Dinner at Mine (17 page)

Charlotte opened first one eye – all fine – and then the other. Woah. Not so good. The bedroom was suddenly blurred and unstable. Furniture reared up from the floor
while the light from the window whirled around the ceiling. Queasiness welled up from her stomach. She shut both eyes quickly and rolled over on the pillow, waiting for the anxious roaring of blood
in her ears to subside.

She could feel her flesh quivering as it sweated out alcohol. She knew if she tried to move it would be painful. For a moment, lying with both eyes closed, she tried to keep the sickness at bay,
pretending that if she just stayed still it would somehow disappear. Even as she thought it she could feel her head throbbing and bile rising towards her throat. If she didn’t move, the surge
would pass. Even breathing made her whole body shiver. Suddenly her skin seemed hypersensitive, the press of the pillow on her cheek like broken glass. Sightless, she felt like she was twisting,
falling into a vortex of nausea.

She tried again to open her eyes. First, the left one. The room seemed clear, and Charlotte anchored her vision on the bedside alarm clock. Then the right eye followed. Immediately the clock
dissolved and she felt her innards roiled by a fresh wave of sickness. She screwed her eyes tight shut.

What was going on? She fought to bring her breathing under control. In the hide beneath the duvet she could smell the stale alcohol on her heavy panting. More slowly this time, she tried again.
Left eye: fine. Both: the room whirled. Was she still drunk? No, the headache was too bad for that. Was she going blind? Was this an early stage of some tropical disease? Would she be dead within
the hour? Bugger. She didn’t want her alarm clock to be the last thing she saw.

Charlotte tried again. Left eye: very good. Close it. Now right eye: very blurred. Left eye: good. Right eye: blurred.

Shit. She’d gone to bed with one contact lens in, again.

Charlotte closed her right eye for the time being and considered getting out of bed. Her nerve endings squealed in protest at the idea. Hmm. This hangover seemed like a bad one. She turned over
very slowly and reached over to the bedside table, groping in the drawer for pills. She felt the reassuring crackle of silver foil. But the first packet turned out to be Strepsils, and the second
was empty. She tossed them to the floor in disgust.

There was a wet glass lying by the side of the bed, a thin trickle of water spilling on to the carpet. Good. She’d obviously had some water before falling asleep. But the glass was now
empty and the back of her throat was parched and ticklish. Was there anything else to drink?

Charlotte flopped forward on to her front, feeling a metallic stabbing pain in her chest. Shit, what was that? A heart attack? Nope. She had fallen asleep in her bra and the underwiring was
digging uncomfortably between two ribs. Charlotte groaned. She hadn’t fallen asleep in her clothes again, had she? She looked down. Well, not exactly. Those were definitely pyjama
bottoms.

What had happened last night? Charlotte tried to concentrate. After-work drinks as normal. Louise had been on good form, bitching about how unfair it was that Jodie was getting a bigger pay
rise, even though everyone knew she was useless. Then some guys from Commercial had come down and they’d moved on to that pub near Warren Street. When they’d got kicked out of there,
one of the guys – Dave, was it? Andy? – had taken them to an underground bar where they were playing loud Latin music. Dave/Andy had bought shots of tequila. So that had become the
drink of choice for the rest of the night.

What had they eaten? Ah. That would be the problem. Charlotte felt a wave of hunger, which turned quickly into nausea, but then back to hunger again.

She had finally left when Dave/Andy had tried to get a samba routine going, lurching unsteadily round the dance floor, desperately chasing the beat with his hips. Louise had joined in, but
Charlotte had gone home. She was drunk, but not drunk enough to samba.

That must have been well past three o’clock, at least. Even the illegal minicabs were beginning to drift home. What time was it now? Charlotte shifted her head until she could see the
glowing red numerals of the alarm clock: 12.47. What did that mean? It was afternoon. Lunchtime anyway.

Jesus, she was hungry. No, nauseous. No, hungry.

Charlotte listened to her own uneven breathing for a while. This was an even worse start to the weekend than last Saturday morning. Whatever she’d felt then, at least she’d been able
to open both her eyes without wanting to puke.

Her right eye was beginning to ache with the effort of holding itself shut, so she swapped, closing the left and looking at the blurred world through the right. The soft focus made her feel
better. Her nausea could float freely now, without banging up painfully against the sharp corners of the room.

