‘And as for the rest of you,’ she finished, ‘don’t think that just because you’re not carrying a huge burden of distorted childhood pain around with you, that you’re not alcoholics or addicts.’

All through lunch I cried and cried and cried and cried. Proper crying, that disfigured and blotched my face. Not the fake, girly tears I’d produced for Chris the day I heard Luke had shopped me. But unstoppable, heaving sobbing. I couldn’t catch my breath and my head felt light. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a teenager.

I was filled with grief. Sorrow that went way beyond the heartbreak Luke had caused me. Sadness, deep, pure and ancient, had me helpless in its grip.

The others were really nice to me, giving me tissues and shoulders to roar on, but I was barely aware of them. I didn’t care, even about Chris. I was in another place where all the raw poignancy that had ever existed was being pumped into me. I expanded to accommodate it, the more that came, the more I felt it.

‘What’s wrong?’ a voice cherished. It might have been Mike. It might even have been Chris.

‘I don’t know,’ I wept.

I didn’t even say ‘Sorry,’ the way most people do when they’re overcome with emotion in public. I felt loss, waste, irretrievability. Something was gone for ever and even if I didn’t know what it was, it broke my heart.

A cup of tea appeared on the table in front of me and the tenderness of that gesture multiplied my grief tenfold. I sobbed louder and harder and felt like puking.

‘Hob NOB?’ Someone, who could only have been Don, screeched right into my ear.

‘No.’

‘God, she is in a bad way,’ I heard someone murmur.

And, mercifully, I found myself sniggering.

‘Who said that?’ I gasped, through the tears.

It was Barry the child, and I laughed and cried and cried and laughed, and someone stroked my hair (probably Clarence who knew an opportunity when he saw one) and someone else circled their palm on my back, as if I was a baby who needed to break wind.

‘It’s nearly time for group,’ someone said. Are you up to it?’

I nodded because I was afraid to be on my own.

‘In that case…’ Chaquie said, and swept me up to our room and produced all kinds of mad stuff, like Beauty Flash and Three Minute Repair to mend my disfigured face. It was rather counter-productive because the feel of her gentle fingers on my skin set the tears flowing again in a river that washed away the expensive creams as soon as they were smoothed on.

In the dining-room, after group, Chris pushed through the sympathetic throng around me. I was glad that Chaquie and the others made way for him so unquestioningly. It showed they knew Chris and I had a special bond. He smiled a smile that was only for me and raised his eyebrows in an Are you OK?’ way. From the concern in his pale blue eyes, I’d clearly been imagining any lessening of his interest in me.

He sat down, his thigh against mine. Then tentatively, nervously slid his arm along my back and around my shoulder. Very different from the quick casual hugs he usually gave me. The downy hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My heart quickened. This was the most intimate contact we’d had since the day he’d wiped my tears away with his thumbs.

I desperately wanted to put my head on his shoulder. But I sat rigid, unable to pluck up the nerve. Go on, I urged myself. I’d begun to sweat slightly with desire for him.

Eventually, as butterflies came to life in my stomach, I managed to lean my head against him, savouring the clean, detergent smell of his chambray shirt. He didn’t smell like Luke, I thought idly. Then felt a short brief throb of loss before I remembered that Chris was just as delicious as Luke. We sat quietly and still, Chris’s arm tight around me. I closed my eyes and, for a few moments, let myself pretend it was a perfect world and he was my boyfriend.

It reminded me of an earlier, more innocent age, when the most a boyfriend did was put his arm around you and – if your luck was in – kissed you. The enforced decorum demanded by the Cloisters was sweet and romantic. It touched, rather than frustrated me.

I could sense his heartbeat and it was going faster than usual. So was mine.

Mike walked past and leered. Misty ambled after Mike and, when she caught sight of me and Chris, glared with such venom it almost removed the top layer of skin from my face.

As embarrassed as if we’d been caught in flagrante delicto, I wriggled away from Chris. Deprived of his clean, male, scent and the feel of his big shoulder and arm through the soft fabric of his shirt, I felt bereft. I hated Misty with a passion.

‘So tell me,’ Chris said, seemingly unaware of the condemnatory glares, ‘why were you so upset earlier?’

‘Josephine was asking me in group about my childhood.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know why I got so upset. I hope I’m not going mad.’

‘Not at all,’ Chris protested. ‘It’s perfectly normal. Think about it. For years you’ve suppressed all your emotions with drugs. Now that the suppressants have been taken away, decades’ worth of grief and anger and all kinds of stuff will resurface.

‘That’s all it was,’ he finished kindly.

I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Chris saw me.

‘Oh no, I forgot.’ He laughed. ‘You don’t have a problem with drugs.’

He got up to leave. Please don’t, I wanted to say.

‘Funny though,’ his voice drifted back to me, ‘that you’re acting just like someone who has.’

39

After tea that evening, we were given a talk. We often had talks, usually given by one of the counsellors or Dr Billings. But I never listened. That night was the first time I’d ever paid attention, happy to be distracted from the deep grief I’d been swamped with.

The talk was about teeth and it was given by Barry Grant, the snappy, pretty little Liverpudlian woman who called people ‘divvys’ a lot.

‘All rice,’ she ordered, in a booming voice that didn’t fit with the rest of her. ‘Keeyalm jown, keeyalm jown.’

We calmed down because we were afraid she’d headbutt us. She began her lecture which I found very interesting. For a while at least.

Apparently people with drug and food disorders often had terrible teeth. Partly because of their debauched lives – ecstasy-takers ground their teeth into nothingness; and bulimics, who rinsed their teeth with hydrochloric acid every time they puked, were lucky to have a tooth left in their head; as were any alcoholics who did a fair bit of throwing up.