Once a story has appeared as Fiction of the Month, I will archive it here. I have to repeat, though, that I am unable to post too many of the stories from Digging for Water in case this leads to my book being removed from sales sites.

THE BESPOKE UMBRELLA

Oh God, it couldn’t be true. She stared at her mobile screen. Six days of unbroken sunshine and today, of all days, they were forecasting rain. With Auntie Dot on her way.

Maybe they’d got it wrong. They were always getting it wrong. She looked out of the kitchen window at a darkening sky.

Maybe she could phone Auntie Dot and put it off. But no, she was coming today to bring a present for Michael on his birthday. Everyone called him Mike, or even Mikey, but Auntie Dot always insisted on Michael. And she always delivered his present on the actual day, even though this time she knew he wouldn’t be there. He was still away at his university.

She went to the cupboard under the stairs. Three umbrellas. Not the red one, for sure; that was much too conspicuous. The black one or the grey one. But they weren’t the midnight blue one, the one that Auntie Dot had specially had made as a gift for her fortieth birthday. She took the grey one out and opened it up. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. No, Auntie Dot noticed everything.

Three hours to go before the estimated time of arrival. There was nothing else for it; she would have to go to each of the shops again, all the shops she’d visited over the last week, even though she’d done it twice already. She took off towards the high street, armed with her grey umbrella.

She stared into the window of the shop that sold household goods. She almost never went there because the man who owned it was so rude, but, as bad luck would have it, this week, of all weeks, she’d gone into the shop to buy some light bulbs because her usual place had been shut for some unknown reason. She could see him behind the counter with his snarl and his hairy arms. She had the feeling he hated women. But she figured she might as well get this one out of the way.

“I came here a few days ago about an umbrella. I wondered if I’d left it here.”

His expression didn’t change. “You’ve got an umbrella in your hand.”

“No, the one I’ve lost is blue, deep blue.”

“You’ve been here twice already asking about it. I told you before, I haven’t seen your umbrella.”

“It was specially made for my birthday.”

“Specially made?” He snorted. “Like a tailor with a suit, you mean? A bespoke umbrella?”

“Midnight blue, with a trim of sky blue at the edges. And the number 40 in gold on two of the sides.”

“Look, I haven’t seen your bloody umbrella. Do you think I stole it or something?”

“No, of course I – ”

“Specially made, you say? Got diamonds encrusted in it, has it?”

“There’s no need to be unpleasant.”

“You know what I think, lady? There’s no such thing as a bespoke umbrella. They don’t exist. You don’t need an umbrella. You need a bloody parasol to keep the sun off your head.”

After that, she gave up on the idea of visiting each of the shops. For all his rudeness, he was right, it was madness: doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And it was starting to rain.

The kitchen clock read a quarter past eleven. It wasn’t just Auntie Dot. It was all the other aunties and, armed with their mobile phones, the grapevine that spread to every corner of the land. The lost umbrella would be nationwide news within a couple of hours. And they’d disapprove. Whatever Katharine did, they disapproved. They hadn’t liked her husband, but then they didn’t like it when she got divorced. And she should have gone back to her family once Michael was at university; it wasn’t right for a divorcee to live on her own. Then there was the way she’d brought up Michael. They were proud of Michael, of course, but had doubts about all that education. When would he get a job and get married and settle down?

Just before Auntie Dot was due to arrive, her mobile rang. Auntie Dot’s number. Her heart leapt up. Maybe she’d changed her plans and couldn’t make it. Maybe she was sick; she was often sick. A glow of shame flushed over her skin as she imagined this.

“Katharine, is that you?” She always called her Katharine, not Kate. “This is your Auntie Dot.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’m in that shop on the corner of the high street. The one that sells all kinds of little goodies and trinkets. You know, where I found that clock for your kitchen?”

“I know the shop you mean.”

“Well, there’s something here that I think would make a super gift for Michael. I’ve got my other gift, of course, the one I bought some months ago, but I’m wondering now if this one wouldn’t be better. I’d like you to look at it first. Boys change so much at his age and you know him better than I do. Could you meet me here and look it over?”

