‘There’s still unresolved tension with your mother,’ she warned. ‘If you stay around her it’ll probably come to a head. Careful that you don’t relapse if that happens.’

‘I won’t take drugs, I promise.’

‘No point making promises to me,’ she said. ‘It’s not my life that’ll be destroyed.’

‘It won’t be mine either,’ I said, a mite defiantly.

‘Go to your meetings, keep up the therapy and in time, everything will be very good,’ she promised. ‘You’ve so much going for you.’

‘Like what?’ I asked in surprise.

‘We don’t focus too much on people’s good points here, do we?’ She smiled. ‘Well, you’re bright, perceptive, entertaining, very kind, I’ve seen the way you’ve been to the others in your group, and to the new people. You’ve even managed to be nice to Misty.’

I reddened with pride.

‘And finally can I say,’ she said ‘what a satisfying experience it has been for me to see how you’ve changed and grown over your time here.’

‘Was I awful?’ I asked, out of curiosity.

‘You were a tough one, but you weren’t the worst.’

‘I hated you,’ I was appalled to hear myself say. Although she didn’t seem at all put out.

‘There would have been something wrong if you didn’t,’ she agreed. ‘What’s that they say in the film? “I’m your worst nightmare”.’

‘How do you know so much about me?’ I asked shyly. ‘How did you know when I was lying? When any of us were lying?’

‘I was at the coalface for a long time,’ she said.

That told me nothing. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, I lived with a chronic addict and alcoholic for years,’ she said, with a secret smile.

I was shocked. Poor Josephine. Who could it have been? One of her parents? Or brothers? Or perhaps even a husband. Maybe she’d been married before she became a nun.

‘Who was it?’ I blurted out.

I expected her to say something uptight and counsellory like ‘That’s not an appropriate question, Rachel,’ but she didn’t.

Instead she paused for a long, long time, her eyes holding mine, before softly saying, ‘Me.’

60

My last day finally came. Like my birthday, my first communion, my wedding day and my funeral all at once. I was the centre of attention and I loved it; the card, the speech, the good wishes, the tears, the hugs, the ‘I’ll-miss-you’s. Even Sadie the sadist, Bubbly the receptionist and Finbar the halfwit gardener came to wish me well. Plus Dr Billings, all the nurses, counsellors and, of course, inmates.

I gave the speech that everyone made, about how when I’d first come I’d thought there was nothing wrong with me, how I felt sorry for all the others etc, etc. And they whooped and cheered, clapped and laughed, and someone shouted – as someone always did – ‘Have a pint waiting for me in Flynns.’

Then they all went off to group and I waited to be collected. Watery-eyed but excited, nostalgic yet elated. Eager to begin my new life.

I’d been in the Cloisters for almost two months and had managed to survive. Pride in myself was the order of the day.

Mum and Dad came and, as we drove out through the high gateway, I symbolically took off my hat and bowed my head in remembrance, as I thought back to the day I’d arrived. Agog and expectant, on the lookout for famous people. It seemed like a million years ago, as if it had happened to a different person.

Which in a way it had.

Apart from my brief foray to the dentist, I hadn’t seen the outside world for two months. So I was highly excitable on the journey back from Wicklow, keeping up a nonstop, running commentary in the back seat.

‘Oh, look, there’s a letter box!’

‘Oh, look at your man’s hair!’

‘Oh, look, there’s a KFC box in a doorway!’

‘Oh, look at the funny bus!’

‘Oh, look at that woman buying a paper!’

‘Oh, look, did you see that baby’s ears? They were like Spock’s!’

When we finally arrived home, the thrill of it all nearly sent me into orbit. I almost had hysterics at the sight of the front door, the door that I could go in or out of any time I wanted. And almost had to be sedated when I saw my room. My own room. With no other people painting their toenails in it. My own bed. A proper duvet! That didn’t smell funny! Or make me itchy!

And no more being woken in the middle of the night to fry seventy eggs. I could stay in bed all day if I wanted. And I did want.

I ran in and out of the bathroom, the bathroom that I had to share with only four other people! I ran my hand along the television and rejoiced that the only limit on the amount of trash I could watch was how much sleep I needed.

The hoover was standing in the hall, so I paused to have a good laugh at it. My brief acquaintance with its brother in the Cloisters had come to an end and I wouldn’t be doing any more housework. Possibly ever.

I threw open the door of the fridge and looked at all the yummy things inside, and I could have anything I wanted, anything. Apart from Helen’s chocolate mousses that she’d sellotaped a picture of two fingers onto, of course. I opened the kitchen presses, looking for, looking for, looking for…

And then I felt very, very depressed.

Very depressed. So, I was out.

So what?

What could I do? I’d no friends, I was forbidden to go to pubs, anyway I’d no money… Was the rest of my life going to be a succession of Saturday evenings sitting in, watching Stars in their Eyes with my mother? Listening to her whinge that Marti Pellow should have won. That he was miles better than Johnny Cash.

And was I condemned to watch my father stand up at half-past nine every night and announce ‘Right, I’m off down to Phelans for a pint’? Then being forced to sing tunelessly with my mother and whoever else was there ‘Phelans, nothing more than Phelans…’

That ritual had existed for about twenty years, but I’d forgotten about it on my first night home, when it was just me and Dad in the room. So things got a bit nasty when he announced his intention to go to the pub and I didn’t burst into song. ‘Don’t they sing in New York?’ he demanded, fixing me with hurt cow-eyes. ‘Singing not grand enough for them?’