The Thirteenth Step

It started with a meeting. "Hello, my name is Daniel, and I am an alcoholic. I have not had a drink for two years and eleven months."

"Hello, Daniel," a chorus of voices greeted me from around the community centre.

I have told my story so many times now that I can reel it off without even thinking about it.

"I got divorced because I drank too much. My wife was crazy, granted, but my drinking did not help. I can forgive her for being crazy, but I can't forgive myself for drinking. I drank because it helped me to cope. I had a stressful job, there were a lot of tight deadlines and a hard drinking culture. My workmates all drank. My wife hated my job and my workmates, and she hated me when I was drunk. I tried to give up, but then she said I was worse when I was sober than when I was drinking."

In a strange way, I enjoy sharing my story at the meetings. Sometimes I might exaggerate a bit, but I think everybody does. Alcoholics are egotistical by nature.

"I used to sleep with a bottle of Russian Standard on my bedside table. I used to hide boxes of wine in cereal packets. I would drink a litre of vodka first thing every morning. I used to brew my own beer. I would 'accidently' add three times as much sugar as the recipe required, so the beer I made was stronger than Tennent's Super. I was constantly drunk, but not in an enjoyable way, I needed booze just to feel normal, just to function. I was in a bad way. Eventually, enough was enough for my wife, so she left me. Moved in with her yoga instructor a month later. I should have seen that coming."

Some of the other alcoholics murmured their sympathy or nodded sadly. Most of them had heard my story before.

What I really wanted to say was: My life was a tragedy, worse than your tragedy because it happened to me. But I resisted this temptation.

Instead, I said, "All I know is, if I take one more sip of delicious, delicious alcohol, I will be dead. One drink would kill me. Instant death, no going back from that. I didn't care if I lived or died when I was drinking. But now, I have something to live for. I have a beautiful girlfriend who I love and who loves me and supports me. I am self-employed, sort of, I make money from doing work that I love. And I never, ever think I want to drink again. I owe this beautiful new life I have to the amazing work of the group. Thank you all so much."

I sat back and waited for the pissing contest to begin.

Ian was the first to speak. "Thank you for that Daniel, it's really inspirational to hear you share. I could really relate to the part where you said you drank a litre of vodka each morning. Myself, I used to drink two litres of vodka for breakfast, it was the only way I could stop the shakes."

"I used to drink vodka too," said Benjamin, not wanting to be outdone. "Until I started on the real hard stuff: Overproof rum. I had to drink a bottle of Wray and Nephew before I got out of bed for a piss."

"Ah, Wray!" said Adrian, nostalgically. He was a very boastful and cantankerous old alcoholic. "I used to love Wray. It was my drink of choice for years. I drank it all the time. Except when the corner shop ran out of it. Then I would drink lighter fluid instead."

There was a new face at the group that evening. A pretty girl. We get all sorts of people at Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism is a disease that can afflict anybody, so seeing a pretty young girl was not entirely out of the ordinary. I tried not to look at her too much. She had long black hair that was tied back in a plait, and she wore a white vest which showed the large number of tattoos on her arms, body and neck. Nothing unusual about that, tattoos are very popular nowadays. I once wrote an interesting blog article on the subject, called The Inked Generation.

Of her many tattoos, I noticed a few in particular. She had a cross and a triangle tattooed on one hand, and the name "Libby" and a date written in cursive script on her forearm. Whether this was a date of birth, death or something else I did not know. She had a very elaborate tattoo on her torso between her collar bone and the tops of her breasts. By looking at this sideways I was able to see what it was without her noticing me staring at her. It was a tattoo of an ornate winged sword, the wings spreading out above her tits and the blade of the sword plunging into the deep cleavage between them.

The young lady was the first to speak when the floor was opened up to contributions from the members of the meeting. She was very buxom and rounded. I admired the shape of her thighs in her tight jeans, and I tried not to gawk at her breasts. Her jeans were ripped, I could see her bare knees.

"Hi everybody. My name is Abigail. And I'm a... well, am I? Yes, I am. I am an alcoholic." She sounded hesitant and nervous, but she spoke well. From her appearance I was expecting her to sound common, but she did not. She was quite well-spoken, and she sounded relatively intelligent to me.

