Ben’s involving himself in a drinking game now, and I look from Ollie and Liv at the top of the stairs to the kitchen down the hall. I feel Ollie turn to glance in my direction as we all hear, ‘One, two, three: drink!’ in Ben’s distinctive voice.
I look up at Ollie and he peers down at me with a face that spells doom. He comes down the stairs and Liv shouts something after him, but he ignores her.
‘We have a problem again, don’t we?’ Ollie asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply sadly as I see most of our remaining guests, around twenty in total, chug from their disposable plastic cups. They’re standing around our charity-shop dining table, for once cleared of all useless paperwork and student textbooks. The detritus of the party food has been shovedtowards the centre. Inside each disposable cup is a large measure of whatever spirits are left over. It’s the end of the night. The party was flagging and I was ready for bed and – always the last one at the party – Ben has resuscitated it with this game. He was doing so well too. He’d been on tonic water all night, as far as I was aware, and said happily that he could almost pretend it was gin and tonic. I’m not sure now if I believe him.
‘Get the fuck off the table!’ everyone yells gleefully, and a girl from Ben’s economics lectures – who was the last person to drink and then put her empty cup upside-down on her head – groans in annoyance at losing and moves back towards the kitchen counters.
Ben grabs a bottle of tequila from the centre and pours a large shot into his own cup and the cups of those he can reach, before passing the bottle around and everyone else refills. ‘One, two, three: drink!’ everyone shouts together when the last shot has been poured. Then as they spy the final person to chug the tequila – one of the computer boys from our old halls – they all turn and yell at him, ‘Get the fuck off the table!’
‘I can’t watch this,’ I say to Ollie. ‘I just can’t. I don’t believe this is happening.’
‘Don’t you?’ he asks softly. ‘I do. I’m sorry, though. What will you do?’
‘I can’t do anything. Can I? Short of locking Ben in his room or following him around for the rest of his days, making sure he doesn’t go anywhere near alcohol. I can’tdoanything.’
Ollie looks lost. We’re in the hallway and I cry. I can’t help it, but I don’t know what to do. I feel helpless. Iamhelpless now. He pulls me towards him.
‘It shouldn’t be like this,’ he says into my hair.
‘I know.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You andhim.’
‘What do you mean?’ I pull back and look at him.
‘Aury,’ he starts and then thinks better of it as Liv arrives and stares at us.
‘What’s going on?’ she asks, seeing Ollie’s arms around me.
I don’t know how to explain it quick enough, so Ollie does it for us. ‘Ben’s drinking. Hard.’
‘Yeah,’ Liv says. ‘He’s been back on it for a while.’
‘A while?’ I ask. ‘As in tonight for a few hours or … weeks?’
‘A few weeks,’ she says and then looks guilty. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘We were in the bar and I bought a round, and I didn’t think about it until it was too late. Ben said he’d be fine. That it wouldn’t change anything. But he still drank it.’
‘Liv!’ Ollie says, even though it’s not her fault. Not really. It’s Ben’s and he can’t stop.
‘I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t thinking.’
In the kitchen someone else is being shouted at to get the fuck off the table.
‘Oh God. This is pointless, isn’t it?’ I say to no one in particular. I don’t know what to do now. I just don’t. I can’t keepdoing this. I can’t keep trying to help Ben or intervene, when he’s not interested in stopping. ‘Will he be like this for ever?’ I ask Ollie. ‘Because if so, I can’t do this.’
Ollie looks forlorn.
But Liv answers, even though I don’t want to hear it. ‘Probably,’ she says gently. ‘He’s got a problem. You can’t fix him. None of us can. Ben needs to fix it himself.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ollie
