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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the many who shared their Nantucket stories with me, in particular Maryellen Scannell, Kari England, Mary Michetti, and Elin Hilderbrand.
The entire team at St. Martin’s Press, Pan Macmillan, David Higham & Associates, and Fletcher & Co., including the dream team of Jen Enderlin, Geoff Duffield, Jeremy Trevathan, John Karle, and Katie James, and everyone else who works on my books; Sarah Hall, Meg Walker, Danielle Burch, Lisa Marie Gina, Lisa Senz, and India Cooper; never forgetting my spectacular agents, Christy Fletcher and Anthony Goff.
Karen, Franklin, and Jake Exkorn; Jeff and Wynter Warshaw; Maggie, Deirdre, Kim, Jeff R, Sam, Joe, Mark, Susan, Sunny, and my other family in the “Tower of Power”—you know who you are. And much gratitude and love to Tricia and Maureen, who brought me into the fold all those years ago.
My London media gang from the old days at the Express: Sam Taylor, Vicky Harper, Lisa Sewards, Gerard Greaves, and Narelle Muller. My Westport gang—too many to mention but I love you all.
Patrick and Tish Fried at Write Yourself Free; Michael Ross, Mark Llamos, and Annie Keefe at the Westport Country Playhouse.
Dr. Tanya Futoryan, Dr. Charlotte Ariyan, and all at both Westport Dermatology and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for their diligence, skill, and kindness—thank you.
If I haven’t mentioned you, it is only because memory has failed. So very many people have contributed to this book, to the stories, to the life that had to be lived in order to write it.
I end by thanking my children and my husband. I couldn’t have done any of it without you. Actually, maybe I could have, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. I love you the most.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
—MELODY BEATTIE
PROLOGUE
London, 2014
Lord knows, most of the time, when I’m facing an evening on my own, I am absolutely fine. If anything, I relish that alone time, when my daughter is with her father; the luxury of eating whatever I want to eat, the relief at not having to provide a nutritious meal for a thirteen-year-old picky eater.
I can curl up on the sofa and watch things my daughter would groan at—documentaries, news, a great three-parter on the BBC—or putter round the kitchen listening to Radio 4 with no one complaining or demanding I put on a radio station that plays nothing but pop music.
Tonight I seem to have itchy feet. Tonight I am restless, and restlessness is always dangerous for me. Restlessness has a nasty habit of leading me to places I’m apt to regret. I have learned from bitter experience that when I feel like this, I need to keep busy.
I have been told to watch out for H.A.L.T. When I’m hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, it means I have to do a better job of taking care of myself. Tonight I am definitely hungry; tonight, like every other night for the last eighteen months, I am definitely lonely.
I phone the Chinese restaurant at the top of Elgin Avenue and order some noodles and spare ribs, then get up and open the kitchen cabinets. I’ve been putting this job off for months. My former husband is fanatical about order. He was the one who kept everything neat and tidy, all the pots and pans organized. Since he’s been gone, the place is a disaster.
It looks perfect when you walk in, but open any cabinet and you have to immediately catch the bowls and dishes that come tumbling out, freed from the restraint of the solid wooden door.
I start with the cabinet that holds the sieves, amazed at how I have managed to amass seven sieves and colanders of various shapes and sizes, when I am now only cooking for Annie and me. I put five of them on the charity pile and keep going.
Breadboards are added, bowls I have been given as presents that I’ve never liked but didn’t have the heart to give away. Cracked dishes, chipped glasses, all go on the pile. As the boxes fill up, I start to feel better, busy, useful. It is almost meditative, as if cleaning out the clutter of my cabinets is somehow cleaning out the clutter in my mind.
I reach to the very back, feel something round, pull it out, and freeze.
A bottle of vodka.
Half full.
I have no idea what it’s doing there, didn’t know, hadn’t remembered. It must have been there for months, maybe years. When I was married, my vodka had to be hidden, every nook and cranny in the house turned into a hiding spot for my secret shame.
I haven’t held a bottle of vodka in a very long time. I can’t tear my eyes away from the glistening glass in my hand. I listen to the sloshing inside the bottle, so comforting, so familiar, and my heart starts to pound.
I can almost taste it, poured over ice cubes and left to sit until it is ice cold, a twist of lemon if possible, no problem if not.
I feel it slipping down my throat, the silky smoothness, the slight burn as it hits my chest, the warmth that instantly rises, removing the loneliness, the hunger, whatever pain is lurking there.
I know what I should do. I know I need to pour this down the sink, but before I do, let me just sit here a while longer, worship at the altar of the god to whom I was once enslaved.
Surely that won’t do any harm.
One
London, 1998
For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of not quite fitting in, not being the same as everyone else.
