When the wake-up call came, it was a shock to her, but nobody else.
By the time the school run came, Fiona would usually have drunk three large glasses of wine. Using the maths of the delusional, she calculated that one and a half of those would be out of her system by then, going by one unit an hour, and the remaining glass and a half was - well, only a glass and a half. Not over the limit in anyone’s book. She honestly believed herself when she told herself she was all right to drive. After all, she was a responsible parent, a loving mother. She wasn’t going to put her own children’s life at risk, or jeopardise anyone else’s.
The twisted wreck that had once been her Porsche Cayenne said otherwise. And thank God she had been on her way to school, not on her way back, so the children weren’t in the car. It happened in the middle of Wimbledon Village. Right outside Daylesford Organics. She sat in the police car waiting to be breathalysed and watched practically everyone she knew drive past her car and clock it, their heads snapping round in astonishment. Although actually, none of them was astonished. They all agreed it was only a matter of time.
It hadn’t even been her fault. She had swerved to avoid someone who had stepped out from the pavement, only then they had thought better of it and stepped back but by then it was too late - Fiona was on course for the lamp-post.
The noise had been the strangest thing. A crumping sound, very loud, but without the reverberation you always heard on the television. She hadn’t panicked at first. She told herself it was going to be fine, no one was hurt, the car was insured. It was only when the breathalyser went red, and the policeman looked at her gravely and told her she was going to be arrested because she was nearly twice over the legal limit that she felt the first claws of panic.
Tim collected her from the station, after first collecting the children from aftercare. He showed no concern for her well-being after the accident, or her ordeal at the station. He was cold, measured, which was more frightening than if he had been incandescent. They faced each other across the granite-topped island in the kitchen, Fiona thinking that really this probably wasn’t the time to dive into the fridge and pull out a bottle, but never had she wanted a drink more. Her head was throbbing, muzzy from the stress and the shock. She couldn’t think straight. She really didn’t want to talk about what had happened, but Tim was pointing at her, jabbing a finger in a manner that was uncharacteristic. He was usually so mild-mannered and easy-going.
‘You’re going to have to do some serious thinking to get us out of this mess,’ he was proclaiming.
‘I know. But we should get a courtesy car on the insurance. And I can always arrange for the girls to get a lift—’
He looked at her in disbelief.
‘I’m not talking about lift-shares. I’m talking about your fucking problem.’
Fiona flinched. Tim hardly ever swore. She tried to smile, shaking her head to show she didn’t understand.
‘Problem . . . ?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Fiona. I’ve tried to rein you in. Time and again. Screwing the lid back on the bottle so you can’t drain it dry every night. Keeping us out all day on a Saturday to put off the point at which you get the corkscrew out. Steering the waiters away from you at a cocktail party. It’s embarrassing, Fiona. Whenever we go out somewhere, you’re completely blotto by nine o’clock—’
‘Who isn’t?’ She felt rightfully indignant. He was talking as if all their friends were card-carrying members of some temperance society.
‘Most people aren’t. Most people are relaxed, not almost incapable of speech, bouncing off the walls. Crashing out at the dinner table, for Christ’s sake—’
‘Once! And I was tired!’
‘You were unconscious! You’d drunk yourself into oblivion. Like you do every night.’
He stared at her. She didn’t know where to look. She tried to smooth down her hair, look as if she was in control.
‘OK. So maybe I’ve been drinking a bit too much. It’s just a habit. I can deal with it. It’s just a question of cutting down—’
‘Cutting down?’ Tim’s voice oozed pure vitriol. ‘To what? Just the one bottle a day?’ Fiona looked wary. ‘You think I don’t know? You think I believe that half-bottle of white wine you get out of the fridge every night is the same one you put back the night before? I know it’s a fresh one, that you’ve guzzled the rest in between . . .’
She drew herself up to meet his accusing glare, ready to defend herself.
‘So why don’t you say anything, if you know so much?’
