The Formidable

14

"Is he up yet?" Janine asked when she walked into the kitchen at half eight. Sam was sitting at the table reading the newspaper. He shook his head. "Should I take him something to eat?"

"No, let him suffer so he remembers why he gave up drinking in the first place," he replied bluntly. She didn't bother arguing, making herself a coffee and sitting opposite. Jase stumbled into the kitchen an hour later, his face pinched and grey. Memories of the night before popped into his sore head in bursts of cloudy, out-of-sequence snapshots. He said nothing as the coffee machine ground the beans and gurgled out his dark roast, keeping his back to Sam and Janine.

"How you feeling?" Janine asked.

"Exactly how you imagine I'm feeling," he mumbled. A beat passed before he asked, "How bad was I?" Sam jumped to answer before Janine could downplay his behaviour.

"Pretty fucking bad Jase, you drunk drove here and practically tried to break the door down at gone two in the morning," he said, closing the paper with an exasperated glare to the back of his head. Jase nodded, unaware of the glare. He remembered leaving Madison's and sitting in his car. He remembered heading to the club, taking a bottle of brandy from the bar. After that, it was a blur.

"Sorry I woke you," he said, not sounding entirely sincere.

"I hope we're not going to have to go through the same thing we did when she first left-" Sam was cut off by Jase's groans.

"Ugh, leave it man. I don't want to talk about it." He waved his hand, brushing the conversation into the abyss, taking his coffee and skulking back to his room. Sam was still glowering at the doorway after he'd gone.

"Hey," Janine said, reaching for his hands, Sam looked at her, she ignored his miserable expression. "Leave him be. Don't make anything harder than it already is. You said you'd talk to him, not rip his head off." His jaw dropped.

"Harder than it is? Am I the only one that remembers the tiff between him and Tommy because he got rid of Gabby when he started spiralling? Or the drug-fuelled rages he'd fly into over someone laughing and the paranoia hitting him so hard he thought they were laughing at him? Or the fact that we barely held our shit together whilst he was on a six month bender?" he asked. "I'm not dealing with all that again, Jay. I won't." Janine rolled her eyes, picking up her empty mug and rinsing it in the sink.

"Throwing a tantrum isn't going to change the fact she's back. Suck it up and be ready to pick up the pieces if shit goes South again-" Sam attempted to interject but she didn't let him, "-and you will if it does because he would for you." She left the mug upside down on the draining board and let Sam sulk on his own whilst she had a shower. He had let it go by the time she was dressed and back downstairs.

"I'm sorry for getting my back up about things," he said, standing up from the kitchen table, "I just don't like seeing him like that." Janine let him pull her into his chest, wrapping his arms tight around her. "Come on, let's go out for lunch."

After sharing a ploughman's and a strawberry milkshake, the two of them took a stroll through Hyde Park, keeping to the right to let past joggers and groups of students on their way to and from Buckingham Palace. The air was chilly, the bite of the final week of Winter nipped at Janine's body under her coat. Everyone was still wrapped up, the dogs had jackets and babies were bundled in thick fluffy blankets in their prams.

"That'll be us in a few years," Janine said, linking her hand through his arm and pointing to a mum and dad taking pictures with of their baby in a little teddy bear onesie. Sam smiled, as scary as the idea of having a kid was, he relished the joy in Janine's voice when she spoke about it. For that, he'd do anything.