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mind about me, flower; worse things happen at sea,’ said Nurse Susan, turning and grinning at me over her shoulder. I sat drinking the remains of my tea-time bottle.
    ‘I told you not to drink that stuff,’ said Colin, ‘but I suppose you can’t help yourself.’
    ‘Colin,’ I told him, ‘it’s not a matter of ‘‘can’t help’’. It’s a matter of choice. I choose to drink wine. It is my hobby, as you well know.’
    ‘Yes, well,’ said Colin, ‘you no doubt have a perfectly good set of reasons for going on doing what you are doing. Addicts always do.’
    There was a silence. Colin looked at his watch. He measured out the minutes of his day as carefully as I tried to measure out my glasses of wine.
    ‘About those tests,’ he said. I braced myself for the usual lecture. ‘Most of it is nothing new,’ Colin went on. ‘You have all the gastrointestinal problems one would expect. You have acid reflux into the oesophagus, which might tend towards producing cancer in a few years’ time, if you don’t get it somewhere else first. Your cholesterol level is extremely high, because of free radicals. In layman’s terms, your liver is disintegrating and as it does so your cholesterol level goes up, increasing the risk of a stroke or heart attack. I dread to think what the condition of your bowels is.’
    ‘Not great,’ I admitted.
    ‘Are you taking any of the tablets I gave you for any of those things?’ asked Colin.
    ‘No, they made the wine taste odd, so I threw them away.’
    ‘Then you have a lot of the other symptoms of alcoholism, such as sweating, weight loss, and mental confusion. You’re sweating now - rather a lot, as it happens.’
    I wanted to stand up and open a window, but it seemed like too much effort; so I simply said, ‘It’s very hot in the kitchen.’
    ‘Why are you dressed up in a suit?’ asked Colin. ‘Are you going to a meeting?’
    ‘No, I just wanted to make an effort.’
    Colin drummed his fingers on the table, then moved his chair around and said, ‘You’re not looking me in the eye.’
    ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I can’t help it. My eyes seem to be wandering a bit since I woke up this morning.’
    Colin took a small torch from the leather bag that he always carried, and came and shone it in both of my eyes. He peered into them. I flinched. He went and sat down again and said, ‘Do you know how alcohol works?’
    There he went again. ‘Stop calling it alcohol,’ I said. ‘This isn’t chemistry; this is wine we’re talking about.’
    ‘Well, I’m talking about chemistry. Actually I want to tell you about brain chemistry. No, just listen for a few minutes, while you can still understand some of what I tell you. The kind of habitual drinking you indulge in is no different in degree from the addiction of a heroin addict. In both cases the brain becomes progressively more damaged, probably irreversibly, by an excessive consumption of a harmful substance. Your ability to produce important neurotransmitters, such as dopamine or serotonin, is being damaged. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that enables you to feel either pain or pleasure. In your case, your tolerance of pain is growing: you never complain to me about your physical state, which must be becoming more wretched every day. A normal person would be asking to be admitted to hospital if they felt like you must feel.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said.
    ‘Don’t be flippant,’ admonished Colin. He held up a finger as if to place it against my lips, to seal them, but he lowered it again and said, ‘The sad part is that your ability to feel pleasure is disappearing at the same rate, perhaps for ever. The pleasure you think you feel in drinking wine is, on the whole, a delusional construct. Another thing that is happening to you is the destruction of your ability to produce serotonin. That’s the happy chemical. If you don’t have enough of it, you become depressed, you take more of whatever your poison is to counter