Bruce laughed, a real laugh filled with genuine mirth. He turned to me. ‘Are you hearing this?’ he said. He looked at me for a moment too long. Then he turned back to Tate and shook his head. ‘You should count your blessings, buddy,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means,’ said Bruce slowly, clearly, ‘it means that your missus can’t cook for shit but she’s a looker. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?’

He turned to Merry, but Merry was asleep, her head against the couch, her mouth open, her breathing audible.

When Bruce turned back, Tate was kneeling on one side of the coffee table. He had taken a cushion to kneel on, and placed another on the opposite side. This attention to detail gave me a pang of guilt, of grief. The point of Tate’s elbow was on the table.

‘I’m serious, old man,’ he said. ‘We can settle this right here, right now.’

‘There’s nothing to settle,’ Bruce said.

He stood up then, leaving Tate with his arm poised for battle. He went to the couch and picked Merry up and carried her, head dangling, down the hallway. He seemed competent in his movements, even sober, until he was passing the entrance of the room closest to the front door. There, Merry’s head connected with the architrave and she woke. The noise she made was guttural, an oof.

Bruce paused. Merry had her eyes squeezed shut.

‘Let me down,’ she said.

‘We need to get you home,’ Bruce said. ‘You’ve disgraced yourself again.’ He said this in a fond tone, as though Merry’s regular states of disgrace were an established component of their intimacy.

He went to keep walking, but Merry’s hand – her french-tipped nails – dug into his arm.

‘No, let me down,’ she said. ‘I feel sick. I’m going to be sick!’

Swiftly he put her down and stepped away, towards the front door. Merry clutched at the architrave with both hands, her forehead pressed against it, eyes closed. She looked like she was clinging onto a sinking ship.

I’ll never be certain that I heard her say what I thought she said. What I heard was, in a mumble, ‘Who could live here?’ though it could also have been, ‘Do I live here?’ or maybe even, ‘I’m going to be sick here.’

‘What?’ I said.

Merry didn’t answer. She was sick. It rushed out, and I saw it all, scattered like runes: the wine, the turkey, the viscous brown streaks that I assumed were coffee or after-dinner mints. It piled up on the carpet. It splattered against the door, the architraves, against the hall table and onto the fresh white walls. Merry took a few deep breaths. Then she vomited again, a kind of afterbirth of vomit. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘I feel better,’ she announced.

‘Let me get you something for your head,’ I said. ‘Some ice.’