Bill Withers
AIN’T NO SUNSHINE
I slipped free of my coat and hung it by the door, dropped my umbrella in the stand and trod, feeling a squelch of socks against shoes every step of the way, to the kitchen.
‘I have spent all day looking at cocktail recipes.’
The boom of David’s voice made me wonder whether he had in fact spent all day sampling cocktail recipes.
That was only the first of the assaults on the senses, the second being the absolute bomb site that my kitchen was.
There were, at a glance, no fewer than four cocktail shakers dotted around the room, complete with various spirits, mixers and stray slices of fruit.
‘Is that a pomegranate?’
‘A recipe called for it,’ David said with a flick of the hand that he seemed to think would explain everything.
He was gesturing with a martini glass that definitely did not contain a martini.
‘Look, I know you’ve been down and out, and I know I said I had a plan, so today I pulled up my socks and thought, David, what is your plan? ’
‘Oh God…’ I dropped into the nearest seat.
‘And I thought to myself, what does Patti need in this plan?’
‘Oh God…’
‘And then I thought!’ He snapped his fingers and gestured to the wild mess that was our kitchen. ‘First and foremost, Patti needs to have fun again. Then Patti needs a plan to win back Sheila. Then–’
‘How many cocktails have you had so far today?’
He glanced around as though tallying up empty glasses. ‘I’ve dabbled.’
‘Okay, how many cocktails have you dabbled with so far today?’
‘Thirteen, but look here.’ He passed me the glass he’d been holding that contained a brilliant, bright green liquid that looked like something scraped from the earth around Chernobyl. ‘I call this one, The David.’
I grabbed the glass from him, mostly to stop him from drinking it himself. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Bit of this, bit of that.’
After I’d taken my first sip, a slow burn moved down my throat and left me coughing.
‘Did you know we had absinthe at the back of the booze cupboard?’
I tried to clear the nagging tickle before I answered but still the response came out strained. ‘Yes, I hid it from you two Christmases ago.’
‘Oh. Well, I found it.’
‘I can taste that.’ I set the drink down. ‘I assume it’s in The David?’
‘Oh, The David is such a mixture of things,’ he answered in a whimsical tone that had a touch of the theatre about it. Without my noticing, he’d managed to wrangle himself another glass of alcohol from somewhere, too: this one was bright orange. ‘So this is part one of the plan.’
‘Drinking?’
‘Mm.’ He sipped. ‘We drink and we lose our inhibitions.’
‘Which is a good thing?’ I stood to get myself a glass of water, which is about the time I noticed the many empty glasses that were stashed in the sink already. Dabbling, my backside…
‘It is! I’m glad you agree. We drink and we relax, and we stop worrying that things are a bad idea.’
‘I don’t feel like that’s a good idea.’
‘But of course it is, because– Patti, you know that’s water, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ I made a cheers gesture. ‘Would you like some?’
‘No, I have…’ He stared at his drink. ‘I have whatever this is. And once we stop worrying that things are a bad idea, we can plot out what we’re going to do to win Sheila back without anything holding us back.
’ He snapped his fingers and sipped. ‘I think that might be the plan to unlocking the whole situation, don’t you? ’
I reached into my front pocket for my mobile.
‘But you can’t think properly on an empty stomach, can you?
’ Which I thought was probably what David had been drinking on for most of the day.
‘What’s your poison? You’ve taken care of the drinks, sort of.
’ I coughed again to clear my throat. ‘So I’ll take care of food. ’
David schlumped next to me, his full weight landing against the kitchen work surface. He slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed me to him. ‘I could bloody murder fish and chips, Patti.’
That one simple statement shoved me by the shoulders, hard enough that I fell on my arse in the middle of a memory: the first time I’d had sex with Sheila; the craving for fish and chips, dipped in curry sauce, dunked in ketchup; the fact that that was the last time I’d had fish and chips with anyone.
I forced out a slow and unsteady breath that I knew to be the prelude to another emotional outburst – and I knew as well that David was not equipped to deal with such a thing without his full wits about him.
