It Could Have Been Her(53)

“Sun’s out,” I say, laying the tea and toast on the bedside table next to her. I pass her two painkillers and a glass of water and watch her down them.

“Has Daisy gone?”

“Yes. She left about forty minutes ago.”

Jessamine nods, passes me back the water glass, and then turns to pick up a slice of toast from beside her. She doesn’t ask how her child is. She hasn’t gotten up to see her off since her first week at secondary school last September.

Hugo appears and jumps on the bed. Jessamine frowns, so I snatch him up and put him on the floor.

“You should get up,” I say. “It feels like spring out there. Daffs coming through in the garden.”

She throws me a withering look. “Do I look like I am about to get up to admire daffodils?”

“No,” I say softly. “No, you don’t. But you should. It would do you good. Clear out the cobwebs.”

“Clear out the cobwebs.” She mimics me in a horribly camped-up estuary accent. “It’s all right for you,” she snaps. “You’re not fucking ill.”

I blink slowly. She’s playing the “ill” card again. She says she’s got some kind of post-viral thing. She had a bad cold just before Christmas, and ever since she’s stayed in bed all day, but she miraculously gets out every afternoon to the little shop on Grove Place and buys herself two bottles of organic wine and half a liter of dark rum that she somehow manages to carry all the way back to the house, come rain or come shine.

The wine is opened at 4 p.m. By 5 p.m., when Daisy returns from school, Jessamine has had half a bottle and is reasonably together, relaxed enough to ask Daisy about her day, express an interest in her schoolwork, in what she might want to eat for her dinner. By 6 p.m. she has had a full bottle and likes to pretend that she has finished drinking wine for the day and says something like, “It’s happy hour! Who wants a rum and Coke?” Nobody will want a rum and Coke, but she will pour herself one anyway and make noises suggestive of a special treat, an earned reward. When dinner is ready she will open the second bottle of wine, pour a small glass for her mother and a large glass for herself, and she will sit and talk loudly and unpleasantly, complain about the food, push it around her plate, pretend that everyone is against her, start an argument, tell everyone maybe they’d prefer it if she just killed herself, then storm off to bed with the rest of the wine, telling everyone to fuck themselves on the way.

At some point she will come downstairs with the empty wine bottle and pour the rest of the rum into a tumbler, neat, then take the rum up and drink it until she sleeps. Often the sleep will need assistance. Annie gives her things that her own GP gives her. I wait until she is asleep before I come up. If it’s been a particularly awful night, I’ll just take a duvet to the sofa and sleep in the living room. But usually, I’ll walk into our room to find her slack-mouthed, rancid with drink, comatose, snoring, drooling, the monster quelled for another day.

“You should see the GP,” I say now. “Maybe it’s something serious. You need to get yourself checked out.”

“I haven’t got a fucking GP, Stuart,” she says. “You know that. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Well, sign up for one then. But seriously, it’s been nearly eight weeks since you got ill. You shouldn’t still be feeling like this.”

She knows and I know that she’s not ill, that she’s hungover, but this is the stupid game we play, because I am not, under any circumstances, allowed to refer to Jessamine’s drinking. If I refer to Jessamine’s drinking then I am the enemy, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past two years, it’s not to be Jessamine’s enemy.

“Find me a GP who hasn’t got a three-year waiting list, and I’ll sign up.”

“OK,” I say then, “I will.”

She sighs and drops the toast back on the plate. “It’s cold,” she says.

I don’t tell her that of course it is, that if she wants hot toast, she needs to come downstairs and eat it quickly straight out of the toaster while the butter is still melting on it.

“What?” she asks me pointedly.

“Nothing,” I say with a sigh. Then I say, “Listen, my daughter’s coming over next week, from Australia. I’m going to take her out on the town, have a few drinks, a fancy dinner.” I lick my dry lips.

“That’s nice,” she says acidly.

I’ve known about this for weeks and have been putting off telling her.

“Yeah,” I say lightly, “yeah. It’ll be great.”

“When?” she says petulantly.

“Wednesday, probably. Just finalizing.”

“She only wants to see you for your money.”

I sigh again. She’s obsessed with the money thing. Thinks everything is about the money, constantly.

“She’s just a money-grabbing little bitch. You know she is.”

This is based on me giving my daughter ?500 about a year ago to help toward her puppy’s vet bill. Blaise offered to pay me back, but I wouldn’t let her. The only reason Jessamine knows about it is because she goes through all my paperwork and emails. I let her because it makes for an easy life, and if there’s one thing you must have worked out about me by now it’s that I like an easy life.