High Sobriety (37 page)

But then, I think about the cocktail party. What would I have done if that party had taken place two weeks from now? Sometimes freedom is a burden. Once my year's up, there will be no self-imposed abstinence or public expectation to make the decision for me. If I indulge in the occasional blowout, how rapidly would I go back to getting pissed, even when I don't feel like it? Would I be stumbling home at 5.00 a.m. when I meant to leave the party four hours earlier? I can now see why Will talks about degrees of addiction. I don't think I'm an alcoholic. And all of the things those test results suggested may be natural character traits that would have been there regardless of whether I was a big drinker. But I do worry that booze has more control over me than I'm comfortable with. Why else would the thought of drinking again worry me so much?

The thoughts chatter on in my head, and I try to settle them with deep breathing. But it's a hot night, and I can't sleep. The Christmas-party season is in full swing: outside my apartment, people are yelling and beeping horns; groups of guys are leering out of car windows. Later, I'm woken by an awful spluttering noise and think that my cat must be choking on a hairball. I race to the living room, but he's curled up on the couch asleep. The noise is coming from outside. I peer through the blinds and see a woman about my age on her knees, vomiting in the gutter. Two friends standing over her are eating hot chips and laughing. Nothing says ‘Merry Christmas' quite like a stranger chundering outside your bedroom window at two o'clock on a Wednesday morning.

It reminds me of an article I read this week by Ruby Rose, the model and MTV presenter, about her 90-day break from booze. Her decision to quit drinking came when she threw up on American pop starlet Katy Perry, after they crashed a high-school formal. The 25-year-old said sobriety had taught her that being pissed isn't sexy; she realised that red eyes, smudged lipstick, and slurred speech are not attractive. I guess it just goes to show that whether you're an average Joe spewing in a suburban gutter or a smoking-hot celebrity vomiting on an international superstar, alcohol will happily take you there.

I can't see myself chucking my guts up in a gutter any time soon, but I do worry that by welcoming booze back into my life, my days of
carpe diem
will be gone. I'll be back to lethargy and excuses. Without alcohol, I've been more fearless than I have in years.

Earlier this month, the music school where I've been taking singing lessons had an end-of-term concert. In a busy bar in front of dozens of people, students of all ages got up and faced their fears. It was an incredibly moving experience to see people who'd never performed in public before stand in front of the mike and realise a dream. The youngest was 12, and the oldest 65. It taught me that you're never too old to achieve your goals. But at the same time, it made me realise that I don't want to wait. I've got the confidence and motivation now, so I shouldn't let anything stop me. When it was my turn to sing, my friends Loretta, Kath, and Lili cheering me on, my nerves disappeared, and I was completely absorbed in that exquisite moment. I was wearing my undies on the outside, and it felt fantastic.

I'M HEADING TO
Sydney for Christmas with Loretta and her family. Then we'll drive back down the coast, to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's beachfront property along the Great Ocean Road. I can't wait to take a road trip and have some time away.

People keep asking how I'll survive the holidays without drinking. It's fairly simple — I just won't drink. I've been doing it for 51 weeks, so one more will be easy. True, for most of my adult life I've had a drink on Christmas Day. But with all that rich food, free-flowing wine, and general over-indulgence, I'm usually feeling fat, full, and ready for bed by 9.00 p.m. And I've always found New Year's Eve, or Hogmanay, as we call it in Scotland, to be massively overrated. It's a night that's expected to be bigger and better than any other simply because it's the last in the calendar. Life's best nights are rarely that contrived; you usually stumble into them by accident.

As my year of sobriety draws to a close, I'm continually being asked if I'm raring to have a drink at midnight on New Year's Eve. I was still knocking back tequila at 5.00 a.m. last year, so technically I won't be allowed my first drink until well into New Year's Day. But the thought of a glass of wine or a beer doesn't consume my every waking moment — it's deciding if and when I'll have another drink that does. After 1 January, I'll be free from my pledge, and pondering what I'll do with that freedom is a glimpse into the great unknown. Whatever happens, I'm proud that I've got this far.

