I read and reread the Rock Star’s email. I had suspected he was still drinking, a bit. You could sometimes hear it on the phone, an intake of breath, a pause where there shouldn’t have been a pause, but I suppose I put this down to him starting to smoke again, due to the stress of going out with me.
I’ve had experience of alcoholics before. My sister-in-law Laura seemed normal until one day, over lunch in a pub, down from Edinburgh for my dad’s funeral, she started to drop her food on to her lap, and dribble down her front. Until that moment, I’d had no idea she even had a problem.
My brother Tony had been unable to help her. Nothing worked. Not even the fact she had two beautiful daughters who needed her.
I wish now I’d been able to take my so-called boyfriend to her funeral, to see the narrow shoulders of the two girls heaving as they sat in the front row of the crematorium.
I think if I were less controlled, less fearful, I would have started drinking by now, beyond a crisp glass of prosecco in the evening. It’s nice to have something to hold.
But I have stopped eating of late, my stomach churning with nerves, and that is an addiction of sorts, something I hide from other people, something that damages relationships, ruins moods as well as bodies.
I could tell him to check himself into the Priory. I certainly cannot help him. I feel bad, too, having placed my worries upon his shoulders when at first perhaps he saw me as strong and capable, not in need of a crutch or even a friend, maybe just in need of a more flexible overdraft facility.I’ve hidden things in the past. With my ex-husband, it was my age, my lack of funds.
I hide my grey roots. I hide away in my house, mainly because I don’t trust anyone. Just the other day, I learned someone had been snooping through my post at the house where I used to live in Somerset. I have learnt, too, though, that I am stronger than I would ever have believed because I’ve survived what has happened to me over the past five years: the loss of a brother and a nephew, loss of my cats Snoopy and Squeaky, financial hardship, betrayal by those closest to me.
So I thought and thought about what to send in return to his confession that he has started drinking again. I could offer to see him. I could help him make a plan.
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I could be sympathetic. I could be dishonest, saying it doesn’t matter at all, or that it matters too much. I could ask him to come and stay, having first cleared the house of all bottles.
I could confiscate his car keys.
Things started to make sense: the lack of sex, the missed dates, the silences…
Lots of things started to make sense, too, as I read and reread. The lack of sex, the missed dates, the silences. And do I want this complication, really, in my life? I need someone reliable, after all, someone to lean on, share things with, go places with. Every time I have to pump my own fuel I wail, to the heavens,
‘I need a man! A useful one!’
I questioned my own worth, too. So this is all I can get, a man with a problem, yet again. Not a normal, nice man, but someone who is flawed.
Like being whisked off your feet and taken to a lovely hotel, only to find when he takes off his trousers he has a wooden leg, or BO, or dentures. All surmountable, but not ideal.
I had thought with all (!) the men in my life it was me who was at fault, undesirable, but it was not as clear-cut as that. Yes, I was too old for my ex-husband, but he was lazy and had his own issues. Trevor was addicted to sadness. The Osama Bin Laden lookalike was shy, full of self-doubt, too, which should have taught me women don’t have the monopoly on that.
So I sat and thought, and I wrote, and I slowly erased the words as either patronising or too mummyish.
And then I typed this, the last words from my favourite film, a film he absolutely got, and laughed out loud to alongside me, which meant I knew then he was ‘the one’.
I typed two words, adding a careful Carrie Bradshaw ellipsis, and then I pressed send.‘Nobody’s perfect…’