Try Not to Breathe: A Novel by Seddon Holly

Author:Seddon, Holly [Seddon, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781101885864
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

Alex had her plan. Her new plan. Self-devised and not exactly on doctor’s recommendations, but a plan nonetheless. Baby steps. She’d written it down although she really didn’t need to. Thirty minutes later each day, 100ml servings, one day at a time. She’d bought a new measuring jug for the occasion, a personal talisman chosen after nearly an hour of wandering around the sprawling kitchen shop in the posh Pantiles part of town.

It was 12:30 p.m. and overcast. Alex wrapped a cardigan around her pajamas and opened her bottle of Faustino VII. She poured it slowly into her new jug, 100ml precisely, then transferred it into her favorite black wineglass.

After all this time, the central heating still followed the temperature and timings that her mother had set up, it was stone-cold and would be for several more weeks. Alex drew a blanket up over her legs and settled into the sofa dip. Moleskine in her lap, she closed her eyes and tried to do her deep-breathing exercises. Just knowing that she would be leaving a third of her second bottle of wine tonight was making her heart race. What if she forgot when that time came? What if she couldn’t stop herself? If she couldn’t leave a third of a bottle untouched tonight then she would never be able to stop.

She breathed out and counted: two…three…

—

Alex woke early and dry. Her cardigan lay next to her under her duvet, and an empty water glass lay on the bedside table. The morning was crisp with a sharp yellow sun-streak underlining the curtain’s edge.

Busting for the loo, she threw the cover back and paced into the bathroom for a wee. She trotted downstairs, trying to contain her pride.

In the kitchen, with a perfect purple ring sitting under it and a tatty drip-covered label, stood her second wine bottle from last night. The cork had been left out and there wasn’t quite a third of the liquid, but there it was. Wine. In the morning. Left from the night before.

Alex allowed herself a wide smile as she pulled the tap on to a full gush. After filling the coffee machine and flicking it on, she picked up the bottle of wine cautiously. She moved it onto the draining board and spritzed a stern burst of kitchen cleaner onto the drip stain. She scrubbed the whole time the coffee machine burbled, working the stain away until only she would know it was there. As she wrung the cloth under the warm water, without giving herself thinking time, she emptied the cold, stale wine down the plughole. She watched the water destroy the purple trickle of Rioja and drag it away.

As she drank her coffee and pondered a run, Alex flipped open her notebook to the penultimate page. She ticked the line marked 12:30 p.m., 100ml servings, leave one-third.

Today’s line read “1 p.m., 100ml servings, leave one third.”

She had a lot of time to kill.

She hadn’t written next week’s plan down yet, though it was there in her head, looming large.

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