace of The Boathouse. She couldn’t finish it.
When she got back to 23 The Strand she checked her mobile. A voicemail.
Hi, Mum. Let me know when you’re sorted. I’m getting married in December. To Sophie. Yeah, we’re back together again. It’d be great if you were able to be there. Luke. Mwah, mwah.
Caroline listened to the words, Luke’s voice, over and over, barely able to breathe. And that kissy sound – mwah, mwah. She felt hot and cold and excited and scared. Luke was holding out an olive branch and she was going to take it.
Dear next occupant,
My name’s Caroline and I’m an alcoholic. There, I’ve said it. Sorry to dump this stuff on you but I had to say it to someone. We’ll never meet, you and I, whoever you are. 23 The Strand has given me the space to try and turn my life around. I’ve made a start. Just two glasses of wine in two weeks – one small one when I arrived and then another I couldn’t finish at the end of my stay, I’m thrilled to be able to say, instead of my usual two bottles a night. So… this rather fine bottle of Rioja was left for me (along with a note welcoming me here and saying it’s something of a tradition to leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, although not obligatory) and it’s been the devil’s own job to resist opening it. But resist I did. I hope you’ll be able to enjoy it and, perhaps, wish me well in my efforts. Happy holidays. Cheers (toasted in water this end!).
Caroline