He might as well telephone Control.

I’m in San Francisco.

Come and get me.

No, he thought, as he drove across town.

He had to stay and see this through until the end.

He gripped the wheel tightly and concentrated on the pattern of his breathing. The rooms had taught him that anger and frustration were two of his most delicate triggers. A good meeting was like meditation and he knew that it would help him to put the lid back on his temper.

Eva was waiting for him, leaning against the wall by the door. She was wearing a woollen jumper, expensive, long enough to reach well down beyond her waist, a pair of jeans and chunky leather boots. She had a black felt beret on her head. She looked supremely cute.

“Hello, John.”

“You’re early.”

She leaned forward, pressing herself away from the wall. “Thought maybe I’d give you a hand. That alright?”

“Course,” he said.

They worked quickly and quietly: preparing the room, setting up the table with the tea and coffee, washing the crockery. Milton’s thoughts went back to the meeting with the police. He thought about everything he knew. Two escorts found dead on the same stretch of headland. Madison going missing just five miles from the same spot. It looked bad for her. Maybe there was another explanation for what had happened, but, then again, maybe there wasn’t. The most obvious explanation was often the right one.

“You alright?” Eva asked him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Looks like you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got some stuff on my mind.”

“A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“I know.”

The regulars started to arrive twenty minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start. Milton went behind the table and made their coffees. The room was quickly busy. Eva was waylaid by a young actor who obviously had a thing for her. She rolled her eyes and, as he nudged her towards the room for the start of the meeting, she paused by the table.

“You want to get dinner again?”

“I’m not sure I’ll be the best company tonight.”

“I’ll take the risk”.

She looked straight at him and winked.

“Okay,” he smiled. “That’d be great.”

The room emptied out as it got closer to the top of the hour and Milton quickly poured himself a coffee.

Smulders hijacked him as he was about to go inside.

“About time you opened that mouth of yours in a meeting, John.”

“Do I get to say no?”

Smulders looked at him with an intense sincerity. “Man, you need me to remind you? You need me to explain? You’re sick. And the cure for your sickness, the best cure I ever found, is to get involved and participate.” He enunciated that last word carefully, each syllable pronounced slowly, and then pressed a pamphlet into his hands. The title on the pamphlet was THE TWELVE PROMISES. “Here they are, Smith. Read them out when I tell you and think on them when you do. Alright?”

“Fine.”

Milton sat down as Smulders brought the gavel down and opened proceedings. He had recruited a speaker from another meeting that he attended, a middle-aged woman with worry-lines carved in deep grooves around her eyes and prematurely grey hair. She started to speak, her share focussed on the relationship with her ex-husband and how he had knocked her around. It was worthy, and she was a powerful speaker, but Milton found his thoughts turning back to the interview and the police. They had already wasted too much time and now they threatened to waste even more. It was three months already. Milton did not know if Madison was still alive but if she was, and if she was in danger, the longer they wasted with him made it less likely that they would be able to help her.

The speaker came to the end of her share, wiping away the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. Smulders thanked her, there was warm applause, and then the arms went up as men and women who had found similarities between the speaker’s story and their own — that was what they were enjoined to look for, not differences — lined up to share their own feelings. Milton listened for ten minutes but couldn’t help zoning out again.

Richie Grimes put his hand up. He had come into the room late and Milton hadn’t noticed him. He looked now and saw, with shock, that the man’s face was badly bruised. His right eye was swollen and almost completely shut, a bruise that ran from black to deep purple all the way around it. There was a cut on his forehead that had been sutured shut and another beneath his chin. Milton watched as he lowered his arm again; he moved gingerly, pain flickering on his face. Broken ribs.

“My name is Richie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Richie,” they all said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look at the fucking state of me, right? It’s like what I was sharing about last time, you know, the trouble I’m in? I guess maybe I was hoping it was all bluster, that it’d go away, but I always knew that was just wishful thinking. So I was coming home from work last night and — boom — that was it, I got jumped from behind by these two goons with baseball bats. Broken nose, two broken ribs. I got a week to pay back all the money that I owe or they’re coming back. I’d tell the police but there’s nothing they can do — what are they gonna do, put a man on me twenty-four hours? Nah,” he shook his head, “that ain’t gonna happen. If I can’t find the money, I’m gonna get more of the same and now, with the ribs and everything, I’m not sure I can even work properly. I gotta tell you, I’m closer to a drink today than I have been for months. I’ve been to two other meetings today already. Kinda feel like I’m hanging on by my fingertips.”

The others nodded their understanding and agreement. The woman next to him rested her hand on his shoulder and others used his story to bounce off for similar experiences of their own. If Richie was looking for advice, he didn’t get any — that was ‘grandiose,’ and not what you came to A.A. to find — but he got sympathy and empathy and examples that he could use as a bulwark against the temptation of getting drunk. Milton listened to the simple tales that were told, his head down and his hands clasped tightly on his lap.

The meeting drew towards a close and Smulders looked over to him and nodded. It was time. Milton took the pamphlet that his fingers had been fretting with all meeting and cleared his throat.

“‘If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.’” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “‘We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. The feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises?’”

The group chimed back at him “We think not.”

“‘They are being fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialise if we work for them.’”

Peace.

Serenity.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

We will not regret?

Milton doubted that could ever possibly come to pass. Not for him. His transgressions were different to those of the others. He hadn’t soiled himself in the office, slapped his wife, crashed his car. He had killed nearly one hundred and fifty men and women. He knew that he would always regret the past, every day for as long as he lived, and what was the point in even trying to shut the door on it? The room behind his door was stuffed full of bodies, stacked all the way up to the ceiling, one hundred and fifty corpses and gallons of blood, and the door wouldn’t begin to close.