I sat thinking about getting a jumper, but felt too nervous to go into my bedroom. I always kept a small supply of codeine in there, tucked in a box on the top shelf of my wardrobe. To collect a jumper meant being too close: the thought of the codeine glowed like a beacon in the dark. Even though I’d been clean for years, I kept a stash to prove it. It was my: Fuck you, codeine, I could take you if I wanted but I don’t want to.

But now I did.

That cold compulsion, that deep and dark desire, replaced the sunshine that Jack shone into my life.

And I found that I wanted to very much.

Thirty-Six

thirty-six:

– before –

That Friday night, I resisted the codeine by getting up from the kitchen table and pouring myself a glass of water which I carried into Jack’s bedroom and set on his bedside table. I then took off my jeans and bra, and wearing just my T-shirt and pants and socks, got into his bed. When I found Bunny on his pillow, I started to weep again as it still smelt of Jack. I didn’t trust my son: I didn’t know if Jack would be well cared for or even if he would come home. But as overwhelmingly stressful as that was, I was determined not to give up my sobriety. Jack needed me to stay clean.

It was Jack being born that’d finally helped me get clean in the first place and after six years I held onto my sobriety tightly.

But before that were many years of codeine abuse. Really I would’ve liked to have given up after Nick and I broke up, but it was too traumatic.

Living alone with Jack and trying to be independent was also a trauma on its own. But after that miserable trip to see my mother in Send prison when I told her my marriage was over, I decided to take control. If not of the codeine, then of every other area of my life. Within the same week as visiting my mother, I bought a car and started applying for jobs. I’d loved agency work, but now I was a single parent, I needed more structure.

Nick emailed after a few days. First of all he begged me to return. It didn’t take long for that to stop, however, and then I got news that he was moving to Gloucestershire following a big promotion. He visited every few months, staying with Irene, and sent housekeeping money and my share of the proceeds of our flat. I was satisfied with the arrangement, now he was at a distance.

Nick was helpful and supportive too in other ways, and sometimes, in the first year or so following our separation, we would talk on the phone like we had before our relationship had turned sour.