How Not to Die Alone

by Richard Roper

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m actually on a diet anyway. It’s the one where you eat an entire wheel of brie and then have a bit of a cry. You know the one?”

But two beers, though. Two! At lunchtime! What was he going to do next—throw a television out of a window? Ride a motorbike into a swimming pool?

“Hmm,” Peggy said, not looking fazed, to Andrew’s relief. “I suppose it’s probably just because it’s a moment in time where you know exactly what’s about to happen, so there are no nasty surprises waiting for you. I dunno, maybe that’s a bit of a pessimistic way of looking at it.”

He had never really understood the point in getting hammered at social events like this. Surely you were just more likely to say something stupid and then spend the rest of the evening regretting it? Then you’d need another drink just to get over that. (“That,” Peggy would later say to him, “is drinking in a nutshell.”)