One Step Closer to You Read online

  As Mum dishes out piping-hot fish pie, she talks about going to church tomorrow. ‘It’s hard timing it with the turkey,’ she says, her brow furrowed. ‘Maybe we should eat in the evening, but the children are exhausted by then.’ Mum is always worrying about something. Granddad Arthur says she’ll be flapping and worrying in her grave.

  I notice her watching as Granddad pours the last of the wine into his glass. ‘Why do we eat turkey every year? Makes you windy.’ He winks at me and I giggle as he helps himself to another drink from a new bottle and offers some to Auntie Lyn. ‘Same goes for stinky sprouts!’

  Auntie Lyn places a hand over her glass, pursing her lips.

  Granddad frowns. ‘Oh come on, Lynny, it’s Christmas! Get legless!’

  ‘Dad!’ Mum says, but I find it very funny.

  ‘I’m driving,’ she replies, refusing to look at him.

  There’s a strange silence. Mum’s face reddens.

  ‘Anyway, this fish pie is delicious.’ Dad raises his glass. ‘Three cheers for the chef.’

  ‘Be careful of the bones,’ Mum warns in her worried little voice.

  ‘Behave,’ I hear Granny Sue muttering to Granddad.

  I feel sorry for Granddad. He’s always being told off.

  *

  ‘I am very very proud of our family,’ Granddad repeats over pudding, his eyes watering. ‘We’ve had some tough times but Hugo is an inspiration. That little boy …’ Granddad takes a deep breath, ‘he’ll have one heck of a life ahead of him and it won’t be easy.’ He wags a finger. ‘But he’s a strong little lad and … well … I can see great things …’ He stumbles on his words, takes another gulp of wine. ‘He’s got balls.’ Granddad hiccups. ‘You know, it’s a big bad world out there, but he’s a brave boy. And then there’s beautiful you, Polly. You’ll have the boys eating out of your hand, I bet, bees round a honey pot.’

  Shy, I play with my spoon, not sure exactly what he means.

  ‘Polly, you have such a happy future ahead of you … oh boy, if I could have my life again …’

  ‘What would you do differently, Arthur?’ asks my dad.

  ‘Oh … everything, right, Sue? Wifey here thinks I’m a failure.’ He nudges Auntie Lyn, who smiles at him awkwardly.

  ‘I do not,’ Granny Sue tuts. ‘When have I said that?’

  ‘You don’t have to.’ He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

  Dad has told me Granddad Arthur hasn’t worked much in his life. He lost jobs as quickly as he found them.

  ‘Why?’ I’d asked.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Dad replied.

  ‘I am a failure,’ Granddad says, pushing his food to one side, ‘and it’s all my fault.’

  I sit up. ‘What’s your fault?’

  ‘Can we change the subject?’ suggests Granny Sue. ‘It’s Christmas.’

  Why does everyone keep on saying, ‘It’s Christmas’?

  ‘We’ve always been very good at changing the subject, Lynny,’ Granddad says. She squiggles in her chair. He leans closer. ‘They never want to talk about the truth.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she says, edging away again. ‘Very drunk, Arthur.’

  He edges towards her once more. ‘Well, as Churchill said, “You’re ugly, you’re very ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning!”’ He leans back in his chair and roars with laughter, but no one else does. I’m not sure what’s so funny. Mum and Dad look angry and Granny Sue furious, as if she might explode.

  ‘Dad, please,’ Mum says, gesturing to me. ‘You promised.’

  ‘All right, all right, loosen up everyone.’ He finishes off his wine and reaches for another bottle.

  ‘Arthur, you’ve had enough.’ Dad swipes the bottle from him.

  ‘Says who?’ he snaps, before knocking over the pot of salt. He takes a large pinch in his fingers and throws it over his shoulder. ‘Bad luck spilling salt, Polly.’

  ‘You need some black coffee,’ Mum says, manically tidying up the salt.

  ‘She should be here,’ Granddad Arthur says as he fishes out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘We go to church, get preached to about forgiveness …’

  Mum stops dead. ‘Dad!’

  Granddad shakes his head. ‘But we can’t even do it in our own family. We pretend like everything is normal, here we are on Christmas Eve, blah blah blah.’ He’s waving his arm in the air.