"Hi, Abigail," I said, along with everybody else. There were fifteen people at the meeting in total. I recognised all of them apart from her from meetings I had been to previously. If I had to guess her age, I would have said Abigail was in her mid-twenties. She was tall and curvaceous, not fat but well rounded and strong looking. She had pale skin and very dark hair, jet black almost. I suspected it was dyed. I noticed with interest that she had multiple rings in each ear, and her eyebrow and nose were both pierced, and when she spoke, I could see a stud in her tongue. Her eyes were bright green and heavily made-up with black mascara around them, silver eyeshadow and long fake lashes. She had large, jutting breasts that I admired subtly. She waved her hands around when she talked, and I noticed that she had long, pointed, probably fake fingernails that were painted with glittery silver nail polish and looked amazing to me.

"I've only just stopped drinking a week ago and I don't know what to do. I've been threatened with being kicked out of my flat and I've got nowhere else to stay. I was working as a journalist, but I've been fired. My life is falling apart and it's all because of drink." She shared some of her story, even for someone like me who has a professional interest in examining the moral decline of this country, it was heart-breaking. She had started drinking at the age of nineteen, and it had got to be a problem quickly. It sounded like things had got very bad for her, she had sought help with her drinking, and found her way to AA. She had managed to stay sober for three years. She had moved into a flat and worked for a small independent music publication. But, over the last few months she had started drinking again. She thought she would be able to handle it, but now she realised she really could not. She knew her drinking was spiralling out of control again and she needed help.

After the meeting had finished, Abigail came up to speak to me.

"It was so inspiring to hear your testimony," she said, her false eyelashes fluttering.

"Oh, thank you," I said modestly. "It was good to hear from you, too. It was very brave of you to share the way you did. Is this the first time you have been to this meeting? I don't think I remember seeing you here before." I looked into her eyes; they were such a bright green that it made me wonder if she wore coloured contact lenses.

"Yes, this is the first meeting I've been to in a long time. I lived down in London when I was in AA before. I thought I could manage by myself, but I really can't. I need help." I noticed Abigail was looking at the crotch of my chinos as she said this.

"There's no shame in asking for help," I said, taking a gulp of lukewarm black coffee.

"I guess you're right. What I really need help with, what I need help with right now, is I need a place to stay." She looked up and stared straight into my eyes when she had said this.

"You can stay with me, if you like, I have a summerhouse that you can sleep in." I knew this was an incredibly bad idea as soon as I had said it. She was a virtual stranger to me; I had literally only met her that evening. Also, it's a bad idea for alcoholics who have been recovering for a while to associate too closely with people who are early on in their journey with AA. I was one month away from three years of sobriety. I always have had a problem with saying stupid things I regret on the spur of the moment. But once I had said it there was no way of taking it back.

Also, she had really big boobs, but this had no part to play in my decision. The largeness of her breasts was entirely incidental. I would have done the same even if she had been flat-chested. They were really big though. Big and soft looking. I imagined her taking her top off and rubbing those jubblies against my face.

"Oh really? Would that be OK? Thank you so much." She played with her plaited hair while she spoke, twisting it around her finger. "I don't know how long I will be staying with you, hopefully it will only be a few days before I can move into my friend's flat with her. I'll just go and get my bags."

She hurried off towards the cloakroom. I helped some of the others from the group put away the chairs after the meeting. It might have looked like I was sniffing the chair Abigail had been sat on, but I really wasn't. It just looked that way, I wasn't doing that at all. I was doing something else that made it look like I was doing that, but I wasn't actually doing that. I was just helping put the chairs away like I do after every meeting. Her chair smelt sweet and fruity.

So, that was that, I took Abigail home with me. As we left the meeting, I saw my sponsor, Benjamin, in the carpark of the community centre. He looked at me and shook his head very slightly.

"You go careful, Daniel," he said firmly.

"You too, see you later," I replied.

I put her rucksack and a bag for life that contained her possessions into the boot of my Lexus, and she climbed into the passenger seat. As I drove us to my house, I tried to make small talk.

"You said that you were a journalist? I used to work for a newspaper myself, so that's two things we have in common."

