I looked at her, at her lovely skin and her golden hair and her perfect nails and was in awe of how successfully she had reinvented herself. I would never have believed there was so much pain and insecurity rampaging about below her sleek, glamorous surface.
Then Josephine questioned her about the carpet-man. And eventually, after a question and answer session that I found excruciatingly painful to listen to, Chaquie admitted that she had indeed christened her new carpet by having sex on it with the carpet-layer.
The details weren’t salacious and fascinating, they were simply sordid. She said she’d only done it because she’d been drunk and desperate for affection.
My heart bled with pity. I expected people my age to behave that way. It seemed far more pathetic and shocking for someone like her, of her age and station, to do it. With passionate force it struck me that I didn’t want to end up like Chaquie.
This could be you, my head said.
How? another part of me asked.
I don’t know, the first voice said in confusion. I just know it could be.
‘I wanted to die with the shame when I sobered up,’ Chaquie choked.
Not content with that, Josephine needled away until Chaquie admitted having lots of anonymous sex with anyone she could get her hands on, particularly tradesmen.
It was astonishing, especially in light of the judgemental, Catholic stance Chaquie had always taken. But then again, I realized, as I began to get the hang of this whole Cloisters thing, maybe it wasn’t astonishing at all. She desperately papered over the cracks of her shame by pretending to be the well-behaved, respectable person she wished she was.
I was staggered by it all.
On Friday evening, I noticed the awful grief that I’d had earlier in the week had lifted. Because it had returned.
‘The tooth didn’t distract you for too long, did it?’ Margot smiled at me as I sat at the dinner table crying buckets.
I should have thrown my plate of bacon and cabbage at her, but I just cried even more.
I wasn’t alone.
Neil was sobbing terribly. That afternoon in group Josephine had finally broken through his denial. Suddenly he saw what everyone else in the whole world could see. That he was an alcoholic who could rival his much-hated father in the atrocity stakes. ‘I hate myself,’ he sobbed into his hands. ‘I hate myself.’
Vincent was also in floods due to the examination of his childhood Josephine had subjected him to in morning group. And Stalin was bawling his eyes out because he’d got a letter from Rita saying that, when he got out of the Cloisters, he wasn’t to come home. She’d applied for a divorce.
The dining-room had so many weeping people in it, it was like a crèche.
‘She’s met someone else,’ Stalin bawled. ‘Someone else to…’
‘To break her ribs,’ Angela interrupted, her tiny, cupid’s bow mouth pursed even smaller in her fat face.
Oh dear. Angela had been stricken by a dose of NIJ – New Inmate’s Judgementalness. Just wait until she had an Involved Significant Other who would tell her group about how she had broken her mother’s arm with a karate chop to stop her reaching for the last slice of Viennetta, or something like that. Then she wouldn’t be so self-righteouser-than-thou.
I felt sorry for her.
On Friday evening, as usual, the new list of team duties went up on the notice board. The minute Frederick secured it to the cork with a red thumbtack, we all surged at it, desperate to see our fate, as if it was a list of war dead. When I saw that I was on Vincent’s team and, worse again, that that meant breakfasts, I was very, very upset. OK, so I was upset anyway, but now I was really upset. So upset that I didn’t want to shout at anyone, I just wanted to go to bed and not wake up.
Chris approached me with a box of tissues.
‘Tell me things,’ I gave him a watery smile, ‘distract me.’
‘I shouldn’t really,’ he said, ‘you should stay with the pain and…’
I lifted my cup of tea threateningly.
‘Easy.’ He smiled. ‘Only having a laugh. So what’s up?’
‘I’m on Vincent’s team,’ I said, telling him the one tangible piece of misery I knew. ‘And I’m afraid of him, he’s so aggressive.’
‘Is he?’ Chris looked over at Vincent who was still sobbing his eyes out at the far end of the table. ‘He doesn’t look very aggressive to me.’
‘Well he used to be,’ I said doubtfully. ‘The first day I came here…’
‘That was two weeks ago,’ Chris pointed out. ‘A week is a long time in psychotherapy.’
‘Oo-oh,’ I said slowly, ‘you mean you think he’s different now…
‘But he was so threatening,’ I felt I should remind Chris.
‘People change in here,’ he replied equably. ‘That’s what the Cloisters is about.’
That irritated me.
‘Tell me how you ended up in this madhouse.’ I’d always been curious about Chris and his past and wished I was in his group so I’d know more about him. But I’d never before had the courage to ask him something so brazen.
To my surprise, a look of pain skittered across Chris’s face, like a breeze blowing over a field of corn. I was so used to thinking of him as totally in control and omniscient that his vulnerability scared me.
‘This isn’t my first time in here, you know,’ he said, pulling a chair close to me.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said. That shocked me. It meant his drug habit must be very advanced.
‘Yeah, I was in here four years ago and I didn’t listen to anything. But this time I’m doing it properly and I’m going to get my life back together.’
‘Were you very bad?’ I asked nervously. I liked him too much to want to hear stories of him rolling round in puke, a needle stuck in his arm.
‘It depends on what you mean by “bad”,’ he said with a twisted little smile. ‘While my life wasn’t exactly Trainspotting, with me shooting up smack and living in a squat, it wasn’t a fulfilled, useful life either.’
‘What, er, drugs did you take?’
‘I mostly smoked hash.’
I waited for him to continue with a long list: crack, angel dust, heroin, jellies… But he didn’t.
‘Just hash?’ I croaked.
‘Believe me,’ he grinned, ‘it was enough.’