  ‘Dad! Now is not the right time …’

  ‘It’s never the right time. She should be here.’

  I frown. ‘Who should be here, Granddad?’

  ‘No one.’ Mum stares at him.

  ‘Secrets,’ Granddad says. ‘The thing about life, Polly, is …’

  ‘I think it’s time you left.’ Dad walks over to Granddad.

  Granddad shakes his head with regret. ‘You can bury your head in the sand, but the thing about life is it will always bite you back, it’ll come back to haunt you when you least expect it.’

  ‘Polly, come,’ Mum demands, taking me firmly by the arm. ‘Say goodbye and up to bed. We need to put some sherry and biscuits out for Father Christmas.’

  ‘I’ll take her up,’ says Auntie Lyn, relieved to get up from the table.

  I kiss him goodnight. His cheek is sweaty; his lips and hair sticky. Granddad barely looks up at me. Reluctantly I follow Auntie Lyn out of the room, before glancing at him, shoulders slumped, his eyes fixed to the floor. He looks sad, as if Christmas is over.

  *

  With brushed teeth and an empty stocking at the end of the bed, I can’t sleep. I hear muffled voices outside and footsteps on our gravel drive. Something makes me walk over to my window. Carefully I lift the curtain and see figures walking towards Granny Sue’s car. Granny Sue doesn’t like staying here. She always books a hotel close by.

  Dad is holding Granddad by the arm. Granddad stumbles, crashes into the side of the car and falls. Dad tries to help him up but Granddad pushes him away. Mum opens the passenger door and they shove him inside. As the car drives away Dad puts an arm around Mum.

  I get back into bed. What did Granddad mean by secrets? She should be here. I pull the blankets around me, feeling something uncertain, something I don’t understand, and I don’t like it. Surely I’m not supposed to feel like this, not when it’s Christmas.

  3

  2013

  My name is Polly. I’m thirty-three years old, a single mother to my five-year-old son, Louis, and I live in north London. Each morning I pray for a sober day and before bedtime Louis and I tell each other all the things in life we are grateful for: my brother, Hugo, comes top of the list, custard tarts a close second. I work in a café in Belsize Village, run by a Frenchman called Jean. Half the café sells cookery books from across the world; the other half is the kitchen and eating area, where I cook soup and bake cakes for the locals. I attempt to go jogging as much as I can to run off licking the wooden spoon. I’ve been seeing an addiction counsellor called Stephanie for the past four years, and finally, every Friday lunchtime I go to my AA meeting. Sometimes I go to a couple of meetings a week, I squeeze them in when I need to, but Friday is always my regular slot. AA is my oxygen. It doesn’t matter how busy I am or what else is going on around me, my recovery comes first.

  As I make my way towards the church, close to Louis’s school in Primrose Hill, I think about the friends I have made in AA. Firstly, Harry. Harry is in his late seventies, grey-haired and slight in build. He’s always dressed in a tweed jacket one size too big for him and occasionally a matching cap that he models at a jaunty angle. Harry loves to be in charge of the kitchen, serving hot drinks and biscuits. The first time I came to a meeting, all snotty-nosed and red-eyed, Harry plied me with sweet tea and gave me his cotton handkerchief with an embroidered ‘H’ in the corner. He hasn’t had it easy. He suffered abuse in his childhood and became addicted to alcohol in his twenties, drinking heavily into his fifties, until his doctor told him he had the choice either to carry on drinking or die in six months. He has been
clean now for over twenty years and to celebrate each anniversary he takes his wife Betsy out for a slap-up meal.

