Free Marian Keyes - Watermelon by Marian Keyes

left home and could afford to support whatever bad habits we chose, Helen and Anna were both still living at home and were bone-crunchingly poor. So the battle continued.

    And what was once a proud and noble alcohol collection was now a tatty and raggedy and depleted few bottles traveling nomadically around the closets and cellars and under the beds, looking for a safe haven. Long gone were the full and sparkling bottles of spirits with recognizable brand names. All that remained in their stead were a sticky bottle of Drambuie, covered in dust, with about an inch left in the bottom, or half an inch of Cuban vodka (honestly, there is such a thing--obviously the right drink for the ideologically sound comrade in Cuba) and the almost full bottle of banana schnapps, which Helen and Anna have both declared that they would rather die of thirst than drink.

    I continued to sit on the cold floor in the dark hall. I really felt as if I needed a drink. I would even have drunk the banana schnapps if I'd known where to find it. I felt so unbearably lonely. I toyed with the idea of waking my mother up and asking her to give me a drink, but I felt really guilty at that idea. She was so worried about me, if the poor woman had managed to get to sleep I couldn't in all conscience wake her.

    Maybe Helen could help.

    I wearily climbed the stairs to her bedroom. But when I crept into her room her bed was empty. Either she had spent the night at Linda's or else some young man had got very lucky. If she had spent the night with a man, his suicided body would probably be found in the morning with a note beside it saying something like "I have achieved everything I ever wanted to do in life. I will never be as happy as this ever again. I want to die on this note of ecstasy. PS: She is a Goddess."

    52 WATERMELON

    Then, as if I wasn't feeling awful enough, I was suddenly gripped with a panicky fear that something terrible had happened to Kate.

    That she'd been the victim of crib death. Or choked on vomit. Or suffoc- ated. Or something.

    I raced back to my room and I was so relieved to find that she was still breathing.

    She was just lying there, a wrinkled, pink, fragrant bundle, her eyes screwed shut.

    As I waited for my breathing to return to normal and for the sweat to evaporate from my forehead I wondered how other parents coped. How did they let their children out to play with other children? Didn't they panic every time they were away from their children for more than five minutes?

    I was finding it hard enough now. How the hell would I cope when she had to go to school? There was no way I could be expected to just abandon her like that. The school would have to let me sit at the back of the classroom.

    Now I really needed a drink.

    Maybe Anna was home.

    I dragged myself over to her room and quietly opened the door.

    The fumes hit me instantaneously.

    The alcohol fumes, that is.

    Bingo!

    "Thank God," I thought. I'd obviously come to the right place.

    Anna was curled up in bed, her long black hair spread out all around her on the pillow.

    "Anna," I whispered loudly to her, and shook her a bit.

    No response.

    "Anna!" I whispered, a good deal more loudly this time, and shook her shoulder vigorously.

    I turned on her bedside lamp and shone it into her face, Gestapo style. Wake up!

    She opened her eyes and stared at me.

    "Claire?" she croaked disbelievingly.

    She looked really quite frightened, as though she thought she might be hallucinating.

    And as this was Anna, it was quite possible.

    53 Marian Keyes

    That she was hallucinating, that is.

    Fond of the mood-altering substances, if you follow me.

    The poor girl. As far as she knew I was four hundred miles away, in another city, in another life. But here I was manifesting myself in her bedroom in the middle of the night.

    "Anna, sorry to disturb you like this but have you anything I could drink?" I asked her.

    She just stared at me.

    "Why are you here?" she asked in a