by Adele Parks
18
Chapter 18, Simon
That first sip, the drink in the kitchen before he set off to the party, there was nothing like it. Simon was still respectful of it, so he did try to sip rather than gulp. Or at least, he mostly did. That sip, it was a potent, amorous purr. It was go time. Time to go.
A gulp? When he arrived at the party, well that was more of a mild erotic shock. Time to let go. To relax, to embrace, to forget. It was all that and more.
The alcohol caressed his tongue, played with his mouth, his mind and body. Like a lover. Better than a lover because it didn’t leave him, bore him or betray him. Alcohol didn’t ever start talking about bills or care home visits or getting some fresh air. Not ever. Alcohol is as close to time travel as we have, that was a fact, right? Science hadn’t come up with anything better. He got to go back. Back to a more carefree place.
What comes next? The high. That had lots of different forms, always good. It depended where he was. Who he was with. It might be that his body felt sort of chill, like he was having a conversation with an old mate, a mate who thought he was funny. Fuck it, he was funny. Or maybe sometimes he wanted to feel like he was alone, slipping into a warm bath or a cosy bed. Somewhere comfortable and private where no arsehole was going to disturb him with demands and deadlines or disappointment and dullness. Or if he was really feeling it, if he was out, like tonight, at a party say – the high? Well, it was like jumping off a cliff.
And flying.
He was one huge, important, effervescent being. Everything was at least ten times as exciting as it had been half an hour ago, twenty times. Listen to that music, man. It’s sweet, right? And look at these people, they’re hot, yeah? Hot and clever. Every single word that dropped from their lips was so compelling, so significant. He could listen to them all night. Even though they were all talking at the same time. Wow, it was loud in there. Really loud. He couldn’t hear himself think. That was funny, right? Because that was not a bad thing. Shut it out. Thoughts and stuff, who needed them? You make a good point, my man. You are very wise. Really, we should stay in touch. I feel you get me. Yeah, you feel it too? We’re like soulmates or something. Yeah, do you hear me? I’ll tell you where I’m coming from. Exactly! Exactly that! You have hit the nail on the head, my friend. Here, put your number in my phone. We need to talk more. We really do. We’ll go out. Have a beer. But right now, I need to go and pee. We’ll catch up. Yeah.
There was always a sodding queue. Good job he had brought a drink with him. What? The bottle was empty. Well then, he’d use that. No point in queueing when he had a handy receptacle. He just needed to find a bedroom because Daisy would go apeshit if he got his cock out and pissed in the bottle whilst he queued outside the bathroom. So uptight. Who the hell had he been talking to downstairs? He didn’t know. Darren? Darragh? Nice bloke though. He should have got his number. They could have gone out. Had a few jars.
Oops sorry, sorry Sophie, sorry Sophie’s friend. You carry on. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Hey, what you watching? Is that Selena Gomez? She’s really hot, right? Sorry, sorry probably shouldn’t say that in front of you. The girls giggled as he walked into the door frame, trying to exit. I’m going now. Just pretend you never saw me. Fuck what are they playing downstairs? This is my all-time favourite song EVER. I know all the words. Well, like most of them.
It had started to smudge, time had. Or at least falter and jerk. Out of my way. I need to dance. Careful. Watch it buddy. You should dance to this too. Everyone should. Shouldn’t they? This song is awesome. I promise you. Like the lyrics really mean something, don’t they? Like they mean everything. Are you hearing that? Do you get that? I am actually a super good dancer. Whoops. Sorry. That will wash out. Don’t worry about it. You are cute. You really are. Can I get you a drink? What? You’re with him? Don’t worry about it. I’m married too, right, who cares? Not my wife, apparently.
Piss off, Luke, don’t touch me. You fucking hypocrite. I was just talking to the woman. No harm done. Right, no harm. No, I am not ready to go home. No, I don’t want to call it a night. This might be your idea of late, mate, but it’s not mine. I am nowhere near ready to stop the party. We should do shots. PARTY, PARTY, PARTY.
