Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [22]
“I’m going to change, Stella.”
“Right.”
“No, I am. I was up all night planning it. I’m going to go to AA today, admit I have a drink problem, and then I’m going to enroll to do a business course at a college and then I’m going to find a flat where I can bring up the baby.”
“This is all so sudden. So spur-of-the-moment. Why aren’t you at work today anyway?”
“My cousin Emily has gone to Hall’s to say I have a personal crisis today and that I will make up the time next week by going in one hour earlier and staying one hour later every day.”
“Does Emily know about all this?”
“Yes. I had to tell someone. She was very cross with me for walking out on you.”
“You didn’t walk, Noel. You ran.”
“I am so sorry. Believe me. I am sorry.”
“So what has changed?” She wasn’t hostile, just interested.
“I want to amount to something. To do something for someone before I die. I’ll be thirty soon. I’ve done nothing except dream and wish and drink. I want to change that.”
She listened in silence.
“So tell me what you’d like if you don’t want us to get married?”
“I don’t know, Noel. I’d like things to have been different.”
“So do most people walking around. They all wish things had been different,” he said sadly.
“Then I’d like you to meet Moira Tierney, my social worker, tomorrow evening. She’s coming in to discuss what she calls ‘the future’ with me. A fairly short discussion.”
“Could I bring Emily in? She said she’d like to come and talk to you anyway.”
“But is she going to be a nanny figure? Always there hovering, making all the decisions?”
“No, she’ll be going back to America soon, I think, but she has made me see things more clearly.”
“Bring her in, then. Is she dishy? Could you marry her, maybe?” Stella was mischievous again.
“No! She’s as old as the hills. Well, fifty or forty-five or something, anyway.”
“Bring her in, then,” Stella said, “and she’s going to have to talk well to deal with Moira.”
He leaned over and put the flowers in a glass.
“Noel?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks, anyway, about the marriage proposal and all. It wasn’t what I had in mind but it was decent of you.”
“You might still change your mind,” he said.
“I have a tame priest in here. A very nice fellow. He could do it if we were pushed, but actually I’d prefer not to.”
“Whatever you think,” he said, and touched her gently on the shoulder.
“Before you go, one thing … how did you get in outside visiting hours?”
“I asked Declan Carroll. He lives on my road. I said I needed a favor, so he made a phone call.”
“He and his wife are having a baby at the same time as I am,” Stella said. “I always thought the children might be friends.”
“Well, they might easily be friends,” Noel said.
When he looked around from the door he saw she was lying back in her bed, but she was smiling and seemed more relaxed than before.
He set out then to face what was going to be the most challenging day of his life.
· · ·
It was hard to go into the building where the lunchtime AA meeting was taking place. Noel stood for ten minutes in the corridor watching men and women of every type walking down to the door at the end.
Eventually he could put it off no longer and followed them in.
It was still very unreal to him but, as he had said to Emily, he had to get his head around the fact that he was a father and an alcoholic.
He had faced the first and he could still recall the glow in Stella’s face this morning. She hadn’t thought he was a loser and a hopeless father for her baby.
Now he had to face the drinking.
There were about thirty people in the room. A man sat at a desk near the door. He had a tired, lined face and sandy hair. He didn’t look like a person who was a heavy drinker. Maybe he was just part of the staff.
“I would actually like to join,” Noel said to him, hearing, as he spoke, his own voice echoing in his ears.
“And your name?” the man asked.
“Noel Lynch.”
“Right, Noel. Who referred you here?”
“I’m sorry? Referred?”
“I mean, are you coming here because of a treatment center?”
“Oh, heavens no. I haven’t been