It was the time of the Olympics – wholesome athletics filled the television, and outside the sun shone on a rejoicing city. I was in a secret agony as dark and bleak as an Arctic winter. And so, I suspected, was Elise, still shackled to me, still desperate to help, watching and fearing. Not that I saw, in my mirrored cell, every thought reflected inward.

I had stopped drinking, overnight. We had watched the opening ceremony on television together, windows open to the evening air, too far away to hear any fireworks or flypasts, but we could make out the mingled sounds of our neighbours enjoying themselves. And we had fun too, of a pinched kind, clearing the fridge of cans, avoiding thoughts of the next day and subsequent days, relaxing like the ‘old times’ that were only a couple of years before. Opening ceremony to closing ceremony, that was the deal – if I could fully abstain for that period, we would reopen talks about moderation and rules and setting limits and so on, all the stuff that had failed in the past.

Not that I could see my way to the closing ceremony. I could hardly stand to speculate as far as the end of the next day, the next morning. The future was inaccessible, and any optimistic speculations had a counterfeit air. But the word addict was still absent from our conversations, and when it crept into my thoughts, it came as a devilish intruder. No, it seemed to me that another force was keeping me drinking, quite apart from either free will or addiction – a spook I had never caught in the light. Twisting away within me was an immense contradiction. I believed that stopping drinking would have very little real effect. After all, I was in great shape: an enviable job, a supportive relationship, good health, the world at my feet. Clearing away the drink, and all the problems it had caused, would do no more than reveal happiness, the happiness that had proved elusive so far.

At the same time, I feared stopping more than I had feared anything before. It should have been possible to infer the truth from this – that I was not opening the curtains to a refulgent dawn of contentment, but something else, something worse – but I did not.

If you want to believe, well, that’s very powerful, it’s very hard to resist.

Work continued. Most of my colleagues had asked for time off during the Olympics, and Eddie hadn’t wanted to decline any of those requests. He had tickets for a couple of events, too. So we had all put in extra effort in the fortnight before the games, and I earned some credit for volunteering to forgo leave. But with much of the work done, the days were quiet, so quiet that management turned the office TVs to the BBC coverage, muted, so we could all ‘be part of it’.