by Dawn Barker
‘That’s crazy! What if something happened to the kids or something?’
‘I don’t know, I guess maybe they’d make an exception.’ I smiled sadly. ‘I thought that, you know, he might turn on his phone at night, when no one was looking, and text me or something. I’ve sent him messages, when I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed – though I’ve kept them nice. I call his phone every couple of days, just in case it’s on. I’ve called his boss, he’s the one who’s got some connection to the place, but he tells me that he isn’t allowed any contact either.’
‘What on earth has his boss got to do with it? That seems a bit odd.’
‘I know. Paul told him. Told him before me. Don’t ask me why, I’ve got no idea. Turns out that Damian – that’s his boss’s name, knows someone who used to be an addict and set up this rehab place and he’s involved in running it or something. I’ve looked it up, but the website is pretty obscure. When I called to see how he was, they said they couldn’t give any information about any clients for confidentiality reasons.’
‘You can’t go and visit? Jesus, I think I’d be breaking in and slapping him for doing this to you!’
I laughed. ‘God, I’ve felt like it. I don’t know, going there seems a bit extreme. And I’m working all the time anyway and have the kids with me all weekend so when could I do it?’
Ceecee sighed.
I shrugged. ‘It’s hard. There’s part of me that’s desperate to see how he is and to confront him, but a huge part of me is saying that I shouldn’t be chasing after him when he’s the one who got me into this position. Paul should be doing everything in his power to see if I’m alright, you know?’
‘Do you think he is?’
I shrugged, looked away and blinked hard, then reached into my bag for a tissue. Of course he wasn’t, otherwise he would have contacted me.
‘Enough about Paul. How are you coping?’ she said quietly.
I shrugged. ‘You know me. I cope, I always do.’ I smiled wryly. ‘In some ways, it’s easier: I just do what I need to do, I get up early and I do everything because I know that no one else will. Before, you know, he was always in and out and coming home late and I was never sure how much he’d be around. I was always… uneasy. A bit anxious, never quite sure what to expect. It sounds stupid, but now that he’s not here, at least I know what I’m dealing with.’
‘You’re amazing, Emily, and I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with this all by yourself.’ Her voice wavered.
‘Now, I don’t need you crying too.’ I tried to laugh. ‘You’ll set me off.’
‘Sorry. Tell me what I can do to help.’
I shook my head. ‘No, nothing.’
She held her hand up. ‘No, don’t start to say you can do it all. I can pick up Cameron or Tilly from school, take them to ballet or rugby or whatever, or take them home with me, you must let me help and don’t even think of telling me you don’t need it. Or if you just need a gin and tonic and a chat then I’m definitely in.’
I pressed my lips together and picked up my chopsticks. I slowly slid off the paper wrapping and snapped the pair in half, unable to look at her. ‘Deal,’ I said. ‘Now, I need to talk about something else.’
Fifteen
Paul
I woke with the dawn song of the magpies, who sensed the sun rising long before the darkness lifted. I guessed it was about 4am. I had been waking early, spending a coupIe of hours before the day at Treetops started, fighting back tears and panic as I longed to be home again. With no phone, no internet or computer, not even a piece of paper and envelope, I had no way to contact Emily and the kids. I felt like a prisoner with no control. I counted the days I had been here and how long I had to go, but it filled me with angst and made my legs writhe with the desire to get up, walk out of here and keep walking until I found a main road and made it home.
But, I reminded myself, I wasn’t a prisoner. If I really wanted to, I could leave, but I was still here. I came here of my own accord, and I couldn’t let myself forget why.
Each day started with a 6am wake up and before breakfast, an hour of ‘contemplation’ with the other clients. At first, I’d baulked at the idea, assuming it was some kind of praying. I had never prayed in my life, just clasped my hands and mumbled along to the Lord’s Prayer when I had to at weddings and funerals, or school assemblies. This was nothing like the school prayers though, and despite myself, I came to enjoy the hour we spent lying in a circle on the floor, our eyes closed, letting our bodies relax, and just listening. During contemplation, Michael played background music, which always made me smile, as it was the type of hippy whale song music that Emily used to listen to when she did yoga. I warmed at the thought of her laughing along with me. Over the music, Michael talked to us in a sonorous voice about how he came to find Phoenix’s way of life, and how other clients had beaten their addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling and sex, or overcome depression and schizophrenia without medications by believing in the power of themselves, by stripping their life back to the basics.
Phoenix, this group that Damian and Michael and Tim and Lucas were part of, was bigger than I’d realised. From talking to the other clients – all men, all successful on the surface but broken beneath – I understood that we’d all been chosen by an existing member to come here because they could see our struggles, but also our potential. Phoenix’s matrix spread all over the world and, from what I could gather, it was a network of highly successful people who believed in themselves and in living the life we were meant to: eating real food – no processed, manufactured sludge; no alcohol; no drugs, prescribed or otherwise; living well. And by doing that, Michael reminded us every day, we would reach our amazing potential and would be free of the toxic influences that poisoned our bodies and minds and led to our addictions.
