And that was supposed to make me feel better?

59

I had a week or more of rampaging around like an anti-christ. In that time Neil left, humble and contrite, crammed to bursting with good intentions.

John Joe also went. Out and proud, already displaying the rudiments of a handlebar moustache.

Chris left, but not before giving me his phone number and making me swear to ring him the day I got out. For about an hour after he’d gone I glowed with delight from the attention he’d paid me, then lapsed into a sudden, surly slump.

Helen didn’t come to visit me anymore. Surprise, surprise.

Vincent also came to the end of his two months, and he too was a changed man, unrecognizable from the Charles Mansonesque bully I’d met on my first day. Soft and gentle, you could imagine him standing in a forest, covered in birds. Deer, squirrels and other woodland creatures flocking to his side.

Barry the child, Peter the laughing gnome, gambling Davy, and Stalin also left. I was now one of the elder statesmen.

As each person left, we cried and hugged, swapped addresses and promised to stay in touch. I was amazed by the strength of the bonds we’d formed with each other, across age, sex and class.

I wondered if that was how POWs or hostages felt. That we’d been to hell and back together, and were united by it.

Although people were missed when they went, their departure didn’t leave a gaping hole. The rest of us swirled over the space they’d left, surrounding it, filling it up. So that soon after, say, Mike had gone, the Mike-shaped hole was filled and had flowers growing over it.

And then, as new people arrived regularly, everything was different anyway, so that you’d never know there had been a gap in the first place.

By the end of the sixth week, my group consisted of Barney, a weaselly man who looked like he stole women’s underwear from washing lines. Shaky Padraig, who’d calmed down a good bit since his first sugar-scattering day. Father Johnny, a rabid alcoholic, who’d got his housekeeper pregnant. A tabloid journalist called Mary who was fat, ugly, bitter and talentless. She’d spent the last five years drinking a bottle of brandy a day, stitching up anyone she could find to write about, and now her life was in tatters. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman.

Then there was me, Chaquie and Misty, the old-timers.

As each new person arrived, they didn’t remain new for very long. As always in the Cloisters, deep intimacy was established almost before you knew a person’s name. Fresh arrivals got folded into the rest of us immediately and within minutes it seemed as if they’d always been there.

I knew I really was one of the senior citizens the day I got to be head of one of the housekeeping teams. I was in charge of breakfasts, Chaquie of lunches, Angela of dinners and Misty of hoovering.

‘Now,’ said Chaquie briskly, ‘Angela and I have already sorted out our teams.’

‘When?’ I asked in alarm.

‘When you were watching telly,’ she said, shiftily.

‘You big hoor,’ I complained. ‘I bet you took all the able-bodied, able-brained ones and neither of you picked Francie.’

‘You big hoor yourself,’ Chaquie said. ‘First come, first served.’

I was so touched by her saying ‘you big hoor yourself’ that I forgave her. She’d come a long way.

‘So you sit down with Misty and share out the rest,’ Chaquie said awkwardly.

I was appalled. I hated Misty. Then it struck me that the tension which normally zinged between the two of us hadn’t been as electric since Chris had gone. Still, I didn’t want to sit down and do anything with her and I said as much.

‘Come on now, Rachel,’ Chaquie cajoled. ‘Act like an adult and give the girl a chance.’

‘God, you’ve changed your tune,’ I complained. Chaquie and I had soothed ourselves to sleep every night for the previous six weeks, by detailing how much we hated Misty.

‘Ah, the poor girl,’ Chaquie said wistfully. ‘Those terrible things that happened to her, no wonder she’s such an unpleasant little madam…’

‘I’ll only talk to her if you take Francie off my hands,’ I bargained. None of us wanted Francie on our teams because she was stone-mad, an awful handful and a lazy bitch to boot.

Chaquie wavered, then gave in. ‘All right then. God help me.’

And, very reluctantly, I went to find Misty.

‘We have to sort out our housekeeping teams,’ I said. She looked at me coldly.

‘OK,’ she surprised me by saying. ‘Will we do it now?’

So we got the list of lame brains and loopers that Angela and Chaquie had left for us and shared them out. And, once I was actually talking to her, I found that in the midst of all the other upheaval that was taking place inside me, I didn’t hate Misty anymore. I was no longer consumed with jealousy of her dainty beauty, I actually felt protective of her. A reluctant warmth passed back and forth between us.

And as we stood up from the table, having masqueraded as grown-ups, Misty touched my cheek with her hand. It was a funny thing for her to do, but I stood there and let her, feeling compassion, affection and strange friendship throb from her. A little flower in a burnt-out land.

‘You see,’ Chaquie smirked at me later.

‘You should get a job in the UN,’ I said, with fake sourness. ‘As a diplomat.’

‘That’ll give me something to do when Dermot divorces me,’ she said, thoughtfully. And for some reason we both found that hilarious and laughed until we cried.

That evening, when the housekeeping list went up on the notice board, I heard Larry, a seventeen-year-old heroin addict, who’d done time in a reform school for GBH, whine ‘I don’t want to be on that Rachel’s team, she’s so aggressive.’

Was I? I wondered, more amused than irate.

And it was then I found that a miracle had happened. Even though I still burned with rage against Luke and, to a lesser extent, Brigit, I was no longer angry about being an addict. I’d watched a lot of the other inmates move away from rage and into the calm waters of acceptance, but I hadn’t for a second believed it would happen to me.

I was filled with a very unfamiliar sensation. A kind of peace.

So, I was an addict. So what? I was no longer tormented as I wished things were different. Let’s face it, I told myself, I’d always known something was wrong with me. At least now I knew what it was.