On Christmas Eve, the plan is for Loretta to pick me up at 7.00 a.m., and we'll start our nine-hour drive north, to Sydney. At 5.10 a.m., my phone beeps. I wake with a jolt. My first thought is that she must be running late. I fumble in the dark, grumpy at being woken so early. But it's not Loretta. It's Fiona's husband, David, in Edinburgh. He never texts me — something's not right. I squint at the glare on the screen. The message makes no sense. ‘Our beautiful son Jude passed away suddenly this afternoon …' Is this is a sick joke? Am I still asleep? I stumble out of bed, hurtling towards the wall, fingers splayed as they scramble for the light switch. Reading the words again, I drop to my knees. The phone bounces on the carpet and the world, changed beyond all recognition, shudders to a stop. My heart thumps so loudly it feels as if the walls are shaking. I wail one word over and over: no.

Fiona and David's Jude, a boy so beautiful he could make godless heathens believe in heavenly creatures, is gone. He was five. How could this have happened? Just over a week ago, he was racing around their home as I chatted to Fiona on Skype. Every now and then, I'd see a flash of blonde hair and hear his cheeky laugh as he dashed past with his big sister, Isla. When he stopped to wave at me, my heart skipped, and I was struck, as I always was, by what a perfect wee soul Fiona and David had created.

I cancel my Sydney trip and spend the rest of the day on the phone to Scotland, trying to piece together what happened. My parents, who have loved Fiona like a daughter since we were kids, are heartbroken. Dad, who got David's message as a text-to-speech voicemail on his answering machine, is distraught. I call Lisa, Jude's godmother, whose three girls are like sisters to Isla and Jude. They're shattered. We cry together as she tells me how it came to this. In the week leading up to Christmas, everything seemed normal: Jude had been playing with Isla and getting excited about Santa coming. But he started to get ill as the week went on; Fiona and David thought he had a chest infection. Three days before Christmas — only two days ago — he started to have problems breathing. His fingers began to turn blue. They took him to hospital, and it quickly became apparent from the looks on the faces of the doctors and nurses that this was more serious than Fiona and David could ever have imagined. There was little time to prepare; Jude died the next day. As I try to process it, I realise that the text message from David came just hours after their boy passed away.

There was nothing the medical team could do — Jude had a large hole in his heart. The doctors said this kind of pulmonary hypertension is a congenital time bomb: it's rare and incurable, and very difficult to diagnose. Even if he had survived, he would have needed a heart–lung transplant. It might have bought him two years, maybe three, at best. He seemed like such a robust boy, who'd never shown any signs of ill health, and yet he was a desperately sick child. It was nothing short of miraculous that he'd survived this long.

As the day goes on, disbelief and desolation come in brutalising waves, like aftershocks in the trail of an earthquake. It feels as if a part of me has been hollowed out; my heart aches for Fiona's loss. She's not able to talk on the phone, but we text, our usual banter replaced by previously unthinkable sentences. I call her mum and tell her how sorry I am. Fiona's her only child. Those grandchildren are everything to her. Her grief is raw and jagged; just hearing her voice cuts me in two. I've never felt more impotent. The phone call leaves me on the floor in howling tears.

Friends come round to offer support, and suggest that if I want a drink, I shouldn't feel bad for having one. It hadn't even crossed my mind. To think that until this morning my biggest worry was whether or not to have a glass of wine is more ridiculous than I can fathom. Even if nobody would blame me for seeking solace in a bottle, it's the last thing I want to do. It's hard enough to cope with this sober. If I get drunk, it might numb the pain for a few hours, but the grief will be more than I can manage tomorrow. Besides, I don't want to block out my emotions, excruciating as they are. Somehow, the pain makes me feel closer to Fiona.

Christmas Day is far from how I imagined it. I spend it with David's brother Mark and his wife, Heather, at their home in Melbourne's bayside suburbs. They're in shock; they can't believe their nephew is gone. Their girls, aged three and 16 months, are too young to understand they've lost a much-loved cousin, but being with them is comforting as we share the loss, clinging to each other for steadiness.

