Mike nodded. His heart felt like lead. He closed his eyes. ‘I loved her,’ he said softly.
Lorraine sat on the sofa, flicking the TV from channel to channel. There was no need now to hide the half-bottle of vodka that lay beside her. She could do what she liked, she was on her own. She didn’t deserve anyone’s love or respect, she knew that. She was deeply ashamed that she didn’t have the guts to slit her wrists. Or was it because she didn’t deserve to die so easily? She was her own judge, her own jury. She had to be punished.
Lorraine finished the vodka and went in search of more. She looked around the bedroom, seeing the open wardrobe doors, the empty hangers where Mike’s clothes had hung, and backed out of the room. She discovered another bottle hidden in the kitchen and had drunk most of that before she wandered into the children’s room. She was humming tunelessly. She got into Sally’s tiny bed, holding the bottle to her chest. She could smell her daughter on the pillow; it was as if the little girl was kissing her face, she felt so close. She reached over to the other bed for Julia’s pillow and held it to her cheek. She snuggled down clasping the pillows. ‘My babies,’ she whispered, ‘my babies.’ She looked drunkenly at the wallpaper, with its pink and blue ribbons threaded round children’s nursery rhymes. ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...’
She could feel a lovely warm blanket begin slowly to cover her body, a soft pink baby blanket, like the one tucked round her when she was a little girl, like the one she had wrapped round the dead child’s body. She felt her chest tighten with panic, her body tense. She could hear him now. Lubrinski.
‘Eh, how ya doin’, Page?’
‘I’m doin’ okay, Lubrinski,’ she said aloud, startled to hear her own voice. ‘I’m doin’ fine, partner.’ She frowned. Who was screaming? Somebody was screaming, the terrifying sound going on and on and on, driving her nuts. She rolled out of bed and ran from the room. She tripped and fell to her knees until she was crawling on all fours into the bedroom. The screaming continued. She heaved herself up and caught sight of a figure reflected in the dressing-table mirror. She clapped her hands over her mouth, biting her fingers to stop the screams. She was the woman, it was her screaming. The terrible sweating panic swamped her.
It was Lubrinski’s smiling face that calmed her, looking up at her from the dressing table. She snatched up the photograph. ‘Help me, Lubrinski, for chrissakes help me.’
‘Sure, honey, take a shot of this, then what say you and me go and rip up the town? You wanna hit the bars?’
‘Yeah, why not, you son-of-a-bitch?’ Lorraine gave a tough, bitter laugh, and felt herself straightening out as the panic subsided and she was back in control.
That was the first night Lorraine went out to drink alone in one of the old downtown bars. She never knew who she ended up with, she didn’t give a damn, and they didn’t mind when she called them Lubrinski. A lot of Lubrinski lookalikes came and went, and there were many more drunken nights when she didn’t care if Lubrinski was with her or not. All she cared about was getting another drink to keep her away from the terrified woman who screamed.
The downward spiral began the night after Mike left her. It was a long road she travelled, searching for oblivion. It was frighteningly easy. People were real friendly in the bars but they used and stole from her. When the money had gone she sold the furniture, and then the apartment. It was good to have a big stash of money, never to worry where the next bottle came from, and still she kept running from the woman in blue whose terrible screams frightened her so much and dragged her down so far, She could take the fights, and the taunts of prostitutes and pimps. Hell, she had arrested many of them. They pushed her around and spiked her drinks but drunk, she didn’t care. Drunk, the screams were obliterated. Drunk, the men who pawed her meant nothing. Drunk, she could hide, feel some comfort in slobbering embraces, in strange rooms, in beds where the little rabbits didn’t creep into her mind and she didn’t hear the children singing, a high-pitched shrill voice that turned into a scream.
‘Run, rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run... RUN.’
Chapter 1
She had almost died that night. The hit-and-run driver had probably not even seen her, and Lorraine could remember little. She had been taken to hospital with head injuries. The following weeks were a blur, as she was moved from one charitable organization to another; she had no money and no medical insurance left. Eventually she was institutionalized and preliminarily diagnosed as schizophrenic. To begin with, she was not thought to be an alcoholic as so much else was wrong with her. She had severe abscesses, a minor venereal disease plus genital herpes, skin disorders, and poor physical condition from lack of decent food. Eighty cigarettes a day had left her with a persistent heavy cough. She contracted pneumonia, and for a few days it was doubtful that she would live. When she pulled through, the hallucinations, screaming fits and vomiting made the doctors suspect severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
A string of psychiatrists and doctors interviewed her and prescribed various medication. After two months she was transferred to the nightmare of Ward C, Watts City Mental Hospital where LA County sent only their worst cases, the drop-outs and no hopers. Drug-crazed kids, deranged old ladies, suicidal middle-aged women — every fucked-up female soul who walked the earth seemed to be marooned with Lorraine. They added chronic alcoholism to Lorraine’s list of ailments. Her liver was shot, and she was warned that if she did not give up drinking she would be dead within the year. Eventually she was transferred to the White Garden rehabilitation centre.
Rosie Hurst was working as a cook at the centre, one of those women who gave their free time as part of a rehabilitation programme. Rosie, a big, plump, sturdy woman, with short, frizzy permed hair, was a recovering alcoholic with six months’ sobriety. She worked hard and was as friendly as she could be with the inmates, a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God attitude never far from her thoughts. Some of the saner inmates were allocated menial jobs in the kitchen and that was how Rosie got to know Lorraine Page.
Lorraine didn’t want to live. She had been waiting to die, wondering hazily why she wasn’t already dead, and then musing that, perhaps, she was. And this was hell. It wasn’t such a bad hell — the drugs made her more relaxed — but she wanted a drink. It was the only thought that occupied her dulled senses. Her mouth was thick and dry, her tongue felt too big, and she drank water all day, bending down to the small fountain in the corridor, hogging it, mouth open, hand pressed down on the lever for the water to spurt directly into her swollen mouth. Nothing dulled her thirst.
‘How long you been an alcoholic?’
Rosie had been watching her in the corridor. Lorraine couldn’t say because she had never admitted it to herself. She just liked to drink.
‘What work did you do?’
Lorraine could not recall what she’d been up to for the past few years. All the weeks and months had merged into a blur, and she could hardly remember one year from another. Or the bars, dens, seedy, run-down clubs where she had been drunk alongside girls she had once picked up and locked away. They had liked that. And the pimps she had hassled and booked in her days as a vice squad trainee, liked being able to sell her so cheaply. She was known to go with anyone, as long as they kept her supplied with a steady flow of booze. Hotels, bars, dives, private parties... Lorraine would be cleaned up and sent out. It didn’t matter how many or who they were, just as long as she made enough money for booze. She had been arrested, not just for hooking but for vagrancy, and released, pending charges, but had never made her court appearance. She had simply moved on to another bar, another town.