“I’ll get a taxi and we can keep it and take it home.”

“Oh my dear, don’t be silly. No point wasting money on a taxi. It’s ten minutes’ walk at most. I can manage that, you know. I’m not totally infirm.”

“But it’s raining.”

“Only slightly. There are worse things in life than a drop of rain. It’s a kind of brooch, I suppose you’d call it. In the shape of a guitar. I know how Michael loves his guitar. But I’m worried he may think it’s a little too feminine. I read that young people don’t care as much about that kind of thing these days, is that right? I’d really appreciate your opinion.”

Kate phoned for a taxi anyway. No need to take an umbrella. Her get out of jail card.

The squelch of the windscreen wipers filled the taxi. They drove past the rude man in the household goods shop who was rapidly moving his pots and pans inside. Kate gave a little grin. She was feeling rather light-headed.

The cab pulled up outside the trinket shop. And there stood Auntie Dot under the awning in the doorway. She was holding an umbrella. A midnight blue umbrella with a sky blue trim at the edges and the number 40 on two of the sides.

“Isn’t that lucky, Katharine? You must have left it here. And somehow it had ended up on sale with all of the others. I recognised it at once, of course.”

There was total silence in the taxi on the way back home. Except for the windscreen wipers and the splash of rain on the windows. Auntie Dot stared out at the street. Katharine sat stiff. She was wondering why the hell she’d never gone to the trinket shop to enquire about the umbrella.

“Now sit down, Katharine, and I’ll make us both a cup of tea.”

“I’m sorry about losing your umbrella, Auntie Dot.”

“You’ve always been absent-minded. Even as a child.” She sat at the kitchen table, avoiding Katharine’s eyes. “You’ve always had your head in the clouds. Your mother and I were worried how you’d survive in this terrible world.”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

And she suddenly burst into tears. Not little drops of rain, but huge gulps from the heart like bombs of water. She stood up and leaned over the sink, facing the window, and covered her eyes. Auntie Dot didn’t move. She sat motionless, like a statue, staring at the kettle as it boiled.

Neither woman could have told you how long they were silent. But eventually Katharine’s shoulders ceased heaving up and down and her sobs grew softer. Auntie Dot moved at last, rapping her fingers on the table. The clock from the trinket shop was ticking loud.

Auntie Dot stood up. “Ah, the rain has stopped, I see. If I hurry, I can catch the 2.15 bus.”

The door clicked shut behind her. Kate smiled and put the grey umbrella back beneath the stairs. Then she stared out of the kitchen window, spread it open wide, and breathed in some fresh air

BUBBLES

Jake was being particularly difficult that afternoon.

“I want to blow bubbles!” he shouted. “Buy me some bubbles!”

So I went into the toy shop in the high street. It had been there since I was a child. I bought him one of those tubes full of soapy water and a plastic thingamajig to blow bubbles.

“The trouble with that boy,” Aunt Clara said, “Is that you spoil him. You always give him everything he wants.”

Not that Jake cared. He was already blowing his bubbles.

“Will we be home in time for tea, mommy?” Susie asked.

“I’m sure we will, dear.”

But I wasn’t sure. I still had so many things to do, and with this entourage at my back it seemed to be taking an age just to get from one end of the high street to the other. I still had to go to the butcher, the fruit shop, the stationers to buy some stamps and a card for granny’s birthday, take the children’s books back to the library, and pick up John’s business suit from the dry cleaners. He was playing golf.

“Look at how big my bubbles are, mom!”

I had to admit I didn’t remember them being that large when I was a child. I guessed it was something to do with science and they’d added some new chemical to make the bubbles bigger.

“Yes, dear. Very big.”

“That boy is always seeking attention,” Aunt Clara said, poking the ground with her umbrella. She always carried an umbrella ‘just in case it rains’.

Then Jake blew another bubble, which got bigger and bigger and bigger as it clung to the plastic thingamajig. Soon it was the size of a child, then an adult, a fully grown man. It plopped clumsily from the thingamajig and edged up against Aunt Clara. Then it wrapped itself around her and enfolded her inside.

