Page 48 of Pictures of Him

Four months before: Catherine

This morning, cocooned by the knowledge that we are alone again, I feel relief, almost optimism. I escaped this first meeting with your friends, the one I’ve spent so many years avoiding, without any acknowledged judgements (other than a few eye-watering looks from Rachel), no calamitous revelations to wreck the night.

You are still deeply asleep and I go downstairs alone to boil a kettle for tea. Earl Grey, loose leaf, without milk or lemon; I know all your daily habits now. While I’m waiting for the kettle, I wander through to the library, thinking I’ll bring in some of the glasses and wash them up. I stop in front of the portrait of you in the hallway, a child of eight or nine. Your hair is lighter and combed into a centre parting, and you kneel on the floor, bare-legged in high-waisted shorts, shirt tucked in, one hand resting on the collar of a black Labrador. It’s sweetly old-fashioned and hilariously unlike the boy I came to know a decade later, but the thing that strikes me is the way the artist has painted your eyes. You could say it’s the glory-days simplicity of being nine years old, but I would tell you that these are ‘before’ eyes; there’s a simplicity, a serenity I havenever seen. It reminds me that you never talk about your father’s suicide except in the baldest, most graphic terms – ‘he blew his brains out,’ you might say, or ‘he topped himself’ – and that in some respects you have just as many skeletons as me.

It’s dark in the library, the curtains drawn, the air thick with last night’s cigarette smoke, a litter of glasses on every surface. A voice looms from the darkness, startling me.

‘What time is it?’

Rachel curled on a sofa, a blanket pulled up to her chin, one exposed arm revealing the sequinned top of last night. Her voice is tiny, tragic, a deathbed voice.

‘God, Rachel. Did you sleep here all night?’

‘Haven’t slept.’ And then, ‘Hate myself, obviously.’

I see that she is close to tears.

‘What am I going to do?’

I sit down on the opposite sofa.

‘What time do you have to leave? It’s still quite early.’

‘I’m not going. I can’t.’

‘But you have to. Your son will be so disappointed if you don’t.’

I’ve spoken without thinking and I watch Rachel sliding her eyes away from me.

‘I don’t expect you to understand, Catherine,’ she says, and her voice is crisp with bitterness. ‘But it’s better for Max not to see me like this. This is what he hates. This is why he left.’

‘Why don’t I drive you? I’d be happy to if Lucian will lend me his car. Or I’m sure we could find a taxi, what about that?’

She shakes her head. ‘Thank you but no.’

She holds out both hands in front of her and in silence we watch the catastrophic tremors. I am wondering if I have the life skills to deal with this naked admission of addiction. Last night I found myself watching Rachel whenever I could. Partly I wanted to see how she behaved around you (with sadness, I thought, and not jealousy as I’d expected), but I also found myself noticing the way she drank. She refilled her cocktail glass from the jug constantly, sometimes when the glass was still three-quarters full. Her speech was slurred long before anyone else’s, as if she’d simply topped up from the day before.

‘Strong coffee,’ I say now, with the voice of encouragement I use when my children don’t want to go to school (a big breakfast, eggs and bacon, that’s what you need, I’d tell Joe; for Daisy it was hot chocolate, with cream if we had it). ‘A long shower. Lots of water. I honestly think you can do this.’

Rachel groans and slides back down into a horizontal position, and then you walk through the door, dressed only in a pair of jeans, your feet and torso bare. You are beautiful to me, always, and you fill this dark, stale room with instant brightness.

‘There you are,’ you say. Then, ‘Rach, you need to get going, don’t you?’

Rachel closes her eyes and mutters, ‘Please just go away, both of you,’ and you look at me, questioningly, so I patch together a quick summary.

‘Rachel didn’t get to bed last night. She doesn’t feel well enough to see Max.’

‘Jesus, Rach. But we took you to the door of your room and said goodnight. Did you come back down? Why?’

‘Obviously I did. Obviously I’m a mess, a disaster, a complete fuck-up. Now please can you leave me alone?’

I watch you kneel down in front of the sofa and take one of Rachel’s hands.

‘Are you sure we can’t work this out? There’s still time.’

‘Let’s drive her there. If we leave soon, she won’t be late.’

‘Sure, we can do that,’ you say, without conviction. ‘Rach?’

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