Helping Sarah

Chapter 12

Sarah

Michael's voice was low, low enough that no one at the nearby tables could hear him.

"I don't know exactly when he started." I spoke without hesitation, without the familiar reluctance to talk about Andrew. "At university, I think. Andrew studied international business in London. We spoke every day on the phone while he was there, but I only saw him on the holidays."

"And his sister was your best friend? That's how you met?"

A smile fought its way to my lips. I didn't only have bad memories. "Yes. I practically lived at Lisa's house growing up. Andrew was three years older than us, and from the very first time I met him I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen."

My smile grew, deepened. "He never saw me as anything other than his annoying little sister's friend. Not until the Christmas I was sixteen and he came home for the holiday. I'd had a crush on him for a while, which Lisa knew and she liked the idea of us being sisters for real. Thanks to her, Andrew and I had plenty of time alone while he was home. We were married three weeks after my twentieth birthday, and a year later I was pregnant with Charlie."

Despite everything that had happened, I still thought of those years as happy, the days of eagerly waiting for each holiday to come round when Andrew would come home or looking forward to the weekends I could visit him in London. The day he'd graduated and had asked me to marry him was still one of the happiest in my life.

He didn't want to be apart anymore. That's what he'd told me that day. And yet he had chosen heroin over me.

"When did you realise he was using?"

I looked across the table, into the kind eyes looking steadily back at me. Not judging me, not condemning me or blaming me. "Six months after our wedding," I said, and the words were surprisingly easy to say. "Looking back, I know he changed, but it happened so slowly I didn't really notice at first. Have you ever seen one of those people huddled in a doorway in the city centre, begging for money for their next fix? With missing teeth and completely pallid and so skinny you can see their bones?"

Michael nodded.

"In my mind that was a drug addict, but Andrew was nothing like that. He looked... normal. He had a good job and got promoted, we had a house and we were happy."

I turned my gaze to the window where rain was now running down the large pane. A few people outside were hurrying to open their umbrellas or running to get under cover.

"I went with him to one of those meetings for addicts once, after he'd finished rehab, and everyone there were the same, they were completely normal. Men, women, old, young. Some were in suits or skirts and some in jeans. I know it sounds callous, but I was glad that there were others like Andrew, because that meant there were others like me." I looked away again and my voice was almost non-existent when I finished, "Others who had been too blind and too stupid to realise what was going on."

"That's not being stupid. Or callous."

Glancing up at the green eyes holding mine, my cup rattled a little in its saucer and I let go of it. Instead rubbed my hands on my thighs. But I didn't look away. "I knew something was off with Andrew, but I never in a million years thought he was doing drugs. I caught him in so many lies about stupid little things like where he'd been and with whom and what he'd spent money on, that I thought he was having an affair."

A smile with absolutely no humour in it curved my lips. "So I confronted him about my suspicion, but he denied it and convinced me I was wrong. And then I walked in on him with one of my belts tied tight around his upper arm and a needle in his arm."