‘Fiona, I do. I have and I do. You don’t want to listen. You don’t want to know. And frankly, I don’t understand why.’ He threw up his hands to indicate their surroundings. He looked helpless. ‘You’ve got everything . . .’
She looked at the floor.
‘I know.’
‘So what’s the problem? Are you so unhappy? Do you not like being married to me?’
‘No, I’m not unhappy . . .’
‘Then what?’
Her tears were falling thick and fast now.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I do need . . . help. Professional help.’
‘You don’t think I’m going to fork out for you to go to The Priory, do you?’ he snarled. ‘You just need to get a grip.’
‘I will. I will . . .’ She could feel snot starting to bubble out of her nose. He looked at her in disgust as she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
‘In fact, just get out. I don’t think I can even bear you in the same house at the moment.’
‘You’re kicking me out?’
‘We’ve both got some thinking to do.’
‘What about the children?’
‘What about the children? I’ll take them to school, as you obviously can’t. And I’m perfectly capable of cooking them supper. Just leave a list of their weekend commitments—’
‘You’re serious.’
‘Never more so.’
‘Where do I go?’
‘I don’t know. But I suggest somewhere without a mini-bar, or a compliant friend.’
Fiona felt herself crumpling. She flicked a glance at the fridge.
Tim looked at her, a sardonic grin twisting his mouth.
‘Glass of dry white wine, dear?’
Suddenly she felt angry. It was all very well him being so judgemental after the event, but if he’d realised she had such a problem, why hadn’t he done anything about it?
She drew herself up, mustering as much dignity as she could.
‘OK. If that’s the way you want it. I’ll go down to Everdene for a few days. See if I can . . . work it all out.’
‘Please do, Fiona. Because quite frankly, I can’t see a way forward the way things are.’
Tim and his brothers shared the hut at Everdene between them. They’d bought it ten years ago, in an attempt to recreate for their own children the idyllic summers they had spent on the beach. Only it had become a source of friction, none of them being able to agree on when they should be allowed to use it, or how much money should be spent on maintaining it. Fiona knew it had lain empty and unloved all winter, but they would all be fighting come the warm weather and the school holidays. In the meantime, it was hers for the taking. The ideal refuge for a woman who needed to take stock of her life.
She caught the train down to Everdene the next morning. Tim took the children to school, leaving her to take a taxi to the station having flung a few things into a suitcase. He showed no sign of backtracking on what he had said the night before. If anything he was more thin-lipped and ungiving. She’d hugged the kids, told them she had to go away for a short while, and they had been heartbreakingly understanding, if a little puzzled. Fiona never went away from home.
Nor could she remember the last time she’d been on any sort of public transport. She sat on the train watching people file past her on their way to the buffet car, coming back with paper bags that belched out the scent of toasted bacon buns. They would sell wine in the buffet. Of course they would. Unbelievably, it had been nearly twenty-four hours since her last drink. She looked around her, at the teenage girl frantically texting with a half-smile on her lips, the businesswoman pecking at her laptop, the man on the phone to his hapless estate agent, giving him a rollicking and not caring who heard. None of them was gasping for a drink.
She couldn’t fall at the first fence. She had to at least arrive at her destination sober. She could do this, of course she could. She sat and flicked through the magazine she had bought at the station, and found herself pleasantly distracted by the articles and the fashion, picking out dresses and shoes for herself.
An hour and a half later, she struggled off the train and out onto the station forecourt and into a taxi.
‘Everdene Beach, please.’
She thought about asking the driver to stop at Marks and Spencer. She needed food, after all, a few nice nibbles to keep body and soul together over the next few days. But deep down, she knew if she went into M&S she would head straight for the wine section, pop herself in a couple of bottles. It was better to avoid temptation.
As the taxi rumbled over the cobbles of the station forecourt and pulled out onto the road that led to Everdene, she put her head back and shut her eyes wearily. She couldn’t run away from it for ever. She had to look into the black hole. It was the black hole she tried to keep filling, but that always came unplugged and emptied itself, leaving her with a gaping jagged rawness inside.
