who looks remotely like the kind of person who’d be wearing
Joint at half past eight in the morning. Or smoking one.
My gaze returns to the sea. Wetsuit Guy seems to have dis-
appeared. Maybe I imagined him too.
Oh shit. I need a drink.
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3
By the time I arrive at AA, I’m wired. All I’ve done since this
morning is drink endless cups of coffee and smoke myself
stupid. I’ve also been researching barnacles. Apparently, they
exude an adhesive- type substance that binds them to hard
surfaces and cements them in place. It’s similar to the clotting
mechanism in blood. I need facts like this to occupy my mind.
To fill up the spaces where the bad stuff clings on. Anything to
quell the compulsion to drink.
And now I’m here, hugging my chest to keep my heart from
exploding. It’s the first meeting I’ve been to since coming out of
rehab. Mum’s been on at me to go for days.
I take the chair nearest the door and do that thing I used to do
on the underground. Quick, furtive glances at the other passen-
gers. Just to get a sense of them. The cross section of people in
the vestry of Flinstead parish church on this chilly May evening
is, in fact, remarkably similar to that of a London underground
carriage. I just wish I could get off at the next stop.
A woman with peroxide hair and a ravaged face gives me a
knowing smile. The crowns on her front teeth are so old they’re
black at the gum line. She looks like she’s in her sixties, but
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LESLEY K AR A
dresses younger, probably is. Drink ages a person. She’s wear-
ing tight black jeans, grey vest over a black T- shirt and one of
those long, shapeless cardigans, which trails over the tops of
her ankle boots. Every time she shifts position I catch a whiff
of stale cigarettes. Do I smell like that too? God, I hope not.
‘Is it your first time?’ says a cultured voice to my left. Its owner wears an expensive- looking charcoal- grey suit and polished brogues. He has the air of someone distinguished. A lawyer or
consultant, perhaps. It’s a great leveller, this addiction of ours.
‘First time here, yes.’ My voice is hoarse from too much smoking and there’s an annoying twitch in my left eyelid.
He nods politely, and I sense that he’s holding back another
question. I’m glad. I’m not here for the small talk.
More people drift in and take their seats. A gaunt- looking
woman with bulging eyes and long, fidgety fingers sits opposite
me. Her eyes veer in their sockets like pale blue marbles. Every
so often they settle on me, before spinning off in another direc-
tion. I stare at my knees. When I look up, I find her watching me.
And she isn’t the only one. I’m clearly this evening’s main attrac-
tion. A youngish man with bad acne keeps looking at me too.
This is unbearable. I could be out of that door and back
home in ten minutes. Except then Mum will know I didn’t
come and I have to prove to her that, this time, I’ll do it. This
time, I’ll quit for good. It’s my last chance – she’s left me in no doubt about that.
A noticeboard with AA literature pinned all over it has
been propped on a table against the wall, no doubt so it can be
whisked out of sight when the mother- and- toddler group take
over in the morning. My gaze drifts over the neatly typed list of
the Twelve Steps, not that I need to read them again. After three
months of rehab and daily meetings I could probably recite
them by heart. Actually working them, step by step, is a differ-
ent matter.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
I can just about get my head round the first one and admit
that for most of the time I’m powerless over alcohol, that my
life has become unmanageable. But the next two are pretty
major stumbling blocks: believing that a power greater than
myself can restore me to sanity and, here’s the killer: turning
my will and my life over to the care of God. I mean, I know
the power of the group itself even – but it’s hard to get down on
your knees and pray to the collective wisdom of a random
bunch of drunks.
I close my eyes. The room has that old- church smell: stale
and musty. It prompts a memory I thought I’d forgotten. A
Sunday- school classroom. Being shown how to write a capital
‘G’ for ‘God’ and pressing down on the paper so hard my pencil
broke. Even as a small child, something inside me resisted the
notion of a higher power.
Someone to my right clears his throat. He looks like the sort
of man who might play the church organ or organize the local
Neighbourhood Watch. Dull and worthy. He looks like my old
physics teacher, Mr Staines. Semen Staines, we used to call him,
poor bugger.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ he says, his voice as watery and
colourless as the rest of him. ‘My name is David and I’m an
alcoholic.’
And so it begins.
David is in the middle of the usual preamble when the door
bursts open and a latecomer hurtles through. A tall middle- aged
woman in a beige raincoat and red court shoes. Her messy hair
is shoulder- length, mousy- coloured.
‘Sorry,’ she says, her face flushing as red as her shoes. Her
flesh- coloured tights have gone all bobbly round the ankles.
