-22-

 

“You’re leaving? But you’ve only just got here.”

Ash hated the disappointment in his mam’s voice. He hated to let her down in any way, especial at Christmas, but staying put simply wasn’t an option. He couldn’t be here and give her what she wanted. She’d taught him how to fake a smile in the face of adversity, but there were some situations where a smile couldn’t carry you through. You could smile through the repercussions of a blown valve on a water pipe, but not the damage of having your heart torn out. It amazed him that when he looked down, there wasn’t a gaping hole in his chest and blood stains on the floor around the lump of meat that he wished he didn’t possess.

Everyone left. Everyone betrayed him. That was his lot in life, to be cast off and left behind. To be a constant sucker.

And to think that for about an hour he thought he had it made. That ought to have been warning enough to realise something major was on the horizon.

He needed solitude to process this.

“Let the lad go, Sarah. He can’t help it if something’s cropped up, and we’re not exactly best prepared for guests.”

“But the water’s turned off now. It’ll not take us long to clear up.”

“Aye, we have, but the problem’s not fixed, and it’s not going to be until the shops are open again so that we can get the part, and we probably ought to leave the electric off until we have everything dried out. It’s going to be a damp and soggy Christmas, and it’s way too late to be thinking about alternative arrangements.”

Dad had overheard, Ash was pretty certain about that, and now he was doing his best to be supportive without explicitly letting on that he’d eavesdropped on the last few minutes of conversation between his son and his girlfriend.

“But,” his mam clung to him. “We’ve not even had a chance to sit down with a cuppa yet, and I’ve not seen you in forever. Aw, let me take a look at you properly. Will they need you for long? What in heaven’s name is so essential on Christmas Eve?”

“I’m not sure.” There was no you, he’d been called away by, but he’d made sure not to lie to her either. He was merely allowing her to make assumptions about the band and failing to correct them.

“You’ll be in touch soon, so we can arrange another day?”

He nodded. “The tour starts on the 29th, but I’ll try to pop in before I have to fly to Norway.”

“Do your best, but we’ll be fine if you can’t manage it. All right, son?” His dad patted him on the back, while giving him a one-armed hug. His mam nearly squeezed him in two, she clung onto him so zealously.

“Nice meeting you, dear.” She hugged Ginny too.

Ash dug a groove into his lip and bit back the nausea welling up from his stomach.

As his parents were both watching their exodus, Ash had no choice but to get into the taxi he’d summoned along with Ginny. He stayed in the vehicle, only long enough for them to leave the cul-de-sac and be out of sight of his parent’s place before he asked the driver to pull over so he could get out. He threw a couple of twenties down on the front passenger seat. “Take her wherever she wants to go.”

“Ash,” Ginny attempted to speak to him, but they didn’t have anything else to say to one another. Everything he’d believed existed between them had turned out to be fake. He slammed the car door and turned away. The taxi cruised past him a few seconds later.

Ash made the five minute walk into the town centre, where he stopped at the petrol station—the only place still open—then called another cab to ride out into the sticks. He knew where he was going. The one place he was sure he wouldn’t be disturbed.

The taxi driver asked him thrice if he was sure this was where he wanted dropping when they pulled up in the lane by Xane’s infamous bolt hole. From the road, it didn’t look much like a house. An artist might kindly describe it as a hermitage, but what it really resembled was a dilapidated shed. Thankfully, the outward façade wasn’t reflected in the interior.

Ash searched for the key where he knew it was kept but couldn’t lay his hands on it. Suspicions raised, and his mood so far into his boots that it felt like he was wading through shit, he tried the actual door, and found it unlocked.

Shitting slimeballs! Some fucking bastard had obviously been using it as a cheap Airbnb alternative. He knew it wasn’t Xane here, as he, Dani and Luthor had headed south to spend Christmas with the bit of Xane’s family he actually got along with. Spook, was on a plane to Sweden by now, Paul would be unrolling his bed mat in some tent, and Liam had headed to Hartlepool to visit his gran.

Ash searched around outside and found himself a stout stick, which he used to push open the door. There were no lights on, so whoever was squatting had either heard him coming, or was out at the moment.

Ash slid into the corridor, and traversed its length with his back to the wall. It wasn’t a very big building, just a combined kitchen-lounge area, and a bedroom with an en suite down below.