I could see her mouth moving as she protested, but couldn’t hear a thing. I pushed back a smile.

Then a gust of wind came from nowhere and suddenly Aunt Clara’s bubble had lifted above the ground. It hovered over the pavement.

“Oh dear,” I said.

A second gust of wind and the bubble was careering down the high street and rising fast. It was at least the height of the top of a man’s head.

I started to run. “Come on, children!” I shouted, “We have to catch Aunt Clara when the bubble bursts and she falls! Otherwise she’ll get hurt!”

“But you don’t like her, mommy,” Susie said.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Susie. Have you ever heard me say that?”

Susie stared down at the ground. “No, I haven’t.”

We hurried along the high street, Jake loitering behind, as we chased Aunt Clara’s bubble getting further and further away. We passed the shops I must have passed a thousand times, and yet if you had asked me to describe that street in detail, I couldn’t have done it. They were places I went to get things: meat, fruit, treats for the children, gifts for relatives at Christmas, loo rolls, light bulbs. I noticed for the first time how many of the shop fronts were boarded up these days. Jake was still blowing bubbles as he ran.

By now Aunt Clara was high in the air, and on course to hit a tree. Maybe that would burst the bubble and she could cling onto the branches until we could get some help.

But another gust of wind and the bubble shot up again, missing the top of the tree by inches. By now she was so high that I could barely make out her mouth as it constantly moved. We kept on chasing. Soon we reached the square, the traditional heart of the town, with its stretch of grass, its cherry trees, and its old grey church with its steeple.

The bubble hit the spire on top of the steeple and there it burst. Aunt Clara was clinging on, her arms clutched tight around the spire. I could just about make out her shrieks, but they were faint.

Jake was blowing bubbles again.

“Will you stop that, please?”I snapped. “You’ve got us in enough trouble already.”

“How can we get her down, mommy?” Susie asked.

“I don’t know, dear.” I turned to Jake. “You got her up there, Jake. Maybe you should climb up the side of the church and carry her down.”

“But I’m just a child, mom,” he said, and went back to blowing his bubbles.

“Could she be like Mary Poppins, mommy? And use her umbrella like a parachute?”

I thought about phoning the fire brigade. If they could rescue a cat from a tree, they seemed the appropriate people to bring someone down off a spire.

“It’s a good thing she’s so far away, isn’t it?” Susie went on. “Otherwise people might see up her skirt.”

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, Susie.”

Jake was up to his tricks again. He had blown another huge bubble even bigger than the one before. I made a mental note to write a stiff letter of complaint to the manufacturers as soon as we got home.

But I didn’t have time to think about that because suddenly all three of us were wrapped in this new bubble which was taking off into the sky.

Susie tugged at my arm and frowned. “Will we be home in time for tea, mommy?”

Jake let out a whistle and said, “Cool!”

When our bubble reached the spire at the top of the church, Aunt Clara held out one of her hands. Her umbrella clattered on the roof as it tumbled to the ground. I stretched out a hand to reach her. The bag with my children’s library books slipped from my grip and followed Aunt Clara’s umbrella on its trajectory. Eventually Susie grabbed one arm and I grabbed the other and we hooked her inside our bubble.

And up and up we went, until the town was a speck below. And further into space. We could just about make out the earth as it disappeared below us. Soon it was pitch black outside but somehow there was light inside our bubble.

“Oh boy!” Jake exclaimed, “We’re going to the moon!”

“The trouble with that boy is you indulge his wild imaginings. He needs to spend less time in silly daydreams and more time on his schoolwork.”

But Jake was right.

We stood together on the surface of the moon, still wrapped up safe in our bubble. I looked up at the sky and saw this big, blue, beautiful bubble of the earth above us. I let out a deep sigh. Just like my high street back home, I’d never really looked at it before.

I put an arm around each child and ruffled their hair.

“Will we be home in time for tea, mommy?”

I glanced at Jake. His soapy water had all gone.

