Ice and a Slice by Della Galton

Author:Della Galton [Galton, Della]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Women's Fiction, Contemporary Women, Contemporary Fiction, General Fiction
ISBN: 9781484978085
Google: kAhmnAEACAAJ
Amazon: B00BSA3JHW
Publisher: soundhaven.com
Published: 2013-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

“My counsellor thinks it might help if I go to an AA meeting.” SJ told Tom this with a little shake in her voice. Sometimes she felt as though this part of her life was happening to someone else. It was someone else, not her, who joked her way through the Tuesday lunchtime appointments at S.A.A.D; someone else who had agreed to venture into the shadowy underworld of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Tom asked. He’d taken to coming home earlier, bringing his paperwork with him and doing it on the kitchen table.

SJ shook her head. “Thanks, but no, it’s okay. I phoned the helpline and they’ve arranged for me to meet someone outside so I know where to go.”

“Don’t they tell you that then?”

“They tell you the name of the building, but not which part of it. I guess they can’t tape a big sign on the door, can they? Alcoholics Anonymous meets here.” She gave a hollow laugh. “It wouldn’t be very anonymous if they did.”

Tom put his arm around her and she tried not to flinch away from him. Why did she find it so difficult to accept comfort from her own husband? When Kit had given her the list of meetings his arm had rested casually against hers and she’d wanted to lean against the warm broad warmth of him, hear him tell her, as he so often had, that she was doing really well, that she didn’t have to cope on her own.

Shrugging away such uncomfortable thoughts, she got up. “I’m going to a meeting in Hammersmith.” That should be far enough away for her not to meet anyone she knew.

“I could always drop you off and …”

“Go for a drink while I’m in there? No thanks.”

“I was going to say I’d wait in the car park.”

She glanced at him, saw the flash of pain in his eyes and knew he was doing his best to support her – now he’d finally acknowledged she had a problem. She felt a wave of guilt. Why did she never say the right thing?

“Honestly, Tom, I appreciate it, really, but there’s no need. This is something I need to do for myself.”

Anxious not to be late, SJ arrived at the community centre in Hammersmith ten minutes before the agreed time. She and the woman she’d arranged to meet outside hadn’t exchanged descriptions – not even of their cars, let alone themselves – and she wondered how she’d recognise her. To her surprise, there were already quite a few people hanging around the entrance of the centre, both men and women, puffing furiously on cigarettes.

She could hardly wander up to one of them and say, “Hi, are you here for AA? – Oh sorry, you’re here for the line-dancing, are you? Yeah, me too.”

So she stayed in her car and spent the first five minutes trying to guess what her companion would look like. She’d sounded quite posh on the phone – she’d reminded SJ of a school teacher she once had.

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