Once

Once, as a child, I was lost.

I don’t remember my exact age. Time has never been kind to my memories and my recall of events – dates, details – has always been a vague and untrustworthy thing. But I remember a sibling in the baby seat of the shopping trolley and as I was old enough to walk and wander by myself this must have been my brother and I must have been in the region of five.

It was in a supermarket. I was following my father and I turned away, just for a moment. What caught my five year old attention in the vegetable aisle of Safeway I do not know, but for a moment I turned away and I slipped into another place where I was lost.

I didn’t know I was lost until I turned back; mind still elsewhere, dreaming the day gone, and I put my hand into my father’s and then, at a jolt from him, dragged my gaze along that hand and the arm and looked up into the face of a man who was most definitely not my father.

He must, I think, have been a nice enough man. His puzzled smile is kind in my mind; his amused ‘hello?’ is gentle.

He almost certainly did not deserve the look of horror I bestowed on him, or for me to scrabble, cringing, away; heart tripping with mortified shame at having touched a stranger so casually with a trust that did not belong to him, and with the panic of being alone, alone – no parents, no sisters to be seen and the sudden, absolute, nightmarish conviction that they would not be found again, ever, and my throat clamped down with fear –

And there, down the next aisle, was my father; one hand on the trolley, frowning down at a packet of pasta. I rushed to him and clung, to his confusion. Bemused, he asked me what was wrong and so I learned he hadn’t even known that – for a moment – I had been lost.

This is a safe space

We’d been planning it out for days but of course when it comes down to it Alex manages to fuck up the timing. So we aren’t quite ready for Dave coming home and we’re all caught out. He stands in the doorway and looks at us. We stare back, looking kind of guilty. Then Fiona coughs and says, Dave. She says, Dave, we all care for you. You know that, right? She’s got the air of someone who’s cleared her evening for this bullshit, damn it, and is going to see it through.

Dave drops down into the armchair, carefully positioned so it faced the group but the placing of it wasn’t intimidating, and he says oh, come on, in this weary voice. Didn’t we do this already?

Fiona forges on. She likes to see things through. We want you to know we care about you, Dave, she says, it’s just that there are things about your behaviour we’re concerned about.

The late nights, Alex says. The stains on your clothing, says Bethany, and the rate you’re going through the drain cleaner; you claim you’ve got it under control but—You’re taking risks, man, Malcolm says bluntly, interrupting. You’re going to end up getting caught. It’s not as if it’s hurting anyone, says Dave. Well, says Malcolm, it kinda is. If you think about it. Malcolm’s always been a stickler for accuracy. Dave rolls his eyes. Ok, he says, it’s not hurting any of you. Is that better?

Fiona raises her eyebrows at me but I just shrug. What? I mouth at her. I’d been going to make the point about the drain cleaner before Bethany stole my thunder. Fiona glares and I sigh. I knew we shouldn’t have voted for her as chair.

Mate, I say, the thing is that it is hurting us. You’re going to start bringing down attention we don’t need and you—Hang on, says Alex, aren’t we meant to be using ‘I’ statements? ‘I’ statements and no generalisations, remember? All this ‘you’ stuff is very confrontational.

Fine, I say, I think that you need to stop shitting where we all have to eat, Dave. I feel that you using this area for your ‘episodes’ is going to affect us all and I think that you should keep your habits at a safe distance, like we do. Is that ok, Alex? I ask. There’s no need to be snide, says Alex.

We’re getting off topic, says Fiona. What we want from you tonight, Dave, she says, is an acknowledgment that there’s a problem and an agreement to deal with it. She pats his hand. We’ll help you if you need it.

And if I don’t agree there’s a problem? asks Dave.

John’s been quiet so far but now he leans forward to say his piece. Then the bottom line is, he says, that we start looking at other ways of remedying the situation. He smiles at Dave. Kill or cure, Dave. You know how it is.