Bottom of the bottle apologies

"I quit" no more, but it isn't true. You’re whispering your promises again, my dear old friend. I’m always listening out for them, I'm all ears for your sly suggestions. You remind me of the warmth waiting in your arms. It’s all mine, you assure me, for a while at least. I see you curled up in each of the gleaming bottles before me on the shelves of the News and Booze store, grinning coyly, reminding me you’ve never failed to take away the pain. To hide the blood curling past, You know I’m yours. you know i can't quit.

The bottles clink as I cradle them like babies in my arms and take them to the checkout. I pay extra for the carrier bag to hide you in, because not everyone loves you like I do. But who cares, because today I really need you. It’s a special occasion, fraught with emotion.Tyler gets parole today, my uncle is coming back, You’ll be with me to greet him, seeping comfort and soothing nerves. After all, you’ve always helped me through everything else. We go back a long, long way. When was it we first met?

You were there when I was small enough to snuggle on my daddy’s lap, a beer can beside us on the arm rest, his finger curling on the ring pull. I can hear it now, the click and then your gleeful hiss. You were there on the breath of his loud laughter and in his rosy cheeks, and I saw you in his glassy eyes. I sometimes took a sip of froth from the shiny can, his hands holding mine over the beads of condensation, and I didn’t like the taste, but he said- you said- that’s my girl.

Other times, you sidled into our lives swathed in peach or coconut, an honoured guest on Mother’s Day. We’d present you with the breakfast tray, wrapped and ribboned, and my mother clasped the bottle to where her satin gown crossed her heart as if you were a long lost child, a yearned for luxury, a cocktail of need and want. Later, I’d sneak exotic sips of you, a bitter ghost swirling in cold lemonade, as she crooned along to love songs.

Outside on the pavement, a fine drizzle blown in from the sea wets my face like tears. The promenade is deserted, the souvenir shops shut for winter, and a silver-tinged loneliness licks the puddles. The spring tide’s drained the sea, exposing muddy flats, and gulls plunge beak first from the sky to stab at stranded fish. I think of Owen once playing upon the drifts of shingle, filling buckets, trailing tendrils of seaweed, unmarred by bad deeds. Today, I’d stop to breathe the briny tang, only the bottles are awkward to hold, and I’m wishing away the time to taste you.

Remember the first time we were properly introduced? You found me in the huddle of teenagers on the blustery beach, sharing bummed cigarettes and slugging the foul taste of you from a shop-lifted vodka bottle. It only took a few eye watering gulps and you were in, insisting on a victorious high five of elation as you surfed into my bloodstream, pooled pleasure in my hungry brain. You hijacked reason, draped yourself across the chaise lounge of my mind, and I said make yourself at home. It was bliss, and I didn’t want you to leave.

You and I became a team. With you, my liquid sidekick, I was funny and brave. With you, my secret weapon, I drowned responsibilities like rats. Friendships were never desired, doubts washed away, recklessness bubbled over. You coached me through the grim hangovers, the next day shame, the inexplicable bruises. We laughed about the odd lost shoe. That was wild, you whispered, let’s do it again.

Shallow love emerged from the boozy swirls you swathed me in, brittle and bottle-born, without substance to survive sobriety’s heartless glare. In the stark brightness of the morning after, stumbling from the beds of bad choices, you murmured it’s ok, this is how everybody feels.

I leave the promenade, turn into the side street of council flats, climb the concrete steps to the front door. Soon, Owen will be taking these same steps and I let the bubble of joy sit in my heart, unburst. The guilt has been ballast for too long, threatening to submerge me- I know I never protected him as I should. When the fragile cells of a new life took hold inside, you knew before I did, and you swiftly seeped through them. I took stock of our relationship- remember how I tried to shut you out? You wouldn’t have it, kept checking in on me, suggested we could make this work if I allowed you back in small measures. A little of what you fancy won’t do any harm, you assured me. You wriggled your way back glass by glass,

As tyler grew closer you were guest of honour at all the family celebrations. When he turned sixteen the men of his family clapped him on the back and brought him beer. He drank deeply to the cheers, grimaced, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. It didn’t touch the sides, he boasted, but the flush in his face betrayed him. Are you slacking, Mum? I drank up, knowing you were now his friend too, and I let you throw your cloak about us both. Isn’t it true that in run down seaside towns like this, there are plenty of worse things that could have coursed through his veins?

