Anne Billson - Suckers

I'd forgotten the car. 'Oh no ,' I said. 'No way are you driving.' I pulled him towards the tube entrance, but it was later than I'd thought — the stairs were barred by a crisscross metal grille. An entire evening had slipped away and we hadn't eaten so much as a pretzel. No wonder we were both legless.

On the Strand I attempted to hail a cab, but they were all heading east with their lights off. Duncan clutched my arm in a determined fashion. 'S'all right, I'm perfectly sober.' This was patently untrue, but I allowed him to lead me back to the car. I couldn't think what else to do.

It was a wild drive. Haves and Have Nots were out in force. Crowds milled on pavements outside clubs, queueing to pass the dress code inspection and spilling into the road. Along Shaftesbury Avenue I was rather pleased to see two shaven-haired thugs heaving a paving stone through the window of a shoe shop. We pulled up at some lights and I shouted, 'Yo!' They waved back, then, grinning like escaped mental patients, started walking across the road towards us.

'Jesus!' I said, but just then the traffic started rolling again. I craned my neck, looking back. The thugs were wading through the cars like a couple of teenage Godzillas, heading back up the road to Cambridge Circus.

The streets were swarming with drunken drivers pretending to be sober, all pointing their hood ornaments in what they hoped was the right direction and praying like mad they wouldn't get stopped. Duncan would have failed a breathalyser at fifty paces, and there was a nerve-racking encounter with a night bus in the vicinity of Marble Arch, but we managed to get as far as Queensway without knocking down any little old ladies. Then, south of Westbourne Grove, just as I was starting to relax, he gave a little sigh and drove into a wall.

We were taking a corner at the time. As I saw his hands lift ever so slightly off the wheel, it flashed through my head that he had judged it an excellent way of committing suicide. Fortunately, our speed was too low to inflict anything other than minor damage to the front bumper and one of the headlamps. We ground to a halt with the engine still running. The wall came off without a scratch.

My head was instantly clear. I tipped Duncan on to the pavement and took his place behind the wheel. I'd given up learning to drive a long time ago, but now I remembered enough to trundle around the corner in first gear and park the car so it didn't stick out at too crazy an angle. One of the wheels ended up on the kerb, but it wasn't bad for an inebriated amateur. I yanked the handbrake up and switched off the engine.

When I got back to Duncan, he was sitting on the wall, kicking it with the backs of his heels. 'That's quite enough driving,' I told him, burying the car keys in his pocket. Behind me, there was the sound of someone clearing his throat. I turned. Just across the road, standing beneath a lamppost, was a man in black.

'It's all right,' I called. 'He's not hurt.'

But the man didn't react. There was something about his stillness which made me uncomfortable. A window opened somewhere over his head and he tilted his face so the light fell on it, and I saw he was having a heavy nosebleed. It made me wonder if he too had been involved in a minor accident, but I didn't want to hang around to find out. I hauled Duncan to his feet and marched him along the street, risking a single backward glance before we reached the corner. The man hadn't budged; he was staring after us with a fixed look on his face as blood gushed steadily from his nostrils. I was relieved when we rounded the corner and he couldn't see us any more.

'You'd better come back with me,' I told Duncan. My flat was only a few blocks away, a five-minute stagger as opposed to the fifteen-minute trek required to reach his place. Quite honestly, he didn't seem up to it. He could walk, but he had no willpower; I was having to propel him.

Lulu had left several anxious messages on my answering machine. 'Dora? Are you there? Is Duncan there?' and 'Dora, please call.' It was too late to ring back; I figured she would have gone to bed early on the eve of her big day.

By the time I'd gulped down a couple of glasses of water, Duncan had passed out fully clothed on top of the bedclothes. I undressed and slid beneath the quilt next to him. Once or twice I dozed off, but mostly I lay propped on one elbow, examining his face at close quarters. I hadn't had him so close for ages. I stared into his face and puzzled over it. He wasn't so good-looking. His hair needed cutting; it flopped all over the place. I'd known men who were more talented, funnier, cleverer. So what was it about this one? As far as I could see, he had failed to enhance the quality of my life in any way whatsoever. All he had done was bring me grief. So why did I stick with him? The only way I could make sense of it was by thinking of him as a type of addiction. He was a drug.

At some point during the night, he regained consciousness long enough to remove his clothes and clamber on top of me, though I'd not sure he realized who I was. After a bit of unresolved fumbling, he rolled over and went back to sleep. He may well have been a drug, but he certainly wasn't a hard one.

But if it hadn't been the grand physical reunion I'd had in mind all those years, what the hell — it was better than nothing.

Feeling quite pleased about it, I fell asleep.

The next day started off badly and got steadily worse. First of all, Duncan went home without even stopping for breakfast. It was one of those mornings when breakfast wasn't exactly on my agenda either. We'd been wrenched awake at about half-past ten by the sound of the Krankzeits hurling furniture at each other. My first attempts at getting vertical convinced me that while I had been sleeping someone had levered my brain out of my head, pulped it repeatedly against a rock, and stuffed it back into my skull the wrong way round. It was a fair bet Duncan would be feeling even ropier, but that was no excuse for bad manners. While I was groaning at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, he snuck out of the flat without even stopping to thank me for having him.

In between heavy doses of Alka-Seltzer and fruit juice, I had to deal with a series of bothersome phone calls. The first was from the editor of a women's magazine called Flirt , wanting to know if I'd finished compiling their readership profile. I said I hadn't and she made tutting noises and told me she needed it for a meeting in the morning. There was no way out. I sighed and promised it would be on her desk first thing.

The second call was from Jack, wanting to know what had happened to the research I owed him. I told him it was ready, which was sort of true, though I still had to type it out. I agreed to drop it round that evening.

The third call was from Ruth Weinstein, inviting me to a party she would be holding the following Saturday. I said I didn't think I'd be able to make it, but I'd try, and she remarked that, when it came to parties, I was always noncommittal, but everyone always knew I'd turn up anyway. That pissed me off; I didn't like being thought of as predictable. 'OK,' I said crossly, 'I'll come.' I had no intention of doing any such thing — all I wanted was for the conversation to end — but Ruth chattered on about work, and Charlie, and the gallery, and asked after Duncan like she always did, because we'd all been to the same art school and she'd never stopped being curious about him and me, though I had never told her a thing.

All I told her now was that I had a humungous hangover in the hope she would take the hint and shut up. Instead she said, 'Oh, what were you up to last night, then?' I ignored the question, which was impertinent, and said I'd call. She reminded me that I always said that, but never did — she always ended up having to call me . This was true enough. Ruth refused to let our long-standing acquaintanceship follow its natural course and shrivel up.