“No, I don’t think so, Susie.”

THE BLACK SCARF

She wondered why he’d bought it her. She never wore black. Even he must have noticed she always wore soft colours: creamy browns or smoky blues.

She stared out of the window at the skeletal trees in her garden. Already it was March, but this winter seemed to be dragging on forever.

And there was something about the way he’d handed it over. He hadn’t bothered to wrap it up, but that was no surprise: he’d never been one for the niceties. But there’d been a strange look in his eyes that she couldn’t explain. And a tremble at the tips of his fingers, a movement so impalpable that she wondered if she’d imagined it.

She began to be careful. Little things at first, like making sure there were no knives lying around in the kitchen. She told herself it made sense to be so cautious: knives are dangerous. But slowly it began to spin out of control. Like refusing on the rare occasions he offered to make her a cup of tea. Going through his wardrobe to look for anything suspicious. Checking that the level of rat poison in the tin in the cupboard below the stairs hadn’t gone down.

The daytime was her time to play detective. He was away at work, and she had so much time in the day now that the children were grown up. More and more of it became devoted to rummaging around for clues of his evil intent.

She wondered what he was doing in his shed each night. His routine hadn’t changed: he’d always spent most evenings in his shed fiddling with his wirelesses while she sat alone in the lounge and watched TV. In the day, when he was at work, she’d sneak inside the shed and look around, checking to see if anything looked different. It never did. It was as if no one had been there.

One of the drawers was always locked. She suspected he had a gun.

He’d only ever hit her once. And when he did she felt she’d deserved it. There was a period of several months when everything he did irritated her beyond belief: the way he rustled his newspaper as he read it, that little cough he gave, the way he tapped his spoon against the top of his cup three times after he put sugar into his tea and stirred it around. Always three times. She’d wait for a fourth and when it didn’t arrive, somehow it filled her with rage. She’d responded in the only way she felt able. Snide little digs, quips that seemed quite innocent, but things she knew very well would wind him up. And when he’d finally snapped, she was overcome by a sense of triumph and all the rage went away.

She thought about throwing out the scarf. She’d never wear it after all and he wouldn’t notice it was missing. But who knows, perhaps he would? Perhaps he checked it was there when she was out at the shops. So she started to order the groceries delivered and never went out of the house, reasoning this gave him less opportunity to plan whatever he was planning.

She dreamed about the scarf one night. Her son and daughter were children again, playing in the garden on a summer’s day. They were throwing the scarf into the air and then running to see who could catch it. The boy always won, because he was much taller, but once for some strange reason the girl got there first. She wrapped the scarf around the boy’s neck, pulled tight, and gave a laugh. But he pushed her away and removed the scarf from his neck. He leaned down and picked up a stone, used the scarf as a catapult, and smashed a bedroom window. She suddenly woke up. His alarm clock was shrieking as he snored.

She began to find it hard to sleep. Maybe that would be when he did it, something as simple as a pillow over her face. In the end she suggested she should sleep in the spare bedroom because her insomnia must be disturbing him and she knew he was so busy at work. He replied that she must do what made her happy; he didn’t seem to care much either way. She wondered if he heard the click of the key in the lock each night when she went to bed. She hoped he did. It would tell him she was on to his little game. It would tell him she was safe.

Had there ever been much love between them? Not romance, for sure. He’d done the right things when they were courting, as they used to call it in those days – given her little gifts, gone down on one knee to propose – but it had always felt like something he’d learned that he should do, a necessary move in a game he didn’t enjoy.

Everyone congratulated her: to the world he seemed a good catch. A decent job and a decent man. She knew the world was right. He was indeed a good catch. And it was different for women back then, at least in the little town where she grew up. If a woman was still single at thirty, she was on the shelf, unwanted goods.

But sometimes she looked at her daughter and envied her freedom.

In the end she went to the doctor to get some pills. They deadened the fear in her heart, but they didn’t stop the thoughts from swirling around her head. When would he finally do it? And how? She almost wanted it to happen. At least all the dreading would be over.