Oh fuck, I’m sorry. Was that valuable? It just fell off the fucking shelf.
19
Chapter 19, Daisy
I dash down the stairs, one foot in front of another, apologising to the people who are queueing for the bathroom or simply chatting, as they have to swiftly move out of my path. I take stock of the scene and instantly surmise that Simon, shamefully drunk, has smashed Connie’s French porcelain table lamp. I’m overwhelmed by a simultaneous sense of protectiveness and powerlessness and for a moment I can’t move, so I watch the scene from the elevated position, two or three steps up the staircase.
Then fury seizes me. Why can’t he just behave like everyone else?
The lamp was on the hall console, pride of place. It’s eye-catching and Connie likes to tell the story of her great-grandfather living in Paris as a young man. He worked backstage at a theatre but apparently had access to all the artists, writers and philosophers of the time; he used to drink with them in cafés and bars on the Left Bank. An actress had gifted the lamp to him in 1920, the year it was made. It held sentimental value then, now it has that in spades, plus a substantial price tag attached. Not that Connie would ever sell it; she just had it valued for insurance purposes. The lamp was the only thing her great-grandfather brought home and Connie had worked quite hard to ensure that it was passed to her and not any of her cousins or three sisters. I’m not into antiques but I’ve always admired the lamp. It was designed in the Egyptian taste that was popular during the roaring twenties. It was decorated with fluting and had gilded panther heads on either side. Now, it lies in four big pieces, at first count I can see that there are about ten smaller pieces scattered about. It’s irreparable.
I don’t imagine Simon caused this chaos deliberately, but it was careless in the extreme. He’s apologising loudly although in an aggressive, unconvincing way that really means he thinks Connie is to blame for putting her precious, sentimentally valuable heirloom on a console where people are partying. Guests are crowding around, ghouls. Luke is thoughtfully trying to smooth things over, he takes Simon’s arm and tries to guide him somewhere private, but Simon pushes him away. Simon is pale, his temple is pulsing, as though something is beating at him from the inside. ‘I don’t need your help. This is your fault. If you hadn’t stuck your nose in. I was just trying to get away from you,’ he sneers. There’s an edge to his voice, a layer of meaning that isn’t lost on Luke, who keeps his jaw clenched shut, he’s determined that nothing he’ll regret will escape. He looks away hurt, beat. Simon looks furious, hostile. Something is going to happen, something already has.
Connie pushes through the onlookers. Seeing the smashed lamp, her face crumples like a used tissue, she turns grey. I feel so sad for her. I’m sorry but powerless. It’s done. Ever the perfect hostess, in a loud, calm voice she tells everyone to step back. ‘I don’t want any cut feet. The important thing is no one is hurt.’
‘Connie, I am so sorry, I—’ I break off. She’s holding her hand up to silence me. I don’t think she can bear to hear a word from anyone right now, least of all me. She smiles up at me. It’s forced and as fragile as the gorgeous lamp.
‘This isn’t your fault Daisy, is it?’
Suddenly I feel exhausted. Bone weary. Exhaustion has pressed its weight on me all day, for many days, for weeks. A choking wad of fatigue is layered upon my sense of responsibility. Layers and layers of dreadful things threaten to bury me. Disappointment, cluelessness, frustration. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The space in my mouth swells to stupid proportions. My sister Rose silently passes me my handbag. I head to the door, pulling on Simon’s sleeve so he has to follow me.
Once we are outside and at the end of the path I hear the music start up again. I glare at Simon. He shrugs and mutters
, ‘Sorry.’ But he’s only as sorry as a little boy caught with his hand in a biscuit tin. Not very, and confident that the misdemeanour will be forgiven because I always forgive him. I’m stunned when he reveals a bottle of wine that he’s lifted.
‘How did you manage that? Oh, never mind…’ It infuriates me that while he sometimes seems incapable of putting on matching socks, he’s always astute and wily enough to keep his alcohol flow constant.
‘Do you want some?’ He offers me the bottle.
