Secrets and Lies (6 page)

Later, she worked as a nightclub hostess which gave her time for her acting classes during the day and allowed her to be available for any possible acting roles that might come her way. The job played to the dramatic side of her personality as it involved her dressing up in often quite provocative outfits which ranged from wearing a sexy nurse's uniform to a black leather basque with stockings and suspenders and outrageously high stiletto heels. The idea was to entice and select what the club owners considered to be the “right” type of risque but upmarket clientele. It was a job which Hope relished, but with her acting classes during the day, then working at the club in the evenings it was seldom that she got to bed much before four o' clock in the morning.

It was exhausting but Hope was determined to make it as an actress one day. She seized every opportunity to network her way around the nightclub scene in the hope that she would get noticed. It wasn't long until she begun indulging in the drink and drugs that permeated the club culture and very soon the partying lifestyle began to take its toll on her.

She was a drug addict and a complete mess by the time she was only twenty two years old. She was a bright young woman but wasted what should have been her golden years. At first, she tried justifying her drug habit as a means of staying awake and maintaining her momentum. Although it felt like she was having a wonderful time, the drugs were ruining her life. Everyone else was taking drugs and drinking to excess so the immature part of her felt that she had to do the same. She had a job and never missed an acting class or interview, so from the outside, it seemed as if she was keeping it together, but eventually the cracks began to show on her carefully constructed facade. She started to feel physically drained and often couldn't remember where she'd been or what she'd done for hours at a time.

The lifestyle was fun at the beginning but it certainly wasn't fun after a while. Hope was naturally a loud and colourful character but there was a dark side to her too. She had plunged herself into a misspent but by no means wasted period of partying. She knew lots of people on the nightclub scene and made some invaluable contacts in the acting industry who would eventually give her the biggest break of her career. When she entered a room everyone immediately stopped to take notice of her. She exuded confidence and energy and was an enigmatic an
d very charismatic character which seemed to draw people to her.

She used to wear very flamboyant clothes and colourful coats and had a striking aff
inity to wearing red. Her effervescent, energetic personality attracted a lot of attention from men. She had been single for a total of one month from the age of eighteen to her self-imposed celibate sabbatical at the ripe old age of twenty seven. Sex was a way of bolstering her low self-esteem and boyfriends helped her to avoid being alone. She would see a man in a room and become magnetised by him, which later therapy sessions taught her was very dangerous, because she was keeping herself in a spiral of unhappiness. She realised that she would never have the relationship she so longed for unless she learned to accept herself on her own. 

Deep down, she was actually very unhappy and discontented when she was heavily involved in alcohol and drugs. She put on a fantastic show that she was having an amazing time but even she knew that she couldn't burn the candle at both ends forever. Her hectic lifestyle combined with surviving on just three hours' sleep a night while holding down a job and pursuing her acting dream was becoming utterly exhausting.

It got to the point where she was desperately trying to resist the drugs whilst constantly battling the incessant little voice in her head that tried to convince her she wasn't really an addict; after all, she wasn't homeless and hungry, she was still holding herself together. She even left a boyfriend who she blamed for her drug habit but it scared her when he was able to quit while her addiction became even worse!

S
lowly she began to realise the truth about her situation and the harsh reality was that she had nobody to blame but herself for her predicament. She was afraid to stop taking everything all at once and wondered if she would still be the same fun person to be around without the drugs and alcohol as her crutches. Abstinence scared her as she was absolutely convinced that she was going to turn into a very boring person and dreaded the thought of remaining abstinent for the rest of her life.

Her light
-bulb moment came when a close friend died of an overdose. It was the reality check that she so badly needed. She was absolutely devastated and it took her a long time to recover from the shock of her friend's unexpected and untimely death. He was only twenty three years old when he died and she realised that she wanted more from life than what drink and drugs could ever possibly offer her. She knew she wanted to settle down and get married one day and maybe even have children and she began to realise that unless she became clean and sober that that life would never be hers.

When she me
t Niall it had been exactly nine hundred and twenty two days since she had touched drink or drugs.

“One day at a time” was what her counsellor had advised. “Tell yourself that you won't have a drink today, focus on one day and ever
ything else will come together,” was the best advice she’d ever been given.

There was a part of her that was glad of her experiences with drugs and what that life had taught her. She was grateful because her addiction and ongoing recovery had made her a much more grounded person and had instilled an overriding sense of gratitude within
her. Now, she appreciated the small pleasures in life. Suddenly, she was getting invited to people's houses again because she'd stopped being the drunken, drugged up, loud-mouth attention seeker who often embarrassed herself and everyone else around her.

Although the death of her close friend was the initial trigger for Hope in cleaning up her act, another turning point came when her beloved father threatened to never talk to her again, unless she cleaned up her act. He gave her a ferocious scolding and told her in no uncertain terms that she was a loser. Hope had immediately burst into tears and that's when she stopped taking drugs and her life started anew.

She still regularly attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings, sometimes going every day if she was feeling particularly stressed. She'd been clean for almost three years but she knew that she had to remain vigilant in her battle against drugs as there was quite a large part of her that would always be an addict. Her Narcotics Anonymous meetings were her lifeline when she'd first embarked on her battle to become clean. She actually liked going there; it was a place where she felt completely safe and absolutely understood.