It happened on a slope of wasteland next to the local school. They’d hurriedly closed the school and contacted all the parents to tell them not to bring their children that day. Seeing a man’s brains blown out wasn’t a pretty sight. The news made the local papers. There was even a picture of the gun he’d used on himself.

She wore the black scarf at his funeral. But she wasn’t wearing it for him. She was wearing it for her life.

WHEN DOVES CRY

“I wish I was a dove,” he said.

We sat beside each other on my beach. I called it my beach because no one else ever seemed to find this tiny stretch of white sand. So it felt like it belonged to me. It was my own little secret haven after all that I’d been through for the last six months.

But I didn’t mind this stranger being there in my secret space. His soft blue eyes were kind.

“Why a dove?” I asked.

“Because they cry when someone is hurt.”

And suddenly, as if he were a magician, a dove flew down and perched on his hand. As white as the sand on the beach, apart from a dot of scarlet on its chest.

“I think he’s crying now,” he said. “I think you’ve been hurt.”

I thought about my boyfriend. It had all been so wonderful at first but slowly he’d got more and more jealous and controlling. And when I’d decided to finish the relationship, he’d lost it altogether and just gone crazy. In the end I’d needed to move to the other side of the country to escape him.

I looked at the dove resting on his thumb. A scroll of paper was tied around its leg.

“Why don’t you read it?” he said. “It’s almost like one of those fortune cookies you get in Chinese restaurants. I like imagining the future.”

I removed the paper and read it aloud. “The glass will shatter and a pool of red will spread across the tablecloth. But my white wings will protect you.”

And suddenly he was gone and I was alone.

I thought no more about it. Until a few months later when I was sitting in a marquee at a travelling fair with a magician performing on stage.

“I’m getting the name Adrienne,” he said. “Is there an Adrienne in the house?”

“Yes, my name’s Adrienne,” I said, standing up, my eyes blinking in the spotlight they suddenly shone on me.

He came over to my table, looking dapper in his tuxedo and bright white shirt.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “I want you all to know that I’ve never met this woman before.” He held his microphone under my chin. “Can I ask you, please, to confirm that?”

I stared into his blue eyes and somehow I didn’t feel quite sure. But the audience was waiting in rapt silence, so I quickly said, “That’s true, we’ve never met before.”

He held out his hand for me to shake but as I moved mine towards his, a dove appeared from his sleeve and flew up into the rafters. The audience gasped.

“Forgive my little friend,” he said. “But beauty should never be confined.”

Then he tapped his wand on the table and masses of white petals burst into the air. This made me jump and my hand knocked over my glass of wine, which shattered into pieces. A red stain spread across the tablecloth. The petals floated slowly back down and landed on the stain like a sprinkling of snow.

Suddenly someone screamed. “Oh my God, he’s got a gun!”

I can’t say for sure what happened next. I remember more screams, a lot more screams, chairs tumbling over, a couple of shots I think. The spotlight swinging violently around the room, people running helter-skelter, surging towards the exit, scrambling under tables, pandemonium. And yet strangely, at the same time, it felt as if the whole world had frozen, as if everything had gone into slow motion. And then, all of a sudden, without a reason, there fell a deathly silence.

“Get under the table!” the magician cried to me.

But I couldn’t move. He’d tracked me down. Somehow my boyfriend had found me.

And now there was nothing but empty space and a row of upturned chairs between us. He strode towards me and held up his gun ready to fire. But the magician threw up his arms and another wave of petals rose like a cloud of white feathers and in that fraction of a moment he got his body in the way. The bullet hit his shirt and a red stain spread like wine against the cloth of pristine white.

Then another shot rang out and my boyfriend slumped to the floor beside the magician. The next thing I remember was the wah-wah of the sirens and the white uniforms of the medics, but it was too late to save either man.

It took a long time but eventually I went back to my beach. I hadn’t stayed away because I felt afraid. I was safe for sure now, I knew that. But I also knew that I must at some point return to my haven. I had a feeling inside me that I needed to express although I couldn’t begin to know what it was. I just knew that the only place I could express it was on my beach.

