I was trying hard to hold on to what I knew to be true. Admittedly, I had taken more than the prescribed amount, and there had been mornings when the pain of a day without my baby was too much. But taking the tablets had always been a choice. I was always in control.
Luke’s version was a distortion. But the solid ground of my conviction was slipping from beneath my feet and I was confused.
‘One evening you were completely bombed, it was fucking horrible, you were slurring and stumbling –’
No. ‘Sometimes I was groggy when I woke up –’
‘It was worse than that. So I went through the apartment and found pills hidden everywhere. Rachel …’
I remembered and even now it made me feel sick. I’d woken to find an array of Ambien laid out on the kitchen counter and Luke pacing in a cold fury.
‘In the box of teabags.’ He’d held up two tablets. Pointing at others, ‘In the freezer. In your coat pocket. Sellotaped to the back of those photos. Have I missed any?’
‘The rice, the basmati rice.’ I rummaged until I found the four pills, then surrendered them to him.
‘That’s it?’ he asked. ‘That’s all?’
I nodded. ‘That’s all. Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I love you, I’m so sorry.’
He’d pulled me onto his lap, then I buried my face in his neck and gave in to the despair. I cried for our baby dying and me being a worthless fuck-up and the horrible suspicion that I was losing everything.
I’d thought my essential brokenness had healed years earlier – how had I ended up back here again?
‘It’s okay,’ he’d murmured, kissing my hair. ‘It’s okay.’
But it wasn’t okay. Because I hadn’t told him about the ones stashed in the lid of my foundation bottle or in the jar of folic acid or at the back of the drawer with all the old chargers. He didn’t understand, he’d never understand because the only person who could get me through this hell was me.
‘That day,’ he reminded me, ‘you cried in my arms and swore you’d stop. But you didn’t. No wonder you were so good in the escape room with Quin – you knew how to find things because you know how to hide them!’
That rocked me to my core. It was such a mad way of looking at things and maybe … Luke wasn’t wrong?
I guess it explained why he had been so weird and alert when Quin had praised my escape-room skills.
‘You know I’m right,’ Luke said. ‘I can see it in you.’
‘No … not at all … you don’t see it.’ But I was scared – I’d had a brief insight that there were two ways of looking at one situation. In the first, my baby had died, my grief was temporarily unbearable and I needed to sleep. The other was that I was an addict who had used her symptoms to legitimately get her hands on sleeping tablets – and then took more than she should have.
Could both be true?
‘Luke, I … I don’t know what to think. I’m … It’s all a bit much … I’m scared.’
He watched me carefully. ‘You’ll be okay.’ He sounded definite about this. ‘Take some time. Let all of this settle.’
‘Luke … listen. I’d better go home. I need to …’
‘Sure. Of course. But should you be on your own? Will Quin be there?’
‘He’s in New Mexico. I’ll be fine, though.’
But as we walked towards the door, my sanity returned. After everything he’d done, Luke had somehow managed to convince me – briefly – that I was entirely to blame.
‘Luke?’
Outside in the indigo night, he towered over me.
‘Luke.’ Now I was angry. ‘You can’t put all the blame on me.’
He blinked. ‘Don’t you get it?’ He looked shocked. ‘I spent nearly six months trying to help you to quit. There was literally nothing else I could do. I had to leave.’
‘… That wasn’t all you did.’
There was a pause that went on for too long. I watched understanding – and something else, something less pleasant – arrive in his eyes. ‘You mean Mia?’
I nodded.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I nearly forgot. I slept with Mia.’
I gulped. At the time he had denied it – denied it again and again. But I’d always had my suspicions. To have it confirmed – even six years later – was excruciating.
He lowered his face to mine, strands of his hair brushing my skin. ‘Fuck you, Rachel,’ he said. ‘Fuck you.’