Resolution

Chapter 50

Winnie was in an open ward with the blinds drawn on the window behind her and the curtains pulled around her bed. She had the covers over her head. Maureen peeked under the blankets. Winnie's eyes were bloody and her face waxy white. She looked through tiny slit eyes and mouthed, "Hello." Maureen mouthed it back and withdrew.

A peculiarly gnarled-looking man and woman were standing nearby, chatting to each other. George explained that they were Winnie's friends from AA and had come to visit her at his request. Winnie was being sent to a drying-out clinic in Peebles as soon as she could stand, and her friends had offered to escort her there in their car. Maureen threw her arms around George and hugged him without his consent. He stood stiffly, bashful at showing emotion in front of strangers. He raised a hand to her head and patted it a couple of times. "You're a good girl," he said, but she heard him ask her to let him go, for God's sake, there were people watching.

Una arrived as if she were moving into the ward. She had the baby with her in a harness, a big soft bag of things, her handbag and a poly-bag of pills and food and magazines for Winnie. George was chatting to the gnarled couple so Maureen had to help her with the bags, tucking them under the bed. Una wanted to go round the bed and see Winnie's head and, with overplayed reluctance, let Maureen hold the baby. She stormed round the bed and lifted the covers abruptly, in a way only someone who didn't drink or understand hangovers could. She talked Winnie through the vitamins and magazines she had brought, speaking loudly, making every muscle on Winnie's back and head contract.

The baby was tiny. Her fingers flexed in her sleep and tightened at the sound of her mother's voice. Her fist was the size of a thumbnail, perfect in every detail. Her pink lips pouted, her tongue rolled out and she opened her eyes. They were blue, pale, pale blue, just like Maureen's and Liam's eyes.

"Her eyes," said Maureen, breathlessly, "they're blue."

Una looked up and her sour expression softened. "All babies have blue eyes at first," she said, "but I think they'll stay blue."

"She's not ugly at all," said Maureen quietly.

Liam came, looking happier and calm. They all moved their chairs around the bed to Winnie's face and sat in a circle. George poked Winnie in the cheek and she groaned and tried to roll away from him but she was too sore and groaned again, then rolled back, a reluctant smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. George said see, she can move, look, she can move when she wants to. They taunted her, playing the hilarious passive-aggressive games that only truly dysfunctional families understand, laughing louder and louder because Winnie had the mother of all hangovers, asking Winnie what the food was like in here and did she have a trumpet the baby could play with. Even the AA people joined in, adding quips of their own. The AA man pretended to run out to the shops for some kippers and Stilton but came back, escorted by a staff nurse, who told them all to shut up and keep the noise down, there were sick people in here. And all the while Maureen kept hold of the baby, cradling it against her chest, cherishing it, hoping she would get to hold wee Maureen again and again.

She didn't even believe her own excuses anymore. She wasn't drinking because she wanted to. It wasn't because she'd achieved anything or even because she was sad. It was compulsive and she couldn't stop herself. She unscrewed the cap from Leslie's half bottle and drank it straight, greedily, as if someone might try to stop her, pausing for breath and refusing to think about what she was doing. And then the familiar blanket came down.

It was later and she was worried, falling down the close steps one at a time, holding on to the wall, clinging to her purse. It was light outside and she couldn't quite remember whether it was morning or evening. Outside now and evening, definitely evening. The charity bags that she had left under the lamppost had been split open and three small boys had pulled her old dresses over their clothes and were laughing excitedly, pushing one another into a thick hedge.

Inside the shop and Padda Junior looking at her, making a joke, a man behind her laughing and Junior looking away. They were laughing at her because she was pissed.

It smarted for as long as she could remember it. A young boy and a stranger laughing at her because she was steaming and alone, as if she were Winnie, as if her being pissed wasn't completely different. She set the thoughts aside and realized that she was at last alone with a bottle with no one to ask her what she was doing. She toasted her reflection in the living-room window, a defiant fuck-them, and drank. The nagging realization wouldn't go away. Even Padda Junior had noticed she had a problem.

The walls of Maureen's mouth began to tingle, sending messages of alarm to her brain, telling her to run for it. Before she had time to think, she was on her knees in the bathroom, pushing the seat and lid up against the cistern, dropping her mouth to the water. Her chin smashed off the porcelain bowl and her head ricocheted back just in time to catch the rim of the seat as it fell on her forehead.

When she had finished being sick she stood up unsteadily and looked at herself in the mirror. She had an inch-long bruise on her forehead, one under her chin and a stripe of vomit on her cheek.