Rachel's Holiday

Resumen del libro

Here's Rachel Walsh, twenty-seven and the miserable owner of size 8 feet. She has regular congress with Luke Costello, a man who wears his leather trousers tight. And she's fond - some might say too fond - of recreational drugs.

Until everything goes pearshaped and she finds herself being frogmarched to the Cloisters - Dublin's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She's outraged. Surely she's not thin enough to be an addict? But on the bright side, she's heard that rehab places are wall-to-wall jucuzzis, gymnasiums and rock stars going tepid turkey. Besides, it's about time she had a little holiday.

Rachel isn't expecting plump, middle-aged men in brown jumpers, and more group therapy than you can shake a stick at. That - alarmingly - she seems to be expected to join in with. Who cares for introspection when all there is to look at is damaged and broken?

Heartsick and Luke-sick, she seeks redemption in the shape of Chris, a Man with a Past. A man who might be more trouble than he's worth.

Rachel is airlifted from addiction to the unfamiliar terrain of adulthood, via a love story or two, in a novel by turns poignant, powerful and seriously funny.

They said I was a drug addict. I found that hard to come to terms with - I was a middle-class, convent-educated girl whose drugs use was strictly recreational. And surely drug addicts were thinner It was true that I took drugs, but what no-one seemed to understand was that my drug use wasn't any different from their having ad rink or two on Friday night after work. They might have a few vodkas and tonic and let off a bit of steam. I had a couple of lines of cocaine and did likewise. As I said to my father and my sister and my sister's husband and eventually the therapists of the Cloisters, 'If cocaine was solid in liquid form, in a bottle, would you complain about me taking it? Well, would you? No, I bet you wouldn't!'
I was offended by the drug-addict allegation, because I was nothing like one. Apart from the track marks on their arms, they had dirty hair, constantly seemed cold, did a lot of shoulder-hunching, wore cheap trainers that looked like they'd been brought in Woolworth's, hung around blocks of flats and were, as I already mentioned, thin.

I wasn't thin.

Although, it wasn't for the want of trying. I spent plenty of time on the stairmaster at the gym. But no matter how much I stairmastered, genetics had the final say. If my father had married a dainty little woman, I might have had a very different life. Very different thighs, certainly. Instead, like my older sisters, Claire and Margaret, I was doomed for people always to describe me by saying. 'She's a big girl.'

Then they always added really quickly 'Now, I'm not saying she's fat.'

The implication being that if I was fat, I could at least do something about it.

'No,' they would continue, 'she's a fine, big, tall girl. You know, strong.'

I was often described as strong.

It really pissed me off.

My boyfriend, Luke, sometimes described me as magnificent.(When the light was behind me and he'd had several pints.) At lest that was what he said to me. Then he probably went back to his friends and said, 'Now, I'm not saying she is fat ...'

The whole drug-addict allegation came about one February morning when I was living in New York.

It was the first time I felt as if I was on Cosmic Candid Camera. M life was prone to veering out of control and I had long stopped believing that the God who had been assigned to me was a benign old lad with long hair and a beard. He was more like a celestial Jeremy Beadle, and my life was the showcase he used to amuse the other Gods.

'Wa-atch,' he laughingly invites, 'as Rachel thinks she's got a new job and that it's safe to hand in her notice on the old. Little does she know that her new firm is just about to go bankrupt!'

Roars of laughter from all the other gods.

'Now, wa-atch,' he chuckles. 'As Rachel hurries to meet her new boyfriend. See how she catches the heel of her shoe in the grating? See how it comes clean off? Little did Rachel know that we had tampered with it. See how she limps the rest of the way?' More sniggers from the assembled gods.

'But the best bit of all,' laughs Jeremy, 'is that the man she was meeting ever turns up! He only asked her out for a bet. Watch as Rachel squirms with embarrassment in the stylish bar. See the looks of pity the other women give her? See how the waiter gives her the extortionate bill for a glass of wine, and best of all, see how Rachel discovers she left her purse at home?'

Uncontrollable guffaws.

The events that led to me being called a drug addict had the same element of celestial fare that the rest of my life had. What happened was, one night I'd sort of overdone it on the enlivening drugs and I couldn't get to sleep. (I hadn't meant to overdo it, I had simply underestimated the quality of the cocaine that I had taken). I knew I had to get up for work the following morning so I took a couple of sleeping tablets. After ten minutes they hadn't worked, so I took a couple more in desperation, thinking of how badly I needed my sleep, thinking of how alert I had to be at work, I took a few more ....