I’m certain that is why I became a writer. Even as a toddler, at nursery school, junior school, I was friendly with everyone, without ever being part of the group. Standing on the outside, watching. Always watching. I noticed everything: how a sideways glance with narrowed eyes could say so much more than words ever could; how a whisper behind a delicate hand had the ability to destroy you for the week; how an outstretched hand from the right girl, at the right time, would see your heart soar for hours, sometimes days.
I knew I was different. The older I grew, the more that difference felt like inadequacy; I wasn’t pretty enough, or thin enough, or simply enough. I couldn’t have put words to it, certainly not when I was very young, other than looking at those tiny, perfect, popular girls and wanting, so desperately, to be on the inside, to be the girl that was always picked first for sports teams, rather than the one left until last.
When adolescence hit, I became the friend the boys all wanted to talk to, to confide in, to find out how they could possibly make my best friend, Olivia, interested in them.
I was such a good friend, even though I fell head over heels for every last one of them. Adam Barrett afforded me two months’ worth of daydreams about how he would realize, as we were sitting on the floor in my bedroom, the Police playing on my record player in the background, that Olivia was not the answer to his dreams after all; he would suddenly notice the silkiness of my hair (always far silkier in my daydreams), the green of my eyes, the fullness of my mout
h, as he woke up to the fact that I was so spectacularly beautiful (which I wasn’t), how had he not noticed that before?
After Adam Barrett it was Danny Curran, then Rob Palliser, and of course, Ian Owens. None of my daydreams came true, and at fourteen I finally discovered a great way of easing the pain of all those unfulfilled dreams, those unfulfilled longings, those misplaced hopes.
Gary Scott was having a party at his house. It was a sleepover, the boys sleeping on one side of the giant loft, the girls on the other. Everyone was ridiculously excited, this being the first mixed sleepover. Looking back, I can’t quite believe the parents allowed it, given the raging hormones of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old teenagers, but I suppose they thought we were good kids, or that they had it under control.
The parents were there, of course. They were having a small gathering of their own; the laughter of the grown-ups and the clinking of their glasses made its way over to us, at the back of the garden with a record player and a trestle table stocked with popcorn, plastic cups, and lemonade.
Ian Owens was my crush at the time. He had become my very good friend, naturally, in a bid to get close to Olivia, who was, on that night, standing under the tree with Paul Johnson, her head cocked to one side, her sheaf of newly highlighted blond hair hanging like a curtain of gold over her right shoulder, looking up at Paul with those spectacular blue eyes. Everyone in that garden knew it was only a matter of time before he kissed her.
Ian was devastated. I was sitting on the grass talking to him quietly, reassuring him, praying that I might be second choice, praying that he might lean his head toward mine, might brush my lips gently with his, spend the rest of the night holding me tightly in his arms.
“I took this,” he said, gesturing to his side, where a bottle of vodka was nestling under his thigh.
“What? What do you mean, you took it? From where?”
“I found it in the garage. Don’t worry, there’s tons more. No one will notice. Want to?” He nodded his head in the shade of the trees, to a private corner where we wouldn’t be seen.
Of course I wanted to. I would have done anything to keep Ian Owens by my side a little longer, to give him more time to change his mind about Olivia and fall in love with me.
I got up, brushing the pine needles from my jeans, aware that there was a damp patch from the grass. I was in my new 501s. Olivia and I bought them together and went back to her house to shrink them in the bath. Hers were tiny, and looked amazing when we were done, drainpiping down her legs. Mine flapped around my ankles like sails in the wind. I had a small waist but great big thighs, so I had to get a big size to fit, which meant they had to be clinched in at the waist with a tight belt and were huge all the way down.
I never looked the way I wanted to look in clothes. I had a new plaid shirt from Camden Market that I really liked, and had smudged black kohl underneath my eyes. Peering from beneath my new fringe—I had cut it two days ago—my eyes looked smoky and sultry, the green sparkling through the kohl. I liked the way I looked, which wasn’t something that happened often.
Maybe tonight was going to be a first for me. Maybe Ian would like the way I looked too.
I followed him into the small copse of trees at the end of the garden, as he brought the bottle out and took the first swig, grimacing as he sputtered, then spat it all out.
“Christ, that’s disgusting.” He passed the bottle to me.
Of course I didn’t want to do it. Watching the look on his face, how could I ever have wanted to taste something so vile, but how could I back down? I gingerly took the bottle, swigged it back, felt the burning going down my throat, then swigged it back twice more.
“Wow!” Impressed, he took the bottle back, this time managing to swallow.
Within minutes, I felt like a different person. Gone was the shy, awkward, ungainly adolescent, and in her place a sexy siren. Suddenly the curves I had always hated so much became sexiness personified, my new fringe a sultry curtain from behind which I could peer with bedroom eyes.