We should talk about that night; the one where it went so wrong for Tyler. You were there along with all his mates, your arms draped over their shoulders. You stoked them up with fire and made them feel invincible. You could have stopped there and let them have their fun, but you took it too far. You’d been working on Tyler for years, hadn’t you? Messing with his self-control, curdling his sense and sparking rage. Tyler may have thrown the fatal punch, but you told him to do it, whispering in his ear, don’t let anyone talk to you like that, don’t take it! Tyler did the time, but the crime was all yours.  Blood would dry to my mouth, one hit now two, but it was always the Drinks, always an apology.

When you taunted tyler so much, when he had that last swallow of the night, that poor kid yelling at tyler, just one strong fatal punch and everything stopped.

I saw the other mother in the supermarket once, not long after the hearing. She was gaunt with grief and loading groceries on the conveyor belt, because although her world had ended it was still turning for everyone else. Although the light had gone out for her, the mornings kept coming, breath still filled her lungs, her cruel heartbeat never stopped. I know, I wanted to tell her, I’m sorry. She looked up and saw me, colour draining from her face, and out she walked, leaving baked bean tins rolling and frozen peas thawing, and the bemused cashier buzzing for assistance. My lover could beat me all day, but that time he hurt someone else.

Come play with me-You would say-I'll take away the pain, you can't leave him you know you can't.

Through the kitchen window, the sea gleams between the gap in the rooftops- the tide’s turning, washing back in over the rippled shore. I slide the bottles onto the fridge shelf. The gold embossed letters gleaming on the label befit your power and charm; you always manage to dress for the occasion, I’ll give you that. I’m persuaded once again that you only ever mean well, and I agree we deserve a treat after everything we’ve endured. Mistakes were made, a life was lost, but it’s important that Tyler moves on now.

The impatient rattling at the letterbox has barely faded before I’ve flung open the door and tyler's home, throwing down a grubby canvas holdall. We’re all hugs and smiles and happy words of welcome before I stand back to take a proper look at him. He’s a lot leaner, his face pinched thin. I remember all those jokes he made during visits about the food, both of us falsely bright and glad to talk nonsense. There’s something else I see in him too, but I can’t quite place it. A sadness where there used be bristling anger.

“You’ll be desperate for something decent to eat!” I’m chattering too fast because if I stop, I’ll cry. “Whatever you fancy for dinner, I’ll make it. But first, let’s celebrate!”

I turn away to fetch what’s missing. You, my old friend, so we can raise a toast to a new beginning, to a fresh start. Let’s mark the moment, all of us together, and you can cast your cosy glow around us, promise us everything will be better. Why don't i want him to go? He hurts me let him go.

Owen puts his hand on my arm and the shadow of anxiety that crosses his face reminds me he’s barely left his childhood. “You slow me down, your so broken that it stuns even me, your worthless.” I wait for him to hit me, to yell, get in my face, words trailing with spit to hit my lips, nothing.

For a moment I’m startled. This isn’t what he does. I’m struggling to make sense of it, surely he can have just one? It’s cheap fizz, nothing heavy. Maybe I’ll have a drink for the both of us. I’m about to ask please stay. But I think those words might be yours. I bite my lip and smile. “you have hurt me for 4 years.” There is no attention to my words.

tyler unpacks in his room, where the football fixtures from when time stopped are still tacked to his wall. I wonder about the empty room in the other mother’s home. "You hit me and scream."

The bottles are cool and heavy in my hands when I take them from the fridge, and my fingers twitch to tear away the foil from around their necks, but I place them back in the carrier bag, twist the edges closed, and carry you outside, still trapped in glass. A thin shaft of evening sun pours through a break in the clouds and reeling gulls shriek insults as I flip back the hinged lid of a wheelie bin. You fall with a soft thud onto bulging black rubbish sacks. There I leave you, amongst the stench of rotting food, trapped like Jonah in the belly of a whale. Only it’s me whose being tested.

I hear you whispering again, when I’m alone on the sofa and Tylers gone now. You promise to keep me company, to embrace and sooth me, just one last time. Your tone is coaxing, then pleading, and finally you shout, enraged, for me to retrieve you from the dark and take you back. I switch on the TV, let the beaming grin of a game show host illuminate the room, and I turn the volume up until the audience laughter drowns out your lies.