Tossin' and Turnin'
(Set between series four and series five)
Trixie had never slept particularly well. When she was a child, she had lain awake, listening to her mother try to comfort her father in the next room and even now, if she concentrated hard enough, she could almost hear his faint cries reverberating off the walls. She glanced at her bedside table. Half past four in the morning. That meant that she'd been lying there for five hours, smothered by her own worry. Out the corner of her eye she caught sight of the nearly empty glass of whiskey that Patsy had left on her bedside table before going to sleep. Trixie's fingers twitched and she brought her fingers to her mouth and bit down on them. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood but surely even the metallic taste of her own blood was better than the sweet burn of alcohol in the back of her throat? She wasn't so sure anymore.
She rose from her bed, feeling as though she had no control over her own feet and her hand reached out, fingers clasping around the cool glass which held the remnants of Patsy's nightcap. She drew the glass up to her lips, close enough that she could taste the fumes of alcohol. She was shaking now, tears pouring down her cheeks. A sob caught in her throat and she strode from the room to the bathroom. Once there, she poured the glass into the sink, heart pounding as she watched the dregs of amber liquid trickle down the plughole.
Glancing up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Gaunt face, haunted eyes surrounded by bruise like rings. A whimper escaped her lips. How had her life come to this? How had she allowed it all to go this far? Her knees gave way underneath her and she sank to the floor.
Sobriety.
She even thought the word itself was ugly. Clumsy. Tripping her up as she tried to get her tongue around its consonants and vowels. Tripping her up as she thought of yet another excuse for why she wouldn't be having a drink that night. Tripping her up as she tried to get through her day without the thought of a drink at the end of it. She missed drink in a way that she had never really missed anything before. In fact, she'd go as far as to say that she missed the drink considerably more than she missed Tom. The drink had welcomed her back into her room after a hard day of work, it had sat with her in her room as she sank into a state of misery and, after all else was done, it had put her to bed at night. It had offered her the companionship she had always longed for. There was no comfort at the bottom of a mug of Horlicks, just milky dregs and the overwhelming sense that nothing would ever make her feel whole again.