‘No.’ Then, ‘Oh give it here.’ I need to take a swig. I take a couple of glugs but hand it back to him because I remember we have the car with us, I have to drive. I wish I had the courage to throw the bottle away, but I don’t. For one thing I don’t want to be responsible for broken glass outside Connie’s house and secondly, I can’t face the scene that would inevitably occur if I did. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’
We are parked two or three streets away. We walk in silence. Simon continues to drink from the bottle but not with as much gusto as I expected. He looks pensive, borderline repentant. I once read that family and friends of functioning alcoholics are advised to try to talk to them when they are hungover. I’ve read a lot on the subject, some of it is contradictory. Damned internet. I understand that there’s no point in talking to him if he’s drunk, even if I do extract promises from him to change, he won’t remember them in the morning. I know this is true, through experience, so I stay silent.
As we walk to the car we pass a pub. People are spilt out onto the pavement. The night is almost unbearably hot. The sort of heat that makes people wild. Everyone looks flushed, sweaty. Simon sways and stumbles next to me but there are plenty of other people outside the pub who are drunk too, so we go unnoticed. This disgusts me and, simultaneously, is a source of relief. It disgusts me because I wonder how in this society – where binge drinking is normalised and being inebriated is seen as funny, friendly, the social norm, and abstaining is seen as dull, pious and a bit odd – how I will ever get him to stop drinking. And it’s a source of relief because I simply don’t know how much more shame I can shoulder tonight. It’s better for me that he blends in.
‘Do you remember that we met at a party exactly like that, Connie and Luke’s first wedding anniversary party?’ I ask him.
‘Of course I do,’ he mutters sulkily.
I don’t know what else to say. Was it there then? This problem. Was it hibernating? Lurking? How would I have been able to tell? We all drank so much back then, too much. You have to be ballsy to not drink. Confident, assured, so certain, and few of us are that. A lot of people pressure each other into drinking because they worry that the sober member of the gang will remember just how crazy the night before was. Drink is marketed as something fun, sexy, magical. The very word intoxicated is such a beautiful word and yet—
‘I feel sick,’ Simon turns his head and a train of hot vomit pours from him. He straightens, wipes his mouth and then takes another swig from the wine bottle. It’s far from beautiful.
The sky darkens, becomes more solid, as though someone had dropped a blind. The clouds ooze and billow, morphing into a single homogenous mass. The evening is cast in a shadowy, deep, deep greyness. A storm is threatening, there is imminent thunder in the air.
When I first met him, he was like a green stalk pushing up through the dull earth. Or maybe a firework exploding in the black sky. He was promise, cleanliness, excitement. He was everything. I search my mind but conclude that honestly, I had no idea that Simon would take this path. He did not drink any more or less than the rest of us, he just carried on while the rest of us eased off. Some people make snap judgements about others, I don’t. It’s not that I’m wise or considered. It’s more that I’ve never had the self-assurance to trust my gut. The thing about people is that it takes years, and years, and years to know them. Really know them. Because we hide things, all of us, all the time. We’re ashamed, cautious or secretive. Sometimes, we just have trust issues and feel people need to earn the right to knowledge about our true selves. We don’t gift it generously. And even when you finally think you know someone, something changes. We can’t know each other. It’s a fool’s game trying to.
20
Chapter 20, Simon
‘Are we nearly home?’ Simon’s head hurt. It was like someone was smashing it from the inside with a hammer, a great big hammer.
‘Almost.’ Her tone was cold. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but something. He couldn’t remember.
‘I need some water.’
‘Can’t you wait?’
Something bad then, because otherwise she’d stop straightaway and get the water. Normally she was keen to get him to drink as much of that stuff as possible. He felt suddenly swollen with resentment. Why should he be on the backfoot? He went in for the attack. ‘Are you having an affair with Luke?’ he demanded.
‘What?’ She turned to him. Fury in her face. ‘What did you just ask me?’
‘Are you fucking Luke?’