Initially, I wanted to get up from the mat and challenge him – but I had come to realise over the past weeks that he was right. What had the doctors and medicines done for my knee except make me depend on them? Their false promises made me cling onto an unrealistic dream when I could have been moving forwards to other, bigger, opportunities when I was still young.
After the daily group session in the morning, we had breakfast. Vegan, no caffeine. For the first few days I was ravenous, desperate for something sweet or spicy, a coffee. I had a constant headache and stomach cramps for a week. But, like everything, you get used to it. Then, after breakfast, I had my hour alone with Michael every day, bar Sunday, when we had to spend all day in contemplation.
* * *
‘How are you today?’ Michael said when I sat down in his office this morning, settling back into the chair.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
He nodded. ‘Great, thanks. Right, Paul, today, I want to hear about the first time you remember gambling. I want to trace this back and find out where this has come from, what started you down this path.’
I raised my eyebrows.
Michael continued. ‘Your first drink, or the first time you get high, or the first win… that experience floods your mind with a drug more powerful than any pharmaceutical you can try, it hardwires your brain. I’m here to help retrain you, break all those connections, and get back to your true self.’
I nodded. I had told the story of my first big win so many times, but always when I was trying to impress people with a tale, over a beer and a bet. I remembered the details as if it happened yesterday, the story of the starting gun shot that flung open the gate and threw me panting after the rabbit that was always just out of reach.
It was in the smoky back corner of the Bondi hotel. Emily and I lived in an apartment near the beach then, only a couple of blocks’ walk away. It was a pretty ordinary Australian pub, walls thick with years of smoke, tables scored with indents of bottles and schooner glasses. But in the evenings, all the tourists and the young locals – people like us – came out to drink and dance in the nightclub upstairs.
It was a hot, lazy Saturday. The season mu
st have finished, otherwise I would never have been out drinking on a weekend, so it must have been early autumn. Emily and I flirted with the anticipation of the hours stretching out ahead of us. We’d done our usual Saturday routine: we’d slept in, then gone for a walk along the cliffs, then later, breakfast out at Bronte. Then we’d cleaned the house and paced around, bored. Lunchtime was too early to go out to the pub really, but maybe we could go and just have one drink, maybe pass the time with a bet in the bookies.
So, there we were, cold beers on the wobbly table with condensation dripping down the fogged schooner glass, hands damp and slippery with sweat. Backs of bare thighs sticking to the scratched bar stools. The coasters damp, cardboard peeling at the corners. A group of us perched on bar stools, drinks in hand, the weekend newspapers folded up on the table, the form guides pinned up on the crumbling cork noticeboards, the TVs on the wall showing the races, the sound a low hum. When the Sydney races finished, there were always the Western Australia races, three hours behind us in New South Wales. If you were desperate, there were always the dogs, or the trots, later on. And when you were going to the toilet, you walked past the slot machines and you may as well drop your coins in; it was better than having them weigh down your pockets.
More people started to drift in as the afternoon floated by, smelling of sunscreen, sandy hair still thickened from the salt water, shoulders red. They gathered around bottles of white wine askew in metal ice buckets on the tables. We’d had too much to drink by then to study the form properly, not that we really knew how to do that anyway.
Emily came back to the table, flapping the betting tickets then slapping them down on the table. ‘Last race. Three mystery bets. Three bucks each,’ she said. ‘We’ve got this one.’
I had raised my glass then lined up the betting slips on the table as the race started, gulping my beer without taking my eyes off the screen in the corner. The sound on the television was turned down as the music played from the main bar. I lost track of which numbers I was meant to be looking for, and the horses were lurching along too fast and I couldn’t really see the numbers on them anyway, but I thought at least one had come in. I looked at Emily and shrugged my shoulders.
She nudged me. ‘I think you got it,’ she whispered, face breaking into a grin.
‘Nah,’ I said, shaking my head though my body was buzzing with the hope that maybe, just maybe, she was right. As the next race was about to start, the official results flashed up on the screen. Emily whooped, then I checked the tickets and the excitement fizzed up in me. I had it! My heart started to beat faster as I looked at the odds. An old bloke in the bookies was shaking his head as he looked at the screen. ‘That’s a big trifecta.’
It was a big trifecta. Two thousand, one hundred and forty-six dollars, just like that. From a three-dollar bet. I screamed and we all cheered and stood up and raised our glasses, and others in the bar saw the commotion and joined in. Emily jumped off her stool, threw her arms around me and gave me a huge kiss on the lips. I waved the betting slip in the air and I felt amazing, filled with the certainty that my life was perfect.
* * *
‘That day was going to be so ordinary,’ I said to Michael, as I finished telling the story. ‘But it became one of the best days ever. We went out, we drank champagne, we went to a club. Even if I won a million dollars now, it wouldn’t compare. Holding all that cash in my hand was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was the dream, it was the unexpected magic of it all.’ I could still feel it.
‘That was the first time. What about the next time?’
I nodded, looking at my knees. ‘I don’t really remember the next time, or the time after that.’
