Again, he says nothing. Then he sits up, turns on his bedside lamp and reaches for his phone.
This is it, I think. It’s over. He’s leaving and we are going to be over because he can’t take being married to a woman who’s addicted to sleeping tablets. A woman who lies.
He spends a few minutes scrolling through his phone and then shoves over till he’s beside me.
‘Right,’ he says in a very calm voice, but the voice he’d use to his mother or even Zed. ‘We’ll do this. It doesn’t sound like fun but if you follow the detox really carefully, titrating down slowly, you can come off them. I’ll help. You know I will.’
And then he holds me and I let myself relax against his chest, shaking, grateful and yet terrified because since I told Dan the truth, he hasn’t once said ‘I love you.’
Still, I’ve told him. That’s got to mean something.
I lie there, scared, and eventually, lettablet-induced sleep claim me.
The next day, we go to see AJ together and Dan and AJ have a long discussion about how this needs to be done. Dan gets a script for a small amount of ananti-anxiety medicine to help me, which he goes into the pharmacy to pick up.
I sit in the car, shamed, feeling like a Hillbilly Heroin addict who has to be kept away from all respectable people and have myanti-anxiety meds bought for me because I can’t be trusted.
‘I never meant it to end up like this ...’ I start when Dan gets back in the car.
He pats my knee.
‘We’ll get you fixed up,’ he says, again, as if he’s talking to Zed and they’re talking about a dodgy knee after a big run. He never talks to me like that. We are intimate, close: his voice changes when he’s with me.
Except I’ve ruined that forever, I think.
This distant Dan is what I’ve got from now on. It’s my fault.
For the first week, I do not turn into a werewolf, but I feel sick, shaky, anxious and irritable.
‘Mummy has a bug,’ I can hear Dan say blandly to the children. ‘Go in for a snuggle but don’t stay. The doctor says she has to stay in bed.’
As I’m never sick enough to be bedbound, they decide I am truly ill and creep around the house, making as much noise as usual but telling each other, in stage whispers, to ‘be quiet’.
He takes them over to his mother’s a lot, and then over to Scarlett and Jack’s.
‘You didn’t tell them?’ I ask each time, terrified he would.
‘I said you’re sick. You’ve been through enough – you’re allowed to be sick. Your mother, Scarlett and Maura are looking at nursing homes for your dad tomorrow.’
I moan with guilt and misery.
‘I should be with them.’
‘You’ve done enough,’ Dan says firmly. He leaves and closes the door.
Alone, I can cry because I feel alone right now and I’ve done it to myself. I pushed this wonderful man away.
By day eight, I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve managed to watch a couple of Netflix series but only funny things – nothing modern or involving drugs in anyway.
Because I feel so shamed.
Dan is an angel: cooking dinners or reheating things my mother has sent over but I feel so terrified that I’ve lost his love.
My head never stops analysing andover-analysing the situation. Have I lost him forever?
By the second week, I am up most of the time but terribly fatigued because I am barely sleeping.
I’ve tried hot milk, valerian tea and going for a walk round the block in the evening with Dan.
