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with Dave 2 and his cronies, because they know more about alcoholism in all its manifestations than an institute full of experts, and they are very keen to impart. So keen that a session with them is more tedious and introverted than being stuck on a desert island with a tour-load of constipated, bourgeois, middle-aged French women.
    But of all this Dan and Carol were unaware. Instead, from the moment Dave 2 arrived at the maisonette in Melrose Mansions, both of them were captivated by his vitality, his immediacy; the way he seemed to smash into shards the very quiddity of a continuum in their lives that they had always assumed to be of the consistency of the toughest Tupperware.
    ‘Bing-bong’ went the door chimes at seven o’clock. Dave 2 stood in the vestibule, arms akimbo, jawlanterned, a thatch of thick sandy hair tilted sideways on his head, so that one edge touched the collar of his army surplus fatigue jacket. This garment was Dave 2’s trademark. He called it ‘my uniform’. It was re-equipped for the campaign each and every day. One hip-dangling pocket was stuffed to overflowing with mock-gold flip-top boxes of Benson and Hedges Special Filter, and the other was usually stretched to its seams with some work or works of an improving or a spiritual nature. Books with titles like
Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I am?
or
Why Are You Afraid to Tell Me Who You Are?
and even the blunter and more comprehensive
Why Are We Afraid?
    Dave 2 then, lowering in the vestibule, under the neat certainty of the sconce, says to Carol, ‘Dave, Dave Hobbes. I’ve come to pick up…Dan?’ He said the name as if not quite sure, and an appealing glance seemed to come up at Carol from his yellow eyes. Seemed to, because it was a trick, an illusion. Dave 2 stood at least a foot taller than Carol, but constant abasements and attempts to achieve perfect humility had given him the ability to alter his height at will.
    And Dave 2 saw a thinnish, blondish young woman, her flat hair trained behind lobeless ears. She had flawless skin, but it did have some kind of a waxy patina; and there was also an oddly collapsing aspect to her midriff, as if Carol were a card table in the process of being vertically folded for storage purposes. Dave 2 said later of this encounter and the first impressions he associatedwith it, ‘It was obvious that she was ready for help, that she had reached her own personal Waterloo… She was all sort of faded and wrung out, weren’t you?’ And at this point he would turn to Carol, sitting next to him in the circle of chairs, radiant in white chemise, and she would radiantly smile her assent.
    But when she opened the front door to Dave 2 this lay some weeks and several group meetings in the future. For the meantime, she just invited him in. Dan skulked off to get ready. He still had the adolescent awkwardness that makes a hash out of introductions. Dave 2, cosy with instant coffee and a fag in the kitchen said, ‘He’s awfully young, but if he’s had enough, Carol m’dear, this could be the turning point for him.’
    Dave 2 leaned across the breakfast counter and took Carol’s forearm gently in between the thumb and fore-finger of his huge, freckled right hand. This was a characteristic gesture of Dave 2’s, and as usual, it came accompanied by a special, more spiritually intense, lowering of his burry West Country voice. ‘You look all in, m’dear,’ said Dave 2. ‘I don’t wonder that you haven’t had a hell of a time coping with him.’
    Carol tried not to shrug. She didn’t want to do anything that might cause the grip of those fingers to tighten on her. She said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it hasn’t been too bad.’ But Dave 2 wasn’t taking ‘not too bad’ for an answer. This was a man who
firmly
believed that the word
fine,
as in ‘I’m feeling fine’, was really an acronym, spelling out Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic andEmotional. Indeed, when Dan had become quite integrated into the St