After that, the memories become darker. The glare and deafening din of the casino when I’d lost track of time, my eyes following the little ball as it hurled around the rim of the roulette wheel, also straining to watch the numbers spinning the opposite way; my hands trembling as the wheel and the ball slowed, silently praying to someone for the ball to keep going just a little bit longer and make it to that lucky number; the panic and dread as the ball skipped past my number and the croupier swept away my chips. The compulsion to open my wallet and hand over another $50 because it was just a bit of fun, and the man sitting beside me was winning, so why shouldn’t I?
Michael’s voice brought me back to reality. ‘Can you see how many other influences you had on your brain then? Alcohol, gambling, drugs, friends who encouraged and enabled that lifestyle… Every time you see those friends, have a drink, see Emily, those connections are firing up and making you want to recreate that feeling that you can never have again. Not through gambling. There are other ways to reach those moments of exhilaration. I can teach you. But you need to say goodbye to that part of your life.’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘I’ve had to because it’s all gone, there’s nothing left for me to risk.’
He had shaken his head slowly, like a teacher showing his disappointment. ‘If you left here today, you’d find something.’
‘There is nothing.’
‘You’d find something.’
‘I would never take things from my kids.’
He said nothing, just nodded a little. I blushed. I had mentioned the kids, not him. At this moment, I was deadly serious, but I also knew that when that urge came over me, when I started to feel restless inside, that the gambling had always won so far. I had to admit that I didn’t trust myself. I had already taken a lot from my children. When would I stop? Would I take their phones, their iPads? Emily’s engagement ring? It was ridiculous, and yet as I thought it, I felt a deep, dangerous, part of me spark into life again and I knew I had to stay away from them for now, for their sake.
Sixteen
Emily
I was back in the position that had become so familiar: sitting across a desk from Cameron’s teacher. I reminded myself that other parents didn’t have to do this. But no matter how familiar it was, sitting in this chair pared off my thin skin of adulthood, leaving the core of an anxious child waiting to be told off.
I swallowed down the seed of guilt lodged in my throat and clasped my hands to hold them still. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept sending him to school over the past few weeks, maybe I should have listened to him as he begged me not to make him, as I dragged him into the school counsellor’s office then stormed away from him as he cowered on the couch with tears brimming in his eyes. I was frustrated, sick of everything about our day and night being consumed with Cameron, and angry with Paul for swanning off and leaving me to handle everything. Cameron had become more withdrawn since Paul left, and at the same time, more chaotic, refusing to go to school, yelling at me, not sleeping. I had tried being calm, tiptoeing around him and giving into what he wanted. I had tried shouting, pleading, crying, threatening, but he just shrugged, his eyes perplexed. He wouldn’t explain it to me; or couldn’t.
It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, that the school had called me to come and collect him. I had to leave work, my receptionist clearly annoyed at having to cancel my clients, who probably wouldn’t come back to see me now. But I had no choice: who else was there but me? And now, I sat on the edge of an uncomfortable wooden chair, across the desk from Mrs McCarthy, Cameron’s year coordinator, and Miss Da Silva, the school counsellor.
Mrs McCarthy began by making small talk and somehow, I smiled and chatted back. Get to the point, I wanted to say. Just tell me. They must have had a meeting about this, before, without me, to decide what they’d say. Mrs McCarthy had a Liverpool accent. I had never noticed before. My eyes filled with tears as I realised how much I missed being home, in the UK; I blinked hard and refocused.
‘Have there been any changes at home?’
I nodded. ‘Paul’s been away for a few weeks, for work, and isn’t due back for another few weeks. I’m trying to keep everything normal, but…’
She leaned forwards, her eyes kind. ‘I understand, Emily. Look, I’ll get to the point. There was an incident this
morning. In English, he was staring out of the window and kicking his chair, so his teacher asked him to concentrate, and well, things escalated. In the end, Cameron threw his book at the teacher then upturned his chair and ran out.’
I froze.
‘It’s okay, he didn’t go far, he went behind the tennis courts and we managed to calm him down and get him back to class. But he’s been more… difficult, recently. He’s not able to focus or concentrate, and he’s definitely more irritable, and then this.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ I shook my head slowly. ‘I’m not sure what to say. I…’
‘Don’t apologise, that’s for Cameron to do.’
‘I don’t know really what to do, I am trying.’
She raised her hand. ‘I know. Please don’t think I’m criticising you, I’m not at all. I can see how hard this has been for you. We just want to make sure that Cameron gets help.’
I nodded and the words tumbled out. ‘I think he’s missing Paul, and I’m trying my best, but I have to work and look after the kids and, well, you know, do everything at home. And I don’t want him to fall behind at school, but I can’t seem to get him here on time, he can’t get himself ready, he won’t listen and at night I hear him pacing around and I worry that he’s got no friends…’ My hands were shaking now.
Mrs McCarthy continued, her words spoken slowly and carefully. ‘When he is here, it’s clear that he can’t concentrate on his schoolwork. He’s not really managing to complete tasks in class, and the quality of his work is going downhill. And it was interesting to hear you mention your worries about his friends. The thing about teenage boys – and you’ll remember being a teenager – is that any point of difference between the kids puts a target on their back. We’ve been watching closely and some of the kids are starting to tease him a bit, and he’s reacting to them.’