In Denial: A Relapse Story

Rachel said a near-inaudible thank you to George and Zoe, the latter still not awake but slumped cozily in her stroller. Rachel envied her: no responsibilities, no worries, and no need to apologise when acting like a child. She thought of Adam and how she wished he could forgive her for her tantrums as George must forgive Zoe for hers.

The walk home was a blur, Rachel’s head filled with every permutation of every conversation they could possibly have and every variant of every stance Adam could possibly take in response. Shelly dodged and wove through the pedestrians, paying little mind to the relapsers who toddled along or were being pushed in their special buggies. When she got to the front door, heart racing and head pounding, all her anxiety was reserved for Adam, for their marriage, and for the hope she had that she had not been so hasty in walking off.

She turned the key. She pushed it open. The door revealed the hallway and the path to the living room, where Adam sat with his back to Rachel. As she crept forward, his neck turned slightly. Perhaps he was motioning to say something and then left it, an undelivered message: of spite or of reconciliation, Rachel could not be sure. Instead, he turned back towards the television.

“Adam, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Adam replied. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so… so wrapped up in work. I won’t go to Glasgow if you want me to stay. You’d be well within your rights to ask that of me, Rachel.”

She paused before replying. Something stirred within her to tell Adam that he ought to stay at home, look after her, coo at her, and ultimately give up work for her altogether. Rachel shook herself back to reality: she had to be an adult about this. Against her every urge, she resisted admonishing him for his independent life.

“Oh god, I’ve been so childish. So selfish. I’ve just been so shaken up and, well, my mum isn’t helping and all this relapsing going on around me. I’m just so tired, Adam. I think, deep down, I’m just so overwhelmed.” Rachel broke out in sobs at that point. Adam twisted around to face her and scooped her hunched frame in his arms, gently rocking her and kissing her upon the crown of her head. She needed this more than he knew.

“Shhhh, shhhh. It’s okay, darling. We’ll be okay.” The rocking stemmed her sobs, but Adam kept going and going. Rachel went back and forth, from sobbing to staring blankly to smiling, until she finally lifted her head. When she looked up at him, Adam was smiling down at her with a lightness and a joy on his face that put Rachel’s mind completely at ease.

“I need a night off. You need a night off. Let’s order a takeaway, how about that?” he offered. “I’ll move Glasgow back a week and we can really spend some quality time together, okay?”

“Okay…” Rachel’s mind was all about the takeaway, moving quickly on from whatever she had been so childish about.

McDonald’s was what she wanted. She wasn’t even shy when she said it. Adam was up and to the kitchen drawers, searching through the menus from all their locals - Chinese, Indian, Thai, even a half-decent pizza place down the road - when Rachel got on her knees on the sofa and blurted it out. Adam winced a little bit, though Rachel paid no mind.

“McDonald‘s it is, then.”

Adam ordered on his phone. His order was a simple cheeseburger, water for his drink, and a small fries. It wasn’t his first choice of takeaway. A king prawn pad thai or a rich lamb Dhansak were more to his taste, but this night belonged to Rachel and her choice was for some mass-produced burger chain. Before she ordered, she went upstairs to change into something more comfortable. When she returned, she practically skipped over to the sofa in an oversized hoodie and a pair of fluffy pyjama bottoms that she practically never wore. She looked… cute. Her order took a tiny bit longer than Adam’s did: twenty chicken nuggets, a plain hamburger, large fries, a large Coca Cola, six mozzarella sticks, a chocolate brownie, and a McFlurry covered in Oreo crumbs. When she passed the phone back for Adam to order, she smiled coyly.

“I’m just a little hungry, d-… Adam. Judge if you want, but I want to pig out and zone out.” Rachel nestled herself into Adam’s side. “What are we watching? Film? Start a new series? Anything but a documentary.”

Before Adam could even think, Rachel had command of the remote control.

“Oooooh, what’s this?”

Re-Parenting was a film from 2022, popular over in the United States but had only recently been added to British streaming services in 2024. The show’s thumbnail was bright and eye-catching, a light blue background with multicoloured imprints of rattles, pacifiers, and diapers lining the border. To the foreground were the central stars of the show: Sheryl Lee Ralph and Damon Wayans pretending to shout in each other’s faces while their pigtailed and onesie-wearing daughter, Lauren London, sits with a vacant grin at their feet.

“I’ve heard this is SO GOOD!” Rachel exclaimed.

‘Growing older doesn’t mean growing up’ read the tagline. Rachel read the text that followed intently, grinning as she scanned the paragraph.

‘Re-Parenting (2022) stars Damon Wayans and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Marcus and Shawna Arnold, a typical couple getting older and growing apart. But, when their daughter Kayla (Lauren London) turns up on their doorstep in the midst of a relapse, the pair put aside their childish squabbles and re-learn what family is all about. A quirky and heartwarming comedy from the makers of One Little Lie (2015) and Playtime’s Over (2018).’

