Page 90 of Where Do We Go From Here?
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.’
