‘He’s in the drawing room,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in group.’
I found a nervous-looking man in his early forties, staring at an untouched cup of tea. An equally untouched plate of ‘visitors’’ biscuits were on the table before him.
‘Ronan?’ I shook his hand. ‘I’m Rachel. Thank you for coming.’
He half stood and, in a voice filled with anguish, asked, ‘What do I have to do?’
My heart hurt for him. The people who care about addicts have it very hard. So much of their time they’re plagued by suspicion, fear, thwarted hope, frustration, anger, and then, when they’ve finally convinced their loved one to get help, they usually feel terrible guilt.
‘Just be honest,’ I said. ‘I’ll guide you.’
‘Do you think she’ll … lose the head at me?’ God love him, he was terrified.
‘She might. She needs to protect her addiction and one way of doing that is to blame other people.’ We’d already been through this on the phone. ‘She might cry. She’ll probably try to make you feel guilty. Or like you’re overreacting.’
‘This is very hard.’
‘You managed to get her in here, you’ve already done the toughest part. Just try to be brave a bit longer.’
He nodded, white with dread.
As soon as I was certain that everyone was safely in group, I took Ronan into the corridor, opened the door of the Abbot’s Quarter, ushered him in and guided him to the ‘visitors’’ chair Waldemar had parked there earlier, draped with a piece of A4 paper saying ‘Don’t Sit Here’。
Murdo was already in the room – he always provided backup when we had ‘visitors’。
You could have heard a pin drop. Ella didn’t understand what was going on, her head was flipping from person to person, seeking answers. The rest of them, though, couldn’t help but be a little buzzed. These confrontations were often edge-of-your-seat stuff so long as you weren’t the person in the spotlight.
‘Trassa,’ I said. ‘Would you like to say hello to your son?’
Her mouth worked but no words emerged. Eventually she managed, ‘Who’s minding down home while you’re up here?’
‘Keith.’
‘He knows nothing about cattle.’
‘It’s one day, Mammy.’
‘Tell that to the poor cows who won’t get milked.’
Already I was losing Ronan. He was wilting before my eyes.
‘Have you any idea of the suffering of a full udder?’ Trassa asked him.
‘Have you, Trassa?’ I said.
‘I’m not a cow!’
‘And neither is Ronan. Take a look at these.’ I passed her a sheaf of credit-card bills.
After a bit of a production with her reading glasses, she scanned them … As the penny dropped, the blood visibly left her face.
‘Telling my business to all and sundry!’ she slung at Ronan.
‘Would you like to tell the other members of your group what you have in your hand?’ My tone was reasonable. ‘Or should I?’
‘I …’ Her rage at Ronan was colossal. ‘I’m your mother.’
‘Trassa, I have more copies of those pages.’ I rustled them. ‘Should I distribute them?’
‘No,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll tell them. They’re … credit-card bills.’
‘Whose?’ Dennis was always bursting with curiosity.
‘… Mine.’
‘How many credit cards?’ I asked.
‘Eleven …’
‘Totalling how much?’ I asked.
‘… I don’t know.’
‘You do. So do I. Should I tell everyone?’
Tearful and defiant, Trassa sat up and looked around at her group members. ‘It’s a lot. But I was unlucky. It’s the fault of the banks and the government for the high interest rates –’
‘Trassa?’
‘It’s … about fifty-nine thousand euro.’
The shock in the room was immense. The session the previous Thursday afternoon had done a lot to reveal the true Trassa and everyone had thought that that was as bad as it would get. This latest revelation was too much to take in immediately.
Ella paled so dramatically that her freckles popped. Oh my God, she was thinking, I am nothing like this Trassa. There’s no way I should be here.
Dennis was even more shaken. He’d believed Trassa, he’d identified with her, but if she was an addict, where did that leave him? The sacred time when the denial of an addict begins to crumble, and the truth of their situation starts to land, always made me visualize a river meeting the sea: fresh water churning into salt water, two powerful, separate streams having no choice but to merge, to become one new blended body.