Ice and a Slice (2 page)

Chapter Two

Two Months Earlier

The terrifying part was pressing the button on the intercom system beside the grimy frosted-glass door. Before that she could have been any other office worker on the busy Soho street with nothing more important on her mind than where to go for lunch: Daddy Donkey for a burrito or Malletti for a slice of pizza? Oh, what she would have given to have been making a choice like that.

She could still run away. Phone up later and say she’d been ill or had to work. She probably needn’t even phone. These kinds of places must get loads of people who made appointments and didn’t turn up. No doubt they were used to it.

Her legs were too rubbery to run anywhere. She glanced over her shoulder. No one was paying her the slightest attention. Thank God. Her outfit, overloud floral leggings and her hideously expensive Monsoon jacket, red for confidence, had been a mistake. She should have worn a wig and dark glasses and one of those great big overcoats so no one knew whether she was male or female. On second thoughts, that would have attracted a fair bit of attention in the June heat – everyone else was in summer suits or mini dresses. A few hundred yards away two bare-chested council workers had coned off a section of kerb and were digging up the road. The faint smell of tar mingled with traffic fumes on the summer air.

Taking a deep breath, she stabbed at the intercom button, which she missed first time because her fingers were shaking. Now she was committed – please let them open the door quickly before someone she knew strolled by and spotted her.

A buzzer indicated the catch had been released and she hurtled inside and found herself in a hallway with a discreet sign, S.A.A.D – that was appropriate – and an arrow pointing upwards. A guy in a baseball cap was coming down the stairs. He smiled and she smiled back and hoped he’d mistaken her for a counsellor.

Her shoulder length dark hair was pinned up in a look which aimed to be grunge, but she had a sneaking suspicion looked more ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’, and she wore the Miss Dior Tom had given her for her birthday. She was not a shambling wreck. She hadn’t even had a cigarette before she came – well, one quick one when she’d got off the tube – but she’d had three mints since then.

Another man carrying a file met her at the top. He smiled too, and she gave him what she hoped was a friendly nod. Pretend you’re here for a doctor’s appointment – nothing to worry about. Just a routine visit to the doctor – no, not a good idea: she hated going to the doctor. She realised suddenly that he was speaking and she hadn’t responded.

“Sarah Carter?” he repeated.

“Yep, that’s me.” Her face blazed with embarrassment. She’d always been hopeless at lying.

“Hi, I’m Kit. Go straight in – door at the end. I’ll be right with you. Can I get you a coffee?”

“Thanks.” She escaped into a cell-like room, furnished with a two-seater settee, an armchair and a small table, which was home to a box of economy tissues and a wire tray of leaflets. On the wall was a Van Gogh print, one corner peeling away from the frame. It showed a small child, supported by his mother and heading towards his father on tottering toddler legs. It was titled
First Steps
. Well, even she could see the wry aptness of that one. In any other circumstances she would have smiled.

A spider plant spilled out of a pot on the table. The earth around it was bone dry. Poor little plant must be desperate for a drink. Oh God, perhaps the spider plant was some sort of in-joke between the counsellors. That couldn’t be right. They shouldn’t be taking the piss. They were supposed to be sympathetic and nice. She remembered the sign downstairs – so it was an acronym, but it was pretty appropriate.

Shuddering, she chose the armchair by the table and picked up a leaflet from the stack.
How to get help if you or your family is suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse
.

Oh crap! She crammed it back in the stand, opened her bag, switched off her mobile and tucked an escaping Tampax back into its compartment – why was it that anything embarrassing in your bag always gravitated towards the top, ready to fall out and humiliate you next time you opened it? Fleetingly, she considered escape, but before she had the chance to move, the door opened and Kit reappeared with two mugs.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He put them on the table and she thanked him numbly. He didn’t need to apologise; he wasn’t late – she was early. It still wasn’t quite midday. She’d been so early she’d actually gone an extra two stops on the tube and walked back, not wanting to arrive too soon in case she bumped into anyone she knew and they asked her where she was going.

Kit sat opposite her on the settee, looking relaxed - no closed body language there. She put her bag on the floor so it looked less like a shield and made a conscious effort to unclasp her hands, uncross her legs and look natural. She knew all about body language. They wouldn’t get her on that one.

Having rearranged herself she turned her attention back to Kit. He looked a bit like a young Bryan Adams, dark eyes and a craggy lived-in face. It had been a waste of time dressing up – he wore jeans and a white T-shirt. Still, at least he wasn’t some shrink in a suit with a load of psychobabble to throw at her. She wondered if Kit was his real name. Probably not. She had a feeling people who worked in these places didn’t give clients their real names in case they turned out to be nut-cases. Well, Sarah wasn’t her real name either. So they were on an equal footing. Hah!

“Anything we discuss in this room is completely confidential…” His voice was Bryan Adams too – gravelley from years of smoking. “…And won’t be disclosed to anyone else without your permission.”

She nodded, relieved he didn’t have a notebook or pen. She didn’t want anything she said recorded and kept on some central government database – far too many people had access to government databases these days.

“So where would you like to start, Sarah?”

“Where do you usually start?” Her voice sounded normal – hey, she could be at the doctor’s discussing her blood pressure. Good job she wasn’t; it must be sky high. She could feel her heart pounding away in time with the faint sounds of the drill, which had started up again outside the window.

“You said on the phone you were concerned about your alcohol consumption. So how about you tell me how much you usually drink?”