The warmth in my body spread out to my fingers and toes, a delicious tingling as I lost my inhibitions and flirted with Ian, stunned that he responded, that we moved from awkwardly standing next to each other to lying on the ground, heads resting on our elbows, my hair dropped over one shoulder in what I hoped was a pretty good imitation of Olivia, both of us giggling as we passed the bottle back and forth.
“You’re really pretty,” he said suddenly, the smile sliding off his face, the bottle sliding to the ground as he leaned his head forward, his lips inching closer to mine, his eyes starting to close, my own eyes closing in tandem. And there we were, kissing, as my heart threatened to explode.
It was everything I had dreamed of, his hands snaking through my hair, my own wrapped around his back, unable to believe I had been given license to touch this boy I had loved for so long, license to hold him, to slip my tongue in his mouth, listen to him sigh with pleasure. He pushed me onto my back, lay on top of me, kissing my neck as I looked at the stars, knowing that if I were to die tonight, I would finally die happy. I would have done anything in my power to make that moment last all night.
We heard a noise, someone coming, and he jumped off me as if stung by an electric shock, refusing to even look at me, pretending we had just been out there drinking, nothing more. The disappointment was like a dagger, which twisted and turned as the evening progressed and he didn’t come near me again.
What could I do other than pretend I was having a great time, and how could I not have a great time with my new best friend, vodka, when vodka had made me feel so good? Maybe vodka would take away this searing pain, make me feel beautiful again.
For a while, it worked. I danced, and laughed, and attempted to flirt with other boys to try to make Ian jealous. I remember laughing hysterically at something, then all of a sudden the laughter turned into wracking sobs. I don’t remember anything after that.
It was my first introduction to booze, blackouts, and the transformative effect alcohol would have on my life.
Alcohol made me beautiful in a way I never felt the rest of the time. It filled me with a confidence that had always been missing. Alcohol made me fit in. And if the night ended with a period of time that I could never remember in the morning, well, so what. I never seemed to make too egregious a mistake, nor do anything so terrible I was ostracized forever. If anything, it cemented my reputation, not as a shy, lonely girl who was always standing on the outside, but as the center of the party. In fact, it wasn’t long before everyone knew that a party didn’t get started until Cat arrived.
* * *
The drinking became a little more of a problem when I went to university. My parents had never been particularly present while I was growing up, so one might presume if I was going to go off the rails, why not do it at home, but I saved it for when I went away.
I was enough of a disappointment to my father. I didn’t need to give him yet another excuse to help me understand I was not the daughter he wanted.
My mother had left her native America when she fell in love with my dad while working for a year as an au pair in Gerrards Cross. She seemed happy when I was very young, then spent most of my teenage years in what I have always thought must have been a deep, albeit undiagnosed, and possibly clinical, depression.
I can understand why.
What I couldn’t understand is how she ever ended up with my father in the first place. He was handsome, and I suppose he must have been charming when they were young, but he was so damned difficult, I used to think, even when I was young, that we’d all be much happier if they got a divorce.
I would sit with friends who would be in floods of tears because their mother had just found out their father had been having an affair, or their parents had decided they hated each other, or whatever myriad reasons drive people apart. And these friends would be crying at the terrible fear of their families breaking up, and all I could think was: I wish my parents would get divorced.
; It seemed to me that if ever there were two people on the planet who should not have been together, it was my parents. My mother is laid-back, funny, kind. She’s comfortable in her skin and has the easy laugh you expect from all Americans. She was brought up in New York, but her parents died very young, after which she went to live with her Aunt Judith. I never knew Aunt Judith, but everything about those days sounds idyllic, especially her summers in Nantucket. You look at pictures of my mum from those days and she was in flowing, hippie-ish clothes, always smiling. She had long, silky hair, and looked happy and free.
In sharp contrast to the pictures of her with my dad, even in those early days, when they were newlyweds, supposedly the happiest time of a relationship. He insisted she wear buttoned-up suits, or twinsets and pearls. Her hair was elaborately coiffed. I remember the heated rollers she kept in the bathroom, twisting her hair up every morning, spraying it into tight submission, slicking lipstick on her lips, her feet sliding into Roger Vivier pumps.
If my father was away, she left her hair long and loose, wrapping a scarf around her head. She’d wear long gypsy skirts with espadrilles or sandals. I loved her like that most of all. I used to think it was her clothing that changed her personality, that in the gypsy skirts she’d be young and fun, dancing around the kitchen with me, singing the Carole King songs she loved at the top of her voice. But of course it wasn’t the clothes, it was my father’s absence. When he was away, she could be herself, not having to worry about pleasing anyone.
I like to think that my mother had no idea what she was letting herself in for when she married my father. We never talked about it until after he died. My mother prizes loyalty above all else. I didn’t know that, of course, during all those childhood years I spent praying for their divorce, but now I realize she would never have left him, however unhappy she might have been, however many days the depression was so dark, so debilitating, she didn’t get out of bed.