Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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a cop or a drunk; her father, her brother, her uncle, three cousins … all were cops. Even her mother, her beautiful, iconoclastic mother, had been a cop. Shot dead by a sixteen-year-old punk trying to make a name for himself. The whole family were cops, except for Allison. She was the drunk. Someone had to do it.
And drunks needed to drink.
That need was not the only thing propelling Allison Jones towards West Forty-Fifth Street on this bitingly cold November night. She needed to be with people. She needed the rowdiness of an Irish bar, the smell of shepherd’s pie mingled with corned beef and cabbage, and beer. She needed to hear laughter. When, she wondered absently, as she waited for the light to change, had she last laughed? Not just pretended she was having a good time so some guy would buy her another drink.
Never, maybe.
But even as that bitter thought came, she knew it wasn’t true. There was a time, not long ago, when joy and laughter and love were as familiar to her as the emptiness was now. Once she had a big, loud, loving Irish family. Once she had had a career, owned a thriving business.
Once she had had Mike. If you had him, there was nothing more to want from a life.
A car horn blared and she realised she was standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue, tortured by memories and regret. Those who said, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, didn’t know what they were talking about. For her, loss was a physical sensation. Loss tore at her heart, denied her sleep.
Most likely it was because she knew in her heart she hadn’t lost Mike. She had thrown him away. The only thing that made the pain of this feeling stop was oblivion. She was headed there now.
Allison picked up her pace. The familiar light emanating from O’Lunney’s looked, at that moment, like salvation. Her heel caught in a crack in the pavement and she stumbled and nearly went to the ground.
Careful, she told herself, hanging onto a parking meter, unsteady in heels way too high for her condition. She was already buzzed. What Officer Jimmy didn’t know was that his baby sister always carried a little something in her purse, something to get her through one of his purges.
Allison bent and pressed her forehead against the frigid meter until the cold cleared her head. No falls tonight. No mysterious bruises, no being carried out of a bar, no waking up next to someone she didn’t remember meeting. She had promised herself that would never happen again.
Slow and steady, she whispered to herself, letting go of the meter. Ten yards more and she was pulling open the heavy oak door to the pub. Laughter rolled out into the street and Allison forgot how cold it was. She was home.
Slow and steady quickly turned into fast and furious. Before long, Allison was perched on the barstool, sloppy drunk, singing maudlin Irish songs that made her cry. She had inherited her mother’s voice, if not her rock-solid sense of decency.
She didn’t care right now. Now she was surrounded by men she had charmed before she went over the edge; men who had already ordered more drinks for her. Enough drinks to seal the deal. Even if they lost interest, Charlie, the bartender she had known most of her life, had collected the cash and would dole the booze out on demand.
She wasn’t positive, but she thought she had promised to go home with what’s-his-name with the blond hair. It would be good not to be alone. Soon she would feel nothing. All in all, it was a good night.
She stopped singing as she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the bar. The golden light in O’Lunney’s added a special glow to her curly red hair. It looked as if it hadn’t been brushed in a week. Her violet eyes no longer held the sparkle Mike used to dote on. At this moment they seemed buried in a once-beautiful face bloated from too many nights like this.
She made a face at herself in the mirror. Make-up streaked her cheeks from the crying jag her own singing had brought on. She had lipstick on her teeth. No one would believe she was only twenty-nine years old. For some reason the image of her ruined visage struck her as funny.
She was laughing as she slid off the barstool, knocked over two more stools and landed on the floor. She still laughed as she lay there, her skirt up around her hips, tights torn, make-up still streaming down her face. And then, she was sobbing. That broken, self-pitying drunk’s cry for rescue. One of her would-be suitors helped her struggle to her feet.
The blond one, the one she thought would be her comfort for the night, stepped around her and headed for the door. No matter. She would rather be alone with her memories.
That was when she saw Mike. He was standing on the other side of the bar, just looking at her, staring. Mike. It was Mike!
Her mouth went dry. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Mike was dead. Killed in action in the Middle East two years ago. He was dead.
It flashed through her mind that she was hallucinating, but she knew better. She wasn’t that far gone. Mike was here. And he was seeing what had become of the woman he once had loved.
He hadn’t changed a bit in the two years since she’d last seen him. The same steel-blue eyes, military bearing, and rugged good looks. And the same look of pain he’d had on his face when she said all those terrible things the last time they were together. Before he died. Before she died with him.
But this was Mike! Alive! She started towards him, a thousand questions, a thousand apologies forming in her brain.
His stare stopped her in her tracks. His eyes were dead, filled with pity. Or was it disgust? He turned and walked away.
She had to hang onto the bar to keep from running after him. She loved him too much to beg for one more chance, to embroil him in the hell her life had become. She had long since used up her second chances.
Allison looked back at her reflection in the mirror. What she saw there was no longer funny. The shock of seeing him had cleared her mind enough for her to see what Mike had seen … a loud, blowsy, desperate drunken woman.
‘Charlie,’ she said to the bartender when she could finally speak. He started to refill her glass but she waved the bottle away. ‘Call Midtown South Precinct. Ask them to tell Jimmy to come and get his sister. Tell him she wants to come home.’
Breezy Point
‘It looks like somebody robbed the place.’ The massive shoulders of a police officer with copper-coloured hair almost filled the doorway of the little shop.
Allison Jones, whose hair was the identical colour, made a face at her brother. ‘Fat chance of that with you and Dad patrolling the street out there, day after day, like the Crown Jewels were on display.’
‘We weren’t patrolling,’ Jimmy said defensively. ‘We haven’t been on patrol for years. We just happened to pass by and thought we’d see how things were going for you.’
‘Gee, Jimmy,’ Allison said, her big violet eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘Seems to me the two of you have been “passing by” since I opened the doors last week. Tell Dad he might as well come in. The store’s closed. Nothing left to sell.’
A carbon copy of Police Lieutenant Jimmy Jones, a little greyer and with a few more lines in his face, stepped through the door. He picked up Allison and swung her around and around.
‘That’s my girl! The only reason we’ve been hanging around is because we were afraid you’d get trampled by all those people fighting to get in the door.’
‘Dad, put me down! What if someone sees? I’m a mogul now, don’t-cha-know! An entrepreneur. I can’t be your little girl any more.’
‘Says