"Oh really?" she asked. "What's the other thing?"

"We're both alcoholics!" I said, and we laughed together.

"I haven't always been a journalist, you know," she said. "I used to be a singer."

"Wow, a professional singer?" I was impressed. "You must have a lot of talent."

"Yes, that's right. My manager thought I was going to be the next Adele. He dropped me quick enough when he realised it wasn't going to happen."

"Oh, that's a pity."

"He treated me like shit!" she wailed. She had suddenly become very upset. I find it awkward to be around women when they cry, so I pretended not to notice and I drove on in silence while she sobbed next to me. She had calmed down by the time we reached home. I showed her to the summerhouse that is at the bottom of our back garden then went on into the kitchen to make some dinner.

My partner, Dawn, came home late that evening, as she often does. She has a very responsible job, she works for a financial services company and manages a department of over a hundred people. I was sat in the kitchen working on a blog article, this was about the street entertainers and buskers who had been appearing frequently in the town centre recently. I had given it the working title Talentless Scum. Abigail was out in the summerhouse, getting settled in.

I looked up as I heard Dawn come in through the front door.

"Hello!" she called.

"Hi honey," I said as Dawn came into the kitchen, taking off her shoes and coat. "How was your day."

"Hectic!" she groaned.

I decided to wait a little while before telling her about our new house guest.

Once Dawn had made a cup of herbal tea and sat down in the living room, I sat next to her and said, "A woman from the group is going to be staying with us, is that going to be OK?"

"What woman?" she looked worried.

"She's a lady called Abigail, she goes to the same AA meeting as me. She had nowhere else to go, so I said she could stay in the summerhouse for a night or two. It won't be for long."

"Yes, I guess it will be fine," Dawn said, but the expression on her face was sceptical. "What does she look like?"

"I haven't really noticed, to be honest. She's just an ordinary looking young woman."

Dawn is quite nosy. When she heard I had invited a woman to stay, she was very keen to see what she looked like. She put down her cup of tea and hurried to the summerhouse to introduce herself to our guest. I went to the kitchen and peered out of the window. I could see Dawn speaking to Abigail at the door of the summerhouse. Ten minutes later, Dawn came back to the kitchen, a slight scowl on her face.

"She's a very pretty girl, don't you think?" She sounded a little peeved.

"I honestly can't say I have noticed. I suppose she is not unattractive." I was sat on my usual stool with my laptop on the kitchen island countertop in front of me. I had given up on writing my blog post and was instead browsing the internet for reviews of air-fryers. I was thinking about writing a blog article about trends in cooking.

"And she is very busty. Have you noticed how big her boobs are?"

"No," I said without looking up from the laptop screen.

"I wonder what cup size her bra is. E at least I would have thought. Maybe F. Do you think it would be inappropriate if I asked her?"

"A little bit, honey."

"Maybe once I get to know her better. I find it fascinating. I know all of my friends' bra sizes. Did you know Michelle is a thirty-eight double F? That's huge, isn't it?"

"I suppose so, I don't really know about these things."

"So you honestly didn't notice that this girl, Abi, was pretty when you first saw her at the meeting?"

"I don't know. I don't go around making judgements on women's physical attractiveness." I could feel my face beginning to flush, I hoped Dawn did not notice.

"You can admit she's pretty. It won't upset me. It doesn't mean you're attracted to her just because you can recognise that she is pretty."

"Oh, OK. She's a pretty girl." I sighed in surrender.

"And she has massive boobs," Dawn said with a smile.

I sighed again. "OK."

"OK what?"

"I agree."

"What do you agree? Let me hear you say it."

"OK, I agree," I said quietly. "She has massive boobs."

"Ah-ha!" Dawn cried triumphantly. "So, you did notice."

"Only since you pointed it out."

"They are exceedingly large, though."

"What?"

"Her breasts. She has exceedingly large breasts. Anyway, how long is that little tramp planning to stay with us?"

"She's not a little tramp, honey. And she's going to stay with us for a week or two until she can move in with her friend."

"OK, fine. She can stay. But admit that her exceedingly large breasts are the reason you want her to stay with us."

"I'm just trying to help out someone in need," I insisted.

