Page 108 of A Night with Damien Spur

I lied when I told you that the university had extended my position.

It seemed that there was nothing left to keep us together, so we agreed to divorce.

And then, it all started to go wrong with Andreas. Every night he went to the taverna and sometimes he didn’t come home till dawn. One morning he came home blind drunk and woke me up. He shook me so hard that I thought he had dislocated my shoulder. He said he’d lost a lot of money playing tavli and that I had stopped bringing him luck. That I was a chain round his neck.

To tell the truth, I missed you, Damien.

I was six months gone. Andreas’s family were kind. But I wasn’t having an easy time. So I made a plan.

To have the baby and take the newborn back to England, even if we weren’t going to be together. However, the best laid plans…

But then one night he came home drunk again. He was so cruel. Said I was his problem. He told me that he needed his freedom, wanted to be with a simple Greek girl. That he didn’t understand my British ways.

I told him I’d take the baby back to England and he could have his freedom.

He went berserk. Threw me against the wall. I was so frightened I couldn’t see straight. I just wanted to get away. And that’s when I fell down the stairs and hit my head. I started bleeding.

He was really scared and called the ambulance.

I went to the hospital. They gave me acaesarean. But the baby boy was dead.

Oh, Damien, I am so unhappy. How can I live with myself? I had a baby in Athens – mine, not yours.

I just can’t take it anymore.

Forgive me,

Laura

Well, at least she didn’t sign off with love,the Voice said.

‘I need a drink.’

Damien moved to the mirror and stared at his reflection with fresh eyes, scrutinising this semblance of features that didn’t seem to have a soul. He looked like the ghoulish marionette with a long face and deep-sunk eyes that his father had brought him back from Prague when Damien was a boy.

No, you don’t look like that. Get some perspective. She betrayed you. Shoved your adoration down the plughole. Wanted a bit of rough. You had every right to have affairs. At least you didn’t pretend, like her, with her high and mighty intellectual claptrap. And look who she took to her heart. A Cretan bull… Damien, wake up. Go get straight. You’re vindicated. Don’t fuck it up. Tomorrow is the first day of your new life.

When Sophie returned, Damien was asleep.

She gazed tenderly at his dear face and graceful body, all curled up in his bed. The duvet cover wrapped around him, save for his fine muscled arms, long and pale, which hugged a pillow to his chest. It was hard to imagine that this beautiful man had been to the bottom of the pit, his life nearly snuffed out. His long, elegant toes were peeking out from under the cover. She touched them. They were ice cold. When she rubbed them, he giggled.

‘Nurse Sophie,’ he said, all silky soft, ‘what a good sort you are.’

Chapter 34

Come on, Damien, go for it. Tell them your story. Everyone here is in the same boat, the Voice said.

No, we’re not, thought Damien.The difference is, I have you yammering on at me all the time.

He looked up and cleared his throat. ‘I’m Damien and I’m an alcoholic and I’m addicted to sex and drugs.’

‘Hi, Damien,’ the group responded.

He paused.

Go on, Damien, imagine you’re on the couch, the Voice said.

‘Okay, here goes. I’ve been going on benders for the last twenty years, but I’ve always managed to keep my work separate from my leisure habits. I could drink a bottle of whisky a night chased down with half a dozen lines of coke and still get up in the morning and write. I’ve slept with hundreds of women and sometimes had a turnover of two a day, when I wasn’t busy.

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