Before I arrived at their place, Fiona texted me to say that she's glad we're all together and she hopes we have a good day with lots of laughter — even in the depths of her grief she's thinking of us. I promise that's what we'll try to do. I dance with the girls, play games, and laugh with them. Over lunch, we smile as we remember Jude for the cheeky little cuddle-monster he was. But when the girls are in bed, the three of us fall apart. We think of Fiona and David waking up on Christmas morning to this foreign world without Jude, his presents wrapped and ready for him to open under a tree he helped to decorate. We think of his partner in crime, his seven-year-old sister, Isla, who asked Fiona if this means she's now an only child.

Mark and I look at flights home, but we can't book until we find out when the funeral will be. The Christmas and New Year holidays mean that all of the arrangements are delayed. If we leave now and find out the funeral's a fortnight away, we risk having to come back to Melbourne for work before it's been held. Waiting is torturous. Every part of me yearns to be back in Scotland.

IT'S NEW YEAR'S EVE:
the last day of the most extraordinary year of my life. I'm still in Melbourne; we leave for Scotland in a couple of days. I've been invited to a friend's barbecue to take in the festivities. I don't feel like celebrating, but I'll go. Part of me wants to throw my hands in the air, bemoan the futility of our daily rituals, and retreat into grief. The other part knows I have to live.

As I drive from my flat to the party, it's a stifling hot New Year's Eve night, just as it was this time last year. The drive takes me past my local McDonald's, where, 364 days ago, as I battled with a hangover that felt as if it might kill me, I nearly lost my mind. My heart races a little as I pass it, and I remember how awful I felt that day. And the next day. What a monumental waste of time that now seems, to spend so much of life hung-over, sleeping away my weekends and cowering under the covers, scared of life. I used to tell myself that the places I was going to visit, the friends I cancelled on, or the family I was meaning to call could wait until tomorrow. How cavalier of me to presume those opportunities would always be there.

At the barbecue, people are supportive and offer their condolences. Talking about Jude helps. Although it's all I can think of, I'm reluctant to dwell on it, conscious that this stuff makes some people uncomfortable, and that it is meant to be a party. But Mari-Claire is amazing. She listens for a long time, asks questions about Jude, looks at photos of him, and doesn't flinch when I cry. It turns out that she's going through her own grief — a good friend of hers is in the end stages of terminal cancer. We talk about our sorrow, the kind that can overwhelm us in the most unexpected moments. And we talk about how, in these moments, there is still reason to be thankful: they remind us how lucky we are. For the first time in a week, I feel hopeful.

As midnight approaches and I sip my third ginger beer, my heart is a knot of conflicting emotions. It is, of course, not how I pictured this moment, but there's a sense of achievement at having reached the end of the year without alcohol. There were tough times and countless temptations. I outlasted them all. Yet it's hard to feel proud of a milestone that seems so insignificant compared to the challenge my friend and her husband will face for the rest of their lives. But I know that they will survive this. Fiona is one of the strongest people I know. She's making herself get out of bed; she's continuing to breathe. She's carrying on, for her daughter, for her husband, for herself, and for her darling son, who lived a life filled with love. But for them, like so many of us touched by Jude's death, nothing is the same. No longer can we say this sort of stuff happens to other people. It has revealed that the ground beneath us is shaky; it has underscored our impermanence and made visible the ticking clocks above the heads of those we hold dear. Jude's legacy will be what we do with that knowledge: we will love more fiercely; we will make brave choices, even when we're scared; we will not let our dreams wait until tomorrow.

The countdown begins as we're in the backyard, listening to Lionel Richie's ‘All Night Long' turned up loud. I've never felt less like dancing in my life, all night long or otherwise, but I go through the motions. When 2012 arrives, I hug and kiss my friends, and wish them well for the year ahead. Traditionally this day, more than any other, signifies the closing of old chapters and the promise of new beginnings. It's the time when we vow that this year we will be better. My list of new year's resolutions is short — there is only one. It is a reminder and a promise: life's too short to be wasted.