Summer Secrets Read online

  Eight

  The first thing that strikes me as unfamiliar is the smell. My laundry detergent smells like white linen. Even after a week there is always the faint smell of cleanliness, and before I even open my eyes, I’m aware that my sheets don’t smell the same.

  My next thought is: What the hell am I lying on? It feels like I’m sleeping on my back (which, by the way, I never do), on a stick.

  The thought after that, once I have opened my eyes, is: Where the hell am I?

  I try to sit up, but can’t, and I reach behind me to feel a slab of bristles. There is a broom tucked into my T-shirt, and I pull it out, letting it clatter to the floor, clutching my pounding head as I wince, wishing that clattering of the broom didn’t make so much noise.

  I look around me at this bedroom, which definitely isn’t mine, and definitely isn’t Jamie’s, and I have absolutely no idea whose it is, which would frighten me, if it weren’t for the terrible headache that’s threatening to blow my head apart.

  If I weren’t in so much pain, I might possibly appreciate the bedroom. The sheets are blue, the slatted wooden blinds a dark, masculine cherry. There is an antique desk pushed into the corner of the wall opposite, bookshelves next to it. I have no idea whose bedroom I’m in, but I’m pretty sure it’s a man’s.

  An ajar door lends me a glimpse of a bathroom, and I creep in, opening the medicine cabinet to find, thank God, a big bottle of ibuprofen. I tip four into my hand and hold my mouth to the tap to swallow them, looking at myself in the mirror with such shame that I have done it again.

  I remember arriving at Chez Gerard. I remember having a long chat with the Channel 4 press officer. And then I don’t remember much else.

  Thankfully, it could be worse. I am in all my clothes, so presumably I didn’t have mad, unconscious sex with a stranger. But it could be much better, and I don’t even know who to ask.

  There is another door. I push it open and find myself squinting in a large, bright living room. On one side is a sectional sofa and coffee table, on the other a dining table and chairs, with an open-plan kitchen. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the light streaming through. My eyes make their way painfully back to the sofa, where there is a man lying wrapped in a bedspread, only the top of his dark hair visible.

  Whoever he is, he has to be something of a gentleman, as I am pretty certain we didn’t have sex. I’m completely ashamed to say that while it isn’t a regular occurrence, there have been occasions where I have woken up, like this, in bed with someone I do not know. Naked. Having had a wild night. I presume, for I rarely actually know for certain.

  And it’s happened more than once.

  Still, whoever this guy is, I don’t want to have to talk to him. I have no idea what my behavior was like last night. I have no idea what I said, what I did, how I ended up here, and I really don’t want to have to face this guy who may have seen me do anything.

  If I knew where my shoes were, I would leave here immediately, but I can’t find them, and there’s no way I’m leaving those Manolo Blahniks behind.

  There they are, a glimpse of a spiked black heel under the coffee table. I pad over, trying to make no noise whatsoever, refusing to look at the sleeping man because if I look at him he will surely, despite being unconscious, feel my eyes on him and open his own, and I reach for the shoes, then practically scream in fear as I hear “Morning.”

  Damn! I can’t believe this. I was so close to getting out of here. I meet his eyes, sheepishly, and say good morning back.

  He sits up, the covers falling away, revealing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and I can’t deny the fact that sitting right before me is a fine figure of a man. He yawns and stretches, his T-shirt riding up to reveal a flat, tanned stomach, the traces of hair disappearing into his boxers, and I feel an unexpected jolt of … something. Something unexpected. I quickly look away.

  I don’t even know this man. This is ridiculous.

  “Want some breakfast?” he asks, standing up to reveal he is much taller than me, and I’m no shrinking violet at five-eight.

  “Um. No, that’s okay. I have to go.”

  “I’m Jason, by the way.” He comes over and shakes my hand. “I already know you’re Cat. I’m making breakfast anyway, so you might as well stay. I know you won’t turn down my offer of coffee.” He grins, his hair mussed up, his eyes a warm brown, and I am so disconcerted by his offer, by how nonjudgmental he seems to be, I find myself, against all my better judgment, nodding.

  “Sorry about the broom,” he says, pulling eggs and bacon out of the fridge, tipping fresh ground coffee into a cafetière. “I was worried you might throw up while you were asleep, and I didn’t want you to choke on it. When I was at university we used to stick brooms down people’s clothes to stop them lying on their backs.”

  “Was I horribly drunk?” My mortification is real.

  “You were horribly drunk. You wanted to go home, but you couldn’t remember where you live. I don’t usually bring strange women back to my flat, but it seemed like a safer option than leaving you collapsed in a doorway in Charlotte Street.”

  “Do you often rescue drunken strangers?” I attempt a smile.

  “It does happen from time to time. I’m quite good at helping those in need,” he says, cracking the eggs in the pan. “Especially when they’re damsels in distress.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I say. “I don’t usually drink like that. It’s been a rough few days.”

  “Oh? Anything you feel like talking about? I know you don’t know me, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers.” He flips the bacon in another pan and slides four slices of whole-grain bread into the toaster.

