When I eavesdropped on the third conversation involving a man pleading to his wife ‘It’ll be different this time, I promise,’ I had to get out of there.

I went to the front door and half-heartedly stood on the front steps in the rain, and looked out at the mournful, dripping trees. I had meant to go round the grounds and find the gym and do an hour or so of body sculpting, but I just couldn’t be arsed. Oh, now, now, I berated myself, this won’t get the thighs narrowed.

So I screwed up my will-power and my resolve and determination, I squared my shoulders, set my jaw and swore, promised, vowed – I could almost hear the celestial trumpets and see the sun break through the clouds – ‘I’ll start tomorrow!’

Back I went to the dining-room and in my head rehearsed what I’d say to Luke. (‘Hiiiii! Great! How are yooouuu?’)

I saw Chris sitting with two people who looked like his parents. They were about the same age as mine and seeing the three of them sitting huddled together, awkwardly trying to make conversation, filled me with a strange grief. I couldn’t help but notice the absence of a girlfriend-type figure hanging round him.

Good.

Stalin dragged me over to meet his Rita, a husky-voiced chain-smoker. She looked like a man in drag and more likely to break Stalin’s ribs than the other way round. I was comforted by that.

At ten to three, I couldn’t wait anymore so I found the counsellor on duty – the Sour Kraut – and asked her if I could make a call. She stared at me, as if I’d asked her for the loan of a thousand quid, then in silence led me towards the office. We passed Bubbly in reception. How manky to have to work on a Sunday. From Bubbly’s resentful expression it looked like she agreed with me.

‘Gif me the number,’ Sour Kraut said.

‘Em, it’s a number in New York,’ I said nervously. ‘Is that OK?’

She glared at me through her John Lennon glasses, but she didn’t say it wasn’t.

‘It’s ringing,’ she said, and handed me the phone.

Heart pounding, scalp tingling with sweat, I took the phone.

I’d practised my speech all day. I had decided to be breezy and chatty, rather than whingey and condemnatory. But my lips trembled so much I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to compress them and actually speak when the time came.

I heard a click and my heart plummeted with acute disappointment – the answering machine. I decided to leave a message, anyway. Maybe someone would pick up the phone when they heard my voice. Patiently, I waited to hear the first verse of ‘Smoke on the Water’.

But it wasn’t ‘Smoke on the Water’!

They’d changed their message to some Led Zeppelin song.

When Robert Plant started shrieking something about red-hot mommas and what he was planning to do to them as soon as he got home, I became seized with fear, convinced that the new message was symbolic. That Luke was trying to tell me ‘Out with the old, in with the new’. It hit home with devastating force that life in New York was going on without me. What else had happened that I didn’t know about?

I listened to the mad, energetic gee-tar break and as it neared an end I tried to stop shaking and poised myself to speak. But no! There was a second verse. And Mr Plant was off again, yelling and screeching and promising hot love left, right and centre. Then there was more frantic guitar playing. Finally Shake’s voice said ‘Do the message thing, man.’ But I completely lost my nerve. I remembered how angry Luke was with me, how deeply nasty he’d been. He wouldn’t want to talk to me, so I leant over and hung up.

‘Machine,’ I muttered at the Sour Kraut, who had been sitting there all along.

‘You haf used vun off your two calls even though you did not speak.’

By five o’clock all the visitors had left. Everyone was subdued and sullen. Except me.

I was suicidal.

After tea, I opened the dining-room cupboard, foraging for chocolate I’d seen earlier in the day, and was nearly brained as an avalanche of biscuits, cakes, buns and chocolate fell out on top of me.

‘Jesus!’ I complained, as a bag of mini-Mars bars nearly took my eye out. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘Guilt money,’ said Mike. ‘They always bring sackloads of sweets. Except for that yoke of Chaquie’s. He just gave her a bag of mandarins. Did you clock his rug?’

‘Dermot?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘He wears a wig?’

‘How could you miss it?’ laughed Mike. ‘It was like a badger asleep on his scalp.’

‘And what do you mean, “guilt money”?’ I asked. That made me feel unaccountably anxious.

‘Our families feel guilty for putting us in here.’

‘But why would they feel guilty?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it for your good?’

‘Is that what you really think?’ Mike asked, his eyes narrowed.

‘Of course,’ I said, nervously. ‘If you’re an alcoholic, or a drug addict, then coming here is the best thing for you.’

‘Do you think it’s the best thing for you?’

What could I say? I decided to be honest.

‘Look,’ I said, conspiratorially, ‘I shouldn’t be here at all. My father just overreacted. I only came here to please my parents.’

Mike’s face dissolved and he laughed and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ I was annoyed.

‘Because that’s just what I said,’ he grinned. ‘I came here to please my wife, Chaquie’s in to get her husband off her back, Don because of his mother, Davy so that he wouldn’t lose his job, Eamonn because of his sister, John Joe’s here because of his niece. We’re all in here to please someone.’

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t help it if all of them were in denial.

21

It was Monday morning.

I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, constantly dreaming of Luke, then waking up sweating and heartbroken. We were just about to go into group and apparently Neil’s ISO, whatever that was, was coming.

‘It stands for Involved Significant Other,’ Mike said. ‘Someone like your wife or your friends or your parents. They come along and tell the group how bad you were when you were drunk or stoned or eating them out of house and home.’

‘Really?’ I had a throb of voyeuristic anticipation.