He could hear someone breathing, chuffing away like an asthmatic steam train.

He neared the corner, caught a glimpse of movement in the glass of the photo-frames on the opposite wall, and launched himself into the room.

“Paul!”

“Ash!”

“What the fuck!”

Ash dropped the stick, at the same time Rock Giant lowered the carving knife, and reinserted it back into the knife block.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

His friend gave him a sheepish grin. “Didn’t much care for the plans for the Pagan piss-up my folks are hosting, so I thought I’d hang here and enjoy some long overdue solitude instead.” Curiously, he didn’t seem overly surprised by Ash’s presence now the initial alarm over him being a potential intruder was dissipated. “Ginny’s not with you?”

Ash shook his head, while sucking hard on his tongue.

“Yeah, gawd, I’m really sorry man.”

Ash reared on to his heels, somewhat taken aback. “You know?”

Rock Giant grabbed a swatch of paper off the sofa, and waved it at him. “It got left behind in the car. I took a look as it seemed important given the formal address on the envelope.”

Ash looked over the papers. It was documentation for a divorce filing, to end the marriage between Miles James Winters, esquire, and Geneva Christina Winters, on the grounds of adultery, naming him as the scummy bastard responsible.

Pain rammed through Ash’s head and threatened to make him hurl as he read that part. Paul caught him and shoved him onto the sofa.

“Do you want to clue me in on what happened?”

“Don’t wanna talk,” Ash muttered, and he didn’t. He’d left the bag of booze he’d purchased by the door. When he waved vaguely for it, Paul supplied him with his poison of choice. The weird thing was, though he claimed he didn’t want to talk, a great deal of words started slipping from his mouth: how she’d lied; how they’d broken up; his parent’s problems with the water pipes, and how his jeans had come to be soaking wet and chafing his calves. “No, I don’t know where she is now.” Was he supposed to care about that? He barely knew where he was.

The booze more or less went untouched, except when he needed to lubricate his vocal chords. The best part though, was that Paul let him ramble without once interrupting to tell him what to think, or to make a single judgemental or lame arse remark. In fact, he barely said a thing until Ash was thoroughly talked out, and had lapsed into a lethargic stupor.

“Can’t tell you how to fix it, or even say whether you should. It’s a lot to chew on, that’s for certain.”

“Yeah,” he said, sagging deeper into the sofa. “’tis.”

He lifted his head off the cushions a few minutes later. “I can’t believe you’re not going to offer me advice, or sympathetic words about how I’m better off without her.”

Rock Giant leaned over and rubbed the back of Ash’s neck, easing the strain Ash hadn’t even realised existed there. “I don’t make a habit of lying to my mates, not even when that’s what they’d like to here. Fact is, the last six months you’ve spent with her, you’ve been the happiest I’ve ever seen you and that’s despite all the crap you’ve endured. On some fundamental level she makes you whole, so while I can’t defend what she’s done, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you’re better off without her as that’s blatantly not true.”

“You think I should forgive her.”

“I didn’t say that either. It’s a pretty hefty slice of her life real-estate that she’s withheld from you.”

“I thought I knew her.”

Paul ceased his rubbing, and rested his elbow on the sofa back. “I’m sure she had a reason for keeping it quiet, even if it’s one that only makes sense to her and not to the rest of us. People do dumb things for crazy reasons sometimes, even when they know they’re being stupid. I doubt the primary intention was to deceive you. Maybe she just didn’t know how to tell you, or she thought it would be instant game over if she did.”

“No,” he began, but then clamped his lips together. He couldn’t claim that wouldn’t have been his reaction. Fuck, in the end it had been his reaction.

“I thought we were set.”

Paul nodded. “I’m not sure any of us are ever as secure as we think we are.”

“Maybe Spook has the right idea in that relationships are best avoided.”

“I’m not sure Spook’s adhering to his own guidelines right now. And no, I don’t have concrete proof of that, only circumstantial evidence and suspicions. Also, look at Elspeth. She got what she wanted and still ended up screwed.”

She had a screw or two loose more like, but he had no intention of getting into a spat over Elspeth right now. Fact was, the band was far more cohesive since her exit than it had been since their very early days. He knew Paul saw that too, but he and Elspeth had been besties since before puberty. The big guy clearly still struggled with the decision to let her go. Although, really in the end it had been Elspeth’s decision as much as the rest of Black Halo’s.