‘Oh wow, Simon. You are something else.’ She pulled into a service station forecourt. Slammed the car door behind her and walked quickly to the shop. She hadn’t answered the question though, had she?
Thick, fat drops of rain slapped down on the windscreen. He felt a surge of unbridled excitement. He liked a storm. It was different. It was exciting. Bring it on. There was something about the drama and scale that stirred and appealed to him. He reached about for the button to wind down the window, couldn’t find it so opened the door and fell out onto the forecourt. That made him laugh. He stood up and breathed in deeply but there was no oxygen in the air, just a horrible closeness that never helped people to think straight. He was just about to close the door, whoops. The keys. He stretched and grabbed them out of the ignition. Didn’t want to lock them in the car by mistake, did he? Didn’t want to give her another reason to go mad. Tut tut.
There was no one around. The temperature had fallen, as it did just before the downpour. How late was it, he wondered? He could just about make out that Daisy was at the till now. The youth that was serving her looked bored. He had served her without bothering to take out his earbuds, white threads trailing from his ears. Simon sniggered. Pleased. That would have annoyed Daisy. She was always going on about poor manners, service not being what it was. He liked the thought of her being irritated, annoyed. She deserved that and more. Bitch.
‘Get back in the car, Simon,’ she instructed. She was clutching two bottles of water and something else. An energy drink, probably. That was Daisy’s idea of going wild, a Red Bull Sugarfree. Whoop, whoop, that woman sure knew how to party. Not. Although she did, didn’t she? Just not with him. With someone else. He glared at her. She cracked open the can and drank it back quickly. Tossing the empty on to the back seat.
‘I’ll drive,’ he said, dangling the keys.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re drunk. Get back in the car and give me the keys.’
‘I’m not drunk. You just don’t judge sobriety like a normal person.’ He slurred the word sobriety. Reducing the potency of his point. ‘All you do is criticise, find fault.’
‘You are way over the limit. Give me the keys,’ she demanded. She really could be so haughty.
‘Look, I can walk in a straight line,’ he replied. Simon spread his arms out wide as though he was walking a tightrope and then, with exaggerated care, he walked along the white line painted on the ground that indicated a car park space. ‘I can drive,’ he insisted. ‘It’s only a couple more miles.’ He knew he was annoying her. He was glad. ‘I can recite a tongue-twister. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Peter Picker pipped a peck of pickered peppers.’ He enunciated with the sort of care an actor might muster, just before he was going out on the stage at the National.
It was raining hard by now. His shirt clung to his body, he noticed that her dress caressed her curves. She looked beautiful and he was furious with himself for noticing. The thick, fat droplets splashed down heavily. Sh
e looked sad and tired. Mostly tired. She didn’t have the energy to fight him.
21
Chapter 21, Daisy
He reaches forward and puts on the radio. He turns up the volume to a level that I think will make my ears bleed. The car is practically shaking. I lean forward to turn it off or at least down, but he lunges at me and pushes my hands out of the way. I realise it’s safest not to struggle with him. At least then, two hands are on the wheel. But the music is so loud it pushes the air out of the car. It’s a mindless, pointless, clubbing tune. My head hurts. ‘So are you then?’ he yells, above the music.
‘What?’ I don’t want to speak to him. I’m furious with him. Ashamed of him, burdened by him and scared of him. Being scared is new. I keep my eyes on the road. I don’t want to look his way.
‘Are you fucking Luke?’
‘What has brought such a ludicrous idea into your head?’ I snap.
‘He’s blonde,’ he states flatly.
‘What?’ I can’t follow this conversation. He’s talking nonsense and we shouldn’t be talking anyway. It’s important to just concentrate on the driving. The weather is hideous now. The windscreen wipers can’t keep up with the rainfall. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Clearing over and over again. The light from streetlamps shatters on the wet roads. Like shards of glass. Like the lamp in Connie’s hallway.
‘You hang off his every fucking word,’ added Simon.
‘You really do swear too much, you know, Simon. I remember when you had a vocabulary.’ I sound prim, even to my own ears.