Before Monica even opened her eyes, she knew something was different. Her apartment, which usually smelled of coffee, Jo Malone, Cif Lemon Fresh, and, occasionally, Riley, reeked of dank, stale booze. And Hazard.
She got out of bed, threw on a baggy sweatshirt over her pajamas—she was not going to make an effort—and tied her hair up in a messy bun. She went into the bathroom, splashed her face with water, then doubled back and added a lick of mascara and some lip gloss. She wasn’t trying to impress, obviously, just making sure that Hazard didn’t have any excuse to sneer at her again.
Monica opened the door into her living room rather cautiously. She tiptoed in, trying not to wake him. He wasn’t there. The sofa she’d left him on was empty, her spare duvet folded up neatly. The washing-up bowl she’d left on the floor, in case he needed to vomit (again), had been put back in her kitchenette. The curtains had been drawn and the windows opened to air the room. There was no note.
Monica had no desire to see Hazard, particularly not at this time of the morning and after yesterday’s events, but—even so—it was a little rude of him to do a runner like that. How could she have expected any different?
The front door opened behind her, making her jump. A huge bunch of pale-yellow roses walked in, followed by Hazard. “I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed your keys,” he said, placing them on the table with a hand that was shaking.
Monica had seen Hazard in many guises—the brash bully who’d called her a bitch, the Christmas Day returning hero who wasn’t, the hardworking and determined gardener and businessman, and the irresponsible, rude bore of yesterday—but in all those guises, Hazard had been so sure of himself. He’d always occupied far more space in any room than even his six-foot-three frame required.
This Hazard was different. He looked awful, for a start, tired and saggy and gray, still dressed in a crumpled morning suit, but, more disconcertingly, he looked uncertain. All the bombast and self-confidence of the night before had ebbed away, leaving him diminished. Sad. The light behind his eyes had dimmed.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the roses and filling the kitchen sink with water to keep them fresh. These things needed to be done instantly. Hazard sat down heavily on the sofa.
“Monica, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I was inexcusably horrible to you yesterday. I’m so, so sorry. That man was not me. At least, I guess he is a part of me, but one I’ve tried to keep locked away. I hate the man I become when I’m drunk, and I really liked the man I’ve been turning into these last few months. And now I’ve ruined it all.” He sat with his head in his hands, his hair, matted and sweaty, falling forward.
“You were awful,” said Monica. “Indescribably awful.” But she realized that, for the first time, she was seeing the authentic Hazard. The imperfect, insecure, and vulnerable boy who must have been there all along, hidden beneath the bluster. And it didn’t seem fair to stay angry with him. He was obviously doing that job pretty well himself. She sighed and shelved the speech she’d rehearsed in her head during the journey home last night.
“Let’s just start again from today, hey? You wait here. I’ll go downstairs, get us some coffees, and arrange for Benji to mind the café.”
MONICA AND HAZARD sat at either end of the sofa, sharing a large duvet and a bucket of popcorn, and watching back-to-back Netflix. As Hazard reached over for the popcorn, Monica spotted his fingernails, bitten right down to the quick, the skin around them red and sore. It reminded her vividly of her own hands after her mother died, inflamed, cracked, and bleeding from the endless washing. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to help Hazard, or heal herself, but she had to tell the story.
“You know, I do understand about compulsions, about that overwhelming need to do something, even when you know you shouldn’t,” she said, looking straight ahead rather than directly at Hazard. He said nothing, but she could sense him listening, so she carried on.
“My mother died when I was sixteen, just before Christmas, in my GCSE year. She wanted to die at home, so we had the sitting room converted into a hospital room. Because her immune system had been completely shot by the chemo, the Macmillan nurse told me to keep her room disinfected at all times. It was the one thing I could control. I couldn’t stop my mother dying, but I could kill all the bugs. So I cleaned and cleaned, and I washed my hands every hour, several times. And even when she died, I didn’t stop. Even when all the skin started peeling off my hands, I didn’t stop. Even when the kids at school started whispering about me behind my back, then calling me a nutter to my face, I couldn’t stop. So, I do know.”
“Monica, I’m so sorry. That’s a terrible age to lose your mother,” said Hazard.
“I didn’t lose her, Hazard. I bloody hate that expression. It makes it sound as if we went to the shops and I just left her behind. And she didn’t pass over or slip away. It was nothing as gentle or peaceful as that. It was raw and ugly and smelly and fucking unfair.” The words scratched at her throat.
Hazard took her hand, unclenched it, and held it in his. “What about your dad? Couldn’t he help you?”
“He was struggling too. He’s an author. Did you ever read those children’s books, set in a fantasy world called Dragonlia?” She saw Hazard nod, out of the corner of her eye. “Well, he wrote those. So he would disappear into his office and bury himself in a fairer world where good always triumphed and evil was defeated. That first Christmas, we were like two shipwrecked sailors, both trying to stay afloat, but clutching on to separate pieces of wreckage.”
“How did you get better, Monica?” Hazard asked, gently.
“I got worse before I got better. I dropped out of school for a while and stopped even leaving the house. I just buried myself in my books. And I cleaned, obviously. Dad used a huge chunk of his royalties to pay for lots of therapy, and, by the time I’d finished my A levels, I was much better. I’m still a little bit overzealous on the hygiene front, but other than that, totally normal!” she said, with a trace of irony.
“And I thought you were the most sane person I knew. Just goes to show, doesn’t it?” said Hazard.
“Well, I thought you were the most sober person I knew, until yesterday,” Monica replied, grinning at him.
They turned to watch the screen as a new episode loaded automatically.
Hazard took a handful of popcorn and flicked a kernel across the room. Monica had no idea where it had landed. Then he did it again. Three times.
“Hazard!” Monica said sharply. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Call it aversion therapy,” said Hazard, flicking another kernel across the room. “Just try and watch a whole episode without worrying about the popcorn.”
Monica could do that. Of course she could do that. How long were these bloody episodes, anyhow? She sat for fifteen minutes, which felt like hours, trying not to think about the rogue kernels, nestled into cracks and crevices and lurking under her furniture.
Enough was enough. She went to get the Dustbuster.
“You did really great, Monica,” said Hazard, once they’d tracked down and sucked up every last kernel and sat down again.
“You have no idea how hard that is for me, Hazard,” she said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he replied. “I know exactly how hard it is. It’s the same way I feel every time I walk past a pub. You know, we all try to escape life somehow—me with drugs, Julian by becoming a hermit, Alice with social media. But you don’t. You’re much braver than any of us. You meet life head on and try and fight it and control it. Just a little too much, sometimes.”
“We all need to be a bit more like Riley, don’t we?” said Monica. “That’s why he’s so good for me.”
“Mmmm,” replied Hazard.
They sat in silence for a while. They’d started off at opposite sides of the sofa, but now they met in the middle, head to head, legs dangling over the arms at either end.
“You know, that’s the story you should have written in the book, Monica,” said Hazard. “Dealing with your mother’s death and coming out the other side, that’s your truth, not all that marriage and baby stuff.”
She knew he was right.
“Just out of interest,” said Hazard, “do all the tins in your cupboards face outwards?”
“Of course,” she replied. “How on earth could you read the labels otherwise?”
He reached over and carefully disentangled a kernel of popcorn from her hair and put it down on the coffee table. Just for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. But of course, he wasn’t.
“Hazard?” she said. He turned and looked at her intently.
“Could you put that piece of popcorn in the bin?”