Chapter 12 #2
W: I am not. And do shut up and answer the question.
H: Which was… sorry… what? Am I in on something?
W: On Todd getting married. And his mum not being trusted with a free bar.
H: Oh, that.
W: Yes! That!
H: So you know about that now, do you?
W: Clearly.
H: Did he call you, then? I didn’t know he—
W: No, he did not! I had to find out from his sister at the bloody airport, Haz! He didn’t even have the balls to tell me himself. Nor did you, for that matter. Like father, like son and all that.
H: Oh.
W: Oh? Is that all you’ve got to say?
H: Well, I can’t say I blame him. I mean, can you hear yourself?
W: Harry, this is not OK.
H: Which bit?
W: Well, any of it. I mean, Jesus, Harry!
H: Look, I can’t really talk to you when you’re like this, Wen.
W: You can’t be OK with this. Tell me you’re not OK with this.
H: The wedding, you mean, or…?
W: Yes, the wedding! He’s twenty-one. He’s a child.
H: Actually, twenty-one makes him what people like to call an adult.
W: He’s twenty-one! Do you remember what it was like being twenty-one?
H: I do, actually. And it was a damned sight more fun than being nearly fifty. But, listen, Todd’s an adult and—
W: So you’re all agreed, then? That’s it? Christ, I’m speechless!
H: You don’t sound particularly speechless. Speechless might be an improvement.
W: Don’t get cute with me, Harry. This isn’t funny.
H: Hey, who’s laughing? Can you hear me laughing? Well, can you?
W: Now you’re being—
H: Listen. There are circumstances, Wendy, and—
W: Circumstances?
H: Yes. For one, they’re very much in love.
W: Love? Huh! Love won’t get them far. It didn’t do much for us, did it?
H: I’m going to do my best to ignore that one, because you’re clearly drunk. But listen: Amanda’s dad—
W: Yes, I know all about her bloody dad. I couldn’t give a shit about her dad.
H: Wow. That’s one of the worst things you’ve ever said, Wen. And there have been some pretty bad ones… But that? Right there?
W: Oh, don’t get on your teacher high horse with me. I’m immune to that, Harry. Have been for years.
H:. You know, you’re horrible when you’re like this? And you are drunk. I can hear it in your voice. So I’m going to hang up now.
W: Don’t you dare, Harry! Don’t you dare hang up on me.
H: Call me back when you’re sober, Wendy, if you ever are these days. Call me back when you’re sober enough to apologise.
The line goes dead.
She tries to refill her glass, but the bottle on the table is empty.
‘Yes, yes, yes, I’m drunk,’ she says out loud. ‘So hang me!’
She crosses to the kitchen and pulls a fresh bottle of wine – red, this time – from the cupboard. She’s shocked to discover that it has a screw top, the first time she has seen this in France.
‘Well, that certainly makes things a bit easier,’ she says to no one in particular.
It’s Boxing Day evening and, with her daughter gone, Wendy’s feeling miserable and lonely. So she drinks until she loses consciousness and then carries on the moment she wakes up the next morning, drinking like she has never drunk before.
She drinks white wine and red wine and then rosé. Occasionally, when the hunger pangs get too much, she eats crisps or lumps of bread with cheese.
Sometimes she tries to watch something on Netflix, but half the time she can’t concentrate on the plot and the other half she falls asleep.
So mostly, she just drinks and dozes and stares at the changing light beyond the window.
She runs snippets of conversations around her head, revelling in the righteous fury they provoke.
Can’t be trusted. You know what you’re like. You’re horrible when you’re like this.
How dare he call her horrible! How dare they plot to keep her from her own son’s wedding!
And when all that fury gets overwhelming – which regularly it does – she drinks more. She drinks until the fury stops and she can slip into not thinking anything at all.
She does not shower, change her clothes, or brush her teeth. At some point – she forgets exactly when – Manon drops by for a French lesson, so she hides out of sight in the bathroom. Mittens visits, too, and despite being too drunk to see straight she manages to give him food.
On the twenty-eighth, she wakes up with the worst hangover she has ever had. The pain of her headache is excruciating, like a pile-driver ramming into her temple just behind her right eye.
She drags herself downstairs. She’s wobbly on her feet this morning and misses the last step, stumbling into the coffee table and bruising her shin.
She searches the bathroom for paracetamol but she can’t seem to find it anywhere, which is unsurprising really because her headache is so bad she can barely see.
She returns to the kitchen and hunts through the debris of yesterday’s binge, but she can’t find the damned paracetamol there either.
What she does find is a half-finished bottle of Fitou, and thinking ‘hair of the dog’ she raises it to her lips and takes a swig.
