Chasing the Glow
Somewhere between the last bottle of wine,  vodka and the next line, Vicky lost herself. Finding her way back was another story.

The telly was always on at Vicky’s house on Orford Lane.

Three in the afternoon, three in the morning, didn’t matter. Some shite game show or another, people clapping and laughing at jokes she couldn’t be arsed listening to. The blue light flickered across the damp walls, keeping her company in a house that had got too quiet for its own good.

It was better than sitting there listening to herself think.

One afternoon, Madge from next door caught her by the bins.

“Turn that bleeding telly down, Vic. I can hear it through the wall.”

“Sorry, Madge . Didn’t realise it was that loud.”

“You’ve had it on since yesterday.”

Vicky shrugged. “Keeps me company, doesn’t it?”

Madge looked at her for a moment.

“Aye, love. I suppose it does.”

And that was that.

Because the trouble with being on your own isn’t always the loneliness. Sometimes it’s what turns up when everything else shuts up. The memories, the regrets, the things you’ve done and the things you should have done but never got round to.

Vicky had got good at drowning all that out.

First came the telly. Then the wine. Then the chip-shop teas, eaten straight out of the paper on the sofa, vinegar running down her fingers while she promised herself she’d sort her life out tomorrow.

Tomorrow was a great place. You could do anything there.

Friday nights meant the Lord Rodney, where a couple of glasses of wine became five and five became whatever she could afford. She’d laugh too loudly, talk too much and convince herself she was having a brilliant time.

Then came the coke.

It started in the toilets, as these things often do, with a little wrap passed over by somebody she barely knew.

“Go on, Vic,” Eddie  said, leaning against the cracked sink, checking her make-up in the mirror. “It’ll sort you right out.”

Vicky hesitated.

“Come on. Don’t be boring.”

So she did.

And fucking hell, for a little while, it was ace.

The music seemed louder. The lights brighter. Warrington looked like somewhere worth being. Even the sticky floor and the miserable faces outside the taxi rank seemed to have something going for them.

She felt sharp. Funny. Attractive.

For a few hours, she wasn’t the woman sitting alone in a damp house on Orford Lane. She wasn’t worrying about the bills or the years slipping away or the fact that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been properly happy.

She was Vicky again.

Or at least, the version of Vicky she wanted everybody to see.

“Who’s that looking at you?” Eddie  asked, nodding towards the bar.

Darren.

Big laugh, tattoos, plenty to say for himself. He had the sort of confidence that made you think he knew what he was doing, even when he plainly hadn’t got a clue.

He came over and bought her a drink.

“You’re gorgeous , you,” he said.

That was all it took.

Vicky knew he was trouble. She wasn’t stupid. By the third week, he’d started ignoring her calls. By the sixth, he was taking his phone into another room whenever it rang.

But when he looked at her properly, when he put his arm around her and told her she was the only one he wanted, she believed him.

Not because the evidence was particularly convincing.

Because she wanted to.

There’s a difference, and sometimes it takes years to learn it.

The glow never lasted.

Saturday mornings were another matter altogether.

She’d wake on the bathroom floor, her cheek stuck to the lino, her mouth dry, her heart hammering away like somebody trying to kick a door down.

The daylight coming through the frosted glass made her feel sick. Her head throbbed. Her stomach turned. Her body seemed to belong to somebody else.

“Never again,” she’d groan, gripping the edge of the toilet.

“Never bastard again.”

She meant it, too.

That was the worst part. She always meant it.

By Sunday night, the telly would be on again. By Friday, she’d be back at the Rodney, telling herself she deserved a night out.

Round and round she went, like a dog chasing its own tail.

Then one Tuesday afternoon, standing in the queue at a supermarket on Winwick Road with a basket full of cheap wine and frozen lasagne, something hit her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually wanted anything.

Not a drink. Not a line. Not some bloke telling her she was lovely before disappearing off the face of the earth.

Anything.

She’d stopped chasing the high. She was just trying to escape the misery that came afterwards.

“You all right, love?” the woman on the till asked.

“Yeah. Fine.”

Vicky gave her a tired smile and packed her shopping.

“Just knackered.”

She was more than knackered. She was worn out in places a good night’s sleep couldn’t reach.

That evening, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and had a proper look at herself.

FIfty years old.

Skin grey, eyes sunken, hair needing a wash. She looked older than her own mam had at that age.

She stared at herself for a long time.

“Right,” she said.

Then again, a little louder.

“Right. I can’t carry on like this.”

There was nobody there to hear her. No music, no laughter from the telly, no bloke telling her she was mint.

Just Vicky.

For once, that had to be enough.

It took her nine days to pick up the phone.

Nine days of changing her mind, putting it off and telling herself she wasn’t that bad. Other people had problems. Proper problems. She was just having a rough patch, wasn’t she?

On the ninth day, she sat in her Dads car outside Bank Park, rain tapping against the windscreen, her phone shaking in her hand.

