This Charming Man

by Marian Keyes

  The loss of control was so unprecedented Marnie decided that it simply hadn’t happened.

  ‘We’ve all been there,’ the man said kindly.

  Maybe you have, you drunken loser, but I haven’t.

  ‘Biscuit?’ the man offered.

  ‘Okay.’ Her stomach was begging for food, but it felt as if the signals were coming from a hundred miles away. She bit a tiny corner off the biscuit but it was so long since she’d held a morsel of food in her mouth that it felt unnatural. She swallowed, forcing the crumbs down her closed throat and her stomach juices squirted with joy.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ Grace suggested.

  Flanked by Grace, she sat on a hard chair.

  This isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening.

  She broke small pieces off the biscuit, letting them dissolve in her mouth, and zoned in and out as the alcoholics whinged on. ‘Sharing’ they called it, what a cringy word. Surely Grace would hate that? Surely she wouldn’t have any time for an organization that used that sort of term?

  ‘… drinking was a full-time job for me. Sneaking alcohol into the house, hiding bottles, pretending to walk the dog so that I could dispose of the empties in my neighbours’ bins. Then they started charging for rubbish collection and I got caught…’

  ‘… when I had dinner parties, I always kept an extra bottle in the kitchen cupboard, so that when I brought the plates back in or whatever, I could help myself…’

  ‘… I was self-medicating. I thought I was drinking because I liked drinking but I was drinking to kill the pain of my feelings…’

  ‘I had bottles stashed everywhere. Even in my wardrobe.’

  Dispiritingly, this confession moved Grace to elbow Marnie. See, the gesture suggested, you’re just like them, you’re meant to be here.

  ‘I kept bottles hidden in the pockets of my winter coats,’ the woman continued and Marnie felt Grace tense with sudden suspicion.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  ‘… I could stop, that wasn’t the problem. I could manage a week, maybe ten days without a drink. The tough thing was staying stopped. I couldn’t do that…’

  ‘… I lost everything to drinking, my job, my family, my home, my self-respect, and I didn’t care, I just wanted to drink…’

  ‘… Marnie…’ Grace murmured.

  ‘Hmm?’ Emerging from torpor, Marnie found a buzz of attention around her. The focus of the entire room seemed to be on her and the leader woman was smiling kindly.

  ‘Marnie, would you like to say something?’

  ‘What? Who, me?’ She looked down at her feet. ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Go on,’ Grace whispered at her.

  ‘… My name is Marnie.’

  ‘Hi, Marnie,’ the room chorused.

  God, she felt so stupid.

  ‘And… well, here I am.’

  ‘Say you’re an alcoholic,’ Grace whispered.

  But she wouldn’t. She didn’t. Because she wasn’t.

  ‘Just so you know,’ Grace said, her mouth a grim line, as she drove them home, ‘you don’t have to drink every day to be an alcoholic. The woman said lots of people stop drinking for long periods of time, just like you do.’

  Ignore her ignore her ignore her.

  ‘So what did you think of the people?’ Grace asked, after a period of silence.

  ‘They’re nice.’ They’re freaky.

  ‘You’ll go again?’

  ‘Mmm, next week.’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow? Isn’t that a bit… extreme?’

  Grace didn’t reply, and when they got home she went straight up the stairs and into Marnie’s bedroom, where she flung open the wardrobe doors and rummaged in the furthest reaches. Within moments, she emerged with a half bottle of vodka and demonstrated it with a silent flourish, like a magician whisking a white rabbit from a hat. Back in she went again, like someone diving for pearls, feeling about in the deep pockets of winter coats and emerging with another bottle.

  When the number of bottles had reached four, she said, ‘Extreme? No, it’s not fucking extreme.’ She sank to her knees and dropped her face into her hands, then she clambered to her feet.

  ‘Grace… where are you going?’

  ‘To the bathroom. To throw up again.’ She stopped at the doorway and whirled around and demanded, ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  Marnie recoiled from the aggression.

