Page 50 of The Golden Girls’ Road Trip

‘Let’s have a nightcap,’ she says.

‘We could do that at the hotel, get the dog back,’ I suggest, but she’s already gone inside and I quickly follow behind her with Bardo’s lead tightly in my hand. She heads straight to the bar and orders herself a large whisky then turns to me to ask what I want.

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke please,’ I say, but she snorts.

‘Another whisky,’ she tells the barman. He looks up to see what I think.

‘Diet Coke,’ I confirm and he nods at me.

‘God you can be joyless at times, Connie,’ she slurs.

‘Don’t see much joy in being so drunk you can barely walk or string a sentence together,’ I retort and then watch as Alex pulls her purse out, spilling coins all over the bar.

‘Hey,’ I say. ‘What are you doing?’ How can she be so drunk? I wonder now how many times she went to the bar and maybe came back with a double gin instead of a single, or had a shot of something while she was inside. I whip out my card and tap the contactless machine while scooping her money back into her purse. ‘Let’s take these outside.’

‘No glasses outside,’ the barman says, reaching for a couple of plastic cups. ‘Sorry,’ he says handing them to me.

‘Don’t worry, it’s probably for the best,’ I say, gesturing to my swaying friend. ‘Have you got a couple of plastic bowls I can take too, please?’

He looks at me strangely for a moment and then nods, disappears through the door to the kitchen and comes back with two disposable bowls, which he hands to me.

We walk back out into the cool evening air. The sun has completely disappeared now and I pull my cardigan closer. We find a couple of seats away from the rest of the drinkers and Alex sits down heavily before knocking back half her drink. I’m about to tell her to take it steady, but decide against it. She’s beyond the point of no return. All I can hope now is to get her back to the hotel in one piece.

I fish the bottle of water out of my bag and the container of dog biscuits, then fill both bowls for Bardo. He eats and drinks and then settles by my feet.

‘So, are you going to tell me what’s really going on?’ I ask her. She’s usually more forthcoming when she’s drunk, but I might have missed the boat this time.

She sighs for so long she has to fill her lungs back up again before she can speak.

‘I’ve got to move out of the house,’ she says, taking me by surprise.

‘Why?’

‘Because Sebastian and I were never married; he wouldn’t marry me. It was too complicated with his property, his name, his children. The house belongs to his family and they’ve finally come calling.’

Instinctively, I glance at her rings glittering in the outside lighting and she follows my gaze.

‘An expensive prop that will have to be sold,’ she says, holding out her hand and admiring the diamonds, as if for the last time.

‘Why did you tell people you were married? What was the point of that?’

‘It was his idea, so I could command a higher price for my art. He was so well known in that world and he could influence collectors. Everyone wanted a piece of Lord Linton and wouldn’t it be great to have some work by his wife? He suggested it as a bit of fun, and I was happy to play the part. He did it for me.’

She doesn’t look as if she was happy to play the part; in fact she looks a bit disgusted.

‘He must have really loved you,’ I say, kindly, and fill her empty glass with water from the bottle. I’m pleased to see that she drinks it without really thinking about it.

‘I think he was a bit obsessed with me, to be honest,’ she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘God knows why.’

I lean on the table a little closer to her. I know why. I’m a bit obsessed with her myself.

‘I know it sounds like I used him, but it wasn’t really like that. I was in a mess financially and he wanted to help me. He turned things around for me, well, at that point at least. I was very fond of him,’ she says wistfully and I notice her eyes are starting to droop.

I begin to collect up our things and she leans her head in her hand, elbow propped on the table to take the weight.

‘The trouble is,’ she says, through squinted eyes and swaying head, ‘him dying when he did was not great timing. He’d suggested a trust for me; it would set me up for life, he said. He never got around to it. He was a bit of a drinker and often didn’t get around to those things he promised. Not that he should have; I really didn’t deserve it.’

I can imagine Alex drinking her way through the last couple of years of her life. That sort of lifestyle would probably have involved parties and events. How easy it would have been to overindulge, for it to become a habit.