Ash rubbed at his tired eyes. Somehow, all the talking had damped the anger that had been raging inside him when Ginny had first dropped her bombshell. He no longer felt as if he were going to turn green and burst his pants. Instead, his outrage had simmered down, leaving lethargy and nausea behind. If he wanted anything right now, it was to be able to close his eyes and drift into oblivion. Only when his eyelids slumped, he saw Ginny on the insides of them.

How had everything gone down the pan so rapidly?

Married.

All this time she’d been bound to some other guy and had never let slip even a whisper of it.

Apparently, he’d spoken that last part aloud based on Paul’s reaction.

“I think I’d be more freaked over the fact her husband had someone hand deliver you those papers to make sure you got them. ’Cause, you know what that means?”

Nope. “That the regular post didn’t deliver.”

He still didn’t get whatever point his friend was attempting to make.

“None of us are all that hard to track down, and he could reasonably assume that you were wherever Ginny was. She’ll have had copies of these forms and papers too.”

She’d presumably intercepted them to make sure her secret didn’t get out, thus compounding the extent of her duplicity. Ash shook his head. “I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to think about any of it.”

“Then it’s not beer you need to be pouring down your throat.” He pointed at the half drunk can Ash had clutched within his hand. “If you want to silence the real world voices, then you’d best start communing with the spirits.”

“Vodka,” Ash said, thinking of Xane’s favourite tipple for combating soul-destroying angst.

“Vodka’s for pussies. What you need—” Paul crossed to where his duffle bag rested against the kitchen island, and drew a bottle from it. “—is Te-qui-la.” He grinned. “You’re going to join me, right? I have sangrita, or we can make Bloody Maria’s.”

“Salt and lime?”

“Tourist.”

 

***

 

Several hours later, Ash didn’t quite recall how tequila time had turned into a conversation about biting hub caps, or how he and Paul had somehow ended up outside, chasing each other around the field and in and out of the trees and shrubs, duelling with a cricket bat and a rusty garden hoe. What did make a weird kind of synchronous sense was the sharp jab to the centre of his chest that finally took him out. There he’d been, right on the offensive, thinking he had Paul cornered, and then out of the blue, wham! He took a good one. His defences were down, and there was no come back.

He dropped his own weapon so that he could cling to the end of the pole that had speared him through the heart, and staggered theatrically, finally crashing to earth where he gave a few beached fish like jolts before succumbing to the welcome oblivion of death.

Leastways, he flopped on his back with his eyes closed and held his breath for twenty seconds.

Paul applauded, before crashing to the ground beside him, and resting his head on Ash’s middle. “Fucker, you know you’ve drawn actual blood.” He held up his index finger to display a pinprick of red beaded around a protruding thorn.

“Wuss.”

“It could go septic. I could die. You’d be responsible.”

Ash caught hold of his hand and took a few seconds to focus enough to pull the offending splinter of cricket bat free of the wound. Then he sucked Paul’s finger into his mouth.

“Euew, no! Ger-off! Hell knows where your dirty chops have been.” He popped his finger free of Ash’s mouth.

“Locked around Ginny’s cunt,” Ash boasted wistfully.

“Yeah, kind of figured on it being something like that.”

“Why’d she have to have such a fucking awesome cunt, but turn out to be a cunting cunt?”

Paul shook his head. The motion rubbed his hair against Ash’s belly. It tickled, making him curl up his legs.

“Have you any idea what you’re saying?”

Ash wobbled his head from side to side. “Not a fucking clue. I love sucking her ring.”

“I know, mate. It fucking sucks what’s happened.”

“I was gonna ask her if we could have a themed wedding.”

“DM?”

“Yeah. I’d have made you all dress up as villains and such, and we’d have had a red pillar box wedding cake, and one of you would have to be the Baron so you could storm in halfway through and announce how you’ve enacted some sort of diabolical world ending nightmare. I’d fix it with a fan, a cheese sandwich, and an afro comb, and then we’d all carry on with the reception.”

“You’re such a dork.”

Ash’s eyes were so full of tears he couldn’t see the sky anymore. He blinked and they tracked sideways, and rolled down past his ears. Yeah, he owned that, he was often a dork, but what he truly was, at this moment, was heart-broken. The woman he loved had smashed open his chest, and everywhere was all out of super glue.