There were still days when she desperately longed for a drink; a chilled glass of white wine on a warm summer day or
a mulled wine at Christmas. She couldn't even allow herself to have one small glass of wine, which was often like torture to her as her husband, Niall, was something of a wine connoisseur. She often regarded him with envy as he indulged in his ritual of decanting, swooshing and sniffing a bottle of red. It looked like such delectable fun and it was all she could do in those moments not to give in to temptation.

She was well aware of her own shortcomings and limitations and knew that she was an “all or nothing” sort of person, so nothing was her only choice. She realised that a seemingly innocent small glass of wine would quickly lead her on the slippery descent into drugs again. Her old lifestyle just wasn't worth it to her anymore. Every day she would wake up feeling like she'd been run over by a truck. She was an addictive person a
nd very driven, but the flipside was that she could also be focused in a negative way, which was how she treated alcohol and drugs. It took her a day to stop drinking and taking drugs, but every day, especially at the start, was a constant internal struggle.

Today Hope prided herself on being a trustworthy and dependable person, but sometimes she would recall glimpses of herself from her past as an addict and it frightened her to know how devious and manipulative she was capable of being. She'd buried that old part of herself deep beneat
h the surface, but it was still there, lurking somewhere inside.

She
quit her job at the nightclub as soon as she made the decision to become clean and she focused with renewed determination on her acting career. Her main goal was to get on television and she would do almost anything to achieve her aim. She bombarded the national television station, TV4, with phone calls, letters and show reels until they finally relented and gave her a chance at presenting on their early morning children's programme, The Playroom, from six to eight o' clock.

It was literally six months to the day after she had stopped all the drink and drugs that she got her first television role. It was a small break, but just what she needed to get on her way and boost her self-confidence. She was very proud of herself for her achievement and knew that all the years she'd spent networking and being tenacious were finally paying off. The minute she stopped taking drugs, she needed something el
se to focus on and she knew that if she worked at something even half as much as she worked on scoring drugs, and she had spent a lot of time and effort trying to maintain that habit, that she would be very successful, and that is exactly what happened.

Hope saw children's television presenting as the
perfect medium to launch into the world of acting. She'd found herself additional work as a researcher and outside broadcaster for the channel's sister radio show, so her media presence was already growing exponentially. She was convinced that it was only a matter of time and continued perseverance before she would finally achieve her big acting break. Her job on the television show helped to increase her confidence in front of an audience and also allowed her to make mistakes and become more accustomed to a live camera.

The Playroom was an ideal showcase for the innovative, open style of presenting that Hope naturally displayed. The show aired every Monday to Friday morning and its biggest appeal was that it offered viewer interaction, funny jokes, live music and crazy competitions. The show was an instant hit with teenagers who would watch it bef
ore school and by the time she left, two years later, she had an unprecedented huge fan following! It was an amazing achievement for a show that had started with a tight budget and a simple idea to simply amuse children for a few hours with slightly zany, off-the-wall entertainment. Many viewers raved about the show, calling it “a truly wonderful gem.” The Playroom became the talk of the school playground, where almost everyone loved it.

Hope became an overnight sensation, finding a unique, enviable level of success that few other presenters achieved on the show since she left. Her bright, brisk and bouncy personality was perfectly suited to presenting
shows like The Playroom and she wisely realised that she had found her niche in television presenting. One of her greatest assets was that she genuinely liked people and was interested in them which came across when she was interviewing. She wasn't afraid to pull faces and say silly things which people found disarming; it was obvious that she had a talent for putting others at ease.

Her time presenting children's television and as a research assistant who sometimes did outside broadcasts helped to familiarise her with the technical side of television, as well as providing her
with the opportunity to learn about dealing with the public. Most of her time on her outside broadcasts was spent roaming the streets with no audience in sight. The radio station asked her to talk to the public about topics as varied as conducting a survey on the latest political fiasco to opinions on the newest pop sensation. She had a natural flair and ability for television presenting and as much as she enjoyed it, acting was still her as yet unfulfilled dream. Her experiences developed within her an ability to adapt to most situations in or out of the studio, skills which would later prove invaluable in her personal life.

Saoirse Darcy stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, glaring mutinously at her mother. She was wearing black leather trousers and a T-shirt that was ripped across her waist. She had just dyed her hair a very unflattering shade of neon pink and her naturally pretty face was plastered in thick white foundation. Her blue eyes were rimmed in heavy, black eye-liner and lashings of clumpy mascara. The whole effect was quite startling.

Kerry stared in open-mouthed, abject horror at her younger daughter's shocking transformation and for once in her life she was at a complete loss for words. She couldn't believe the apparition that had manifested in front of her.

I must be dreaming
, she thought, blinking rapidly several times, as if trying to banish the scowling girl in front of her.

Saoirse had celebrated her thirteenth birthday the previous week and she seemed to have had a personality transplant. Gone was the happy-go-lucky, cheerful, loving, chatty girl and in her place was a monosyllabic, moody young woman, who her mother hardly recognised.

Kerry's friends complained at length about their teenage daughters' mood swings and stroppy ways, but she tended to think they were exaggerating for the most part. After all, Emer, Kerry's eldest daughter, had sailed through her teenage years. There'd been some mild moodiness which was only to be expected with all the hormones that were raging through her system, but nothing as dramatic as the sudden, unexpected change she'd seen in Saoirse.