I waited for him to arrive with his soft blue eyes. But day after day he didn’t come. The feeling inside me grew stronger and harder to bear. When each day there was nothing. Just the ocean as lonely as ever and a sky of crystalline blue.

Until one day I spotted a flash of white alight on one of the palms. It was the dove, I felt sure. I held my hand in the air. I knew it would come and rest there.

I looked at the dove with the red dot on its chest and I was overwhelmed by guilt.

“I’m sorry I survived you,” I said, “I’m really sorry.” And I started to gently weep.

As I wept, the spot of scarlet slowly faded. Then the dove flew up into the sky and far away out of sight, unconfined.

THE THIRD BOTTLE

He was only slightly drunk. Alcohol had little effect these days.

Mark watched him pour himself another glass of wine. “You’re hurting the people who love you, John.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” He wondered why Mark was raising this topic. They’d reached an unspoken agreement that it was off limits.

“Do you want to hurt them? Is that it?”

John snorted. “Oh, spare me the pop psychology, please. Don’t give it a greater meaning than it has. It’s just a habit.”

“An addiction.”

“Habit, addiction – what’s the difference?”

Mark looked away. John had been the smartest kid in their school, sure of a shining future, to go all the way to the top. But he’d never seemed at all interested in climbing up the greasy pole. Mark had admired him so much when they were young – almost a kind of hero-worship. While he’d needed to work so hard just to get half-decent exam grades, John had seemed to do nothing and passed them all with flying colours.

And look at him now. A boring, pointless job he hated but which he managed to do well enough to avoid getting the sack. Then drinking himself sodden each night while he did The Times cryptic crossword, until somehow he clambered upstairs and fell into bed. And gradually, over the years, Mark’s hero-worship became tinged with envy and perhaps a touch of resentment. John had frittered away all that brainpower in a waste of a life. While he himself could have achieved so much with just a fraction of that talent.

At last he found the courage to say what he’d been working up to. The words were strangely coy. “I can’t be your friend any more, John.”

A smile curled along John’s top lip as if he were about to make a witty riposte. But he paused instead, and then he asked, “Why not?”

“It hurts me to see you like this.”

“Save your pity, Mark.”

“It’s not pity. Not for you, not any more. I’m the one who’s hurting.” He pointed to the bottle. “That stuff blots out your pain.”

John poured himself another glass.

“I’ve worked hard to get what I’ve got, John. But it always feels like you’re looking down your nose at what I’ve achieved.” He bit his lip. “I wasn’t born with a brain the size of a football.”

“You’re wrong, Mark. I’ve always admired you.”

“It doesn’t feel like that.”

“I’ve admired the way you can get up in the morning and carry all that sunniness into your day.”

Mark gave him an icy look. “You don’t need anyone to pity you, John. You can do that all by yourself.”

John sniffed. He felt nothing but disdain for people who offered solutions but didn’t even begin to understand. So-called experts. They had lots of fancy new words. No one said ‘alcoholic’ anymore – that was so passé. It was ‘alcohol use disorder’. Shiny new words to hide the fact that they hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. Or what to do about it. Then there was ‘functioning alcoholic’. He was sure that would be the category to which they’d assign him. A functioning alcoholic. The whole thing was bullshit.

“Your ressentiment is showing, Mark. How is your Nietzsche these days?”

Mark went to speak but said nothing. He knew he was about to be treated to an example of John’s erudition.

“It’s the resentment that slaves feel for their masters,” John went on. “They tell themselves it’s respect, but really it’s a ploy for the weak to snatch power from the strong. Look at us. Over the years it’s you who’s become the strong one. Just like old Friedrich predicted.”

“Sure, John. Come up with something clever like you always do. It doesn’t make you right. You’re smart and you know lots of things. But sometimes I think your cleverness is poison. Sometimes I think it’s what’s killing you inside.”

John held up the third bottle, still more than three-quarters full. “No, this is killing me inside.”

“Then why not give it up?”

