‘It’s okay, Lulu. We know you didn’t mean to hurt Isobel.’
‘The poor little thing, I’m sure she didn’t mean no harm,’ said Isobel, making herself comfortable on one of the island stools.
I smiled sweetly. ‘It’s fine, isn’t it, Lucy?’ I said, and I nuzzled her neck until she giggled. Jack was uneasy. By trying to protect his girlfriend from my marauding three-year-old, he had given the impression that he could be overly strict with children. He desperately tried to remedy the situation by getting down on all fours and snuffling around my child like a dog. It was not a good look.
I offered Isobel some peppermint tea and Jack said he’d have a regular tea. We made small talk for an hour. She had grown up in a tower block in Brixton. From an early age, she sang and danced, first at her primary school and then later at stage school, as her mom cleaned houses to save the money to pay for her talented little girl while her dad worked as a Tube driver. She loved musicals and we bonded over that for a while, and then she left with Jack.
Later, Jack called me. It was about 9 p.m. ‘I need to stay the night. Can I come home?’
‘Of course. Have you had an argument with Isobel? We thought she was lovely.’
‘I can’t … I need to be home, okay?’ There was desperation in his voice.
When he arrived, he told me that as soon as they got back to the hotel, while he went to buy a pair of shoes, Isobel had gone straight to the bar. He’d found her flat-out drunk on the bed when he got back. Jack tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t making sense. She had said she’d been four years sober but now he wasn’t sure if that was true. He couldn’t stay with her.
A few hours earlier, I had added a miniature bottle of vodka to Isobel’s pot of peppermint tea and warned her that the kick she might taste was lemongrass. I knew how easy it was to go back to drinking, because I had, several times. I was crafty about it. Waited until Jack was out for the day and Lucy was in kindergarten before I started. I would drink myself into a stupor andfall asleep, and then, on waking, I’d shower and change, eat a pack of Polo mints and an orange.
The first time it happened was an accident. I had called to Deirdre’s house to collect Lucy from a play date, and Deirdre had invited me in to join a group of parents swilling wine. I accepted a soda, and someone offered me some salmon paste on toast. I tried it and it certainly tasted great. And on the way home, an hour later, I desperately wanted a drink. I stopped at an off-licence and bought a half-bottle of vodka. The rest of the day went to hell. I can’t remember where Jack was, but he wasn’t around that night. I know Lucy kept trying to wake me up, saying she was hungry. I let her have a box of dry cornflakes. When I woke on my bed about 10 p.m. I was horrified and had no clue what had driven me to drink, until Deirdre called me the next day to see if I was okay. After I left, Deirdre’s sister, who had made the salmon paste, had boasted that the secret ingredient was vodka. Deirdre knew I was in recovery. I was furious but too ashamed to admit what had happened afterwards.
I had other episodes that were planned. Sometimes, life felt hard, and I knew I needed a little alcoholic release. I didn’t consider these to be relapses, as they only lasted a day, and I could almost schedule them around Lucy and Jack’s comings and goings. As far as Jack was concerned, I sometimes suffered from severe migraines, and if it was the weekend he’d be only too glad to take Lucy out for the day. They didn’t affect my work or my relationships, though they sapped my energy, like a bad migraine might. It was a different kind of drinking than before, planned and controlled, but I still felt horrible afterwards.
Isobel would never suspect the tea. Jack had told her it was a sober house. We knew about each other’s sobriety. Jack had talked me up as if I was some kind of guardian angel who’d been able to put a roof over his head.
When he came out to the house that night, he was distraught.I feigned upset too, on his behalf. ‘What was she thinking?’ I said. ‘She knows you’re in recovery. Maybe she’s one of those Hollywood types. You can’t tell whether they’re acting or not.’ My own performance was worthy of an Oscar.
Poor Isobel went on a bender that weekend. Jack had to drive her back to Belfast on the Sunday night. She ranted and raved and blamed him for leaving her on her own in the hotel. She had a bottle of gin in her bag, and Jack had to throw it out of the car window on the motorway. He called the Second Assistant Director when he got back to Belfast. I don’t exactly know the sequence of events, but Isobel Lucas was written out of the show. She was ‘taking the rest of the year off’ said the gossip columns ‘because of a recurring throat infection’. Everyone, certainly everyone in the business, knew that was code for ‘problematic’.
I will accept the blame for her slip, but not her relapse, although that might have been caused by Jack breaking up with her and then losing her job. Maybe it was all my fault, but she wasn’t right for Jack. Later, he told me that she had a mansion in Essex, drove a Range Rover and kept ponies. They didn’t have anything in common. Besides, she was an obstacle and she was in my way.
38
Jack came back at the end of the summer with a new contract for the next season. He had money to invest in the Academy and, he said, he should think about getting a place of his own. I turned to Lucy and said, ‘Jack doesn’t want to live with us any more.’ She cried loud and long, and he had to rock her to sleep.
‘I don’t want you to go either,’ I said tentatively.
‘I’m grateful to you, Rubes, but I feel like a teenager in a single bed, and I’m in your way. You’re young and beautiful and should be on the dating scene by now.’ He had never said I was beautiful before. Nobody had. I was taken aback. I reached out and stroked his beard. I could see his surprise and then a smile that lit up his face.
‘Jack, would you like to go on a date with me?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Wicked serious.’
‘But I thought you weren’t interested … when I moved in, you said –’
I hushed him with a kiss on the mouth.
‘I’m interested,’ I said.
He put a waking Lucy gently on the floor and wrapped his arms around me.
‘I’ve loved you from the day you gave birth,’ he said. ‘You were incredibly brave, determined to do it all on your own. You have guts, Ruby, but I thought as soon as you were properly sober thatyou would never settle for someone like me. I mean, socially, we’re poles apart.’
I recalled sometime in the long-distant past eavesdropping on a similar conversation between Milo and Erin in the kitchen in Boston, but I banished the thought from my mind. Memories like this took root sometimes. Those were the days when I might have a slip and drink again.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you were made for me. Besides, you didn’t think Isobel Lucas was out of your league.’
He blushed. ‘I was trying to distract myself from you. You have no idea how hard it has been to keep my distance –’