She’d rehearsed what she was going to say about twenty times.

When somebody finally answered, every bloody word disappeared.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I help you?”

Vicky opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Then she started crying.

Not a pretty little tear rolling down her cheek, either. Proper crying, the sort that leaves you struggling to breathe and feeling like an absolute idiot.

“I think I need some help,” she finally managed.

The woman on the other end didn’t tell her to pull herself together. She didn’t ask why she’d left it so long.

She just listened.

And for the first time in years, somebody was listening without wanting anything from her.

Three days later, Vicky found herself sitting in a small room above a clinic near the town centre.

The walls were beige. The chairs were uncomfortable. A counsellor called Denise sat opposite her with a box of tissues between them.

Denise looked to be in her fifties too and had the sort of straightforward manner Vicky recognised from home. No fancy words. No messing about.

“So, Vicky. Where do we start?”

Vicky picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.

“I don’t know.”

“Fair enough.”

“It’s not just the coke. It’s the drink. The food. The men. The telly. Everything, really.”

She swallowed.

“I just can’t bear being on my own with myself. Does that sound daft?”

Denise shook her head.

“No.”

Vicky looked up.

“It’s like there’s nobody in there,” she said. “Like I’ve spent so long trying to be somebody else that I’ve forgotten who I am.”

Denise sat quietly for a moment.

“And how’s running away from all that been working out for you?”

Vicky let out a laugh that was half a sob.

“Shit, if I’m honest.”

“Thought it might be.”

For the first time in a long while, Vicky laughed without needing anything put up her nose.

Denise smiled.

“You’ve walked through that door, love. That’s a start. Now we’ve got to work out what comes next.”

There was no miracle cure.

No sudden moment when everything clicked into place and life became a bed of roses.

Getting clean was bloody hard.

The sweats came first, then the shaking, the sleepless nights and the constant arguments with herself. Her body wanted one thing. Her head wanted another. Some mornings, she couldn’t see how she’d get through the day, never mind the rest of her life.

On the worst night, she nearly rang Darren.

His name was still in her phone. She stared at it, thumb hovering over the screen.

She knew what would happen. He’d say he missed her. She’d believe him. They’d end up back at the Rodney, and before she knew it, she’d be right back where she’d started.

Her thumb moved towards the number.

Then she stopped.

She rang Denise’s out-of-hours number instead.

“I want to go to the Rodney,” she whispered.

“I know you do, Vic.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“All right. Stay with me a minute. Tell me what you can see.”

“What?”

“Your kitchen. Tell me about it.”

Vicky frowned, but she played along.

“The mug tree. It’s got a chip in one of the cups.”

“Go on.”

“Calendar from the Chinese takeaway. Fridge needs cleaning. There’s a bloody great crack in one of the tiles.”

“What else?”

“The floor’s freezing. I’ve got no slippers on.”

“Right. Stay with that for a bit.”

So they talked about the kitchen. The mug tree, the cracked tile, the stupid calendar. Ordinary things in an ordinary house.

Nothing exciting. Nothing glamorous.

But slowly, the craving eased.

It didn’t disappear forever. She wasn’t daft enough to think that. But it passed that night, and when the sky started turning grey over the rooftops, Vicky was still there.

Still standing.

Sometimes, getting through a night is enough.

The telly went off that week.

No grand announcement. No dramatic gesture. She simply picked up the remote one evening and pressed the button.

The room fell silent.

At first, it was horrible.

She sat there listening to the pipes knocking, a car going past outside, somebody shutting a door down the street. She could hear her own breathing.

Her first instinct was to switch it back on.

Instead, she sat there.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Half an hour.

The silence didn’t turn into some wonderful spiritual experience. It was just silence.

And eventually, she discovered she could live with it.

A few days later, she put her trainers on and went for a walk.

Nothing heroic. Just round the block.

Then she went a little further, down to Walton Hall Gardens, where the ducks carried on regardless and the grass smelled fresh after the rain.

She walked past families with pushchairs, old couples holding hands and lads who looked as though they’d rather be anywhere else.

The world hadn’t changed.

Vicky had started looking at it again.

Later, she began walking along the Trans Pennine Trail beside the Mersey. The water was brown and slow, the sky mostly grey, and the path muddy enough to ruin a decent pair of trainers.

It was hardly the Costa del Sol.

But it was peaceful.

On her first proper walk, she cried. She couldn’t have explained why. Perhaps it was the fresh air, perhaps the relief, perhaps the realisation that she’d spent so long trying to get out of her own head that she’d forgotten there was a whole world outside it.

On her third walk, she noticed the sun breaking through the clouds.

An old fella came towards her with a spaniel trotting along beside him.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” Vicky replied.

She walked another hundred yards before realising she was smiling.

It felt strange, that. Smiling for no reason. Not because somebody had bought her a drink or told her she looked good.

Just because the morning was all right.

