But when I got in and tried to go to bed, my head buzzed like a chainsaw and raced like a grand-prix car. It was worse now than it had been in The Parlour. So I took three sleeping tablets and thought I’d write a bit of poetry as I felt particularly creative and uniquely talented.

Still my head wouldn’t switch off, so I took a couple more tablets.

All the pleasure of the rush had left and I was trapped with a head that kept vibrating. I felt panicky fear. When would it stop? What if it never stopped?

My terror flitted hither and thither and came to rest on the thought of work the following day. My heart squeezed with dread. I really had to go, I’d been in trouble so much lately that I couldn’t skip it again. I couldn’t be late, and I had to stop making mistakes. For this, I really, desperately needed to go to sleep immediately. But I couldn’t!

Frantically, I tipped the rest of the sleeping tablets out of the jar and crammed them into my mouth.

Voices, brightness in my eyes, the bed moving and bumping, blue light, sirens, more voices, bed moving again, whiteness, strange sterile smell. ‘Dumb bitch,’ a voice says. Who is? I half wonder. Beeping sounds, feet running on corridors, metal banging against metal, rough hand on my chin, forcing my mouth open, something plastic on my tongue, scraping my throat. Suddenly gagging and choking, trying to sit up, being forced back down, struggling up again, retching and heaving, strong hands flattening me back against the table. Make it stop.

In less than twenty-four hours I was back home at my apartment. To find Margaret and Paul had arrived from Chicago, to take me to a rehab place in Ireland. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Apart from feeling I’d been beaten up, was swallowing razor blades and about to die from dehydration, I was OK. Fine, almost. It had been nothing more than an embarrassing accident and I was very keen to forget about it.

Then, to my surprise, Luke arrived.

Yikes. I braced myself to be berated for doing a runner and taking coke on Sunday night. I presumed that, in the whole stomach-pumping débâcle, he must have found out.

‘Hello.’ I smiled anxiously. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work? Come in and meet my lickarsey sister Margaret and her awful husband.’

He shook hands politely with Margaret and Paul, but his face was pissed-off and grim. In an attempt to put him in better form, I amusingly related the hilarious story of waking up in Mount Solomon puking my intestines up. He grabbed me tightly by the arm and said ‘I’d like a word with you in private.’ My arm hurt and I was frightened by the madness in his eyes.

‘How the hell can you make jokes about it?’ He demanded furiously, when he slammed the door of my bedroom behind me.

‘Lighten up.’ I forced myself to laugh. I was just relieved he wasn’t giving out to me for doing coke on Sunday night.

‘You nearly died, you stupid bitch,’ he spat. ‘Think of how worried we’ve all been – for ages, not just about this – think of poor Brigit, and all you can do is laugh about it!’

‘Would you ever relax?’ I said scornfully. ‘It was an accident!’

‘You’re mad, Rachel, you really are,’ he said passionately. ‘You need help, big-time.’

‘When did you lose your sense of humour?’ I asked. ‘You’re as bad as Brigit.’

‘I’m not even going to answer that.

‘Brigit says you’re going to a rehab place,’ he said, more gently. ‘I think that’s a great idea.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ I laughed splutteringly. ‘Me, go to a rehab place? What a joke!

‘Anyway, I can’t go away and leave you.’ I smiled intimately, to rekindle our closeness. ‘You’re my boyfriend.’

He stared at me long and hard.

‘Not any more, I’m not,’ he said eventually.

‘Wh… what?’ I asked, cold with shock. He’d been angry with me before, but he’d never broken it off with me.

‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘You’re a mess and I wish to Christ you’d sort yourself out.’

‘Have you met someone else?’ I stammered, horrified.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he spat.

‘Why then?’ I asked, hardly able to believe we were having this conversation.

‘Because you’re not the person I thought you were,’ he said.

‘Is it because I did drugs on Sunday night?’ I forced myself to bite the bullet and ask the unaskable.

‘Sunday night?’ he barked, with mirthless laughter. ‘Why pick on Sunday night?

‘But this is about drugs,’ he continued. ‘You’ve a serious habit and you need help. I’ve done everything I can to help – persuading you to stop, forcing you to stop – and I’m exhausted.’

For a moment he did look exhausted. Bleak, miserable.

‘You’re a great girl in a lot of ways, but you’re more trouble than you’re worth. You’re out of control and I can’t handle you anymore.’

‘Oh no.’ I wasn’t going to be manipulated. ‘Break it off if you’re determined to, but don’t try and blame me.’

‘God,’ he said angrily. ‘There’s just no getting through to you.’

He turned to leave.

‘You’re overreacting, Luke,’ I said urgently, trying to grab his hand. I knew how much he fancied me, I’d always been able to win him over that way.

‘Get off me, Rachel.’ Angrily he pushed my hand away. ‘You disgust me. You’re a mess, a complete fucking mess.’ Then he strode out into the hall.

‘How can you be so cruel?’ I whimpered, running after him.

‘Bye, Rachel,’ he said and slammed the front door.

70

In the days leading up to Christmas I was very jumpy whenever I went into Dublin’s city centre. Luke and Brigit were probably home and I half-hoped I’d meet them. I constantly searched for their faces under the fairy lights, among the hordes of shoppers. Once I actually thought I saw Luke on Grafton Street. A tall man with longish dark hair striding away from me. ‘One minute,’ I muttered to Mum, then belted after him. But when I caught up, after nearly flooring a crowd of carol singers, I found it wasn’t him at all. This man’s face and bum were all wrong, not half as nice as Luke’s. It was probably just as well it wasn’t Luke. I had no idea what I’d have said if it had been him.