Come on. Time to get up. Food. Water. Pills. Charlotte pulled back the duvet and slid one leg experimentally out of bed. It reached the floor without incident. She sent the other out after it
and used an elbow to lever herself upright.

For a few seconds she had to sit still on the edge of the bed, until the roaring in her ears subsided again. Her damp skin felt cold against the harsh air of the bedroom. Maybe this was a bad
idea. Charlotte looked back down at the soft, tousled warmth of her sheets. She was about to let herself collapse back on to them when another pang of hunger propelled her upright. By the time it
became nausea, she was halfway to the bathroom and it was too late to turn back.

At the sink, Charlotte slipped out the contact lens, stung her face with cold water and dug out some packets of pills from the back of the cupboard, rifling through them for paracetamol. There
was only one compartment in the plastic wrapper left unpopped. What about aspirin? She found a packet, but that too had only one pill left.

Sod it. She popped one of each into her palm and swallowed them straight down with a cupped handful of water from the bathroom tap.

Her glasses were on the ledge under the window, and as she put them on Charlotte caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her skin was puffy, with red blotches down her cheek and a dark-yellow
patch under her eye. She made herself look closer. The flesh below her chin sagged, but above it the skin was waxy, imprinted into lumpy mounds by the pillow. Her eyes were still not fully open,
sunk into deep trenches ringed with wrinkly fortifications. She looked exhausted. No, worse than that – she looked old.

Christ. Jesus. Charlotte stared at herself. What a hag. She couldn’t keep doing this. She wasn’t young enough any more. She didn’t recover like she used to. The nausea seemed
to spread to her bones. How long was she going to carry on doing this? Would she still be out on the lash in twenty years? With all the twenty-one-year-olds laughing at her behind her back? Maybe
they were doing that already.

At least she had woken up in her own bed this week, though. That was progress, wasn’t it? Well, no, actually, it was the norm. And would be for decades ahead . . . decades of waking up
alone with hangovers that got steadily worse until they turned into a terminal illness.

Charlotte slammed the bathroom door behind her. Jesus, what maudlin bollocks. Bacon. That was what she needed. Charlotte took off the bra, put on her warmer pyjamas and a dressing gown, and went
down the hall to the kitchen. The fridge was largely bare, but at the back there were two stacked packets of smoked bacon, the remains of a three-for-two offer. The top packet was open, but the
three rashers left in it had acquired a rainbowy sheen. The meat below looked lifeless and grey. Charlotte checked the use-by date. It wasn’t that long ago. She sniffed it. Nothing. It always
looked better once it was cooked anyway.

She threw the bacon into a frying pan with a big chunk of butter. When the butter began to melt, she stirred the pan, coating the bacon all over. Within minutes the kitchen was filled with a
fatty sizzle. Charlotte perked up immediately. She searched for mushrooms or tomatoes, but found only a tin of baked beans in the cupboard. They would do. Beans were better for a hangover anyway.
Someone had told Charlotte recently that beans and ketchup each counted as one of your five a day, which cheered her up so much she decided not to check if it was true.

She tossed a couple of slices of white bread into the toaster, and when the bacon was browning at the edges she broke in the last egg without sniffing it first. The kitchen filled with thick,
warming smells and Charlotte felt a stab of hunger which this time brooked no opposition from the nausea. She made a cup of tea and tipped the contents of the frying pan on to a plate. The egg
landed upside down with the yolk bleeding into the beans. Delicious.

Charlotte flipped on the TV as she ate, pausing at a programme in which overemotional teenagers discussed their break-ups and crushes direct to camera. One boy, describing how his girlfriend of
three weeks had dumped him, began to weep unashamedly. What wimps. No wonder teen bullying was on the rise if this was what fifteen-year-olds behaved like these days.

The pills and the fry-up had kicked in now, and Charlotte was feeling much better. Two days of recuperation lay ahead. Did she have anything on tonight? Oh shit. Another bloody dinner party.
Charlotte mopped up the sticky red and yellow residue on her plate with another piece of bread.

She hadn’t heard from Matt since last week. She could have been annoyed, but it would have been for form’s sake. It was obvious that neither of them wanted anything more. Actually,
she now felt that they’d handled it quite well.

