William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story. Matt Rudd

poor widow at work dead, I could do with some time on my own to relax and recuperate from what is clearly a stressful time of my life.

      Hahaha, I say.

      The overwhelming sense of freedom is intoxicating, as is the whisky I down naughtily the moment I get in from work. I don’t know why I was so excited…I’m very happy being married. I love Isabel. Isabel loves me. Sure, the honeymoon is over (the honeymoon that dare not speak its name, complete with its constant diarrhoea and its inescapable taxi drivers and its long-haul economy class syndrome, and I thought honeymoons were supposed to be relaxing and, yes, it’s still too raw to talk about). But even in this post-honeymoon phase, where it’s all got a bit trouble and strife and ball and chain, I don’t know what I’d do without her.

      Well, actually I do.

      FIVE QUICK AND EASY STEPS BACK TO BACHELORHOOD

      Step one: find note from Isabel. ‘Will miss you, darling. Vegetables in fridge need to be used. And there’s still some quiche left. Love you. Call later.’

      Step two: feel quite tired. Can’t face cooking or eating of vegetables. Have a Scotch and dry. And another. Decide to have a curry. Fortunately, the curry house number is still on speed-dial seven, right between the video shop and the laundrette. I am asked if I’ve been on holiday when I give my name and ask for the usual. ‘No, no, just married,’ I reply. ‘Ahh,’ comes the reply. ‘Extra poppadums for you, sir.’

      Step three: leave the flat and walk down the street to the curry house. It is the walk of a free man. Nelson Mandela had his Long Walk to Freedom. I have my Short Walk to Memories of Bengal. Put vegetables and leftover quiche (evidence) in bin between flat and curry house.

      Step four: video store adjacent to curry house. To kill time while waiting for chicken madras (‘hot like in the olden days, sir?’), nip in. Plan is to rent one film with explosions and car chases, but they have a Rent Two, Get One Free offer and it’s only 7.45 p.m. So I rent two films with explosions and car chases and a PlayStation zombie shoot ’em up.

      Step five: I have absolutely no idea how it got to 4 a.m. Still playing zombie shoot ’em up. Still haven’t switched the light on. Have escaped the underworld prison and am in the zoo, fighting zombie elephants. Have finished all the beers and almost all the whisky. Definitely don’t want any more to drink but because I am free, free as a bird, I have another one anyway.

      Step six: room spin. I love Isabel so much. I love her. I love her. I love her. I don’t want to be alone any more. This sofa is comfortable. I might just lie down for a minute before going to bed.

      Saturday 9 July

      Doorbell. Then, a second later, a key in the door. Then, another second later, Arthur Arsehole and two blond people (in trouser suits even though it’s Saturday) standing in my living room. I am still lying in my living room in my clothes from yesterday. Shoes and everything. As I struggle to sit upright, I follow the trouser-suited gaze over beer cans, curry trays and other squalid bachelor detritus. From the look on their executively blond faces, it could have been tin foil, teaspoons and encrusted heroin resin. Or a leper colony.

      I smile nervously.

      They smile nervously.

      I apologise.

      They mutter no, no, noes.

      Arthur Arsehole looks as furious as an estate agent can look.

      The aroma of leftover madras and stale beer is not as effective a sales tool as freshly baked bread. Still, the blonds go through the motions: they point at our stainless-steel cooker hood, caress our heated towel rail and tape-measure our bedroom. Meanwhile, I struggle to tidy myself and my living room up.

      It is as the church bells across the road ring a painful 10 a.m. that the shock of unexpected expected guests subsides enough for me to notice that I have a dreadful, dreadful hangover. Beer then wine, fine. Beer then whisky then beer then whisky then whisky, then beer, whisky, whisky, whisky, Drambuie, Pernod—not a chance.

      The sudden onset of pain and nausea is almost unprecedented. My head throbs so alarmingly that I have to check to see if the throbbing is visible in a mirror. If I lie back on the sofa, it subsides slightly, but then comes the urge to vomit so I must sit up again. By the time the blonds return from their tour, I am considering gouging my own eyes out with the coffee spoon. As they mutter goodbyes, I stand up and try to apologise to them again. This sudden movement coincides with a full-frontal waft of Arsehole’s aftershave, and I have no option but to retch. I throw up mostly in my mouth, a tiny bit on one of the trouser suits. They leave. I throw up again.

      It takes three hours to recover enough to become mobile. During this time, I develop a surprisingly ferocious self-loathing. Without Isabel, I am a sad, lonely man who gets drunk pointlessly and still plays computer games at the age of twenty-nine and thirteen-fourteenths. I eat junk food and fail to ablute properly. If I was American, I would live in an Appalachian trailer park, shout ‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry’ at the television and cultivate maggots in the folds of my stomach.

      As I lie in a foetal position, clinging desperately to the base of the toilet, I hatch an extensive plan to restore my self-respect. The minute, the very minute, that I feel better, I shall shower and change and clean the flat and go for a run and write a letter to my godmother and start reading Dickens and go out and buy a present for my sister and change the Hoover bag and stick the bit that’s fallen off my backgammon board back on.