Abbott looked along the bar, to where another customer regarded him with interest. Over to his right were a man and a woman at a table. Both wore the florid faces of daytime drinkers. Both also looking at him with naked curiosity. He stared them out until they looked away.

The pint was in front of Abbott by now, the barman having moved off. Abbott looked at the drink, his little alcoholic voice, that wheedling AV, insisting that he should drink it. Just one, it told him. Just one wee little dram to take the edge off. You know what? You could maybe just have one drink a day. Why not do that from now on? Just one drink a day. That’s a plan.

And he let the AV have its say. He listened and almost capitulated before that other part of his brain reasserted itself and told the AV to pipe down, because when had one ever been enough?

If one was enough then you wouldn’t have a problem, would you?

What did you buy the booze for, then?

Because I like my enemy where I can see it.

So, although the full pint of lager glistened with coldness, and every aspect of it, from the curvature of the glass to the colour of the liquid, called out to him, he moved it away from himself and then indicated to the barman. ‘I’ll need a pen and paper for my number.’

The barman brought it. Other customers returned their stares to Abbott as he left the piece of paper on the bar and stepped off his stool.

‘My name is Alex Abbott, by the way,’ he announced, just before he left, addressing not just the barman but the whole pub. ‘And if you see Jason Scutter, how about you tell him that I’m looking for him? That I’m coming for him.’

And that was stupid, he thought, as he left the pub. Giving his name out like that. There was something in AA they called being a ‘dry drunk’. It meant that even though you were sober, you still carried on with some of your old reckless behaviour. He’d always thought it was a myth. Up until now.

In the car park, his phone rang.

It was her. It was Tess.

Ever since arriving in Derby, she’d been on his mind. Two days off the grog and while his head had not completely de-fogged, it had certainly cleared sufficiently for him to realise that he’d been an utter twat at her house and in doing so had destroyed everything that was good about their relationship. Everything that had been good. Everything that was good. Everything that might have been good in the future. All of it gone.

He’d been texting her.

‘Sorry.’

‘We need to talk.’

That sort of thing. Understanding completely that she might want to cut him out of her life altogether. Who could blame her?