 

***

 

Ash and Paul were still lying on their backs watching the clouds pass overhead when a car rumbled to a halt in the lane some thirty minutes later. The arrival prompted Ash to lever himself up on one elbow to see what was what, in case it turned out to be those squatters he’d disturbed earlier returning for their stuff.

There had been squatters, right? He didn’t know.

What curiously didn’t faze him was when instead of a bunch of unknowns appearing, Spook walked around the corner.

Spook on the other hand stopped in his tracks and stared at him and Paul in puzzlement.

“Guys?”

Paul got to his feet and went to relieve Spook of his travel bag. “What are you doing here? How come you’re not in Sweden?”

Spook sighed in an exceedingly weary fashion. “There’s been some incident somewhere. Dozens of flights have been cancelled and countless more delayed. I decided I’d had enough waiting around and being switched about. I figured this was at least a roof for the night. Well, what pitifully little there is left of it. Airport lounges suck, even the first class ones.”

“You’re very welcome to our humble hostel.” Paul performed an elaborate sweeping bow that he just managed to straighten up from. “If you’d care to step inside. Concierge will deal with your luggage.”

“Hang on,” Spook planted his feet. “Why are you both here? What happened to your plans?”

“Stuff,” Paul fanned the air as if none of it were of any consequence. “Burst pipes, too much crazy.”

Spook strode over to where Ash was still on his back stargazing. “I thought you were going to your parents. Is something up with them? Is Ginny with you?”

“She isn’t,” Paul answered for him. Ash left him to bring Spook up to speed. He’d done all the talking he intended to do on the subject. It was now officially a closed topic. Nothing would be gained by endless repetition of the facts. Rehashing events merely made him feel shitty, and he was actually enjoying the buzz of tequila in his veins.

Spook’s expression grew increasingly dark as Paul’s matter of fact retelling of the story unfolded. By the end, his brows were in danger of tickling his nostrils.

“She’s married already. Since when, and to whom?” His shadow blocked out the starlight.

“Some geezer called Miles,” Rock Giant said.

“Is Dani aware?”

“Nope,” Ash responded putting extra emphasis on the P. “Nobody is. According to her, she never told anyone.”

Spook hunched down by Ash’s side. “Did she mention why that is? You don’t keep that sort of thing quiet without a good reason. There must be a reason why she didn’t tell you or any of us. Was he abusive? Is she in witness protection or something?”

In all honesty, he hadn’t even considered any of those things. If they were the cause then she’d have said when she was ‘fessing up.

As Ash didn’t answer, Spook turned to Paul for a reaction. The big guy shrugged.

“Where is she now, Ash?”

“Dunno.” Why the hell should he care?

“Did you break up with her?”

Of course he fucking had. He couldn’t trust a damn thing she’d said to him for the entire length of their relationship. He’d fallen for someone called Ginny Walters only to discover on proposing to her that woman didn’t exist, and he’d actually been fucking some other bloke’s wife. He didn’t do relationship theft. He didn’t do lies and secrets. And why the hell would he stick around for a woman who’d let him down like that? She knew how he felt about marriage. She knew all his hang-ups. He on the other hand knew not a goddamned thing about her.

“It wasn’t real.”

“The hell it wasn’t!” Spook snapped, his lips curling back off his teeth. “That woman loves you. She agreed to marry you in front of a stadium full of people.”

“Sure, once she’s divorced some other poor sod.”

“She’s disentangling herself from him so that she can be with you. She’s certainly not been in an active relationship with him for some time. Not for years if Dani’s unaware of his existence. Doesn’t that clue you in to the fact she cares about you? Isn’t all the evidence that’s stacked up since the summer enough? Ginny loves you, Ash. Did you even hear her out properly, or was your mind stuck on the fact she couldn’t dive into a church with you immediately?”

Paul put a hand down hard on Spook’s shoulder, knocking Spook off balance and his stride. “Jan,” he said quietly, making both Spook and Ash’s ears prick. None of them ever used Spook’s given name, most times they had trouble even recalling it. “It’s too soon. Give him a break. He’s still in shock.” Rock Giant kept his voice low, but the sound still carried over to Ash. It was odd hearing himself referred to.

“He’s blatantly screwing himself again.”