  “I might be able to talk to you if I knew just a little more about you,” I say, sipping the coffee and starting to feel vaguely human again. “Just so I know you’re not Jason the Ripper or anything.”

  He lets out a bark of laughter. “I’m definitely not Jason the Ripper. I’m Jason Halliwell, television director extraordinaire. Right now I’m working with Channel 4 on the series we launched last night. Where we met. Chez Gerard. Do you remember that?” He peers at me as I gratefully nod. “Okay. Good. So, I was born in London, brought up in Primrose Hill, before, by the way, it was Primrose Hill.”

  “You mean before it was overrun by celebrities?” I think of all the pictures of Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit, Jude Law and Sadie Frost, Jamie Oliver, all living their lives in the leafy green of Primrose Hill.

  “Exactly. The most famous person there when I was growing up was Alan Bennett, and he wasn’t even technically Primrose Hill. Gloucester Crescent. Camden.” I nod. Even Alan Bennett sounds impossibly glamorous, Primrose Hill being my second choice, after Notting Hill, for where I would live now if money were no object.

  “What else?” I push, but what I really want to know is, do you have a girlfriend? Are you available? Might there be any possibility that you could be interested in me, because my God! You are just the sort of man I could see myself with, thank you very much.

  “I’m thirty something years old, have two sisters, and parents who have retired to the Cotswolds. This flat used to be the living room and drawing room of the house I grew up in. My parents converted it into flats, and I ended up with this one.”

  I swivel on the stool and look out the window, noting the pretty pastel-colored terraced houses. Of course it’s Primrose Hill. As if it could be anywhere else.

  “What are the three most important things to know about you?” I ask, although that isn’t what I want to ask. All I want to know right now is whether he has a girlfriend.

  “Hmmm. Good question. Okay. I love chocolate. Seriously. It’s a huge addiction of mine that means I have to have chocolate every day.”

  “Milk or dark?”

  “Milk?” He grimaces. “I wouldn’t touch that crap if you paid me. Dark. The darker, the better. I’m embarrassed to tell you I’m a member of a gourmet chocolate club. Every month they send samples of chocolate.”


  “Do you have any?”

  His face falls. “No. I finished it off last week. But—” His face lights up again as he joins me on the stool next to mine, two plates filled with eggs, bacon, and toast in his hands. “I’m expecting a new delivery later this week, so you can try it then.”

  I resist the urge to leap up from the stool and do a dance of joy. Surely he would not have said that if he weren’t the tiniest bit interested in me? Surely he wouldn’t be suggesting we see each other again if that were not the case?

  “What else?”

  “I love cats. I know, I know, it’s a terribly unmasculine thing to admit to, but I’m afraid it’s true.”

  “I don’t think it’s unmasculine. I think it shows you have a sensitive side.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” He grins.

  “So where’s the cat?” I look around the flat, expecting to see one, but nothing.

  “Albert is usually outside, hunting. He comes back when he’s hungry. Sadly he’s turned out not to be a cuddly sort of cat at all, so I’m thinking of getting another one who might turn out to be a better sort of companion.”

  “How do you know what they’re going to turn out to be like?”

  “That’s the problem, you don’t. Not when they’re kittens. I thought if I rescued an adult cat that would probably be the best way of knowing.”

  “So now I have two things that are starting to indicate you may be the perfect man. What’s the third?”

  “I’m a recovering alcoholic,” he says, taking a bite of bacon and reaching for a sip of coffee as if it were the most normal thing in the whole world, having no idea that my ears have started to buzz.

  Why did he have to ruin the most perfect morning I have had in years?

  * * *

  “I’ve been sober three years, eight months, and sixty-eight, no, sixty-nine days,” he says, not an ounce of shame about it. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Do you think I have a drinking problem?” I say, my voice as cold as steel, because I know exactly why he brought this up. I have no idea how he knows, but seeing me shitfaced last night must be why he brought me home. He’s not interested in me, other than because I remind him of how he used to be and presumably he knows the answer to all my problems. I feel a flash of anger and put down the knife and fork, am about to pick up my bag and walk out, because I really don’t need this shit. Not from my mother, and certainly not from this guy I don’t even know.

  No matter how cute he may be.

  He looks at me, bemused. “I don’t know anything about you. I have no idea whether you have a drinking problem or not. I, on the other hand”—he grins, and the tension disappears—“have a serious drinking problem. Note that I said recovering,” he explains. “I’m never actually going to be recovered. The only thing I know for sure is that it never stops at one drink. And I was bad.” He shakes his head at the memory. “When I got into recovery I’d been kicked off two television shows, and I was almost entirely yellow, my liver was so fucked. Seriously, they said if I’d have carried on I would have been dead within a year.”

  I look at him, this picture of health, and I feel slight disbelief, coupled with relief. I’ve held the same job for eight years, and I’m not the slightest bit yellow. Clearly I’m absolutely fine. Although … the bit about not being able to stop at one drink … that certainly resonates. But just because I happened not to stop at one drink last night, after I said I would, doesn’t mean I can’t. It just means I didn’t last night. Tonight will be different. Today I’m going to start again, and particularly given I’ve just met this guy. If he’s not drinking, all the better. How much easier will it be for me?

