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him feeling childishly shy and unsure of what to do with my hands. He was still a little unsteady from the whiskey but thought another drink would perk him up. And as he went to have a glass of wine, his boss said I have your favourite tipple here and produced a bottle of Patrón Tequila.
    At the dinner table, Joe sat doing his best, beside a big Beryl-Reid-type woman who asked for a taste of his tequila. I had been seated opposite him, beside a funny little man with a moustache who was fascinated by the forthcoming election and wanted to talk of nothing else, gesticulating wildly with his thin, womanly hands when he spoke about what needed to be done to save the country. I was still in that phase of besottedness where talking to anyone aside from Joe, or talking about anything other than Joe, was a little tedious. Bella said that I was too into him; that it just wasn’t normal or healthy.
    So I wasn’t listening to the little man beside me that evening, I was watching Joe as he poured the Beryl-Reid-type woman a glass of tequila. She took a gulp, then Joe got up and stood behind her. ‘You do it like this,’ he said. He put his hands on either side of her head, pulled it back and rocked it from side to side like a cocktail shaker.Inspired by her enthusiasm, he forced this trick on other guests: the ladies seemed to quite enjoy it; their partners glowered at him. I squirmed in my seat. Then out came the white wine, red wine, cigarettes. And after a short respite on the journey over, Joe plunged back into drunkenness.
    I suggested that he take some air. He went out to the back garden and I forgot about him for a little while, becoming great friends with an accountant and part-time fortune teller. She said that I was going to have three babies and that we’d live in a house with high ceilings by the sea. I spotted him once through the bathroom window. He was slumped on a child’s swing in the sleet but I didn’t dare gesture, I was quite happy for him to be there, away from potential trouble. I hadn’t seen when, seconds later, he’d fallen backwards off it, banged his head, tried to stand up and had fallen again, this time into the flowerbed. Or the moment when his boss’s wife, Brenda, had come out to try and help him up and he had told her to fuck off. It was the drunkest he had ever imagined or been.
    When he fell back in through the sliding doors, wet, bleeding, covered in coal, having mistaken the bunker for the back door, people were already leaving. The woman who’d sat beside him at dinner was being helped into her coat by her husband. Joe made a lunge at her, to say goodbye and sorry and they’d both toppled over. Joe fell on top of her; she kicked and struggled beneath him like a capsized beetle. Her furious husband lifted him off her and onto his tiptoes. I pleaded with him to go home.
    I apologised to everyone and put him in a taxi, begging him not to throw up. He held his hand over his mouth, got sick into his shirt. Then he told me he thought he was dying, said he wanted to be dropped off at the hospital.
    When we got home I told him to stay outside while I went to get the garden hose. It was four in the morning, freezing cold. I returned to find him naked, waiting to be hosed down. I got him inside with great effort and up the stairs into the shower. Then he refused to get out.
    So I left him there. I locked the door because I didn’t want him in the bedroom. I heard him groaning, rolling about all night. In the morning he had carpet burns on his elbows and backside. He couldn’t do anything for the next two days. He just stared at the TV, understanding nothing.
    *
    I double checked that the front door was locked (it was), that the iron was unplugged (it was) and that Addie was still breathing (she was) and climbed into bed.
    The silence was ringing in my ears like tinnitus. Then I heard something. I hadn’t got used to the sounds of this house. I slid