Page 57 of The Snag List
‘I know I’ve been a bit all over the place since Tilly came along, but I was just adjusting. I swear I am going to cop on now. Ipromise. Tom and I will get back on track. We’ll have a fresh start. He’s going to sort out the fine, arrest, whatever. I’ll cut down, I mean, stop … for a while. Show him that I’m taking this seriously.’
Her phone rang. Tom. As hard as this conversation was going to be, she was happy to have a good reason to turn away from her mother’s searching eyes.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Eileen closed the door quietly and Ailbhe hit accept.
‘Ailbhe, what are we supposed to do now? I can’t believe this is happening. I feel like I don’t even know you!’
‘Yeah, well, when you get together post-forty, there’s going to be some stuff you forget to mention.’ Ailbhe tried to make a stab at being light-hearted, but seeing him shake his head, she knew it wasn’t right.
He can’t even look at me, she thought. His troubled gaze was trained on something off to the right. He took a breath and spoke softly. ‘I don’t think I am actually ready to get into this yet. I need some time to process this, to figure out where we can even go from here. Ailbhe?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘I want you to really think about your drinking. Do you really think it’s normal? Most people have hangovers after drinking, not legal troubles in other countries.’
Or two potential baby daddies. She pressed her lips together and avoided his eyes. They couldn’t look at each other.He doesn’t even know about the drugs. He doesn’t know the half of it.
‘I’m going to take a few days on this. Maybe longer, I don’t know.’
Oh God, it was falling apart, and not even for the reason she’d been so focused on.I didn’t even need my little soap opera to ruin this – I’m more than capable of wrecking my life on my own. And now my daughter’s too.
After she hung up and cried on the floor in front of the mess of clothes and make-up until she was wrung dry, she picked up her phone and looked up ‘Do I have a drinking problem?’
The first result was a HSE self-assessment tool. She clicked and duly began answering the questions presented: female, forty-two years of age.
‘How often do you have a drink containing alcohol?’
The first option was ‘two to four times amonth’. Ailbhe frowned. Who was taking this test and clicking that option? She hesitated over ‘four or more times a week’ and then hit the lesser option, ‘two to three times a week’. To be fair, that was truesomeweeks.
The next question asked: ‘How many standard drinks containing alcohol do you have on a typical day when you are drinking?’ She selected two cocktails and three glasses of wine. Again, she was maybe rounding down but this was the HSE – they were bound to be a bit hysterical.
The next question seemed to suggest that the HSE were on to her game: ‘How often have you had six or more standard drinks on a single occasion?’ She considered the fact that she’d been pregnant for much of the last year. Did it count as not drinking when you absolutely couldn’t drink? Even breastfeeding hadn’t impeded her drinking that much, she hadn’t allowed it to – she pumped and dumped and gave Tilly formula when she needed to. She tried to swerve this discomfiting realisation and re-read the question. How often have you had six or more standard drinks on a single occasion? How many times had she had LESS than six drinks once she got going?
‘How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop drinking once you had started?’Oh c’mon! Who stops until the night is over? Give a bitch a chance. I’m going with ‘monthly’.
‘How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected from you because of your drinking?’ She flashed on waking up after Fielding Fitzsimon’s birthday party. That icy shock when she didn’t immediately know where Tilly was. She couldn’t hit ‘never’. She looked at the next option down, ‘less than monthly’, and clicked it. It wasn’t a lie. Though there had been other nights when Eilers had done bath and bedtime, but Eilers had wanted to, and Ailbhe hadn’t beendrunkdrunk those times. Not really.
‘How often during the last year have you needed an alcoholic drink in the morning to get yourself going after a heavy drinking session?’ At least she could confidently reply ‘never’ to this one! She enjoyed a brief, bright second of relief only for the next question to stamp it straight out.
‘How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or regret after drinking?’ She regarded the two most extreme answers: ‘weekly’ and ‘daily or almost daily’. The Tilly guilt throbbed virtually all the time. She selected ‘weekly’. The same for the next question: ‘How often during the last year have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because you had been drinking?’
To ‘Have you or somebody else been injured as a result of your drinking?’ she tapped ‘no’. Not unless you count ‘emotionally’ – she had an unpleasant flash of Tom’s reproachful gaze.
‘Has a relative, friend, doctor or other healthcare worker been concerned about your drinking or suggested that you cut down?’ She tapped ‘yes’.
She hovered over ‘See result’. Did she really need to see it? Was taking the test proof enough? Never mind that she was currently on the brink of losing Tom. She tapped the button.
18
LINDY AND RACHEL WERE IN THE SNAG LIST OFFICE, sitting side by side, with Rachel’s computer on the desk in front of them. Lindy had only said yes to Rachel’s Snag List request out of awkwardness at the goodbye party, but when Rachel had texted to follow up, Lindy realised that, even though things were much better with Adam, she was curious about this woman.
They’d been going over Rachel’s chief regret for an hour now. It was not cyber-motorboating random husbands, as it turned out, but obsessively trolling Sigrid for many years. This insight into a pretty pathetic side of Rachel’s character was definitely soothing Lindy.She isn’t even that hot. Plus, since their date, Lindy and Adam had had sex two more times. OK that wasn’t a lot of sex in four weeks and it was a little bit sad keeping count but, whatever, it was a big improvement. Lindy refocused on the comments about Sigrid rolling up the computer screen.
@RealTalkGal:I actually cannot even look at your smug face. Seriously, how does a person actually get to the point of being so goddamn self-satisfied?
@RachyRantz:Ugh delete this woman PLEASE.
@RealTalkGal:If you can’t earn money online without exploiting your children then you need to leave the FUCKING internet. Can’t stand you.
