She winced.

‘… It was the best thing you could have done for me,’ I continued. ‘I’m grateful.’

She demurred. I insisted again. Once more she demurred. And once again I insisted.

‘Do you mean it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I really mean it,’ I said nicely. And I did really mean it, I found.

Then she gave me a woebegone smile and the tension lifted.

‘So you’re really OK?’ she asked awkwardly.

‘I’m great,’ I said, honestly.

We were quiet.

Then she tentatively asked a question.

‘And do you go round saying you’re an addict?’

‘Well, I don’t stop strangers in the street,’ I said. ‘But when it’s relevant I say it.’

‘Like at those meetings you go to?’

‘Exactly.’

She leaned closer to me, her eyes gleaming. ‘Is it like that bit in When a Man Loves a Woman when Meg Ryan stands up in front of all the people and says she’s a jarhead?’

‘Just like it, Brigit.

‘Except,’ I added, ‘Andy Garcia doesn’t come running up to me at the end and try and drop the hand.’

‘Just as well.’ Brigit smiled suddenly. ‘He’s gruesome.’

‘Like a lizard,’ I agreed.

‘A good-looking lizard, mind,’ she said. ‘But a lizard is a lizard.’

For a few moments it was as if nothing bad had ever happened. We were pitched back in time and space to when we were best friends, when we each knew exactly what the other was thinking.

Then she stood up. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said, awkwardly. ‘I’ve got to pack.’

‘When are you going back?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said.

‘Thank you for being so nice to me,’ she replied.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

Any chance of you coming back to New York?’ she asked.

‘Not in the foreseeable future,’ I said.

I went downstairs to the door with her.

‘Bye,’ she said, her voice trembling.

‘Bye,’ I replied, my voice matching hers, wobble for wobble.

She opened the front door and put one leg outside, turning away. Just as I thought she was gone, she swung back and flung her arms around me and we hugged each other fiercely. I could feel her crying into my hair and I would have given everything I ever had to put the clock back. For things to be the way they used to be.

We stood for a long, long time, then she kissed me on the forehead. We hugged again. And she went off into the cold night.

We didn’t promise to stay in touch. Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn’t. But things were OK now.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t devastated by grief.

I cried for two solid days. I didn’t want Nola or Jeanie or Gobnet or anyone, because they weren’t Brigit. I didn’t want to go on living, if I couldn’t have the life I’d had with Brigit.

I thought I’d never get over it.

But I did. In a matter of days.

And I was suffused with pride that I’d gone through something so painful and hadn’t taken drugs. Then I felt a strange relief that I wasn’t tied to Brigit anymore. It was nice to know I could survive without her, that I didn’t need her approval or endorsement.

I felt strong, standing alone without splints or crutches.

71

On into the spring.

I got a job. It was only as a part-time chambermaid in a small local hotel. The money was so bad I’d probably have been better off if I had paid them. But I was delighted with myself. I took pride in arriving on time, working hard and not stealing any money I found lying on the carpet, the way I used to. Most of the other people who worked there were schoolgirls, supplementing their pocket money. I would have found this very humiliating in my former life, but not now.

‘What about going back to school?’ Jeanie suggested. She was in the second year of a science degree. ‘Maybe do a degree, when you know what to do.’

‘A degree?’ I was appalled. ‘But it would take too long. Maybe four years. By then I’d be thirty-two. Ancient!’

‘But you’re going to be thirty-two anyway,’ she pointed out calmly.

‘What would I do?’ I asked, as the impossible, the out-of-the-question, suddenly became not so ludicrous. Possible, even.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jeanie. ‘What do you like?’

I thought about it.

‘Well, I like all this,’ I said shyly, indicating us. ‘Addiction, recovery, people’s heads, their motives.’

Ever since Josephine had told me she was an addict and an alcoholic, the idea of achieving what she’d achieved had rattled around in the back of my mind.

‘Psychology,’ suggested Nola. ‘Or a counselling course. Find out, ring up.’

Then it was the fourteenth of April, my first anniversary. Nola and the girls made me a cake with a candle. When I went home, Mum, Dad and my sisters had made another cake.

‘You’re great,’ they kept saying. ‘A whole year without a single drug, you’re fantastic.’

The following day I announced to Nola ‘My year is up, now I can ride rings around myself.’

‘Good girl, off you go,’ Nola said, with a wryness that unsettled me.

I soon understood what she’d been getting at when I found there was no one I wanted to sleep with. No one I fancied. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t meet any men. Apart from the thousands of lads in NA, I’d started going on occasional nights out with Anna or Helen. Forays into the real world, with real fellas who weren’t addicts and who didn’t know that I was. It always came as a surprise when they tried to get off with me. Of course, I had to go through the tedium of explaining to them why I didn’t drink. But even when they realized there was no hope of getting me into bed by drunken means, they still hung around.

One or two of these interested parties were even attractive, wore good clothes and had jobs in bands or in advertising.

I certainly wasn’t making the most of my liberation from purdah. The trouble was, whenever I thought of going to bed with someone, the person I instantly thought of was Luke.

Gorgeous, sexy Luke. But I only spent a fraction of a second reflecting on how gorgeous and sexy he was, before rushing to remember how appallingly I’d treated him. Immediately I felt very ashamed and sad. Not to mention scared to death because Nola kept telling me to write to him and apologize. Which I was far too mortified and afraid to do in case he told me to fuck off.