After that night, I kept a second tablet hidden in my pillowcase for when I woke at 2 or 3 a.m.
In an awful development, daytimes seemed to be becoming more painful. It was about seven weeks since she’d died, the initial devastation had shifted and the full weight of my – our – loss was starting to settle. Instead of the wide-open expanse of love and happiness Luke and I had been primed for, the life we were left with seemed small, stunted and very sad.
Then he went through a spell of insomnia. After one morning too many when I woke to find him hollow-eyed and exhausted, I suggested he go to Carlotta. My hope was that if we were both taking sleeping pills, he’d understand how helpful they were – and I could tell him I was still taking them.
But he said, ‘I’ll just tough it out. Your sleeping got back to normal.’ Then, ‘Didn’t it?’
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought his eyes flicked to my sock drawer and I went cold. If he found out about them, he’d make me throw them away and I couldn’t – they were the saving of me.
When he left for work, I gave it twenty minutes, just to make sure he wasn’t coming back to catch me, then I retrieved my precious little stockpile – three cards, twenty-seven pills remaining. They needed to be broken up and hidden around the apartment, so that if Luke found some, at least there would still be plenty left.
As I cut the cards into quarters, I felt ashamed, then resentful. Why did he have to be so difficult? If only he’d take on board that this was a very temporary thing and as soon as I was stronger, I’d stop.
The bathroom seemed too obvious, that was probably the first place he’d look. But it seemed safe to slide some pills into the pocket of a coat I no longer wore. In the kitchen, my hand rummaged down low into a bag of basmati rice we hadn’t touched in years and I buried four tablets. So long as Luke didn’t take it upon himself to do a kitchen clearout – and that was wildly unlikely – they’d be safe.
My focus narrowed in on the three photographs hanging on the living-room wall: smiley, happy pictures of Brigit and me on a night out with the Real Men, a thousand years ago. They’d been there for so long that Luke and I no longer saw them.
I took them down and as I was sellotaping tablets to their backs I got a glimpse into how insane this was. Like, it was mad. Shouldn’t I just tell Luke? There was nothing dodgy about taking these pills, they’d been prescribed by a doctor. Well, two doctors actually. Carlotta didn’t know that Dr Gagnon had given me a prescription and Dr Gagnon either didn’t know or wasn’t interested in Carlotta’s script.
But they were prescribed. Admittedly, I was taking more than either doctor had given me, but that was just to get me through this awful time. For all that Luke had freaked out about the initial five Ambien from Carlotta, he was forgetting that I was the least likely person to come a cropper. I knew so much about myself and so much about addiction that I would make sure it would never happen.
58
I woke up to a series of texts from Claire.
Devin Costello a BIG hit. Luka and him in bromance! Even Francesca stopped being bitchy after a while.
Then:
No effing job, though. Do any of them ever have jobs? Us Gen Xers keep the world turning then they make us feel guilty for buying clothes. Not cool.
Then:
I’m barely Gen X. Almost young enough to be millennial lol. They’re happy enough to take allowance from us though and let us pay for stuff.
Then:
Doesn’t really look like Luke. Would have been weird if he did. He seems mad about Kate. Never liked that Isaac.
Then:
What you up to this evening? Luka and me having mother-son bonding time. Going shopping. Proves my earlier point. Then going for Mexican food. Teenage boys obsessed with tacos.
Well. It was good news for Kate that they liked Devin. That was about as much headspace as I could spare for it. Then I went to work.
At ten past ten, Freya Tollemarche hurried up the steps, her bossy-pants father, Eden, behind her.
I’d expected Bronte’s daughter to be a fey, fine-boned blonde but instead she had lots of thick, russet hair, barely contained by a knitted utility hat. Her face was long and thin with prominent teeth but she was gorgeous, with fresh bouncy skin and glowing eyes.
Eden greeted me by bellowing, ‘Today must be all about Freya.’
‘Excuse me?’ Cheeky fecker, telling me how to run my sessions.
‘I can be here whenever you command. But as Freya is visiting for just one day, she must have the floor.’
‘We’ll see.’ I gave him a thin smile and turned my attention to his daughter.