  ‘You’re the one who drank yourself into a coma,’ Grace cried. ‘But

  I’m the one who’s puking!’

  ∗

  Grace returned from the bathroom and curled on the bed beside

  Marnie. They lay in silence.

  ‘What were you doing in Cricklewood?’ Grace suddenly asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cricklewood. Nick says that’s where the ambulance picked you up.’

  ‘… Yes, I know.’ But I don’t know what I was doing there.

  ‘What happened that night?’

  ‘Nothing. I just went to the pub after work with Rico.’

  ‘Not in Cricklewood?’

  ‘No. Wimbledon. Near work.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know London very well.’ Was Grace being sarcastic? ‘Is Wimbledon near Cricklewood?’

  Not even remotely. It was the other side of the city. ‘No.’

  ‘So you and Rico…?’

  ‘We had a few drinks.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I met some people, they were going to a club, I went with them.’ I think.

  ‘Where was the club? In Cricklewood?’

  Please shut up about Cricklewood. ‘In Peckham.’ Peckham? What had she been thinking? Peckham was a ghetto.

  ‘Is that near Cricklewood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know anyone who lives in Cricklewood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why do you think you were found in Cricklewood?’

  ‘Grace, if you say Cricklewood again, I’m going to the off-licence.’

  ‘Cricklewood, Cricklewood, Cricklewood. Which off-licence? The one in your wardrobe?’ Grace slung her leg across Marnie’s to stop her from moving. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘I know. Look at me, I’m in hysterics.’

  They spiralled down into gloomy silence, then Grace said, ‘Don’t you think it’s kind of…?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were lying alone on a roadside, injured, poisoned with alcohol, in a part of London you didn’t know, with no memory of how you’d got there or what you’d been doing there.’

  Before Grace had got more than five words in, Marnie had stopped listening and was preparing her response. When she saw that Grace had finished she said, ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I agree with you, it looks pretty bad when you put it like that. But it was an accident, a one-off and it won’t happen again.’

  ‘It’s three o’clock.’ Grace swung herself off the bed. ‘I’m going to collect the girls from school. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Thanks, Grace.’ Melodie had finally walked; they were currently without a nanny. If Grace wasn’t here, Marnie didn’t know how the girls would get home. Perhaps one of the other mums…

  She heard the front door slam shut and the sound of the car start up, and she settled herself into her pillows. She was sleepy now. But as she hovered on the brink, Grace’s words replayed themselves. ‘You were lying alone on a roadside, injured, poisoned with alcohol, in a part of London you didn’t know, with no memory of how you’d got there or what you’d been doing there.’

  Oh.

  A tiny chink opened, giving a glimpse of the vast cavern of horror beyond. Seized with terror, Marnie scrambled to sit up, gasping for breath, her heart pounding. She was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

  Lying alone on a roadside, with three broken ribs, at five in the morning.

>   She was that person.

  She had always liked a drink – she never made any bones about that – but the truth was that she was a moderate drinker. When she’d been a full-time mum, she never drank during the day. She didn’t approve of it. The rule was, no alcohol until 6 p.m. She’d spend the day taking care of the two babies, but once the hands of the kitchen clock aligned themselves into a straight black line, she poured herself a vodka and tonic. She looked forward to it, she wasn’t going to deny it, but since when was that a crime?

  Perhaps she could have started earlier – there were probably other mothers who did – but rules were rules. No drinks until 6 p.m.

  Except for the day two Octobers ago – or was it three? – after the clocks had gone back and five o’clock felt like six o’clock. It was dark outside and the day had gone on for long enough and it seemed unnecessary to wait, particularly because Nick hadn’t changed the clock. The hands actually pointed to six and if it had still been yesterday, it would already be six. So on that particular day, she was comfortable with five o’clock. And – perhaps because the world didn’t end when she broke the 6 p.m. rule – a few days later 4.30 seemed fine. Later that month, so did 2.15. Then 1 p.m. The first time she had a drink in the morning, she felt giddy with freedom; astonished that she’d spent so many years hidebound by artificial barricades. Time was only a concept – what did it matter when she had a drink, as long as she did her job as a mother properly?

