Being so close to him made me feel better about Luke. It helped calm my fear that he’d met someone else. It soothed my raw emotions. Momentarily, at least, I was so filled with desire for Chris, it blocked out the awful memories of Luke.
I yearned for Chris to kiss me. Longing made my head light. Almost mental with desperation.
What wouldn’t I give…
To my alarm, I found we were almost back at the house.
Already?
The light from the windows shone near us, so that we could see each other in shadow.
‘Look.’ Chris turned to me, his face into my face, almost touching. Every nerve ending leapt onto full alert, certain that a clinch was coming.
‘See that big bathroom there,’ he pointed, his body tantalizingly almost touching mine.
‘Yes,’ I said thickly, following his outstretched arm, as it pointed up at a lighted window. He didn’t move any closer to me, but he didn’t move away either.
If I breathe out a lot, my stomach might touch his.
‘Two people were caught having sex in there,’ he said.
‘When?’ I could hardly speak, as he kept me there, hovering on the brink.
‘A while back.’
‘Who were they?’ I forced myself to ask.
‘Patients, clients, whatever we want to call ourselves. People like us.’
‘Really,’ I mumbled, wondering where all this was going.
‘Yeah,’ he chuckled. ‘Two people like you and me were caught having sex in that very bathroom.’
It sounded as though he had deliberately structured that sentence for maximum provocativeness. But then he moved away from me and I felt like I’d fallen off a cliff.
‘What do you think of that?’ he asked.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, my voice dull with disappointment. All that anticipation and nothing to show for it…
‘Honestly,’ he promised, his eyes flashing sincerity in the darkness.
‘No way,’ I said, finally able to fully concentrate on what he was saying. ‘How could people be so… so… I mean, how could they break the rules like that?’
He laughed. ‘You are so surprisingly innocent,’ he drawled. ‘And I thought you were a wild girl.’
Furious with myself, I spluttered ‘Oh, but I am. Honestly.’
‘Will we go back in?’ He nodded at the house.
Confused and frustrated, I nodded. ‘OK.’
47
On Monday morning in group Josephine turned her attention to Mike and humbled the living daylights out of him.
‘Mike, I’ve been meaning to get back to you,’ she said, sounding apologetic. ‘It’s about time we looked again at your alcoholism, isn’t it?’
He declined to reply. Just stared as if he’d like to maim her.
Great, I thought gleefully. While someone else was in the hotseat, it meant there was no room for me.
Josephine turned to the room at large. ‘Have you any questions for Mike?’
Do you perm your hair? I wondered. And if so, why?
No one said anything.
‘OK,’ sighed Josephine. ‘I’ll do it myself. You’re the eldest of a family of twelve?’
‘I am,’ Mike agreed loudly.
‘And your father died when you were fifteen?’
‘He did,’ Mike bellowed.
‘That must have been hard?’
‘We managed.’
‘How?’
‘By working hard.’ Mike’s ugly face was stonier than ever.
‘On the land?’
‘On the land.’
‘Cattle?’
‘Mostly arable.’
I hadn’t a clue what they were on about.
‘Long days?’
‘Up in the dark and still working when the sun went down,’ Mike said almost proudly. ‘Seven days a week and no such thing as a holiday.’
‘Very commendable,’ Josephine murmured. ‘Until your drinking got out of control and you disappeared on week-long binges and the work stopped getting done.’
‘But…’ Mike began.
‘We’ve had your wife in here,’ Josephine cut him off. ‘We know all about it. You know we know.’
And off she went. All morning she worried away at him.
She tried to get him to admit that he kept himself so diverted trying to organize his entire family into a slick workforce, that he never got a chance to mourn his father.
‘No, no, no,’ he insisted, annoyed. ‘We had to get a system going, otherwise we would have starved.’
‘But why were you the one who had to do it?’
‘I was the eldest,’ he mumbled painfully. ‘It was my sole responsibility.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Josephine. ‘What about your mother?’
‘My poor mother,’ Mike stammered. ‘I wouldn’t want to worry her.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think the world of my mother,’ Mike said quietly, as if Josephine should be ashamed for asking such a question.
‘Yes,’ Josephine said quietly. ‘You’ve an odd attitude to women, haven’t you? The Madonna/whore distinction is very marked in you.’
‘Wha…?’
‘Anyway, we’ll come back to that some other time.’
Despite her intensive cross-examination, he wouldn’t admit to anything.
After lunch my luck held because Misty was for it. A double blessing. Anything bad that happened to her cheered me up immensely. And while she was being humbled it meant I wasn’t.
I’d got off fairly lightly, I realized. I was sure that they wouldn’t bother with the questionnaire at such a late stage in my stay. Apart from that one day when she’d questioned me about my childhood, Josephine hadn’t given me too hard a time. And only five days to go before I could leave. Five days to convince me I had a drug problem? Well, I didn’t give much for their chances.
With that in mind, I was able to really enjoy Misty being trashed by Josephine without worrying that the same thing was in store for me.
And trash her she did. Josephine suspected that Misty had only relapsed as a publicity stunt.
Which Misty vigorously denied.
‘This isn’t a plug for Tears before Bedtime, my new book,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not in here just so that my new book Tears before Bedtime gets publicity.’