  Next is Ryan, a music producer in his late twenties, sleepy brown eyes, who always looks as if he’s just rolled out of bed and shoved on a pair of jeans and sneakers. Over the past four years he’s sported orange, pink, black and blond hair, but currently it’s his natural brown, which suits him. He plays the guitar and has a rescue bulldog called Kip. Louis and I once met Ryan and Kip in the park and Louis had an instant crush; Ryan is impossibly cool. If I were a little younger, or the old Polly …

  There’s also Neve, two children, just turned forty, divorced, but now in a happy relationship with a former addict. She left the corporate world and has since become a yoga teacher. Neve has an open, angelic face, which makes it hard to imagine that by the age of fifteen she was addicted to cocaine, drink and sex. Basically, she wanted the largest piece of whatever was put in front of her. She chaired the first meeting I went to. Everything she said echoed my life. She was also funny, describing how she’d been pulled over and breathalysed on her way to the meeting. ‘When the policeman asked me the last time I’d had a drink I replied, smugly, let me tell you,’ she’d added with a wink, ‘“Twenty-ninth September 2005, 5 p.m., Phoenix Airport, Arizona, sir!”’ I was in awe of how she’d turned her life around, so much so that I plucked up the courage to ask her to be my sponsor – a person who helps you to stay sober through the AA programme. ‘I’d love to, Polly,’ she’d said at the end of the meeting, before adding, ‘but you’ve got to promise me one thing. You swear you’ll never ever lie to me.’

  And finally there’s Denise, in her late fifties, dark roots and dyed blonde hair. She’s had many jobs, mainly in retail and now works part-time for Sainsbury’s, behind the cheese counter. Denise’s mother was an alcoholic who didn’t make it to fifty. Her father chucked her out on the streets when she turned sixteen. She has a mustard tinge to her skin and the crumpled lines on her face give away her forty-a-day habit. She lives in a council flat with a ginger cat called Felix, and since giving up smoking, has taken up knitting instead.

  I enter the church hall, waving to Harry behind the tea and biscuits table, before taking a seat on the back row, next to Denise, who’s knitting something in pale blue today. She tells me it’s a cardigan for her grandson Larry. ‘He was called Larry, ’cos my daughter always used to say when she was preggers, “He’s as happy as Larry.”’ She chuckles as she carries on, giving me a flash of her nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Didn’t see you last week, sweetheart?’

  I tell her Louis and I spent Christmas and New Year with my parents in Norfolk.

  Neve enters shortly after me, dressed in yoga pants that show off annoyingly toned legs and a sheepskin coat. Her short brown hair is pulled back at both sides in a couple of clips, accentuating her high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Out of breath, she sits down next to me and says, ‘So blooming glad Christmas is over.’

  Ryan strolls in next, wearing headphones. Just behind him is a tall man with thick dark hair and a beard, his shoulders hunched awkwardly as he looks for a space to sit down. ‘What is it?’ Neve asks when she sees me shrinking into my seat.

  ‘I know him.’

  Her eyes light up as she says, ‘He’s handsome in a beardy kind of way. Who is he?’

  He turns round, as if sensing someone is talking about him.

  ‘An ex?’ Neve whispers.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Your gynaecologist?’ There’s that flash of mischief in her eyes.

  ‘Shh! I don’t have one, luckily.’

  ‘Your Botox man?’

  ‘Bog off.’

  ‘Your doc who tells you not to drink and smoke,’ chips in Denise with a husky chuckle, her knitting needles clickety-clicking.

  Neve turns to me, the colour in her cheeks fading. ‘It’s not Louis’s dad, is it? Matthew?’

  ‘Whoa, Matthew’s here?’ says Ryan, catching half the conversation as he approaches us with a mug of tea, laces undone and headphones now round his neck. I still get a knot in my stomach whenever someone mentions Matthew’s name.

  ‘Everyone calm down,’ I say, feeling far from calm myself. ‘He’s a dad from school, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Neve seems disappointed.

  Ryan scratches his head in confusion. ‘Who’s a dad from school?’

  Neve gestures to the back of a man wearing a navy jumper. ‘Do you think he saw you, Polly?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  I explain to Denise, Ryan and Neve that his name is Ben and his niece, Emily, is in Louis’s class. Emily started school during the second half of the Christmas term last year. When I’d asked Louis about Emily’s father, he’d said, ‘Emily doesn’t have a mum. Her heart was attacked. Her uncle Ben looks after her instead.’ Part of me is pleased to see him here. I have an ally, someone I can be sober with at school fundraising events, a kindred spirit at the school gates. I’ve wanted to talk to him and now I have an excuse. The other side of me likes to hold on to my privacy. I like being new Polly at the school gates, unscarred, the mother who has left her past behind.

  *

  ‘Hi. My name’s Colin, and I’m an alcoholic.’

