Seeing ‘signs’ had never been my thing but the same strange calm I’d woken up with was insisting that my personal rainbow was a very clear message: Be brave. Say goodbye. You’ll be fine.
Chalkie was still talking and hastily I tuned back in.
‘I was going to give NA another go,’ Chalkie said. ‘I’d done lots of stints there.’
But he’d never stayed long enough to do any healing – and there was so much for him to heal from. Born to a single mother, an addict, he wasn’t even three years old when she overdosed and died in their home. For seventy-two hours, he sat by her side, trying to wake her up. He’d even attempted to feed her, putting a saucepan on the hob and trying to open cans of soup by tearing off the paper labels.
His father had never been in his life so he lived with his grandmother. Sadly, she died when he was fifteen.
‘Then Skye tells me I’m on her health insurance.’
It was hard to know precisely what to call Skye’s relationship with Chalkie. She was the mother of his eight-year-old son, Tito. After Maarit died, Chalkie had asked Skye to adopt Vida. Now Vida lived with Skye full-time, but Chalkie came and went.
Skye was a social worker and a community activist. Chalkie had said – with warm admiration – she was ‘a working-class woman trapped in a middle-class body’。
‘The health insurance meant I could come in here.’ Chalkie gave me a bold smile. ‘Be the beneficiary of Rachel’s considerable wisdom, get three meals a day, a warm bed at night. But spare a thought for the poor scumbags nodding out on stairwells in the fla–’ He saw my face. ‘Soz. Yeah. You know, I think that it was just my time to stop. You don’t see till you see, you don’t hear till you hear. “The truth must dazzle gradually, Or every man be blind.” Emily Dickinson.’
Ella took in a short, gaspy breath. Her chin trembled as she stared, lovestruck, at Chalkie.
‘Yeh.’ Chalkie slanted a look at Giles. ‘What would someone like me know about poetry?’
‘Well, I –’
‘Ah, you’re all right, Gilesy man.’ Chalkie grinned. ‘I’m just fucking with you.’
Call me delusional, but I was sure there was affection in there somewhere.
Ella’s tears were now in full spate and Harlie was watching, her contempt visible.
I was concerned about Harlie – she seemed to have got bogged down in anger.
Usually, when the truth dawned on addicts, anger was one of the reactions. But people tended to move through it and on to grief, back-and-forthing between the two, often throwing some bargaining into the mix while they were at it. Harlie, however, had landed on anger, liked it and decided to stay.
Since her arrival, I hadn’t made her cry once, a failure that I felt keenly. What if I couldn’t get any further with her? Sometimes – very rarely, mind, but it had happened – people withstood everything I flung at them during their six weeks and left, still in the tight grip of their addiction. It was the worst. Obviously, I felt for the addict and all the people who loved them but – and this was shallow and shameful – I felt like a failure.
I wondered about trying again to get her friend Tegan’s parents to come in. Maybe if they talked to Harlie about their dead daughter, something would shift?
Meanwhile, Ella was still sobbing.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she gasped. ‘Just happy that Chalkie is here. That he’s going to be okay.’
‘What about you? Are you happy you’re here? Happy you’re going to be okay?’
‘But I am okay.’
As they filed out at the end of group, Trassa, looking haunted, hung back.
‘Rachel. Would you know if …？’ She clutched my arm. ‘I’m thinking about Ronan.’
I waited. Her grip on my arm tightened and she leant close to me.
‘I’d be afraid’ – her voice was hoarse – ‘that Collie Byrne might hurt him.’
Still I waited.
‘He’s not really a violent type, Collie Byrne. He’ll probably just take some of Ronan’s machinery for the debt. But I was lying awake and I couldn’t stop thinking of …’ Her jaw clenched and her skin was as white as paper. ‘Ronan’s not tough,’ she said. ‘He’s a gentle sort of a lad, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself and – can you help me, Rachel?’
‘What would you like to do?’
‘I could maybe talk to Collie Byrne? Make a plan to pay back the money?’