And, inevitably, the morning after would come. This was subtly altered by the exact events of the night before – whether glasses of water were drunk, if he had been sick, what take-away had been ordered – but since these, as mentioned, might as well have happened when he was passed out, Graham didn’t have much of a say in what happened, and was usually ruined by the morning after anyway. He woke up, and immediately regretted it. For a start, he’d been having a rather interesting dream he couldn’t remember the specifics of. It wasn’t exactly fun, or sexy, but it was a very interesting dream, one of those that could easily fill out a thousand words of nonsense if you could remember it. Following this by waking up meant you forgot it doubly quick, once for waking up, twice for waking up thinking your head had been hit by a sledgehammer, and forgetting anything else.

He felt horrible. People who had stopped drinking heavily at twenty three, and tried to kick-start it with a massive bender ten years later, come out of it like an old school Mini Cooper picking a fight with a lorry. His head was the worst part, sledgehammer metaphor already mentioned, but as ever, there were many little things making it so much worse. The dry mouth and parched throat. The starving hunger, paradoxically mixed with the stomach growling “you just try it, mate, you won’t enjoy it”. The horrible aftertaste, in this case chilli, tobacco, and something else quite foul, but thankfully not vomit. That, and he’d left the curtain open, a wall of light hitting him in the face. And like fuck could he do anything about it.

He lay there for what was only an hour, but felt like three, before lurching out of bed, throwing the curtains shut before the light made his head any worse, and collapsed back on the bed. It was still too bright, since he must have overslept, but at least he could actually get his eyes open without them falling out.
All in all, his room wasn’t in too bad a shape. When he was a student, a night like that could have anything spilt or dropped on the floor. And walls. And ceiling. In this case, it mostly just seemed to be clothes, a pizza box, seemingly empty, more clothes, and…

Wait, clothes?

A flash of something came to his mind, he’d walked past a charity shop, he was with… some students, perhaps. He had the vague idea that one of them had suggesting stealing a black sack left outside, full of donations. Something to do with not having any clothes. Evidently, the drunken Graham had told everyone what he was doing, and one of the people he’d told had done something about it. A simple solution, perhaps. But what was here?
Wonderful. Someone’s grandma had had a clearout, by the looks of it, and three flower-print dresses festooned the floor. Also, an ancient looking, and gigantic, bra. That would have to be binned when he could move. A pair of jeans that looked like they might just fit, but on closer inspection seemed to be a woman’s pair. Well, needs must and all that. And finally, what was either a bandanna, or a headscarf. So no T-shirts then. Graham risked a look at a clock. Eight thirty. He’d always had a bad habit of waking up too early when he’d been drinking.

He stumbled downstairs, and through sheer force of will, managed to force down the fry-up he was served. He needed food in him, despite the feeling that his insides were out to kill him. He then returned to his room, and studied the pile of hideous clothes in the middle of the floor. Evidently, even though he had been utterly smashed off of his face, he had been thinking along the right lines. He needed supplies. He had kept the important things and what he needed to keep up the illusion he was only away for the weekend. The other bag had contained more clothes, some tourist guides, a map of Europe, and a Dutch language book, without which he’d be struggling a little.

Promptly, two thoughts crossed his mind.
Where was his phone?
And how much had he spent last night?
The second question was the easiest to answer, a quick check of the wallet showed that “only” fifty pounds had vanished from his wallet. Ten pounds of the remainder had turned into loose change somehow, and there was a scrap of paper with an illegible phone number on it. Graham left it. The first question remained unanswered. It hadn’t come back with him. This was slightly more worrying. One, it had been a rather nice phone, a birthday present from Miranda, and had had email, internet, and all sorts of new and shiny things installed on it. Secondly, if Miranda tried calling it, there was every chance that whatever happened, she’d start panicking about it. He went downstairs, asked if he could use the phone, and dialed his own number. Unlike seemingly everyone he knew, he thought it was quite useful to know your own number, and he felt rather smug as it started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Hello, who is this?”
“I dunno, who’s this?”
“Well, you know the phone you’re holding?”
“Yes?”
“Its my phone.”
A pause. Then a gasp of surprise.
“Oh yes! Its… you’re that bloke from last night! Man, that was a maaaaaaaaaaaaad night! Do you know how much you drank?”
“By the feel of it, far, far too much.”
“Yeeah, that was mad. Listen, you want this back, I guess?”
As obvious as it might seem, Graham paused for a second before answering. Was it that useful to have a phone that had no SIM card in it?
Still, if all else failed, he could sell it somewhere.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Right, right, well come back up the road, we’re back here, come get it.”
“Erm.. back where?”
“Here!”
“I don’t know where here is! I don’t even know who you are!”
“Right, right, I hear you, fucking hammered last night and all that. Right, we’re in Lambert Street, go up Bev Road and find the petrol station, we’re at number 32. Catch you in a bit!” And then the phone went dead.
Packing up his bags, Graham checked his ferry tickets. His ferry left at half five in the afternoon. Plenty of time. He packed his bags, paid his bill, and set off to find a petrol station.