Her childhood home had been a silent, joyless place, its windows blind with closed curtains, low-watt bulbs throwing sinister shadows. Her mother didn’t like light. It triggered her headaches. So the three of them, Fiona and her mother and father, moved through a crepuscular twilit world, Fiona always blinking when she came out of the front door into what she thought of as the real world.
Her father did his best to keep things together. On top of his already stressful job as a civil engineer, he tried to run the house, keep an eye on Fiona’s progress at school and monitor his wife’s mental health-a test of his nerves as much as hers. Whenever he left the house, he felt a sense of dread. He could never be sure what he was going to come back to. Euphoria, with every item of her wardrobe scattered around the bedroom, music blasting, make-up smeared all over her face. Or despair, which meant an ominous silence, a vacant stare. He never knew which was worse.
Food was simply a fuel, a necessity, never a source of pleasure or enjoyment. At eleven, Fiona took over the catering, unable to bear the unpalatable and unimaginative stodge her father served up. Her repertoire wasn’t terribly gourmet, but at least her macaroni cheese had proper cheddar in it, not just a packet sauce that tasted of sick. Neither of her parents was particularly interested in what she cooked, but at least she could take a modicum of pleasure from what she ate if she made it herself.
Her mother was beautiful, with large sad eyes and a dark bob that always seemed to be perfect although Fiona had never known her go to the hairdresser. She was tall, with painfully thin arms and legs, her knobbly wrists sticking out of the end of the jumpers she wrapped herself in, because she felt the cold terribly. She drifted around the house aimlessly, usually silent, sometimes watching television, mostly sleeping. Although sometimes she would come into Fiona’s bedroom and interrogate her about her life, words spilling out of her in a chaotic jumble. Then she would clap her hand over her mouth as if she was trying to shove the words back in where they had come from. Fiona preferred it when she was silent. Silence she could handle.
Her desperate father tried to make it all up to her. Every now and then he would drive her to London, dropping her off at the big Top Shop in Oxford Circus, telling her she could have whatever she wanted. He would turn up an hour or two later with his cheque book, never quibbling at the amount she had spent. Her friends were green with envy, but she would have swapped all the shoes and dresses in the world for just one day of normality, when the air wasn’t thick with portent.
The third time her mother tried to kill herself, her father decided enough was enough and sent Fiona to boarding school. She was fourteen.
‘It’s no life for you, stuck here. It’s too much responsibility. You should be with girls your own age, having fun, listening to records, putting on make-up.’
The school he chose wasn’t a particularly posh or grand one. Fiona was a willing student, but not particularly able. Information seemed to trickle out of her head, as if it could find no reason to stay in there, so she was spectacularly bad at exams. Ambleside wasn’t bothered about exam results, just an ability to pay, and was therefore stuffed with girls whose parents were clearly happy to pay anything to get them off their hands.
It should have been hard arriving as a new girl into a school with friendships that had been long established, but Fiona settled in surprisingly easily. Despite her troubled home life, she was a sunny-natured, confident girl, and she quickly found herself popular. In fact, her arrival rather upset the status quo.
Her year had long been ruled by Tracey Pike. Tracey, it was generally agreed, was as common as muck, but her father was very, very rich. And what she lacked in intellectual prowess she made up for in charisma. She was loud-mouthed and large-breasted, with a cloud of black curls and a low boredom threshold. She ruled the fifth year with a rod of iron, dictating what everyone should wear, what they should listen to, who was in and who was out, playing people off against each other.
Fiona quickly worked out that she needed Tracey as an ally in order to survive. She didn’t fear her in the least - what on earth could Tracey do to hurt her? By facing up to her she got Tracey onside. Soon she was able to dissuade Tracey from her more extreme ideas and ill-disguised bullying. This gave Fiona an almost heroic status amongst the other girls, who had suffered Tracey’s tyranny for years. Frankly, after a manic-depressive mother, Tracey was a piece of cake, though Fiona suspected that Tracey was simply biding her time, awaiting the opportune moment to overthrow the pretender to her throne. She didn’t trust her one bit.