‘Helen’ll kill you,’ she warned, when she saw the depleted bottle of body lotion.

‘It’s fine,’ I said irritably.

‘Who’re you meeting, anyway?’ I could hear the massive anxiety in her voice and that both pained and annoyed me.

‘Chris from the bin,’ I said. ‘You know, you met him. So no need to worry, I won’t be with anyone who takes drugs.’

‘Chris Hutchinson?’ she said in alarm.

‘Yesss,’ I sighed, with a great play of patience.

‘Oh, be careful, Rachel,’ Mum said, her forehead crinkled with concern. ‘He has his poor mother’s heart tormented.’

‘Is that right?’ Interest and fear propelled me closer to her. ‘What did he do?’

‘He wouldn’t stop taking the drugs,’ she muttered, not meeting my eyes. ‘And Philomena and Ted spent a fortune on this expert and that expert, for all the good it did. The next thing they knew, his work’d be on the phone saying he hadn’t turned up in a week. And he’s in his thirties, Rachel, too old for his parents still to be looking after him. And there’s something else…’

‘I know,’ I interrupted.

‘He was in the Cloisters once before, four years ago.’

‘I know,’ I said again, in a deliberately soothing voice. She’d been getting a bit agitated and it was suddenly too close to the bone for me. ‘He told me.’

‘He nearly made poor Philomena have a nervous breakdown,’ Mum said, her voice shrill and with a hint of tears in it. Time to go. ‘And then there’d be a pair of them in institutions.’

I remembered the large boomy-voiced woman who’d visited Chris at the laughing house. ‘She didn’t look tormented,’ I scoffed. ‘She looked like a right heifer.’

‘You’re too quick to judge…’ Mum’s voice trailed after me. ‘You think everyone’s happy except you.’

Off I went on the Dart into town, my legs wobbling like a new-born calf’s. Everything was so strange and new, I felt as though I too had just been born.

Even though I wasn’t going on a date and I wasn’t allowed dates, and both Chris and I knew that, I still had that lovely, I’ll-never-eat-again, stomach-tickling terror.

Everything seemed new and beautiful. As if I was seeing a spring evening in Dublin for the first time ever. The tide was in, the sea blue and calm as I passed it on the train. The sky was wide and clear, with a faded, just-washed look. The parks were bright with green grass and red, yellow and purple tulips. I sat on the train, trembling with the fear and wonder of it all.

I almost ran to Stephen’s Green with the need to see Chris. And there he was, standing waiting for me. I’d known he’d be there, yet I still marvelled at the sight of him. He was gorgeous, I thought, my breath catching, and he’s standing over there because he wants to meet me.

I could see the blue flash of his eyes from ten yards. And had ever a man’s legs been so sexy? He should never be allowed to wear anything other than Levi’s, I thought distractedly.

He turned his blue gaze onto me. Eyes lowered, I crossed the road to him. Then I was standing next to him, my heart beating hard, pleasurably. We were both smiling, embarrassed, tearful. Not sure how to deal with each other in the outside world.

‘How’re you doing?’ he said gruffly and gave me a hug that was so awkward it was nearly a necklock. Spontaneous affection did not come easily to us recovering addicts in the outside world, I thought, with a pang of loss. We’d been all over each other in the treatment centre but it was different when we were among civilians.

‘Fine,’ I said in a trembly voice, feeling as if my heart would burst from all the emotion.

‘One day at a time,’ he said, with an ironic smile.

‘So,’ I said with another enormous, shaky smile. ‘We made it, we’ve done the Cloisters and lived to tell the tale.’

The general vibe was that we had survived something awful and were united by it. Like the survivors from a hijacked plane who met up once a year to rake over misty-eyed memories of drinking their own urine, savaging their nearest and dearest for their bread rolls and being beaten to a pulp by a man wearing a tea-towel on his head.

‘So!’ he exclaimed.

‘So,’ I agreed.

I waited for him to say something about my hair and when he didn’t the worry started to gnaw at me. It was awful, wasn’t it?

‘Don’t you notice anything different about me?’ I heard myself asking. No, no, no!

‘You’ve shaved off your moustache?’ He laughed.

‘No,’ I mumbled, embarrassed. ‘I’ve had my hair cut.’

‘So you have,’ he said thoughtfully.

I cursed myself for ever mentioning it and I also cursed men in general for their visual unawareness. The only things they ever notice about any woman, I thought in disappointment, are big tits.

‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘Gamine.’

He may have been lying, but I was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘What’ll we do?’ I asked, my good humour restored.

‘I don’t know, what do you want to do?’

‘I don’t mind.’ I simpered. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘What I’d really like to do is buy a quarter of Red Leb, smoke it in under an hour, take you home and fuck your brains out,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘But,’ he smiled reassuringly at my rigor-mortised face, ‘we’re not allowed to do that.’

‘And we can’t really go to a pub,’ I said, clearing my throat in manly fashion, letting him know that I hadn’t taken him seriously, that I wasn’t going to go all girly and clingy, and pout and stamp my foot in the middle of a busy street, ‘But you said you’d fuck my brains out. You PROMISED!’ I’d learnt in the Cloisters that I’d made the mistake in the past, too many times, of being needy. And needy girls scare men away. Of that there was no doubt. So to not scare them away, you’ve got to pretend not to be needy. When you’re being shown out of their flat in the morning and they say, ‘See you,’ you’re not supposed to turn around and plead into their face ‘WHEN? TONIGHT? TOMORROW? WHEN, WHEN, WHEN?’ You’re just supposed to say ‘Mmmm, see you,’ and trail an immaculate talon along their stubble-rough cheek and waft away in a cloud of tangible un neediness.