“Perhaps. You can’t expect him to be reasonable or logical about things at this stage. Would you be? Of course not. No one would. You saw how giddy he was last night. He was farting rainbows, and scaring everyone with his Gene Kelley grin. Whatever the reasons for it, she’s flung him out of a plane without a parachute. He needs us to be here to catch him. Are you getting me?”

The blaze in Spook’s eyes paled, and he gave a juddery series of nods. What he refused to do was look straight at Ash. “All right, sure.”

“You ought to get your facts straight too,” Ash muttered, finding his voice again. “She’s not divorcing him. He’s divorcing her. I have the paperwork to prove it.”

“Divorce proceedings are rarely straightforward.”

“Jan,” Paul warned him again.

Spook backed down with his hands raised. “Sure, I know nothing, and it’s none of my business.”

The three of them stewed for several moments, none of them speaking. Paul and Spook shuffled about uncomfortably, until Paul eventually said, “Come on inside. I’ll make us breakfast and we can see if Yule Father has been.”

“Santa,” Ash mumbled. He’d left his case at his parents place containing all the presents he’d bought.

“Odin,” Spook corrected them both. “Reckon he can be bothered with us?”

Paul shrugged and turned towards the door. Spook followed, but only for a couple of paces. He tapped Rock Giant on the back. “I’ll follow in a few, just need to…”

“You realise there’s nothing any of us can say right now?” Still, he left them and headed inside the bolt hole.

Spook wearily squinted at the morning sky, then sat on the grass beside Ash, who pushed himself up into a sitting position.

“If you say that you knew I’ll never fucking speak to you again.” Some things were big enough they ended chapters, maybe whole sections of your life. This was one of them.

“I didn’t know, Ash. I had no idea she’d spring something like this, none.” And yet there were clearly cogs and gears inside his brain working.

“None? She didn’t confide during one of your many post-midnight conflabs.”

Spook vehemently shook his head. “I listened when she needed to let off steam, that’s all. Don’t start inventing conspiracies. I’m sorry I snarled. I’m just trying to look out for you and figure out how to make it right.”

“Yeah. Let’s not go there.” There was nothing and would never be anything right about this situation. It was a long steaming pile of shit, destined to make a stink for a significant amount of time.

“I guess we now know what all the phone calls were about.”

“Guess,” he agreed.

 

***

 

When Ash finally stumbled back inside a few minutes after Spook, he discovered three of Paul’s most threadbare socks had been strewn across the front of the kitchen island. His name had been pinned to the centre most one.

“Looks as if we were good boys this year after all,” Paul boomed from across the room. The sound left Ash’s ear’s ringing. He peeked inside the sock and found a satsuma, some vegan chocolate coins, an assortment of nuts, a bleeding candle, and tube of hemp scented hand cream. Great if he wanted to smell like a stoner.

“Thanks.”

“They’re from Yule Father—”

“Odin,” Spook interjected.

“—not me.”

“Thanks, Santa.” Ash raised one of the coins to him in a sort of salute, before scoffing it. “Say, is there any actual food in this place?”

Rock Giant made a so-so action with his hand. “It’s well stocked if you like frozen or tinned. I managed to grab some milk and eggs from the farmer next door, and there’s a bread maker that I… Well, I played with it last night right after I arrived. He took the lid off an oversized pan and revealed the results.

“Why’s it in a pan?”

“There’s no bread basket.”

“Are those mushrooms in it?”

“Fuck off, they’re… Okay, it’s leek and mushroom bread…and cheese. It’s cheese and leek and mushroom bread, and there’s baked eggs to go with it.”

“Sounds scrumptious.” Spook tore a piece off the end of the loaf and stuffed it in his mouth. “It’s good.” He gave it a thumbs up. “Let’s have some more with butter on it.”

Paul slapped the back of his hand with a spatula when he reached for it. “Get your dirty mitts off. I’ll slice it, and you can set the table.”

Confused, Spook looked around, and exchanged a nonplussed look with Ash. “What, the coffee table?”

“It’s a table, ain’t it? Ash, you sort us some brews.”

Brews, yeah, he could do that, but why would any of them want sobering up? He cracked open three of the beers he’d bought last night. “It’s traditional,” he claimed when Spook gave him some serious side-eye. “A century back, everyone had beer for breakfast.”