I give her a small smile. She looks so vulnerable, standing
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LESLEY K AR A
there in front of us all, and I can’t help noticing that tremble in
her hands. I bet she’s still drinking. Poor woman. She looks like
she’d rather be anywhere but here. I know just how she feels.
After the meeting, people drink coffee and chat. Some of them
hug each other. The peroxide woman with grey skin – Rosie,
eight years sober, AA evangelist – tries to hug the woman with
red shoes, who clearly doesn’t want to be hugged. I’ve met Ros-
ie’s type before. Homing in on the newbies. Oh God, now she’s
heading straight for me. I hold out my hand instead and the
woman with red shoes rolls her eyes at me over Rosie’s shoul-
der. I can’t reciprocate, not without Rosie cottoning on, but I
think she can tell from the way I look back at her that we’re on
the same wavelength about inappropriate hugging.
When Rosie finally slinks off to accost someone else, the
man in the suit gestures at me with a cup. He’s standing next to
the man with acne, who’s now openly staring at me. I shake my
head. I have to get out of here. Now. But as I turn towards the
door I bump straight into the woman with red shoes. We both
&
nbsp; say sorry at the same time.
‘My fault,’ she says, flustered. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was
going.’
Her voice is soft, tremulous, and though I haven’t come here
to make friends I feel as if I ought to encourage her. Reaching
out more, helping others – that’s how this whole fellowship
thing is meant to work. Be nice, Astrid. Be nice.
‘See you next week?’ I say.
‘Maybe.’ Her eyes glisten with tears. She rushes to the door
and stumbles out into the corridor, her exit as sudden and
clumsy as her entrance.
I imagine her running all the way home then opening a bot-
tle of red wine and drinking the lot. Opening another. I pack
the thought away before it takes hold.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
Outside, wind hurls itself from the sea end of Flinstead Road.
I tug my coat across my chest and walk straight into it, chin
pressed down, the musty smell in my nostrils blown clean away.
The street is deserted. Out of season, Flinstead is dead after
nine o’clock. Actually, that’s a lie – it’s dead after eight. When I pass the alleyway that leads to the little cluster of overpriced
boutiques, the ones only the tourists go in, I stop and stare into
the shadows. This was the exact spot where I saw Simon last
night. In the daylight, it looks enticing, with its coral- painted
walls and that glimpse of courtyard at the end, the metal bistro
tables and chairs, the hanging baskets. Now, it looks like the
kind of place a girl might get strangled.
I walk straight down it and sit on one of the chairs, the cold
of the metal burning into the backs of my thighs. It’s a matter
of pride. To prove to myself that I’m not scared. That I don’t
believe for one second that it was really him.
Once, I would have said he wasn’t spiteful enough to come
back. But that was before.
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I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve killed her. The number of ways.
Yesterday, it went like this: we were standing on the pier at Mist‑
den Sands and I just pushed her in. She was wearing those stupid Doc Martens she clumps about in and, what with them and her big, heavy coat, she couldn’t keep afloat. I stood there, watching, as she thrashed about and waited for her to sink. Her braids spread out on the water like long fingers of seaweed.
The last thing I saw were those little blue beads at the ends, bob‑
bing on the surface like fishing floats.
It was too easy, though. Too clean. I prefer it when there’s blood.
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4
I’ve passed the Fisherman’s Shack almost every day since I
arrived, but I’ve never been inside before this morning. I see at
once what I’ve been missing. Creaky old floorboards and mis-
matched tables and chairs. Vintage, but only because they’ve
been here for years. They haven’t been specially ‘sourced’ or
painted in Farrow and Ball and roughed up with a sanding
block. And, most impressively, they just serve coffee (instant or
filter, not a macchiato or ristretto in sight), tea, Fanta or Coke.
Egg- and- bacon butties. Toasted teacakes.
It’s an inspired choice. I love it.
The barista has arms like Bluto. The devil in me wants to ask
for a skinny latte, just to see his face, but I order a filter coffee, black, and take it over to a table in the window. I’m ten minutes
late and he’s not here, which either means he isn’t coming or he
couldn’t be bothered to wait. I don’t even know his name. For
all his chatter on the beach yesterday, he forgot to introduce
himself.
I rub a circle in the steamed- up window and watch the good
folk of Flinstead go about their usual business. Coming out of
shops with papers tucked under their arms, waving to someone
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LESLEY K AR A
on the other side of the street or nodding their endless hellos.
