‘I had to look at the bigger picture. It was the destination, not the journey’

Her parents dumped her in the carpark of a rehab centre in the middle of the night. So navigating the path to true love should be a walk in the park for Charlotte Cripps

Illustration by Amara May

When Alex told me over coffee he had to move, I was filled with horror. What if he meant really move? Like, out of London? Leave for America? Forever? We needed to have crunch talks. Where are you thinking of going? He can’t tell me because he doesn’t even know. Maybe Brighton? Brighton. I had to act.

Even the thought of him leaving Notting Hill and its environs sent me into a headspin. I might never see him again? It was then that a light bulb went off in my head: was it divine intervention or luck? My sister had a flat off the Portobello Road and was moving to Brazil for six months to try to write a novel. Her flat would be empty.

I didn’t hang about with the flat matchmaking. This could be a win-win for all of us, I thought, as I took him over there the next afternoon to meet her. I told my sister to play it down when she met Alex and pretend that she hadn’t heard much about him – even though she was clearly sick of the sound of his name.

Even the night before, when I was ranting on and on about him, she stopped abruptly and said: “Hang on a minute, you sound like Cathy in Wuthering Heights.” She started reciting the bit when she tells Nelly, “I am Heathcliff!. He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” I had to agree there were some similarities in her depth of feeling.

Was she going to ban me from talking about him in an act of tough love, rather like my parents had done all those years ago when they dropped me off in an alcohol/drug rehab car park in Salisbury and drove off? All I could hear were the wheels churning up gravel as they sped off into the distance. No goodbyes! Just days filled with group therapy and peer evaluation and vacuuming the place – a sprawling house with no escape route.

My sister would look at me as if she was thinking, ‘move on, get a life, this is a pipe dream’, but I wonder what she thinks now she is auntie to his adorable children? 

My sister used to look at me as if she was thinking “move on get a life, this is a pipe dream” but I wonder what she thinks now she is auntie to his adorable children?

Did she have no faith in me? Recovery was possible and we could be happy. There was something drawing us together. Alex offered to pay my sister in cash upfront for six months and I had the delightful task of collecting my sister’s post regularly, securing a new method of contact that went beyond our recovery meetings.

At the beginning of recovery, you are encouraged to attend 90 meetings in 90 days. I was quite a few years in and didn’t need that many – nevertheless, my sponsor was happy I had upped my attendance. But seeing Alex in my sister’s home was like a dream. I felt the chemistry as strongly as the first time I met him.

I’d heard he was dating other women – but did I care? Daily interrogations of Simon revealed these women were more high maintenance than Alex, so definitely nothing to worry about; merely mild flirtations to boost his self-esteem. My psychic had instructed me: “Don’t react, stay calm, be his rock.” I had a calm exterior but the whole situation was like a storm in my mind. I had to look at the bigger picture – and in this case, it was the destination I was interested in, not the journey.