"You liar!" she snorted and then laughed when she said this. I knew she was only joking around. She wasn't really jealous of Abigail and her enormous rack.

That night, after we had gone to bed and turned out the lights, I thought about how nice it would be having Abigail stay with us for a while. It would be an opportunity for me to get to know her and to help her with her burdens. I might even write a blog article about the experience, I thought. I could call it The Kindness of Strangers. After a while of lying there thinking about Abigail, I reached over and touched Dawn on the hip and was about to ask her how she was feeling, but I heard her snore and decided to leave her be.

The following morning, I was sat in my usual spot at the kitchen island in my pyjamas and dressing gown, drinking my coffee and reading a news article on my laptop about a man who had been convicted for dealing heroin. He had an unusual name, and I was trying to work out his ethnic origin as the article did not make this clear.

I heard a knock on the patio doors. I looked up and saw Abigail stood outside, waving at me and smiling. I noticed she was wearing thick framed glasses, but her eyes were still the same vivid green colour behind them. Her long, black hair was hanging down around her shoulders. She wore a long blue t-shirt and flip-flops. The t-shirt was so long it came down over her waist. She had a tattoo of a skeleton on one of her firm-looking thighs. I could not tell if she was wearing knickers underneath the t-shirt.

I got up from the stool and went over and opened the patio door. "Good morning," I greeted her cheerfully.

"Hi," she said. "I was wondering if I could get a cup of coffee?"

"Of course, come on in. I've just made a cafetiere."

I poured two cups of coffee and we sat at the kitchen table together. I absent-mindedly stared into space, my eyes entirely by chance pointed at her breasts. They just happened to be in my line of sight. She raised her eyebrows at me, and I realised she must have thought I was ogling her, when in fact I was just looking at her t-shirt. And even if I was looking at her breasts, it was only because Dawn had made such a fuss about them the day before. I decided to make conversation to distract from my apparent faux-pas.

"I used to be a print journalist myself," I said. "I wrote for one of the national dailies until I found out that blogging was much more lucrative."

"How lucrative?" she said with evident interest.

"Well, I write my blog on a freelance basis for a company called Freeman Publications Limited, they pay me exactly one hundred pounds a year for the blogs I write."

The look of confusion on her pretty face made me smile. "A hundred pounds? How do you afford such a beautiful house with only a hundred pounds a year?"

"I also work as a consultant for a company called Freeman Publications Cayman Islands Incorporated. They pay me considerably more. They own the rights to my image that is used on the blog, and they invoice Freeman Publications UK Limited once a year for the use of my image. The total of the fee for the image rights is calculated as one hundred percent of the advertising and subscription revenue from the blog less one hundred pounds."

"One company invoices the other for all its revenue?" she looked astonished.

"Correct. And so, the UK company never makes any profit so never has to pay any tax."

I could see the look on her face as the cleverness of this set up dawned on her. I felt my penis twitching pleasantly in my pyjamas. "Oh I see, it's a tax dodge!"

"Tax dodge? Certainly not. I pay tax on the income for my consultancy work to the government in the Cayman Islands. The government here in the UK for some reason thinks that people on low incomes do not need to pay their fair share of tax, so I do not pay tax on the meagre income from my writing."

"Oh wow," her eyes were wide open. "So how much does Freeman Publications Cayman Islands pay you?"

"I don't like to discuss my income too much. But do you know what the revenue for click-through is? And do you know how many hits my blog gets per month? And how many people click on an advert for one of the fine products that is promoted in a tasteful sidebar on each of the pages?"

I could see her eyes widening as she tried to calculate the size of my pay-packet.

"What is the name of your blog?" She licked her lips after she said this.

"Freeman's World. It's named after me, Daniel Freeman." I tried not to let my pride show too much.

"I'll look it up. People have told me that blogging can be profitable, if you know what you are doing."

My penis was growing quite hard now. I realised I would need to do something to disguise my erection. I carefully retied the belt of my dressing gown, hiding the outline of my swelling member from her view.

"Basically, if you took the amount I made in my last year writing for the newspaper, and put a zero on the end of it, that's roughly what I earn each year from writing the blog. Sorry, I mean for my consultancy work for the company that owns the rights to the image that is used on the blog."