What is it about hangovers and growing older? When you’re young, they’re almost fun, synonymous with bacon rolls and gallons of coffee and sprawling around with a bunch of mates on threadbare sofas, chuckling over the antics of the night before. Plus, hangovers make women horny; everyone knows that. The morning after was sometimes better than the night out that caused it.
It’s not like that anymore. A hangover now results in complete mental collapse. ‘Kate?’ he shouts, sitting bolt upright now. ‘Where are you?’
Silence. Perhaps she’s taken the dog out? Although Jarvis belongs to Vince’s daughter, it’s Kate who’s been doing all the walking. Feeling reassured now, he remembers that she’d taken herself off for a walk last night too. What was that all about? He opens the messages on his phone and reads the last one he sent her:Gail’s saying if it’s oat milk can you get the barista kind?Sent at 1.17a.m. Now it’s coming back to him. Gail had wanted tea, and it had seemed easier at the time to ask Kate to fetch the milk while she was out, rather than their neighbour nipping next door for it.
Vince isn’t quite sure why he thought that. But there’s no reply to his request.
Frowning now, he clambers out of bed and pulls on his favourite dressing gown, grateful that the thick velour-type fabric is effectively blotting the dampness from his body. He’s no sooner opened the bedroom door than Jarvis shoots in, panting with his tail wagging madly.
‘Oh! What’re you doing here?’ So Kate hasn’t taken him out after all. He’s fussing around Vince now, jumping up in a manner that suggests he’s desperate for breakfast.
Vince steps out into the hallway and sees that the bathroom no longer has a door on it. ‘What?’ he shouts. They’ve been robbed! No, burglars steal jewellery, laptops, stuff like that. Not doors. So what’s been going on?
Now he spots a filthy and crumpled bed sheet lying on the bathroom floor. It looks like people have been trampling on it, in dirty shoes, possibly from being out in the garden where the lawn turns to mud in the lightest of showers. More curiously still, bits of Sellotape are dangling from the top of the doorframe, as if something had been hanging there. Managing to piece these clues together, Vince remembers the jammed bathroom door and trying to smash his way in by ramming his body against it, which explains his aching shoulder and upper arm. But the door had remained shut, and Colin had insisting on rushing home for his toolkit like some screwdriver-wielding superhero. Just to rub it in that Vince hadn’t known where the toolbox was kept.
Oh yeah,Colin had crowed.Kate did mention that she assembles all your flatpack!
Casting a cursory glance at the small pile of dog puke in the corner, Vince stomps through to the kitchen with Jarvis fussing at his heels. Here, every surface is strewn with smeared glasses, dirty plates, half-eaten sausage rolls and bowls of dismal rice and couscous. On top of the recycling bin sits a stack of frozen food boxes, and on the draining board is a smear of something white and creamy. He vaguely remembers Kate presenting some kind of dip, and his stomach shifts uneasily.
Now he’s aware that the kitchen seems terribly hot, which is triggering his sweat glands again. Plus, there’s a burning smell. With a jolt he realises the oven’s little red light is on. It must have been left on all night. He turns it off and opens the door, reeling back as acrid smoke billows out at him.
‘Jesus!’ he cries out, squinting through it to identify a round, flat object sitting on a tray on the middle shelf. He grabs the oven glove, jabs both hands into it and lifts out the tray. But the glove offers virtually zero protection and he screams in pain and flings the tray and the thing on it into the sink. ‘Fuck!’ he yells, the smoke alarm beeping shrilly as he peers at the blackened object. Its surface is bubbled and charred, almost metallic. It looks like a component from a burnt-out car.
Vince looks around for the floor brush. He’s seen Kate using it to jab at the smoke alarm on the ceiling when it’s gone off before. But where is it? Why does she insist on hiding things – brush, toolbox – in weird places? ‘She’s gaslighting me,’ he informs Jarvis, who’s been observing the scene and doesn’t seem to know what to make of this new information. His only concern seems to be breakfast. So Vince will have to deal with that stinky dog meat too.
He can’t find the brush and the smoke alarm’s relentless shrieking seems to be spearing his brain. Under Jarvis’s watchful gaze he clambers unsteadily onto a kitchen chair, punches the smoke alarm with his fist and groans in relief as it falls mercifully quiet.
There,he thinks, climbing down. That’s another good thing about living in a Sixties bungalow: low ceilings. He rubs at his smarting eyes and opens the kitchen window to alleviate the smell.
The day has barely begun and Vince is exhausted already. Glaring again at the incinerated object in the sink, he snatches his phone from his dressing gown pocket and calls his wife.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate
‘You’re... what?’ Vince splutters.
‘I’m at Euston station,’ I repeat.
‘What’re you doing there?’
‘Catching the next train home,’ I say automatically, as I look around at all the people hurrying around, clutching coffees and those anaemic-looking baguettes wrapped in paper napkins.
‘I... I don’t understand,’ he announces.
‘Vince,’ I start, ‘d’you realise I’ve been out the whole night?’
‘The wholenight? You are kidding.’
‘No, I really have.’
‘You’ve been at Euston station all night?’
‘No, I stayed at Tash’s.’
‘What?’ A stunned pause. ‘How did you get there?’
‘I caught a bus.’