But something unexpected enters her mouth – something solid, something alive.
She gags and spits the wine into the sink where she sees a bluebottle, still wriggling, drag its hairy body from the red mess onto a teaspoon.
She heaves and runs to the bathroom where she kneels before the toilet bowl. She thinks she’s going to vomit and in fact wants to vomit. Instead, she merely retches repeatedly. There’s nothing in her stomach to come out.
Eventually, once the retching is over, she stands and washes her face at the washbasin.
She examines herself in the bathroom mirror. This morning, she looks about ninety.
She washes her face again more thoroughly and applies moisturiser. She brushes her teeth, and then her hair, and then, though she knows this is in the wrong order, she undresses and steps into the shower where she stands beneath the flow until it runs cold.
She dries herself and pulls on clean clothes before returning to the devastation of the kitchen. She tips the remaining Fitou down the sink revealing a second, smaller fly, then returns to the cupboard for a fresh bottle which she uncorks.
She pours herself a hefty glass. She hears Fiona’s voice commenting on the hour and glances at her phone.
It’s not even ten in the morning. She looks at the glass of wine.
She looks at the bottle. If I carry on like this I’ll die.
She doesn’t know where the thought came from, but it feels like a profound truth mystically revealed to her in that moment.
She gasps and then slowly, as if possessed, as if on autopilot, she pours the glass of wine down the sink and then follows it with the rest of the bottle. Glug, glug, glug.
Hurriedly, fearing she’ll lose the willpower to continue if she hesitates even for a second, she opens and empties the three remaining bottles one after the other. Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.
She opens the refrigerator for food and discovers a final bottle of beer – truly the last drop of alcohol in the cabin. She takes it from the fridge and pops the cap off.
She pauses. She stares at it. She sniffs it.
She holds it up to the light and thinks of every other bottle of beer, thinks of the parties, and the dances and the summer barbecues; thinks of the chilled delicious bottles of Mythos in Santorini and the draught halves of Mahou in Spain.
Gin and tonics. Manhattans. Shots. Alcohol had been fun, once, hadn’t it?
She’s sure it used to be, sure she isn’t kidding herself about that.
But it isn’t now. And the truth is that it hasn’t been for some time.
Telling herself it’s a final goodbye kiss, she takes a swig. It’s delicious! And then she pours the rest down the sink.
Just before eleven, Manon knocks on Wendy’s door again, so she forces a smile and opens it.
Her hangover is still horrendous and she has barely slept, but at least she has tidied the cabin.
‘Post?’ Wendy asks, because Manon generally calls by after her postal round rather than at the beginning of it.
‘No,’ Manon says. ‘I check that you’re OK. I come yesterday but there is no answer.’
‘I think I must have been out,’ she lies.
‘You make me coffee?’ Manon asks.
‘Um…’ Wendy really doesn’t feel like company right now.
‘Go on. I need coffee,’ Manon says. ‘And I think that you do, too.’
‘Don’t you have post to deliver?’ Wendy asks.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Manon says, checking her watch. ‘No one cares what time the post come as long as it come.’
‘As long as it comes,’ Wendy corrects, emphasising the ‘S’.
‘Comezzz,’ Manon repeats. ‘Same mistake every time!’
Wendy makes two cups of coffee which they drink at the kitchen table. It’s too windy to sit outside despite it being a sunny day.
‘So where do you go yesterday?’ Manon asks. ‘You are visiting with your daughter? She is still here?’
‘No, she’s gone,’ Wendy says.
‘You still have a car?’
‘No.’
‘So you go for a walk. This is good. Where?’
Wendy sighs. ‘OK, I wasn’t out at all. I was here, and I was drunk. I was very drunk and I didn’t want to open the door, so sorry.’
‘Oh,’ Manon says. ‘OK.’
‘And today I have the worst hangover I have ever had.’
‘Ah, so this is why you look…’ Manon says, nodding knowingly.
‘Yes,’ Wendy says. ‘This is why I look awful. Moving on, how was your Christmas?’
‘Bad,’ Manon says. ‘My father is with my brother in the… um… the rehab? He drives down there for Christmas Day. And my girlfriend, she’s with her family in Draguignan. So, I am alone. But it’s OK.’
‘And is he OK? Your brother? Is the rehab going well?’
Manon shrugs, but then shrugs again differently and rolls her eyes. ‘Officially, is all OK. It’s just…’
‘You’re not convinced,’ Wendy offers. ‘After all the times before.’
‘Yes, I am not convinced,’ Manon repeats. ‘And you? Your Christmas is good?’
‘It was… interesting,’ Wendy says. ‘In a way, it was good, yes.’
‘OK,’ Manon says. ‘Mysterious.’