Sometimes I think it’s like The Truman Show and all I’ve got to do is find the perimeter of the set and break out through the
papery screen to the real world on the other side. The messy,
chaotic world of noise and pain and sharp- faced strangers who
look straight through you.
Then I see her, the hugger from AA. Rosie, or whatever her
name is. She’s wearing another of those long, trailing cardigans,
only this one is black, and she’s dragging a rotating card stand
out of the Oxfam shop. After she’s wrestled it over the step and
wheeled it into position in front of the window she swivels her
head round and looks straight at me, almost as if she’s sensed me
watching her. For one awful second I think she’s going to wave,
but then she turns away and goes back into the shop.
My shoulders soften. There’s no way she could have recog-
nized me from this distance and, even if she did, there’s an
unspoken rule at AA that we don’t acknowledge each other in
public, especially in a town this size.
A girl in a puffa jacket emerges from the newsagent’s. She’s
tucking into a huge bar of chocolate, biting straight into it as if
it’s nothing more than a snack- sized bar. My mouth waters. If
Wetsuit Guy doesn’t turn up soon, I’m going to buy some choc-
olate too.
I watch as she positions herself in front of the card stand,
spinning it listlessly. Something about her looks familiar, but
before I can work out what it is, she disappears into the charity
shop.
I turn away and stare into my coffee. Why am I still hanging
around in here, waiting for some fitness fanatic to show up? I
might just as well finish this and go.
A door at the back, which has the word ‘Toilet’ written on a
piece of card strung round the handle, opens with a loud squeak,
and there he is. For some stupid reason, I hadn’t imagined him
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
in anything other than a wetsuit but, of course, he’s fully
clothed. Faded jeans and a pale green rugby shirt. Blond, tou-
sled hair. He’s even more good- looking than I remember.
‘You’re here,’ he says, grinning.
For one awkward moment I think he’s going to kiss me, but
at the last minute he offers me his hand.
‘I’m Josh, by the way.’
‘Astrid.’
‘Cool.’ He nods at my coffee. ‘Can I get you something to eat
with that?’
I could murder an egg- and- bacon buttie but have visions of egg
yolk sliding down my chin. It’s not a great look for a first date. If that’s what this is. Dating hasn’t been part of my repertoire for
ages. In fact, I’m not sure it ever was. Falling into bed, rat- arsed, with complete strangers is my usual modus operandi.
‘A toasted teacake, maybe?’ Christ, did I really say that? It
sounds like something my Great Aunt Dorothy would order.
‘Toasted teacake coming up,’ he says, and saunters over to
the counter, reaching in his back pocket for some money.
‘One toasted teacake, one egg- and- bacon buttie and a cup of
tea, please, Bob,’ he says.
Bob nods and sets to work. I’m studying the back of Josh’s
head – the way his hair curls over his collar – when an involun-
tary shudder travels the length of my spine. I don’t have to look
out the window to tell that I’m being watched, and I instinc-
tively know that, this time, it’s not Rosie.
Josh pulls out the chair in front of me and it scrapes against
the floor. ‘Are you okay?’
I swivel my eyes to the right. There’s no one there. Of course
there isn’t. Get a grip, Astrid. It’s not him.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.’
Josh glances out of the window and frowns. Then he turns
his attention back to me.
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LESLEY K AR A
‘So how long will you be staying with your mum?’
‘Until she gets better, I suppose.’ There’s just the faintest sen-
sation of warmth in my cheeks.
‘What do you do?’ he says. ‘For a living, I mean.’
My brain goes into overdrive. Breathe.
Josh screws up his face. ‘Sorry. That’s a really annoying ques-
tion. I sound like some tosser at a dinner party.’
I smile. ‘I trained in scenic design. I work freelance.’
What I don’t tell him is that the last job I had that was any-
thing remotely to do with design was over seven years ago. I
had a reputation for turning up for work late, still pissed from
the night before. A walking health- and- safety hazard. A useless
drunk. Since then it’s been a series of low- paid, temporary or
zero- hours contracts. Boring clerical positions, supermarket
work, that kind of thing. For the last year it’s been nothing
at all.
I take a mouthful of coffee and scald the roof of my mouth.
Josh blows across the top of his drink, like I should have
done. ‘I work in a university,’ he says. ‘Student services. At least, I will do, from the end of August. I was made redundant from
my last job.’
‘Oh, sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t be. I hated it. Anyway, it’s worked out pretty well. My
dad’s bought a big old place overlooking the backwaters. So I’m