Plus, he’s dealt with enough from you already…
A spiteful and unkind voice told me, despite my trying to shake it away.
It wasn’t until I literally shook my head that I realised I was already crying – as though it were as natural as breathing now, and I could do it without even knowing I was doing so – so I kept my head down, and mumbled my agreement with my drunk husband while I typed in our order.
I wiped my iPhone screen clean of diluted mascara when he wasn’t looking.
I couldn’t avoid fish and chips forever.
After all, it was one of David’s favourite things, too.
* * *
It took one large battered cod, a large curry sauce, half a portion of chips and another two cocktails for my husband to finally pass out on the sofa.
I struggled to remember another time when we’d felt like such a married couple – and even now, it didn’t ring quite right.
David was sprawled across the three-seater with his arm thrown over the cushions behind him, one leg up and the other down, smiling in such a way that I dreaded to think what he might be dreaming of.
Lucy was curled up in a ball at the far end of the same sofa, staring at him with utter contempt.
Meanwhile, Fred had taken up residence in the armchair opposite my own.
The rain had started again, at some point between us leaning out the window for a cigarette and now.
It only felt right to change the never-ending stream of Bill Withers that David had had me listening to while I watched the rain tumble, too, ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ now humming through the speakers.
Somehow, I’d drifted back to taking occasional sips from The David while I held this pose, feeling every bit the tortured heroine from a cheap romance feature.
Not that heroines are ever quite this guilty…
‘Perhaps because we’re meant to know better, Fred,’ I said quietly, to avoid rousing the sleeping spouse.
I set my drink on the side table and leaned back with my phone in hand.
After my fourth sip of The David, I tried to call Sheila another two times but to no avail.
The drink had nearly given me courage enough to leave her a voicemail, but I chickened out before the beep – which was probably for the best. Now, I clicked into my web browser to see the last site that David had pulled up before falling into a completely drunken stupor: ‘How to get your girlfriend to forgive you (with pictures)’.
It had been the closest to a bright idea that David had been capable of having for much of the evening, but at least he had the booze as an excuse.
The fact that I was infinitely much more sober than he was but still I was looking at the website, without David’s encouragement either, spoke volumes as to the level of hopelessness I’d sunk to.
I scrolled through the list of tips – have a talk, take responsibility, be honest – and I belched out a curt ‘HA!’ at the last of those, before clasping my hand over my mouth and checking David was still asleep.
Of course you’re still sleeping… Then I carried on scrolling through the points, each of which was accompanied by a jaunty illustration that showed open-palmed begging, whispered sweet nothings, and accomplished fist bumps in the air when things had finally worked out.
‘Which they would, provided all of these tips were to help a person win back a woman who would actually speak to them still…’ I said, mostly to myself but also a little bit to Fred who tilted his head to one side as I spoke.
‘You don’t have this nonsense to contend with and look at you, you’re perfectly fine.
’ He tilted his head again, a questioning wobble.
I thought back to the time before Sheila – the dinners for one because David was out; the fleeting romances that I never really pursued; the many, many times I told myself I enjoyed doing things on my own – and despite myself, I started to wonder how fine I’d really been.
There was only one route of communication that I hadn’t yet tried for reaching Sheila and this suddenly felt like the right time.
I leaned forward and took two thirsty mouthfuls of The David, then sat back, feeling every bit like I’d been kicked in the throat, and clicked into The App: the godforsaken thing that had started this mess.
Mine and Sheila’s conversation history should still be there, I thought.
I wasn’t especially well-versed with technology, but I knew enough to know things didn’t magically disapp–
This user’s profile has been deleted.
‘Well, shit.’
Fred whined, a pained and confused sound.
I decided to give up on bright ideas for the time being.
Instead, I dropped my phone on the table and went back to watching the rain pound against the window, listened to the wind thrash against the outer of the building, and soon I found I was making a similarly disapproving sound to the dog.