  And she did do her job properly. The girls were her life and it was her purpose to feed, clothe, entertain, cosset and comfort them. They came first, before all else. That was the bargain she’d made with herself.

  The 6 p.m. rule was broken only in extremis: she had to feel particularly black or bleak or bored or lonely in order to justify flouting it.

  But then again, who was she hurting by drinking before six? Nobody. In fact, everyone benefited, because when a few drinks took her away from her life and into a happier place inside her head, she got great relief. She was doing exactly what she wanted, the only time she was being true to herself. Being personally fulfilled made her a better mother; it must do.

  Nevertheless, she had a suspicion that Nick wouldn’t see daytime drinking as the life-enhancing asset that she did. After he began wondering out loud why their vodka was disappearing so quickly, she began to buy her own special bottles and keep them in her own special secret places. She had never intended to have a stash of alcohol in her wardrobe but she needed to be able to drink without restraints.

  She took care never to slip into slurred incapability around Daisy and Verity. But sometimes the effort became too much and she began giving them their dinner at 4.30 and putting them to bed while it was still daylight, turning a deaf ear to their startled complaints.

  By the time Nick got home from work, it had become her usual practice to have a bottle of wine opened and to be sipping demurely at the first glass. It had a two-fold benefit: it explained any smell of alcohol on her breath; and she could relax into her drunkenness because, after all, she was drinking.

  At times he was surprised at how drunk she seemed to get, and how quickly. ‘You’ve only had two glasses,’ he used to say. ‘Your tolerance has gone.’

  ‘Cheap date,’ she’d quip, pleased that her subterfuge was working.

  But what she longed for, lived for, were the evenings when the girls were in bed and Nick was out late at work parties. Only then could she really surrender, pounding the drinks, one after the other, in glorious abandon, until her bed tilted and the room swirled around her, whirling her away to oblivion.

  Sometimes – usually in the dead of night, when everyone was sleeping – she saw the full, fractured kaleidoscope of her secret life, saw it as others might see it, and it froze her with fear.

  What does it mean? What will I have to do?

  But I am a good mother.

  I am a good wife.

  I am a good person.

  Everyone finds it hard to cope, we all do what we have to.

  Good mother, good wife, good person: these are the important things.

  Good mother, good wife, good person: I have the basics in place.

  She kept worrying at the information, twisting and turning her badness into goodness, until the broken pictures rearranged themselves into something less ugly and she was able to fall into a light, anxious sleep.

  Then she got caught, drunk and messy. She couldn’t understand how she’d let it happen. Nick was due home from work at 6.30, it wasn’t one of the nights where she could let her guard down, and although she’d had her first drink at one minute past eleven, she’d kept an eye on things all day. She’d certainly been sober enough at 4 p.m. to drive to playgroup to collect the girls. Then they’d settled down on the squashy couch, all three of them, to watch a DVD. She’d been sipping from a glass, pacing herself, with plenty of time to clear away all evidence long before Nick got in.

  But she must have fallen asleep and when she jerked awake, her heart pounding hard enough to jump out of her cottonwool mouth, Nick was leaning over her, his features blurred. Chaos; a bad smell; a horrible screeching noise; black smoke billowing from the kitchen. Even in her confusion, she knew she’d better start thinking fast.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are you ill?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What is it?’

  She tried to speak but her words came thick and slow.

  His face changed. ‘Marnie, you’re pissed!’

  ‘No, I’m –’

  ‘You are, you’re drunk.’ He was obviously alarmed and confused. ‘Were you out for lunch?’

  But she knew that he knew she hadn’t been; he’d spoken to her at home in the middle of the day. And when did she ever get to go out for lunch anyway?

