drove off and left me, like a lemon, at the side of the road.â
âWhere were you?â Donna interrupted, clearly trying to picture the scene.
âOn the M4. Somewhere between Reading and Swindon.â
âGod, the highway â¦â
âAnyhow, I was crying my eyes out. My shoes were still in the car, and I didnât know what on earth I was going to do next. Then a white Porsche pulled up ahead of me and Jaz got out. He was on his way back from Londonâit was pretty miraculously one of his sober daysâand he asked me if Iâd broken down. So I howled for a bit and told him all about the fight with my mother, and he offered me a lift home.â
âCool,â said Donna, impressed. âNothing like that ever happens to me.â
âSo on the way back, he found out that I lived in Bristol too, only a couple of miles from him. And he was so sweet, when I kept blubbing and saying I never wanted to see my hateful mother again, he offered to take me back to his place until Iâd calmed down.â
âDouble cool.â Donna sighed. âAnd then I guess he just seduced you.â
Suzyâs smile was wry. âWell, I like to think I seduced him, but what can I tell you? I was eighteen.â She shrugged. âI thought I was in love with Jaz Dreyfuss.â
âWerenât you?â
âLust.â Suzy paused, struggling to be honest. âOr more likely in love with the idea of getting out of my motherâs house for good.â
Mystified, Donna said, âCouldnât you have just moved into a studio apartment?â
âI could have, but it wouldnât have irritated her nearly so much.â
Donna was struggling to find a speck of romance among the debris. âBut you liked him, surely?â
âOh, of course I did, I fancied him rotten.â Smiling, Suzy remembered that feeling in the pit of her stomach, like an aviary full of hummingbirds. âHe was lovely to me, he was gorgeous-looking, he was rich and a famous rock starâ¦crikey, who wouldnât?â
âAnd he liked you.â Donna was hopeful.
âOh, he liked me all right. Almost as much as he liked drinking.â
âWas it really awful? I canât imagine what he was like.â
âJaz?â Suzy paused; this was something else she remembered only too clearly. âWell, he drank. And drank. And drank and drank and drank. And then he drank some more. What you have to understand is that back then I was quite innocent in that respect. Iâd never known an alcoholic before. For a while, I didnât realize how bad it actually was. Half the time, I just thought he was lying around unconscious because he was a rock star andâ¦basically, thatâs what rock stars do .â
Donna blinked her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. âAnd then you married him.â
âI was nineteen. People shouldnât be allowed to marry when theyâre nineteen and hell-bent on getting back at their mothers. They should have pretend marriages,â said Suzy, âlike little kids have pretend shops, with Monopoly money and packets of candies and little plastic tills that go ding .â
âIt must have been glamorous, though,â Donna persisted. âJetting off all over the world, brilliant vacations, meeting famous people.â
Suzy gave her a you-must-be-joking look.
âThereâs nothing glamorous about living with a drunk. It wears you down. And it drives you absolutely mad, knowing that it could be brilliant, if only he didnât drink. Jaz was lovely when he was sober,â Suzy said sadly. âI canât tell you how many fights we had about it. One night I actually got down on my knees and begged him to stop. Iâd booked him into a clinic, the taxi was waiting outside, and Maeve was threatening to carry him down three flights of stairs and throw him into itâ¦â
âAnd?â
âHe refused to go. We