“This looks really good, doesn’t it? Let’s have a look. If we don’t like it, we can always change it over.” Adam silently agreed, though he seemed to spend half the evening propping his laptop on the arm of the sofa and typing away with a puzzled look on his face. Rachel, meanwhile, was engrossed.

She laughed at Sheryl Lee Ralph’s snarky quips, the silly dad jokes of Damon Wayans, and even found herself giggling at Lauren London’s relapse acting. That was all the rage now in Hollywood. Unless an actress mainly did period pieces set prior to the 1980s, there was an expectation that she perfect her relapse acting or just give up entirely. Everything from dramas to comedies to horror films had at least one relapsed woman in a side role, a constant reminder of women’s biological clock ticking ever downwards to their near-inevitable regression.

When the delivery driver arrived, she didn’t take her eyes off the screen and merely gestured with a wave of the hand that Adam should go and retrieve the food. When he plopped the bag in front of her, she tucked in voraciously with care for neither manners nor spilled ketchup. Adam slunk off to the other end of the sofa, propping his laptop on the arm and trying not to look as Rachel stuffed her face with fries and mozzarella sticks. To her mind, nothing she was doing was out of the ordinary. She was a hungry girl having a little indulgence after an emotional time, so who cared if she got a little messy? Who cared if a little speck of mushed burger fell from her lips as she laughed at the film? She sure didn’t and Adam didn’t raise any complaints. Quietly, though, he typed at his computer and left his own meal to go cold in the bag.

Twenty minutes passed, Rachel giggling along as she watched Lauren London cry “uh oh!” as she flung a bottle of juice at Damon Wayans’ head and then bouncing up and down as Sheryl Lee Ralph chased a toddling, half-naked Lauren London through a crowded park. Unbeknownst to Rachel, her husband glanced over intermittently between bursts of frantic typing. During a particularly heartfelt scene where Ralph and Wayans put Lauren London in her crib and harmonised a soft lullaby to get her to sleep, Adam suddenly bolted up.

“Need some kitchen roll? I’ll just be a second.”

Rachel felt a little teary at the scene in front of her and she turned away for just a moment to hold back the deluge she feared would come. Looking to her right, down the sofa and to its right-angled edge, she spied Adam’s laptop open and unlocked. Some irrational jolt of curiosity coursed through her and so she sidled up to the glowing screen with a series of bounces of her rump along the couch. Her hands were covered in a thin layer of grease, salt, and tomato sauce as she shuffled up to the space that Adam left, smearing her muck as she went.

Wishing she had just kept her eyes in front, Rachel looked at the series of tabs open on the web browser. The screen in front was a blank Google search page with nothing written in the search bar, but above was a row of four grey boxes bearing some triggering language.

They read, from left to right: ‘relapse warning signs’, ‘my wife has relapsed help’, ‘relapse spousal custody rights’, and ‘adult daycares north london’. Rachel threw a fit.

Adam’s cold food was lifted from the paper takeaway bag and thrown upon the ground with such force that his burger’s patty split three ways. The man himself walked in with a paper towel to hand and a glass of water with a straw in it, his eyes watering at the sight of his beloved wife stomping her feet. Rachel could not have cared less as she picked up Adam’s laptop and threatened to throw it out of their bedroom window.

“Rachel, please. I’m worried about you, I… I need you to understand,” he spoke, his voice trembling life a leaf. Rachel folded up his laptop and chucked it on the sofa, then strode up to him with her heavy steps and balled her fists tightly. She looked up at him and saw her handsome, kind husband looking down at her. Part of her wanted to stop, to hear him out, but then a larger wave of indignation came over her.

“My mum was right! You’re… you’re just like them, right? You’re just another man, trying to hold everything over girls like me. Trying to put me in a nappy and make me waddle and go all fucking dumb and, and, and-…”

“I need you to trust me. I know it must feel awful but we need to make sure you’re safe.”

“Safe?! Safe??!! You’re gonna lock me up in some daycare for invalids and weirdos. No! Enough. I’m going to my mummy’s and YOU. CAN’T. STOP. ME.” She involuntarily poked out her tongue and then flipped him an obscene gesture as she gathered up her house keys and phone, put her shoes on, and made a dash out the door. Adam called after her meekly, the glass of water and paper towels still in his hands, but it was of no use. Inside Rachel was a surge of adrenaline and endorphins, her mind flooded with a reassuring warmth like nothing she had felt in all her adult life.

She was still dressed in her oversized hoodie and fluffy pyjamas, marching her way to the train station and then onwards to her mother’s flat. People eyed her strangely, like a lost child that someone ought to help. When she alighted in Kensington, a platform assistant approached her and asked her in a tone normally reserved for infants: “Are you alright, sweetie?”

“Of course I’m fucking alright,” Rachel barked back.

When she reached her mother’s door, breathless and flush in the face, she had nothing to day. She didn’t need to, though. Sheila took her daughter in her arms with haste.

“I always knew this would happen,” she said, cutting through Rachel’s sobs. “He’s just like every other man.”