The previous Saturday she’d woken up late too, with a moment of panic at the unfamiliar surroundings. When she had realized where she was, she had been relieved to find herself alone in
the bed. It was a bad moment to be making small talk.

She had lain there in the half-light, wondering what to do. Occasionally, she heard Matt’s footsteps walking past the door. Was he trying to let her know that he was still there if she
wanted to come out? Or was it just a small flat?

Charlotte didn’t move. The stale smell of Matt’s sweat rose from the sheets, along with a strange aftershave she couldn’t imagine him using. There was a glass of water by the
bed. Had he brought it in that morning or was it left over from last night? Charlotte downed it. The room felt fetid. Charlotte wanted to open the curtains, maybe the window too, but she
didn’t want to attract Matt’s attention. What the hell would they say to each other?

The footsteps paused conspicuously outside the bedroom door. Charlotte slumped back down and closed her eyes. Matt opened the door; light flooded in from the hall. Feeling his eyes on her,
Charlotte didn’t stir. She was pretending to be asleep and Matt, she was fairly sure, was pretending to believe her.

After a while he left without saying anything. Charlotte wondered how long she would give it before cracking. She didn’t want to go out there drowsy and hungover, but what was the
alternative? She lay staring at the bare walls. There were no posters on them, and the only clothes on the floor were her own. Everything else was tidied away. Charlotte suddenly wanted very badly
to be in her own flat.

Outside, the front door slammed. Charlotte listened. The footsteps had stopped and the flat was silent. Had Matt gone out?

Charlotte waited five minutes. Nothing. The bastard! He’d just fucked off and left her there!

But no, this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She slipped out of bed and found a dressing gown in Matt’s freakishly neat cupboard. Cautiously, she opened the bedroom door. The hall
was quiet. She approached the kitchen, but it was obvious there was no one in it. Matt had already done most of the washing up, and a big stack of plates and glasses was drying on the worktop. The
extended table was now very bare, apart from a note in the centre.

Charlotte admired its neutral simplicity. It committed him to absolutely nothing, and while it raised the possibility that she could leave, that couldn’t be classed as
rude because the decision was hers to make.

Charlotte had put her clothes on and got the hell out.

Now, the fry-up gone, Charlotte dumped her plate in the sink. She poured herself a bowl of Frosties for pudding and settled on to the sofa with more tea and the remote control.

If it wasn’t for Matt, she would make an excuse and stay in tonight. No, that wasn’t quite what she meant. It was just that if she didn’t turn up, he would think it was because
of him. Charlotte zapped through the TV channels. So she would have to go. It would be bloody awkward, obviously, but she wasn’t going to be the one to blink first.

The minicab driver didn’t offer to help Justin get the chairs out of the boot. Justin struggled under their weight and had to find a lamp post to lean them against while
he went over to the driver’s window to give him a ten-pound note. The man drove off without giving Justin his pound change. Justin thought of protesting, but the man didn’t seem to
speak much English. If he was a recent immigrant, he probably needed the money anyway, Justin decided.

The folding chairs were much heavier than they looked, and Justin found he needed to loop his arms beneath the backrests to be able to carry them over his shoulder. As he let himself in the
front door he had to turn sideways and shuffle carefully into the hall to get them inside.

Justin had borrowed the chairs from Gautam, a friend who lived nearby. It was very kind of him, Justin thought. Especially since he hadn’t been invited to the dinner party. Justin had
explained that he would have asked him, only it was a competition, you see, and it had to be the same people every time . . .

Justin felt bad too that he hadn’t felt able to ask his neighbours if they had any spare chairs. He experienced a familiar pang as he walked past the front door of Mrs McCluskey’s
ground-floor flat. He really wanted to get on with his neighbours, but she did make it so difficult. Justin trod as lightly as he could on the way past, hoping that today she would not dash out and
complain that his footsteps were too loud. He had never had a conversation with her in which she hadn’t complained about that, or about him walking around too late at night, or playing music,
or running the washing machine at the weekend. Of course it wasn’t her fault; she was obviously lonely, and had probably had a difficult life. Justin had tried to ask her about it more than
once, but she’d told him to mind his own business. He suspected hers might be a council flat. That made him feel a bit better about it.