“Pour it down the sink, you mean?”

“Why not?”

“They don’t give this stuff away, you know. You have to pay for it.”

“Go on, do it. Just walk over to the sink and pour it down the plughole.” They stared at each other for a moment. “Less than a bottle of cheap plonk. And you can’t even manage that.”

John put the bottle back on the table. “You’re right, the cleverness doesn’t help.”

Because in some ways John was ashamed of being an alcoholic. Yes, that’s the word he would use if forced to give it a name. That was the word he preferred – at least it wasn’t mealy-mouthed. But he was a cowardly alcoholic who soaked up wine in the comfort of his own home, not someone kicked out of a dive in the small hours of the morning and later found passed out in the gutter. Three bottles of wine a night were kid’s stuff compared to that. At least people who became heroin addicts or fried their brains with hallucinogens had made a decision at some point. There was something tragic about them, almost noble. They’d willingly gone to the edge. But most alcoholics slipped into their habit by accident. A little more each day until they were trapped. Nothing remotely noble. Just a stupid, pointless habit.

“Is there someone else?” he found himself asking. Then he laughed a little too loudly. “Oh, how could I come out with such a pathetic cliché?”

Mark glumly shook his head. “There’s no one else. I’ve kept you together all these years, John. I supposed it felt like my duty. I somehow got you to work on those mornings when it seemed you couldn’t do it. I phoned your boss and lied to her and told her you were sick.”

“I know, I know, I’m grateful.”

“No, you’re not – I’m just a useful mug.” He pointed to the bottle. “Or that stuff thinks I’m a mug. Well, I’ve finally realised that my kindness hasn’t helped you. I’m not the brightest spark, so it took me a while. All I’ve done is keep you comfortable in the hole you’ve dug for yourself. Perhaps if I’d stood back and let you fall apart, you’d have given that poison up.”

“Kill or cure, you mean?”

“Kill or cure. But I wasn’t smart enough to see that until now.”

“An interesting hypothesis.” He held up his glass. “You see, Mark, the problem is you have to want to give it up. That’s the key thing. Your life has to be so bad that it’s either you or the booze. But I’m a pathetic alcoholic. Not a proper one who ends up seeing pink elephants and getting DTs. Just a bourgeois little lush with an alcohol use disorder. So this won’t end in a tragic denouement. I’ll get liver disease or oesophageal cancer and those clever doctors will explain that I drank myself to death. I’ll be another statistic for their PowerPoints when they go to their medical conventions.” He paused. “They have no idea how most people actually live. The quiet desperation of ordinary lives. So they tell us it’s not our fault, it’s a disease, and that way they can dream up ways to cure us.”

Mark stood up. “I’m sorry, I should be going.”

“You won’t stay here tonight?”

“I’ve booked a hotel.” He paused. “I’m leaving, John. This time it’s for real.”

John poured himself another glass. “You’ve said that before. You’ll be back. We’re chained together, you and I.”

“Not this time.” He swallowed hard. “I’m going away. I’ve got a new job.” He paused. “In the Netherlands. I’ve read it’s a good place to live. It’s easy-going.”

John’s glass froze in mid-air. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for a job?”

“It wasn’t an easy thing to do. John, I just couldn’t.”

“Whatever problems we’ve had, we’ve always been open with each other. We’ve been honest.”

“And I knew that if I told you, somehow you’d change my mind.”

John took a long swig of his drink and gave a laugh. “Well, what a turn up for the books, eh? Do I brush back a tear and wish you all the best? Is that what happens next if we’re going to be adult about it?”

“I’ll pick my stuff up tomorrow if that’s OK.” He walked to the door and turned around. “I’d give the job up, John. You know that. If I really believed you could change.”

The door clicked shut behind him. It reminded John of a performance of A Doll’s House they’d watched a few years ago when he still did things like evenings at the theatre.

The third bottle was half empty. He carried it to the sink and held it over the plughole and tilted it sideways. But then a smile, or a smirk, rippled along the purple line of his lips. He shrugged and went back to the table and topped up his glass.