  “Did you go to rehab?”

  He nods. “And now I go to meetings every day. During the week I go before work, but on Saturdays the meeting’s at noon. AA, obviously.”

  “Obviously. So you knew you had a problem?” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t think it was a problem. I was convinced I could stop at one drink, except I never could. I’d wake up in the morning and have no idea where I was or how I got there.”

  Oh shit.

  “Like me,” I mutter, eventually, and he just looks at me, with a look of such understanding and compassion I almost burst into tears.

  * * *

  I have never felt more self-conscious in my life than I do right now, in this room full of people, milling round, helping themselves to coffee from the machine on the trestle table in the corner of this room in the basement of a church in Paddington.

  I don’t want to be here. Except I do. I wouldn’t be here had Jason not mentioned that he was coming, and I didn’t want to leave him. He has an exuberance and happiness that are infectious, and I figured either I’d have to go home and see my mum at some point later in the day or I could spend the day with Jason.

  But I didn’t really think about what it meant, coming with him to an AA meeting. We climbed in his old Citroen and drove through the park as he told me his story. The full version. The bit about blackouts, and strange women, and how he had alienated everyone around him. The bit about all his friends trying to talk to him about his drinking and how worried they were, and his absolute refusal to listen. How he jumped on the defensive, cut them off, filled with shame at what he was doing.

  He talked about the chaos of his life, the self-centeredness, how every time he’d decide to stop drinking, which he decided on practically a daily basis, so fed up with waking up feeling like shit every single morning, his vow would be broken by the evening.

  He talked about sitting with friends, in bars, naturally, nursing a tonic water, and he couldn’t hear any conversation, couldn’t join in, couldn’t do anything other than plan how to get away so he could carry on drinking in the privacy of his own home, so no one else would know.

  He talked about all of this cheerfully, with no remorse, no shame, and I had no idea how, because every time he said something, all I could think was, oh my God, this is me. This is my story, and how is it he gets to talk about it like this, as if it is the most natural, acceptable thing in the world, when all I want to do is dig a hole in the ground and disappear?

  He talked about getting into Alcoholics Anonymous. He talked about letting go of ego, turning things over to a Higher Power. He talked about letting go of control, of learning humility, of learning to accept life on life’s terms, and I started to seriously regret getting in the car with him, knowing that it was too damn late to make my excuses and leave.

  So here I am. In this hall, where everyone is hugging everyone else, and although I don’t know anyone here, and in fact am terrified I might run into someone I know, they do seem like a friendly bunch.

  Jason left me on a chair to go and talk to one of his sponsees, whatever that might mean, and so far three people have come over and introduced themselves to me with big smiles, which is completely weird, but rather nice.

  “I’m Jeff,” says a big guy, sitting next to me with a cup of coffee in one hand and a paper plate in the other, filled with cinnamon buns from the trestle table. “Want some?” He proffers the plate as I shake my head.

  “I’m Cat. Hi.”

  “First time?”

  I nod. “I’m a little nervous. Not sure I belong here.”

  “None of us are sure we belong here when we first get here. Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything. You can just listen. You’re not going to relate to all of it, but they say take what you like and leave the rest.”

  “Okay,” I say, as Jason walks over and sits down, and everyone in the room takes their seats.

  * * *

  He said I didn’t have to speak. They all chant a preamble, something about the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, and AA is not allied with any sect or anything, although frankly, there is definitely something eerily cultlike about the smiling people in this room, and how their primary purpose is to stay sober, or something like that.


  Then comes announcements, and apparently there’s a new speaker meeting, whatever that is, in Queens Park that needs some help, then anniversaries. Two men and one woman stand up and proudly announce, in turn, ninety days sober, two years sober, and then nine years sober. Huge applause, and hugs all round, then a few words from the person leading the meeting.

  And then, oh God! Are there any newcomers? There is a silence as I look at the floor because I do not want to say anything, I’m only here because Jason said I didn’t have to say anything, but I make the fatal mistake of looking up and pretty much every single person in that meeting is looking at me with an encouraging smile, and oh shit, now I have to say something.

  “Hi,” I say, my voice shaking with nerves. “This is my first meeting.”

  “What’s your name?” a couple of people say.

  “Sorry. Cat. I’m Cat.” I think about every film I’ve ever seen that features a 12-step meeting and how they always introduce themselves by saying, “I’m Cat, alcoholic.” Or, “I’m Cat, a recovering alcoholic.” Or, “I’m Cat, a grateful recovering alcoholic.” But I can’t. I can’t qualify my name with anything else because I’m really not sure I belong. I’m really not sure I have that big a problem with drink. Or at least, not a problem I can’t fix by myself.

  “Welcome!” the group chimes in. “Keep coming back.”

  Riiiiight. I give them all the smiles they seem to expect, then shrink back into my seat, grateful for the reassuring rub on my arm from Jason. I turn to look at him, and he smiles and nods, as if he’s really proud of me.

  God, he’s just yummy, I think, and suddenly I’m pleased that I’m here, and I settle back to listen.

  It seems this is a “step meeting,” and today is step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.