  ‘Hi Colin,’ everyone replies. Colin is chairing the meeting, sitting at a table in the front of the room, next to the secretary, dressed in a grey cable knit jumper. ‘It took me a long time to admit I was an addict. I pictured old men in mouldy clothes with rotting teeth, clutching a whisky bottle in a brown paper bag and sleeping in skips.’

  There are smiles and mutters of agreement in the room. Harry, sitting a few chairs away from me, wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, before finishing off his slab of Battenberg cake.

  ‘We’re good at fooling ourselves, but in reality my sofa was my park bench.’

  As Colin continues, my mind drifts to Ben. How is he managing with Emily? What happened to Emily’s father? Is this his first AA meeting?

  ‘I started drinking heavily when my divorce papers came through.’ Colin shakes his head. ‘I used to dream about lieins and freedom, no child jumping on the bed at six in the morning. Truth is when the kids were with my ex suddenly I had all this time on my own. I was also still in love with my wife, which didn’t help, and in complete denial that it was over. I didn’t drink to be social. I’d drink to get plastered. One time I vandalised public property, another time I went round to my ex-wife’s house and thought it was a great idea to hit the new boyfriend. “Don’t blame me! I was drunk!” That was the excuse. Addicts need an excuse to drink, never want to accept responsibility. “It’s Friday,” or “I’ve had a bad day at work.”’ Colin smiles wryly. ‘“It’s Christmas!” That’s a great excuse to drink even more because everyone gets wasted at Christmas. Looking back now, I reckon all my cherry-faced cousins were pissed on whisky and mulled wine.’

  I think of Granddad, that very first time when I was allowed to stay up for supper on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, he had fallen backwards into our tree and blamed it on Hugo getting in his way, when in fact Hugo was nowhere near him. In my teenage years I saw a darker side to Granddad. His jokes weren’t so funny anymore. He became a sad and lonely figure. I understood why Mum talked to him as if he were a child and why he and Granny Sue had slept in separate bedrooms for years. It had nothing to do with Granddad ‘snoring’. Granny Sue didn’t want to be woken up by Granddad staggering home from the pub.

  ‘Then something made me sit up,’ Colin continues. ‘My six-year-old daughter became ill. I had a choice now. It was a case of “Do I run?” or “Do I face life and be there for her?” Basically, I had to sober up and be a proper man, be a dad.’

  I watch as Ben heads abruptly out of the room. Neve glances at me. Should I follow him?

  When Colin finishes his talk, the secretary opens the meeting to anyone who wants to share. A woman raises her arm. Colin nods.

  ‘Hi. I’m Pam and I’m an alcoholic.’

  ‘Hi, Pam,’
everyone says.

  Will Ben come back?

  ‘Thanks, Colin,’ she begins. ‘I haven’t touched a drink for nearly five years now.’

  There’s clapping. Maybe he’s outside having a cigarette? Neve encourages me to go.

  I tiptoe out of the room and head outside to a small group of people smoking. I see Ben in the distance. Unsure if I should go after him, I see him glancing over his shoulder. Caught off balance, I take a step back before waving tentatively. But it’s too late. He’s turned round, hands back in pockets as he walks away.

  4

  After the meeting, I jog back home. I live in a tiny rented two-bedroom flat in Primrose Gardens, off England’s Lane, in Belsize Park. I had no idea how beautiful and green this part of north London was until I moved here. Hampstead Heath is only a ten-minute walk away from my flat. Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park are equally close.

  Inside the block of flats, before heading upstairs I glance in my cubbyhole to see if I have any interesting mail. It’s all junk except for a credit card bill, which I decide can stay there.

  The moment I walk through the front door, Louis charges towards me in his pilot’s costume. ‘Have you been a good monkey for Uncle H?’ I ruffle his bushy brown hair.

  He nods. ‘We played pirates.’

  ‘Thanks, Hugo.’ I touch his shoulder. ‘I really needed to go today.’

  ‘How were your breakdown friends, Mum?’ asks Louis.

  Recently, Louis overheard Hugo and me talking about AA and my breakdown friends, as Hugo calls them. He’d walked into the kitchen in his pyjamas and said, ‘What’s an alcoholic?’