‘I don’t want anyone to see you like this.’
She nodded and put her head back against his chest again and he held her tight, stroking her hair.
‘I’m a horrible person,’ Alex said.
‘No you’re not, not at all, you’re one of the kindest, loveliest people I know. And I had no right to say those things to you before. You’re a brilliant mum to Zara and I know she will always be at the forefront of anything you do. I was completely out of order and I wasn’t angry at you, I was annoyed with myself.’
‘What does that mean?’ She looked up at him.
‘It… doesn’t matter. But I’m sorry if I hurt you.’
She leaned her head against his chest. ‘You didn’t hurt me, I was pissed at you but you didn’t hurt me.’ She sighed. ‘Your mum came round. I told her about the date.’
He winced. ‘What did she say?’
‘She was utterly lovely about it, unlike some people,’ she looked up briefly to give him a mock scowl. ‘But I could tell I broke her heart.’
He stroked her back. ‘We spoke about it once, about how she would feel if you started dating again. I think she’s scared of losing you and Zara.’
‘That will never happen. Zara loves her and I do too. She will always be a part of our lives.’
‘I think she knows that really but I guess it hurts to see you move on when she will never be able to get over Liam’s death.’
Fresh tears filled Alex’s eyes. ‘I think that’s why I feel so horrible and guilty about this. I feel like I’m benefitting from Liam’s death. I get to finally move on, fall in love again, maybe get married again one day, and I wouldn’t be able do any of that if Liam was still alive.’
He frowned in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know.’ She sighed. ‘Our marriage was over probably eighteen months before he died.’
‘What? I thought you were happy together.’
‘We were. Very happy. But then his best friend died.’
‘Tom?’
‘Yes. He had a heart attack while out jogging.’
‘Shit. I didn’t know. Christ, I wondered why he wasn’t at Liam’s funeral. Those two were always as thick as thieves. I’m guessing Liam didn’t take it well.’
She looked at him in confusion. ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘That he was an alcoholic, yes.’
She stared at him with wide eyes. ‘I… I didn’t. He never drank, not even on our wedding day, but he never said he had a problem with it, just that he didn’t like the taste or the hangovers.’
Quinn shook his head. ‘We were never a big family of drinkers, the occasional glass at celebrations, but Liam went off to university and, just like all his friends there, he was drinking every single night. I didn’t think much of it, he was a student, that’s what students do. But when he left university and was still getting stupid, blind drunk every night, I started realising he had a problem. He went to work with raging hangovers, or called in sick if he couldn’t get out of bed. He lost more jobs than I can count. He started drinking in the mornings to help combat the hangovers and it was just a very fast slippery slope into full-blown alcoholism. He was an ugly drunk as well, always getting angry and rude. Hegot into so many drunken fights, he was always sporting a black eye or a bruised lip. We tried getting him into rehab or to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, but he refused to go, saying he didn’t have a problem. He didn’t want help. He got so good at hiding it too, he wasn’t staggering around obviously drunk. Sometimes you could have normal coherent conversations with him and we thought maybe he wasn’t drinking all the time, but we could smell it on him all the time.’
He sighed, pushing his hand through his hair. ‘But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he picked Mum up one day. I can’t remember where they were going, but she asked him if he had been drinking and he flat-out denied it. She got in the car and a few minutes down the road he crashed it. Mum’s leg was completely crushed – pretty much every bone in her leg was shattered, which is why she walks with a cane now. He was five times over the legal limit.’
‘Oh my god,’ Alex gasped.
‘Well that was it. We all had a massive row with him, told him he needed to sort out his life and he wasn’t welcome back in our lives until he’d given up the drink for good. He stormed out and we never saw or heard from him again. There was a part of me that thought we could have done more to help him, but he had to want our help and he never did.’
‘I presume the accident was the thing that shocked him into changing,’ she said. ‘When we met he was sober, never touched a drop, he was lovely and we got on so well. He was a good dad to Zara too.’
‘I bet you helped him more than you know. The first few years of becoming sober are always the hardest, but in you and then Zara he found a reason to keep fighting that temptation.’
She nodded. ‘But when Tom died it was like a switch went off in his head. It was like you said, he was drunk every day, he lost his job and we needed that money. He had his gardening job but it wasn’t enough. But he was horrible and nasty all the time, always belittling me, always criticising everything I wore or what I did. Surprisingly, the only time he was nice was when he was with Zara – there was something about her that reached the old Liam that we loved. One time, he snapped at her and made her cry and I told him if he ever did that again I would take her and leave him. He apologised and said she was his world and he’d never do it again and he never did, well not to her. But he was always nasty to me. Every single day. Like you, I tried to get him some counselling, tried to get some help, but he wouldn’t have it. I’d never let him have sex with me when he was drunk and so he went out and slept with another woman and then came home and gloated about it. I knew then and there that our marriage was over. I packed a case and told him I was leaving and he sobbed like a baby, promised me he’d never do it again, which as far as I know he didn’t. And there was a part of me that knew I couldn’t leave him. He was depressed, grieving, sick – he needed my help, not me walking out and leaving him.’