“Sure.” She picked up her bag, more comfortable with it on her lap. “Well, I don’t drink at lunchtime – apart from the odd Sunday if we go out for lunch. I don’t drink in the day at all, actually. In fact sometimes I don’t have one until nine or half past. I’m too busy, you see.” So far, so good. In a minute he’d start asking her why she was here and she could say she wasn’t sure, it had all been a mistake – a phone call made after a particularly bad night when she was feeling depressed. But that was probably more age than excess. Everyone got hangovers when they got past thirty-five, didn’t they?

He nodded. “So when you do drink, after nine, what would you have on an average day, say?” His voice was mild and not at all judgmental.

That was easy. “Wine. White wine, usually. With dinner, you know – like everyone.”

Another little nod. “How many glasses would you have?”

“Two or three, it depends on the size of the glasses – they vary so much these days, don’t they?”

“Would it be easier if you told me in terms of how much of the bottle you had? Would you drink maybe half a bottle, or more than that?”

“More than that,” she said without thinking. “I mean, half a bottle is nothing, is it? Everyone has half a bottle of wine with dinner.”

He smiled. “Three quarters?”

“Yes, I’d say it was usually three quarters, occasionally the whole bottle, but not always. Maybe if I’d had a particularly stressful day, or if I was up late.”

“Do you drink on your own or with a husband or partner?”

She was ready for this one; it was the same thing they asked on the
Are you an alcoholic?
questionnaire she’d found on the net. If you drank alone you were a saddo alky, but if you were sharing the wine with someone else you were okay. Not that she exactly shared the wine because Tom didn’t like white much – luckily – but he did quite often have a glass of red.

“My husband’s usually around,” she said firmly.

“But not always?”

“No, he sometimes works late, so I might have the odd glass before he gets in.”

“But not the whole three quarters of a bottle?”

“Well, possibly I might – if he was working very late.” How had she fallen into that one? “I mean, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have a drink at all, would I?”

“And would that bother you, not having a drink at all?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Her hands felt slippy on the leather of her bag – she didn’t remember picking it up, but it was on her lap and she could feel sweat dripping down the back of her neck. Flustered, she stared at a paperclip on the grey carpet just in front of Kit’s trainer.

The truth was she couldn’t remember the last day she hadn’t had a few glasses of wine – so she didn’t actually know whether not having it would bother her. After a slight pause she told him this. After all, she wasn’t in denial about how much she drank. If she was an alcoholic she would have been in denial. That was a big part of the illness – it was almost the definition. If you thought you were an alcoholic then you probably weren’t. She’d been clinging to that little truth for a while now.

But instead of condemning her as an alcoholic Kit changed tack. “Do you ever drink anything else besides wine, Sarah?”

The fact he’d called her Sarah reminded her that whatever she told him would be attributed to someone else and, feeling a strange sense of liberation, she told him she drank gin and tonic, too – not much – a litre or two of gin every couple of weeks. She knew this because she put at least one empty bottle in the green recycling bin every fortnight. Never any more than two bottles. She was quite proud of that, although occasionally she put the recycling bin that contained innocuous plastic shampoo bottles and milk containers over the one that contained glass - in case the neighbours took more than a passing interest.

“So you’re mixing your drinks?” he asked unexpectedly, and she stared at him.

“Is that bad?”

He paused, and suddenly she’d had enough. In the cold light of day listing all her drinks like this sounded a lot worse than it felt. It wasn’t as though she ever got drunk – well, very occasionally she did, but hardly ever. Not one of her friends had ever commented on how much she drank, although, come to think of it, she’d had an awful lot of jokey drink-related birthday cards this year. Not even Tom had commented. Mind you, he didn’t comment on much she did; he was too tied up with his job to notice.

She wanted to get out of here – she’d only come to reassure herself her drinking habits were normal. For heaven’s sake, if you were French you drank gallons of wine, didn’t you – not just the odd bottle. The French had the stuff with every meal. A ten-year-old French child probably drank more than she did. But before she left she really needed to establish she was fine and didn’t have a problem. Otherwise the whole embarrassing experience would be a waste of time.

“Am I drinking too much?” she asked, glad her voice sounded perfectly calm. “I mean, I know I’m not teetotal, but I’m not too OTT, am I?”

“Do you know what the recommended amount of alcohol units for women is?” Kit smiled as he spoke, as if they were about to share some private joke.

Reassured, she smiled back. “Yes, it’s something absurd like twenty-one units a week, isn’t it?”

“A bit less than that – it’s fourteen units for women.”

She waved a hand, feeling in control again. “Everyone knows that’s ridiculous. It’s like the government recommendation for eating five portions of fruit and veg a day – a nice idea, but utterly impossible in reality. I mean, no one lives like that.” Her stomach rumbled at the thought of food. She’d been too anxious to eat breakfast. At least she didn’t feel sick any more. She glanced at the clock – soon this would be over and she could escape and get something to eat.

“Sarah. From what you’ve told me, you’re drinking at least fourteen units a day. So in a week you’d be drinking – what – almost seven times the recommended limit?” His voice was soft, completely non-judgmental, but the words hit her like a bucket of ice.

For a few seconds she was too shocked to speak. The little room felt oppressive and her head was spinning. No longer caring about body language, she grabbed her bag again and closed her eyes for good measure so she didn’t have to look at him.

“Shit, am I?” she whispered, opening her eyes and staring at a point to the left of her shoes.