‘Yes.’
‘And surely that was good?’ I watched her ask the question and glance at our entwined hands at the same time.
‘I was looking forward to that part.’
‘Then that is a huge positive, because life is about balance,’ she answered and smiling at us both she leant back further into her black, ergonomic leather seat.
‘Okay, so far in our previous meetings we have covered how you have used gambling as a crutch.’
I nodded at her.
‘The breakdown of your parents’ marriage and the forced distance between you and Brody left you unsure of who you were… you were stumbling in life and feeling almost deserted by the decisions they made. Do you agree with me, Barbara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then losing your mom when you felt like she chose her addictions over staying with you, left you feeling out of control.’
‘Exactly that,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Everyone made their choices, even my brother Brody when he refused to leave England and stayed with our dad. But as the youngest child, I was just bundled along with their decisions… I hated it… and for a time I hated all of them.’
‘Go on,’ she gently encouraged.
Tears were falling silently down my cheeks as I recalled hitting the back window of the car my mom drove us away in. I’d screamed and shouted at Brody to stop her and to save me. I could see him in my mind’s eye standing there, holding my dad’s hand as neither of them moved to stop the car. Of course, I understood now that as a small boy who wasn’t much older than I was, he couldn’t do anything to help, but we had pinkie sworn to always be together, and he had let me go. My dad had tried everything to get her to stay, but once she had started the engine, resigned to the inevitable, his feet had remained firmly fixed to the spot. He’d watched with his eyes focussed on me the whole time, as we had driven away from the house that we had all lived in. I’d watched in return from that small back window as pain overtook his features and saw the very second his heart had broken in two. The pain of loss inside me was so acute that I could still feel it nearly thirty years on, as if it had happened only yesterday. I continued by revealing that occasionally now, when I shared a memory with Nico, I would sometimes find myself smiling at a happy recollection instead of feeling only the pain connected to it.
‘That’s amazing… It’s a great step forward.’ She took a sharp inhale of breath and I knew she wanted to force me forward once again. ‘Then after your mom passed you lived with your aunty?’
‘Yes… I wanted to go back to my dad… but by then he had cancer and couldn’t look after Brody as well as me.’
‘So, once again you felt you had no control.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ I offered.
‘Then your dad died.’
Unsure of why we were having to go over what we had already aired before, I nodded at her, unable to answer her with actual words at first. ‘I didn’t even get to see him before he passed… Once again, a decision that was made for me with my best interests in mind, obviously.’ I couldn’t help the air of sarcasm that laced through my tone.
‘Barbara, you are so much stronger than you realise. You have lived through the loss of so much and yet here you are… living and taking control of your life.’
‘Me?’ I questioned.
‘Yes… you.’
I could feel the stroke of Nico’s thumb on the back of my hand, as he let me know he was right there with me.
‘I can hear what you’re telling me, Mrs. Davison, but I’m not sure how you’ve come to that conclusion… I chose addiction, even after what I’d seen with my mom… I chose to gamble.’
‘You did. I believe originally when you started to gamble that it gave you the element of control in your life that you’d been searching for.’
I slumped back in the chair I was sitting on and began to think. The astute woman wasn’t far from the truth. The cold calculated way I could, in the beginning, count on the roll of the dice and each turn of the cards in front of me, was calming. I had a mathematical brain and I loved the control I had over whatever table I sat down at. Initially, I had respect from the others there. I could walk away when it wasn’t going well, or stay and gamble some more in a place where people respected and listened to the decisions I made. Until it started to go wrong and the compulsion to try to control it once again meant I could no longer trust my own decisions. Because the decisions I was making were borne from desperation and not from clear thinking. Then it dawned on me that my parents had been in the same position as me. Making decisions that they were forced to make and then struggling with the fall-out.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘I think I can understand what you’re saying.’
‘But?’ she gently questioned, smiling over at me.
‘So, how do I control it now?’
‘You control it by trying to forgive the people in your life who hurt you and by understanding what compels you towards using it as your crutch. You control it by changing your situation, and you’ve most certainly done that.’ She smiled at me and looked over at Nico.
‘I’ve had rehab before, I’m not sure they used the same method as you, but…’ I hesitated.
‘I know, we’ve spoken about it previously… but this time is different. This time you want to have a different life. You are now in control of your own future and it’s a future that has love in it and that is the very best sort of future.’
I looked down at my lap to watch Nico’s thumb as it caressed my hand. Not once had he faltered in offering me the support I needed even when she’d mentioned the L word.
‘Now, our time is up. I look forward to seeing you both in two weeks’ time, and I think it should be back here in Vegas again. Because as much as I have loved visiting Crete this is where your ghosts are, and they need to be exorcised.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed.
‘I want to leave you both with a couple of things if I may?’
I could see Nico nodding out of the corner of my eye and comprehended that she was actually in some way treating us both and not just my addictions.
‘Firstly, at some point over the next couple of days, I want you to walk through one of Nico’s casinos with your hand in his and out of ten measure the compulsion you think you still have to gamble, against how it used to completely dominate your life.’ She looked over the top of her glasses at me and smiled as my mouth fell open in horror. ‘And secondly, I want you both to understand and to recognise that we are in charge of our own lives. We are not our parents because although we may look like them, we are not created in their exact image. As children and with our dependency on the adults around us, we are made to believe certain things about who we are. But once we gain our independence, only then do we actually become who we were meant to be. There are other ways forward and we carve out those other paths by fighting for what we really want… Thank you both for coming. I look forward to seeing you in two weeks’ time.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bee
The limo was silent as we swept through the busy streets of Vegas. It was as though we were both caught up inside our own heads as we digested everything Mrs. Davison had just told us. But not once had our connection been severed. I looked down to the cream leather seat to see my small hand inside Nico’s much larger one and even now his thumb was still gently caressing my hand as he offered me reassurance.