Page 143 of Where Do We Go From Here?
Dancing, too, turns out to be impossible. Perhaps if there was a little less light in the room (the evening sun is now streaming in through one of the windows) then she’d feel a bit less self-conscious, but as it is, in broad daylight, on a sparsely populated dance floor with unfamiliar music, sober, she’s left feeling like a clunky adolescent. The sensation of being all elbows and knees – of being the only sober person present – is unbearable.
Around six thirty, just as she’s wondering how early she can reasonably convince Harry to leave and how early it’s socially acceptable to do so, Prue’s florist friend, Jennifer, crossesthe dance floor holding two drinks, one of which she hands to Wendy before plonking herself down beside her. ‘I thought you were looking a bit glum,’ she says, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘So I came over to cheer you up.’
‘Thanks,’ Wendy replies, examining and then sniffing the drink. For half a second, she forgets that she’s not drinking – she really does forget that fact. And then for another few seconds she tells herself that befriending Jennifer is more important right now than the whole silly not-drinking thing. She raises the glass to her lips and the sweet liquid (it turns out to be vodka and tonic – oh my God, that taste!) has barely touched her lips when Jennifer says, ‘Did you like the flowers? That was me, you know.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Wendy says, lowering the glass to reply, and as she does so thinking,God! I nearly drank that. ‘Yes, they were amazing!’
‘Thank you!’ Jennifer says, raising her glass. ‘Cheers.’
Wendy clinks glasses but then braces herself and – feeling like she’s wrestling with her own arm – manages to place the glass on the table. ‘I’m driving,’ she says, meeting Jennifer’s troubled expression with a forced smile. ‘So…’
‘Surely one won’t do any harm, will it?’ Jennifer says. ‘Because, frankly, you look like you could do with a drink. Your shoulders are all hunched up. Trust me, I do reiki.’
Wendy bristles at this remark. ‘Actually, it would,’ she says, so quietly that Jennifer has to lean in to hear her over the thumping Britney Spears bassline. ‘It would do harm. I’m on the wagon, so…’
‘God, how dull!’ Jennifer says. ‘Poor you!’
Suddenly, Wendy finds herself on her feet, heading for the door. It’s only once she steps into the garden that she understands why she has left, because it’s then that she realises she is crying.
Aware that a few people are staring at her, she makes her way to the street, forcing a smile and muttering, ‘All getting a bit emotional, that’s all,’ to the best man as she passes by.
As she strides away she dries her tears, and soon finds herself back at the church where some kind of service is taking place.
For a few minutes, she lingers outside, watching as people file into the church, and then when a stranger catches her eye and actually beckons at her, she continues on her way, past the graveyard, and then along a footpath beside a brook.
It is calm, green and lovely here, and the only sounds are birdsong and the burble of the water.Nature, she thinks.It’s so good for us, and we forget that fact so quickly.She can feel her heart slowing down already.
After a few hundred yards she comes to a drystone wall, just low enough that she can clamber on top of it so that she can sit looking out at the brook. She pulls her cigarettes from her handbag for only the third time today.
She’d intended to stop completely – had thought that if she wasn’t drinking then stopping smoking might be easier. But on her third, or perhaps it was the fourth visit, the therapist had suggested that stopping both alcohol and cigarettes at once might be over-ambitious. So though she has slowed down considerably, she’s putting off stopping completely until next year. But, oh my God, that cigarette tastes good. Maybe she won’t give up at all.
She thinks now about the drinking, specifically about the deliciousness of that tiny sip of vodka and tonic. Actually, it had been beyond delicious. She had sensed every cell of her body starting to vibrate in sheer anticipation. It’s why she’d suddenly felt so scared.
She thinks about being told she’s ‘dull’ for having stopped. That’s going to be an ongoing challenge, she can see. Therealways seems to be someone to insist that drinking is normal and fun. And how to maintain sobriety without becoming a hermit? How to stop without refusing every invitation to every party, every dance, every night out…? Perhaps one day she’ll get to the point where it doesn’t feel so awkward. But she finds it hard to imagine.
She takes a deep drag on her cigarette, stubs it out early, and pulls her phone from her bag, just in case Harry is looking for her, but there’s no news from him – he’s way too busy having fun to notice her absence. But she has received a WhatsApp message from Manon.
These messages – with Manon making the effort to write in English, and Wendy doing her best to reply in French – have become regular occurrences, which was unexpected. They’re sending each other multiple messages on most days of the week. She really does seem to have made a new friend there and that feels strange. It’s so long since that has happened, after all.
How go the wedding?Manon has asked in her latest message.Bless her, Wendy thinks.She remembered.
Ca va, she replies, then even though she knows it’s approximative,Pas alcohol est tres difficile.
You can do, Manon replies immediately.You are strong woman.
And just like that, she feels strong enough to make it through this. Sometimes a vote of confidence is all you need.
When she gets back the sun is setting behind a copse of trees. The music from the pub is pounding (she recognises the song: ‘Rock Lobster’) and only three people remain outside, a couple, snogging in the shadows, and Prudence, seated alone at the furthest pub table nursing a drink. All signs of the wedding meal have vanished.
Wendy takes a deep breath to prepare herself for another round of banal, socially acceptable conversation, and crosses thegarden to join Prue. But as she reaches her table, Prue, whose back is turned, simply raises one hand and without even glancing to see who is there, says, ‘Just give me another five minutes and I’ll be in.’
Wendy freezes and starts to turn away. But something in Prue’s voice – a hoarseness indicative of sadness – makes her hesitate. Instead, she touches the woman’s shoulder and asks, ‘Prue, are you OK?’
Prue shrugs her hand away and, again without looking, says, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Wendy hesitates and then, decision made, rounds the table to sit opposite. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘What’s going on? Oh, you’ve been feeling emotional, too?’
‘Oh, well spotted,’ Prue says, sounding more weary than anything else.
