Lovers in Their Fashion by S F Hopkins

reeling along the Embankment in a coat that had seen better days, his hair matted, his face unshaven. He was swearing and shouting and he swung a bottle in his hand. It was the talk of the company.
    The chatter died down. Then someone else was coming out of the Savoy and saw Billie trying to get in. His clothes and hygiene were even worse than before and his mental state clearly dire. He was arguing with the doormen, insisting that there was a breakfast meeting (it was four in the afternoon and the Savoy was starting to serve afternoon tea) and that he must attend it.
    The Savoy doormen, who had seen it all before and knew they would see it again, dealt kindly but firmly with this ghost from their past. Which was more than Billie’s one-time colleague did. She walked quickly away, determined not to get involved.
    There were no more sightings of Billie. And then, one day, a police constable called on the Human Resources department. A derelict had been found dead of hypothermia. In his pocket were thirty pence and an out of date ID card that said his name was William McKay and he had the right to park his car in the Fairmount Head Office car park. The policeman said he would put the dead man’s age at about seventy. In fact, he had not yet reached forty.
    The Chairman paid for the funeral out of his own pocket. HR introduced new, rather more helpful, policies on alcoholism.
    But being a drunk was still a quick route out of the company.
    The businessman or woman who travels the world knows the risks. You are alone so often in strange cities where you know no-one. Have a drink in your room or in the bar. You’ll feel better. Have another drink. You’ll feel better still. So have another.
    And, before you know where you are, you’re not drinking to feel better. You’re drinking because you must.
    John knew all about Billie McKay, though they had not been at Fairmount at the same time. John enjoyed a drink and would have one – when he was with someone else. Alone, he stuck to water, fruit juice and the occasional coke.
    Sitting alone now in his Brighton home, he needed all of that determination. He succeeded in keeping himself from drowning his sorrows. He could not prevent himself from brooding.
    Alice. Alice, whom he had loved so much that when she left him he went for ten years without being able even to contemplate a lasting relationship, let alone enter into one. Alice, who still retained such power over him that he had been like a teenager when he heard her name on the airport tannoy and worse – a scampering puppy longing to be petted – when they actually came face to face. Alice, the love of his life. It was she who had betrayed him.
    He could not believe it. And yet he must. The Chairman had said there could be no doubt, and the Chairman would not make a mistake like that. The checking and counter-checking would have been meticulous. That was the Fairmount way.
    Slowly, through the brooding and the grief, John saw that the way forward was clear – because there was no way forward. Not in the sense of a quick “With one bound he was free” denouement. What he could do – and all he could do – was to lead his life. To put one step in front of the other until he found himself on solid ground again. He could not force himself to forget Alice, and nor should he. He could, though, live without her. Simply by doing it.
    And it was with a strange lurch of the heart that he realized he had never attempted to do that. Whatever he had been doing, wherever he had been, whoever he had been with, Alice had always been there somewhere in the back of his mind. At some level, his hopes and dreams had always included her. And he could change that. He could not bury the anger, he could not lose the sadness but that, at least, he could change.
    And he could start here.
    Today.
    Now.
    He pulled on a lightweight jacket and stepped out into the street.
    I f Alice was catatonic with despair and John at the beginning of what