She extended a smooth, tanned hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m Jackie,’ she smiled.
She was about forty-five but from a couple of feet away she could have passed for at least ten years younger.
‘And that’s spelt C-H-A-Q-U-I-E,’ she added. ‘Jackie’s so common when it’s spelt J-A-C-K-I-E, don’t you think?’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I smiled again.
‘I’m Rachel,’ I said politely.
‘Hello Rachel,’ she said. And is that Rachel with a Y and two Ls?’
I was sharing a room with this lunatic?
And why was she hoovering? Wasn’t she an inmate? I was certain that I’d seen her at the lunch table. My heart sank. Surely they hadn’t taken that Betty Ford stuff to heart?
‘You missed the bit by the door, Chaquie,’ Dr Billings called and made for the stairs.
The look that Chaquie gave his disappearing back could, as they say, haunt a house.
‘Don’t forget your bag, Rachel,’ reminded Dr Billings.
And off he went, up the stairs to the bedrooms, leaving me to carry my bag. And it weighed a ton. In case there were lots of famous people at the Cloisters, I’d taken the precaution of bringing all my own clothes, plus any of Helen’s that fitted me. I would have borrowed everything Helen possessed but she was dainty and tiny and petite and I was five nine, so there was no point in taking anything other than her ‘One Size Fits None’ garments. Apart from the fact that it would be a right laugh when she opened her wardrobe and found every stitch she owned gone, of course.
As I bumped and banged my way up the lino-covered stairs and past walls with peeling paint, I cursed my bad luck that my stay coincided with the Cloisters being redecorated.
‘When will the decorating be finished?’ I shouted up to Billings, hoping that he would say ‘Soon.’
He just laughed and didn’t answer me. He really was a mad bastard, I thought in a sudden burst of rage.
With every breathless, puffing step I took, my heart sank further. I was sure that, when the walls were repainted and the new carpet laid, the place would look just like the luxury hotel I’d been expecting. But in the meantime I was uncomfortably aware that it was more like a Dickensian orphanage.
When I saw my bedroom I was even more disappointed. Downright puzzled, in fact. Surely it didn’t need to be so small? It barely held the two tiny single beds that had been shoehorned into it. Apart from the size, or lack thereof, the similarity to a monk’s cell ended there. Unless, of course, monks had pink nylon fitted bedspreads, the type that I remembered from my childhood in the seventies. Not exactly the crisp, white, Irish linen counterpane that I’d been expecting.
As I walked past the bed, I heard a faint crackle of static and the hairs on my legs stood up.
A white rickety chest of drawers was loaded down with bottles of Clinique and Clarins and Lancôme and Estée Lauder skin-care stuff. They must have been Chaquie’s. There was no room for my pitiful couple of jars of Ponds.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Dr Billings. ‘Group starts at two and you’re in Josephine’s. Don’t be late.’
Group? In Josephine’s? What would happen if I was late? Which bed was mine? Where would I get hangers?
‘But what…?’
‘Ask any of the others,’ he said. ‘They’ll be happy to help.’
And he was gone!
The cheeky bastard, I thought in fury. Lazy, unhelpful layabout. Wouldn’t get me vegetarian food. Wouldn’t carry my bag. Didn’t stay to help me settle in. I might have been very upset, you know. He wasn’t to know that I wasn’t really an addict. Ask any of the others, indeed. I’d write a letter to the papers when I got out and I’d name him by name. Lazy bastard. And he was probably being paid a fortune, out of my money.
I looked around the little room. What a dump. In misery, I flung myself on the bed and the forgotten Valium bottle nearly disembowelled me. When the agony abated I fished it out and decided to hide it in my bedside locker. But when I tried to get up, the pink nylon bedspread came with me. Every time I tore some off it swam back to me and reattached itself.
I was frustrated and disappointed and pissed-off.
9
Come now, come, I cajoled myself. Let’s look on the bright side. Think of the Jacuzzi, the massage, the seaweed treatment, the mud wraps, the funny stuff they do with the algae.
OK, I said grumpily, reluctant to let go of my self-pity.
I half-heartedly unpacked a couple of things until I found that the tiny wardrobe was already packed to bursting with Chaquie’s clothes. So I redid my make-up, in the hope that I might find some celebrities in Josephine’s group, and forced myself to go back downstairs.
It had been quite a battle to leave the bedroom. I felt shy and self-conscious and suspected that all the others were talking about me. When I got to the dining-room (hugging the wall and sucking a finger in a childish and unattractive gesture. A woman of my height just doesn’t cut the mustard in the ‘cute’ stakes) I could barely see into the room for the cigarette smoke. But, from what I could hear, everyone seemed to be sitting around drinking tea and laughing and chatting and very obviously not talking about me.
I sidled in. It was just like going to a party and knowing nobody. A party where there was nothing to drink.
With relief I saw Mike and, even though I’d be afraid to give him the time of day in the outside world in case somebody thought I hung around with him, for the moment I was too scared to care. I was quite happy to overlook the fact that his trousers were Farrah slacks and that he looked like a bull wearing a curly wig, because he had protected me from Sadie of the orange pinafore.
‘Where do I go for Josephine’s group?’ I asked.
‘Come here and I’ll show you how it all works.’ He took me over to a notice board on the wall and pointed out a timetable.
I did a quick scan of it and it seemed to be very full. Group therapy both morning and afternoon, lectures, talks, films, AA meetings, NA meetings, GA meetings…
‘Is that AA, as in Alcoholics Anonymous?’ I asked Mike in disbelief.
‘That’s right.’
‘And NA?’
‘Narcotics Anonymous?’
‘What the hell’s that?’ I asked.
‘Like AA, but for drugs,’ he explained.
‘Get lost,’ I said, greatly amused. ‘Are you serious?’