‘He’s honestly not an alcoholic,’ Phoebe said, glancing towards the sofa and biting her nails. ‘He sometimes has a drink in the evenings. But I’ve never seen him drunk until a couple of weeks ago, after the article came out. Last Sunday was the worst night so far. I think that was when he called you.’
Becky nodded and Phoebe continued.
‘Tonight at eight-ish I went down to get some water and he was in the study looking through old photo albums. I think the wedding album was one of them. He’d already had a couple of glasses. At about half eight I heard him go out and then I saw lights in the studio—’
Becky decided to skip to the end. ‘And when you called me you’d gone out to check on him and he was like this.’
‘I couldn’t leave him out here and …’ Phoebe hunched her shoulders, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I didn’t know who else to call.’
Becky sighed. Whatever Phoebe might have been able to do on her own, there was small chance a skinny child on the verge of tears could have dragged a well-built, six-foot-two man back to the house across the moonless, muddy garden.
‘Go into the house and make some industrial-strength coffee,’ said Becky, patting Phoebe on the arm. ‘We’ll be in shortly.’
The slam of the heavy door failed to rouse Charlie or even disrupt the steady drag-whistle of his snoring. Becky sighed again and waited a minute to make sure Phoebe wouldn’t return before approaching her father.
Standing in front of Charlie, she steadied herself on the arm of the sofa as she leant forward, called his name and shook him. He grunted and twitched, but otherwise showed no signs of waking.
Becky straightened up, frustrated but also relieved to be putting some distance between herself and the fumes on Charlie’s breath. She picked up the stained rag from Charlie’s lap using her thumb and forefinger and flicked it towards the canvas. Good. At least she wouldn’t stain her coat while dealing with the drunken idiot.
As she rubbed a small smear of paint from her nail, her gaze fell to the side table and the single photo album next to the whisky bottle. Her natural curiosity got the better of her and she twisted away from Charlie to flick through the pages. She had assumed it was the wedding album Phoebe had mentioned, but instead she found a collection of family photos, most of them either featuring Phoebe alone or with her mother. Becky ran a hand over her mouth and adjusted her assumptions: the sorrows he was trying to drown appeared to go beyond pining for his absent wife.
She turned back to Charlie, whose snoring was now making her nerves jangle in time with the hairs on his upper lip. Enough, Becky decided and kicked his ankle.
Charlie woke up with an excessive amount of snorting and sniffing which Becky suspected was a reflex action common to all those roused from a self-induced stupor.
‘Mr Handren! It’s Rebecca Watson. I was here the other day.’
‘Who?’
‘Rebecca Watson.’ She raised her voice and over-pronounced each syllable.
‘Ahhhh!’ His head bobbled up and down. ‘Lauren’s professional life fixer. She thinks I need help. None of her damn business.’ He shook his head as violently as he’d nodded it. ‘Life fixer! Ha! None of her damn business either. And what kind of a job is that anyway?’
He beckoned for her to come closer. ‘Funny girl that one,’ he said in a low slur, circling a finger beside his head. He giggled, then bent forward and confided in a stage whisper, ‘She’s got a great pair of legs though.’
Becky inhaled slowly through her nose. At another time, she might have found this amusing. But not tonight.
‘She’s also me, Mr Handren. I need you to get up. OK?’
Charlie made an attempt at rolling to a stand, but gave up halfway and slumped back to sitting. He lifted his arms and let them smack down onto the sofa.
‘She’s going to leave, y’know. Like her mother.’ His head dropped onto the backrest. ‘Can’t paint. Can’t do anything. It’s all derivative and dull. S’what everyone’s saying. Might as well sit here and rot into ob … obshurrity.’
He huffed and rubbed his eyes while Becky wondered how she was supposed to respond to his drunken ramblings.
She was toying with the idea of dumping a bucket of freezing water over his hairy head, when he looked up at her and blinked rapidly. He narrowed his eyes and stared as if she had just manifested before him. Then, moving faster than she would have thought him capable, he grabbed her arm and yanked her towards him.
‘I didn’t offer you a drink. Would you like me to give you one?’
Horrified, Becky felt his other hand crawl round her waist and creep downwards as he leered up at her through bloodshot eyes and, slurring, said, ‘What do you say? Care to join me?’
The anger which had been winding into a coil since Becky received Phoebe’s call slithered down her arm; she whipped her hand back and swung it forward, slapping him with a satisfying snap.
It felt fantastic. Stingy, but fantastic.
Unfortunately, elation was brief. Slapping potential clients wasn’t exactly an orthodox way of winning their business.
Becky raised her throbbing palm to her mouth. Oh, good God Almighty. She could say goodbye to the perfect new project and chunky commission cheque. She’d have to branch out from crisis management at events to organising the damn things. In the Comptons. That would mean even less time for Dylan and when she did see him she would be cranky and cross. The people would be awful and she’d be working directly with migraine-inducing brides. And then there would be children’s parties. With clowns and creepy magicians.
She shuddered and scanned Charlie’s dazed and reddened face, wondering if an apology would penetrate the alcoholic fog.
But the smack appeared to have bounced off its target leaving no lasting impression. Charlie rolled his head back to centre, his features settling back into the pre-slap leer.
He laughed. ‘That’s a no, then?’
Becky balled up her fists but clamped them to her sides. Violence, while sure to be therapeutic, was not the answer. She cleared her throat; perhaps her bark would be more effective than her bite.
‘For God’s sake, snap out of it!’
The leer vanished. Encouraged, she leant towards him and lowered her voice to a vicious hiss.
‘You may be feeling sorry for yourself right now, but the truth is your only real problem is you. You’re sitting here getting drunk on expensive whisky in your glorified Wendy house—which is bigger than my home by the way—you’ve barely a mortgage to pay and stacks of cash in the bank.’
She rolled on, letting her prejudice and resentment of South Compton’s elitist art set mingle with more justified criticism.
‘You drive a Mercedes and make, or made, your living from paintings which look like the masterpiece my toddler produced the time he tipped his poster paints over the living room rug. You’re acting like a privileged, pathetic, selfish fool who’s one drink away from becoming a total cliché.’
Open-mouthed, Charlie was watching her with an unfocussed, glassy stare. She couldn’t tell if her words were penetrating his hairy armour and thick skull, but she was buzzing and couldn’t stop.
‘Stop wallowing and get up!’
As if her words had been delivered via cattle prod, Charlie jerked out of the seat and jolted to standing. He swayed, but Becky swooped forward to drape his arm over her shoulders and used his momentum to help them stagger out of the studio back into the rain.