Beery breakfast, turned into even more beery elevenses as they polished off the vegan chocolate. Yet more ingredients were thrown into the bread maker in the hopes of producing a Christmas cake. The result was boozy fruit loaf, but no one cared. It washed down well with yet more beer, and eventually helped loosen their vocal chords.

Paul started singing first, making some mad attempt to impersonate Xane singing a Christmas carol.

“That’s a rubbish impression.” Spook laughed into his beer bottle.

“Yeah, well you do him then.”

“I don’t want to do him.”

“Do someone else,” Ash encouraged.

“No.”

“It’s no good, mate. Spook never puts out. You ought to know that by now.”

Spook flipped him a matching set of Vs with his fingers, which for some unfathomable reason, Ash found hilarious. Everything seemed crazy funny at the moment. “I reckon he left plenty of ladies buzzing with pleasure after they played with his dick last night.”

Spook growled low in his throat. He’d already blown a gasket before the gig yesterday when he caught wind of the fact there were Black Halo branded dildos on sale, each apparently modelled on the band member’s own members. There had been some heated words spoken already over how they’d even come into existence, since no way had any of them voluntarily stuck their dicks in a mould. Okay, so Xane totally admitted it, and Ginny had… Well, never mind. He wasn’t thinking about that, or her.

“Yours was the dick that sold out,” Spook spat.

Rock Giant beamed as if he’d been offered a compliment. “My awesomeness is finally appreciated.”

“He can’t help being the biggest dick… Oops, I meant having.”

“Fuck you, Gore.”

“No tah, that thing would split me in two.”

A few stupid words exchanged between friends shouldn’t have meant so much, but the banter sparked a warm glow inside Ash’s chest where there’d earlier been only a vast open hollow. He rose unsteadily, swaying onto his toes and knocking into the table in the process.

“Sit down, you dope.” Spook tugged on his wrist, tipping him to one side from the waist.

“Don’t wanna.”

“Jeez, he’s wasted.”

He wasn’t. At least, not nearly as badly as he wished he was.

“We should jam,” he insisted. “I bet Xane has a guitar or two stashed here somewhere.”

“You want to jam?” Spook sounded utterly incredulous. Maybe he didn’t think it was the time. Ash on the other hand, figured why the hell not lose himself in music. There was no other joy in the world.

Paul got to his feet. “Well I’m in, as long as no one is expecting us to play Christmas stuff.”

 

***

 

Guitars were grabbed, and a fake microphone improvised with an empty beer bottle. They each took turns mimicking members of other groups, and mangling a variety of former chart hits. Singing had never been Ash’s forte. His voice had a grating quality that was prone to setting teeth on edge, but neither of his mates seemed to care. When he combed his hair down flat and burst into a raucous rendition of his favourite Oasis classic, Paul, and Spook backed him up, even leaning in to him in order to yell the “Well…s!” into the bottle mic.

There was something immensely satisfying about dancing around in his socks, yelling about morning glory.

“Need a little time to wake up. Need a little time to rest your mind…”

At the end, they fell quiet just long enough for the smile to start slipping from his face, before Rock Giant launched into another song. Paul took the lead on that one for the first verse, handing over to Spook for the second, and leaving him to finish up. They zipped straight from that into another, and another, the choices getting increasingly weird, then playful, and pantomime stupid. He didn’t know how long it went on for, only that it was dark again outside by the time they stopped. They collapsed on the sofa for Paul to give them his version of the Queen’s speech. And suddenly it was time for more nosh and improvised cracker pulling, constructed from loo roll inners, magazine pages, and jokes they made up on the spot.

It was the best and worst Christmas of his life.

Only, in the dark after the other two had finally turned in, did Ash have solitude and quiet enough resting on the sofa to pay attention to the horrors lurking inside his head. Where had Ginny gone after they’d parted ways? Why did he even care?

Should he be anything other than butt hurt and critical? She’d taken the most magical moment of his life and turned it into the worst in the span of an hour. What the hell was up with him that women constantly found ways to screw him over? Every Black Halo fan on the planet would know by now that he was getting hitched. The band’s email box was probably about to explode from the number of congratulations messages. He was going to look like such an idiot when he had to announce the whole thing was a mistake.

Worst of all, he’d spoiled his parents Christmas too.

Sorrow welled, churning up the gallons of beer he’d drowned with the mixture of sultanas and mushroom bread in his guts. He spewed the lot over the floor.