Losing You by Susan Lewis Page B

didn’t make it to the bathroom. He knew it was common for drunks to become incontinent, but what he’d never imagined was it happening to the beautiful young girl he’d married. However, that girl was long gone now; in her place was a stranger, a victim drowning in her own dependence. He’d tried so many times and in so many ways to rescue her, but nothing he did or said ever seemed to make a difference. In the end, it was the cleaning up after her that had finally finished it for him; he never intended to go there again.
    ‘Hey Mrs B,’ Oliver said, as his friend’s mother opened the front door of the Brents’ large Edwardian semi in Redland. ‘Is Alfie back yet?’
    ‘In his room,’ Janet Brent answered. ‘Go on up.’
    ‘Thanks. Oh, is my car still OK on your drive? Do you need me to move it?’
    ‘My love, you’re welcome to leave it there all day if you can persuade my son to tidy up his room.’
    With a grin, Oliver said, ‘Best I go and move it now then?’
    Laughing, she closed the door and went back along the hall to the kitchen as Oliver took the wide staircase two at a time, to the second floor. ‘Hey,’ he said, crashing into Alfie’s bedroom and startling his friend so badly that Alfie almost fell off the bed.
    ‘Jesus, man,’ Alfie grumbled, picking up the girlie mag he’d leapt to shove out of sight. ‘I thought you were my old lady.’
    ‘Like she doesn’t know you read that stuff. What time did you get home?’
    ‘About half an hour ago. Where did you rush off to?’
    ‘Oh, I just had something to deal with. Can I use your computer?’
    ‘Sure, help yourself. Did you get laid last night?’
    ‘Did you?’
    Alfie threw out his hands. ‘Look at me man, what do you think?’
    Oliver laughed. Since Alfie was a dead ringer for the most recent X Factor winner whose name Oliver had already forgotten, mainly because he never watched the show, Alfie had been getting more than his fair share of action. Not that Oliver was ever short of girls himself, but he never allowed himself to get involved – he didn’t need the hassle, especially not while all this was going on with his mother.
    ‘You might want to take a look at Jerome’s Facebook page,’ Alfie told him, as he settled down at the computer. ‘Actually, he could be on his way over here.’
    In spite of having been to separate universities these past three years – Leeds in Oliver’s case, Nottingham in Alfie’s and Manchester in Jerome’s – the friendship between the three had remained strong, and now they were all living at home again while they looked for jobs, they’d taken up almost as though they’d never been apart.
    ‘Hey, this is amazing,’ Oliver declared as he read Jerome’s wall. ‘He’s only been shortlisted for the job in Durban.’
    Yawning, Alfie said, ‘Tell me something I don’t already know.’
    ‘Lucky bastard,’ Oliver muttered as he posted a message asking Jerome if he knew where Durban was. ‘Has he ever been to South Africa?’ he asked Alfie.
    ‘Not as far as I know. His first interview was in London. Got to widen my own search, ’cos I have to get out of this place. Not Bristol, or yeah, Bristol, but it’s more being back here, at home, that’s doing my head in.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ Oliver muttered, clicking on to his own page. No big surprise to find that he’d been poked by a couple of girls he’d known at uni, they were regularly in touch, and Cara Jaymes, who was in the sixth form of his old school, Clifton College, had posted some photos of last night’s party. A mate, now back living in Reading with his parents, had sent him a link to a job he thought Oliver might be interested in as an analyst for a marketing company based in Blackheath. When Oliver clicked on to find more details he could only wonder what kind of degree his mate thought he’d taken, because for this position he needed either maths or computer science, or better still physics, neither of which, as