  He disappeared into the hall and after a few moments the screeching noise ceased abruptly. The smoke alarm; he must have taken the batteries out.

  Then he was back. With a finger, he pointed in outrage towards the kitchen. ‘They were standing on chairs at the stove, making spaghetti hoops in a frying pan.’

  So that accounted for the smoke.

  ‘How did they turn the gas on?’ he demanded. ‘What’s going on, Marnie? You’ve been drinking?’

  There seemed little point in denying it.

  ‘On your own! Why?’

  Why? Because she liked it. That was all she could think of but she knew that that wouldn’t do.

  ‘I… I was upset.’

  She watched him soften. ‘About what, Sweets?’

  ‘I was thinking about your dad.’ He’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer some months earlier. A slow-metastasizing strain. He was expected to live for years.

  Nick gaped. ‘But we’ve known for ages.’

  ‘I think it’s just hit me now.’ Tears came from nowhere and suddenly she was sobbing, ‘Your poor dad. The poor man, it’s just so sad.’

  ‘But he’s fine about it now, Mum’s fine, we’re all fine.’

  Nick stroked her hair and treated her gently for the rest of the evening. But she knew her excuse hadn’t worked. She’d woken something in Nick, a suspicion, an alertness.

  Only days later came the ‘Fiona Fife incident.’

  Daisy and Verity were on a playdate with Alannah Fife and Marnie had the afternoon to herself. The price was that at some stage in the not too distant, she’d get lumbered with four-year-old Alannah for several hours. But she wasn’t thinking about that. She was having a nice time, thinking dreamy thoughts in her own head; and when the phone rang she decided to let the machine pick up.

  ‘Marnie?’ It was Fiona, mother of Alannah, leaving a message. ‘Are you there?’

  She grabbed the phone. ‘Sorry, I’m here.’

  ‘Bad news. My car won’t start.’

  ‘That’s a bummer.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘… I can’t drive Daisy and Verity home. Can you come and fetch them? It’s too far for them to walk.’

  ‘
Oh God, yes, sorry! Just being a bit thick. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  Marnie scrambled around in her handbag for her car keys and had a moment when she wondered if she shouldn’t be driving. She hadn’t had much and her judgement wasn’t in any way impaired, but she was probably over the limit.

  She would drive extra carefully.

  But outside the Fifes’ house, she somehow overshot the parking space she’d been aiming for. She hit the brakes and, in protest, they gave a tight, bat-like screech. Two seconds later, Fiona’s white, wooden-spoon face popped up at the window, then disappeared almost immediately – but it was still long enough for Marnie to register Fiona’s anxiety.

  Almost immediately the front door opened and Fiona stood on the step, watching as Marnie slid out of the car and walked towards the door. Fiona’s manifest shock told Marnie that she wasn’t as sober as she’d thought.

  ‘Marnie, are you okay?’

  ‘Fine!’ No, too loud. ‘Fine.’ Better this time.

  ‘Are you…?’ Fiona asked. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘ME? Joking? I never drink before six o’clock.’ She hadn’t intended to sound so belligerent – and she shouldn’t have lied; she realized that afterwards. She should have pretended she’d been out for lunch, she should have giggled and used words like ‘tiddly’ and ‘squiffy’ and it would have been fine.

  Fiona left the step and walked with purpose at Marnie, straight into her space, almost colliding with her, and even though vodka wasn’t supposed to smell, Fiona began fanning her hand in front of her nose like she was being attacked by fumes. She said accusingly, ‘I thought you sounded strange on the phone.’

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Daisy and Verity tumbled out of the house, pulling on coats and trailing backpacks.

  ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed,’ Fiona said quietly.

  Marnie turned away. ‘Come on, girls.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Got all your stuff?’

  ‘Should I be letting you drive?’ Fiona asked.

  Marnie couldn’t find the words. Should she be defensive? Apologetic?