The Night Book by Charlotte Grimshaw Page B

the time.
    That morning all those years ago the sun had come up, brash and hot, over the shining garden, and she’d sat dreaming on the concrete step, considering this new feeling: she had reached the end, and let go. She wouldn’t try to live any more, but would simply wait for it all to fall in. No more hiding and hustling, no more secretive addict’s bargains. The rent would fall due, the landlord would come; she would be thrown out in the street. It was finished; she couldn’t go on any more. It was a strange, sensual feeling.
    In the afternoon the landlord, who was making preparations to evict her, had sent a man around to mow the back lawn. The gardener had found Roza slumped on the back step, and called an ambulance.
    Her mother’s idea of recovery had been for Roza to find her way back to God, but Roza had told her calmly that she blamed the church for her woes. She said she would never set foot in a church again. The more her mother persisted, the more obvious it was that they were estranged.
    Roza had said, ‘Mum. If you keep on with this, you’ll have to go away.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘If you can’t accept I’ve given all that up, you’ll have to leave me alone.’
    Roza had been admitted to a recovery centre, and they were in the visitors’ room. Her mother said, ‘But don’t you see, your giving it up is what’s brought you here.’
    Roza had looked away with a hopeless feeling. There was too much they couldn’t say.
    ‘I’m here because of your fucking God.’
    ‘No, don’t say that.’
    Roza remembered standing up in sudden fury. ‘All that hellfire rubbish, that bullshit.’
    Her mother made a gesture of disgust. ‘Hysteria,’ she said.
    ‘You messed up my mind, you and Dad.’ Childish, impotent words.
    ‘I saved you. Or I tried to. You were just the most immature, wilful child. It all fell on me. Your father didn’t know what to do with you. It wasn’t easy. I suffered.’
    Roza struggled to find words. ‘Your religion … you call it choosing life, but you deny life.’
    ‘Everything I ever did was for you.’
    When Roza walked out her mother hadn’t followed, but sat staring angrily at the floor. Later, Roza had watched the black Mercedes drive out of the car park, and cried for the first time since she’d been in the place.
    The following year, when her mother was dying in hospital, she’d told Roza, ‘I didn’t want you to be like me.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I didn’t want you to be just a wife. I wanted you to have a job, be a success. You were so bright.’
    Roza remembered a still, blue afternoon, her mother in a patch of summer sun, her grey hair trailing on the pillow. As the hours went by the sun moved, the colour bled out and faded, her mother had gripped her arm and whispered in her ear, and Roza said, ‘Yes, I understand,’ and held her hands as she died, held them tight as if she could keep her back from the other side.
    Later the priest, Father Tapper, had arrived outside the door. He’d put his hand on her sleeve as she was leaving, but Roza had told him to go fuck himself.
    A month later, she had taken stock. She had money, her parents’house, and she was back to being sober. She went regularly to AA meetings, which were boring but necessary, and comforting too. She’d enrolled for an arts degree at Auckland University, rediscovered reading, realising that it was a way to stay sober in the evenings, and had started to enjoy her studies. The only problem was that she was lonely. She’d had to leave a lot of destructive old friends behind.
    She’d graduated with a degree and found work with a publisher. She liked the women with whom she worked, and she’d begun to be happy. Later, she’d met David, whose first wife had died, leaving him with the two children. During the months she and David were getting to know each other she’d tried out the sober Roza on him, and found, to her surprise, that the new self was a success. He’d seemed