The meetings were held in a draughty church hall in Latchford. Plastic chairs, stewed tea, custard creams that had probably been there since the previous meeting.

Vicky sat at the back for three weeks and barely spoke.

She listened to people talk about drink, drugs, broken relationships and all the stupid things they’d done when they thought they were having the time of their lives.

Some of the stories made her laugh. Others made her want to cry.

The thing that struck her most was that nobody seemed particularly interested in judging anybody else.

They’d all got their own mess to deal with.

In the fourth week, a big fella called Terry caught her eye over his mug of tea.

Terry had spent twenty years drinking and lost two marriages along the way. He spoke about his past without dressing it up, and there was something reassuring about that.

“First one's the worst,” he told her afterwards. “After that, you just keep turning up.”

Vicky nodded.

“Does it ever get easier?”

“Some days. Other days, you have to drag yourself through the bloody door. That's life, isn't it?”

She thought about that for a while.

The following week, she stood up.

Her knees were shaking, and she could feel her face going red.

“My name's Vicky,” she said. “And I think I've spent most of my life running away from myself.”

Nobody gasped. Nobody looked shocked.

A dozen people nodded.

They knew exactly what she meant.

“Welcome, Vicky.”

Two words.

But they meant more than she'd expected.

For years, she'd been trying to find somewhere she belonged. She'd mistaken a crowded pub for friendship, a bloke's attention for love and a line of coke for happiness.

Now she was sitting in a draughty church hall with a mug of terrible tea, surrounded by people who knew she'd made a mess of things and weren't about to write her off for it.

It was a start.

Eddie  texted her later that month.

Big night out Saturday? Missing you, babe. X

Vicky read the message while sitting on a bench at Walton Hall, the sun warming her face.

For a moment, she was tempted.

She missed the laughs. The noise. The feeling that something might happen.

She missed the old life, even though she knew perfectly well what it had cost her.

That's the trouble with looking back. Memory has a funny way of cutting out the worst bits.

She typed a reply, deleted it, then started again.

Not for me anymore, babe. Hope you're all right. Give me a ring for a brew sometime. X

She pressed send.

Her heart didn't race. Her hands didn't shake.

She put the phone away and watched a couple of ducks arguing over a bit of bread.

It wasn't much of a victory, perhaps.

But it was hers.

He  rang twice that month. Vicky let both calls go to voicemail. After the second, she blocked his number.

Then she went to the market and bought a little spider plant.

It cost next to nothing. She put it on the kitchen windowsill and watered it when it needed watering.

It sounds daft, but she was proud of that plant.

Something living in her house that wasn't dying from neglect.

Something she could look after without having to destroy herself in the process.

Months passed.

There were good days and bad days. Days when she felt strong and days when the old thoughts came creeping back. She learnt that getting better wasn't a straight road. Sometimes it meant taking two steps forward and one back, then finding the strength to carry on.

She still had bills to pay. The house still needed decorating. The washing still piled up if she left it too long.

Life hadn't suddenly become  brill.

It had simply become hers again.

One Sunday in early spring, she went walking along the Sankey Canal with a flask of tea in her bag.

The hawthorn was blossoming along the bank, white flowers against the dark branches. A heron stood in the shallows, perfectly still, as if it had nowhere else to be.

Vicky stopped.

For once, she wasn't rushing anywhere. She wasn't looking at her phone or thinking about what she needed to buy or who might ring.

She was just there.

The grass was green. The trees were green. The new leaves were every shade of green she'd ever seen, and a few she hadn't noticed before.

Funny, that.

All those years she'd spent chasing a feeling, convinced happiness was something bright and exciting that happened to other people.

And here she was, standing beside a muddy canal in Warrington, drinking tea from a flask.

Her phone buzzed.

A message from her counsellor .

Proud of you, Vic. Same time Thursday?

Vicky smiled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

She thought about the girl she'd been a year earlier, sitting in a darkened house with the telly blaring, waiting for somebody to make her feel alive.

She wished she could go back and tell that girl a few things.

That he wasn't worth it.

That the coke wouldn't fix anything.

That you could spend a fortune chasing a high and still end up feeling emptier than when you started.

But life doesn't work like that. You don't get to go back and give yourself a warning. You make your choices, you live with the consequences, and sometimes, if you're lucky and prepared to put the work in, you find another way.

Vicky looked out over the water.

She wasn't flying. She wasn't suddenly somebody else. She was still the same woman who'd made a mess of things, who'd hurt herself and probably hurt other people along the way.

But she was learning to live with herself.

And that was something.

“I'm not flying,” she said quietly.

The heron turned its head.

“I'm just here.”

After a moment, the bird lifted its wings and drifted away over the canal.

Vicky watched until it disappeared beyond the trees.

Then she picked up her flask, put it back in her bag and carried on walking.

No big finish. No miracle. No promises that she'd never struggle again.

Just a woman putting one foot in front of the other, with the ground beneath her feet and the rest of her life still waiting.

For the first time in years, that was enough.