How Not to Die Alone

by Richard Roper

weaving past parents with pushchairs and a group of tourists who’d slowed to a stop in the street as if their batteries had run down,

It was fair to say, if you were to really drill down and examine the data, and then draw conclusions from said data, that Andrew was, to a certain extent, drunk. He

it had felt like an out-of-body experience.

“Well now. I’m not entirely sure I saw this coming.”

He spent the entire journey home trying to stop grinning.

her,” she said, with the tone of someone weighing in calmly to settle a fierce debate, before going back to her book.

He decided this should be part of some governmental scheme: that everyone should be legally entitled to have at least one evening a year where they could sink down into soft cushions, their stomachs rumbling in anticipation of ravioli and red wine, listening to chatter from another room, and feel for the briefest flicker of time that they mattered to someone.

It was only now he could truly see how deluded he’d been to think the fantasy he’d created could be anything more than the weakest facsimile of the real thing.

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was well kept but with lots of character—a

The windows had steamed up to reveal handprints and a wonkily drawn

Peggy said to no one in particular.

Jesus Christ, Andrew thought, unable to stifle a hiccup. I think I’m in love.

As the old drinking adage goes: beer before wine, then you’ll be fine; six beers before half a bottle of wine, then you’ll be dizzy and believe the story you want to tell to be much more important than anyone else’s.

“And the impression we’d had up till then was that the man had been fairly quiet, fairly normal . . .”

Peggy had spoken over him, so the impact of the punch line was deadened.

“I’ll do the washing up,” he announced determinedly, as if volunteering to go back into a burning building to rescue some children.

“Oi, you, you lightweight,”

Andrew heard the tail end of their conversation as he left.

euphoria

And there was music—jarringly out of tune, so deep it was vibrating through his body.

The song was Ella’s, but her voice sounded like it was playing at half speed. Bluuuue moooooon, you saw me standing aloooonnnne.

Andrew took the can of Irn-Bru from Peggy with a trembling hand and took a tentative sip, tasting what seemed like fizzy metal.

“Thanks,” he croaked.

Andrew was never drinking again, that much he knew. His head was throbbing, and every time the train took a bend he felt a horrible pang of nausea. But far worse were the incomplete flashbacks from the previous night. What had he said? What had he done?

He remembered Peggy and Imogen looking annoyed. Was that the point when he’d started a sentence three times with increasing volume and urgency (“I was . . . So, anyway, I was . . . I WAS”) because people didn’t seem to be concentrating?

The brief sleep had revived Andrew enough that he could now, with horrible clarity, consciously consider how much he’d ruined things.

“Look,” Andrew said quickly, cursing himself for butting in but desperate to get his apology in as soon as he could. “I’m

like you said I’m clearly a lightweight.

There was a “but” coming. Andrew could sense it hurtling toward him quicker than the approaching train.

Peggy put a hand up to her mouth, fingers splayed across her lips. “How can you be so naive?” she said. “In what universe does that happen so smoothly, so quickly, with all the logistics sorted and none of the fucking pain of it all? We’re not teenagers, Andrew. There are consequences.”

“And, at the moment, given what I’ve been going through with Steve, what I really need—even if this is hard to hear—is an understanding friend with a good heart, who’s there to support me. Someone honest, that I can trust.”

They had been promised a replacement train, but in reality this just meant they were forced to cram onto the next service, which was already full. It was an every-man-for-himself affair,

Later, he stood outside his shabby building, which had seemingly aged ten years in the last week,

He thought back to how uncharacteristically rushed he’d been when he’d left the house,

the scuff marks on the wall, and the flickering light.

Gritting his teeth,

for anyone to realize he was dead.

An unfortunate debt collector—who’d apparently been scrambled to the property with the urgency of a counterterrorist operative—had peered through the building’s letterbox only to be met by a volley of flies.

He dropped his bag to the floor and batted away the flies excited from the disturbance.

he even forced himself to look inside the oven, which was caked in congealed fat,

He’d always thought he preferred the chaos to the sterile, but on a purely sensory level it was hard to reconcile how someone could have lived like that. Surely he must have been of unsound mind not to know how bad it was. It made

Andrew think of the frog boiling to death, unaware that the water’s getting hotter.

Later, he headed back to the office smelling like the Body Shop...

steaming away next to him.

“So that means it’s just us two here . . . holding the old fort.”

unsure where this was going, wondering if he should suggest that Cameron’s next move toward enlightenment should be an enforced period of silence.

It was horribly clear, though, that Cameron had some ...

Andrew looked blankly back at him.

“Right,” Andrew said, resisting the temptation to scream, IF YOU MEAN “TALK” JUST SAY “TALK,” at him.

Cameron flashed him a particularly desperate grin, his teeth on full display.