He pretends that he isn't acutely aware of their eyes on him, the nervous smiles and uncertain glances they share, their steady counting of number of glasses of wine he has as they wait for the one that sends him over the edge. They're two weeks post-Paris but they don't know how far in the past it is, or whether the upswing is temporary. Aubrey sleeps through the night now - mostly - and as Harlowe leaves to put her to bed, pulling her from Marc's lap where her enthusiastic limbs wriggled wildly as she lay flat on her back, her unofficial uncle shaking her toes back and forth, Andy ducks into the kitchen.

He pretends not to notice when Vic enters, stabbing an olive with a toothpick and popping it into her mouth, pretends to concentrate on the search for the bottle opener in every drawer but the one he knows it's in. He hears the sound of a bottle being uncorked, and she sets it down in his line of sight, resting the corkscrew and cork beside it, each item making a dull thud against the granite. He waits for the sound of her feet retreating back into the living room with the rest of them, but it never comes, forcing him to look up. She places a folded piece of paper between them, her thin fingers pushing it towards him, eyes not moving from his face. She taps it against the bottom of the bottle repeatedly, stopping only when he picks it up. Vic smiles as she refills his glass halfway, not unkindly, but she takes the bottle with her. He puts the cheque into his pocket without opening it.

He watches Alan help Fara out of her coat, hanging it on the last available hook by the door. He can't remember hearing the bell ring, but these are the things he needs, the anticipation of things he can't predict, an army of Harlowe-lites to protect him from himself. His thumb rubs over the text on his wrist, the same hand that had written for him the things he couldn't seem to remember, slowly replaced by his own as he gradually tries to teach himself to survive the first month of the year.

Kate catches up with him near the lavatory, rolling her eyes at the idea that she wait outside as he uses it. She pulls herself onto the sink, legs dangling over the edge, then takes his drink, holding each of theirs in her hands. She never quite meets his eyes, and it feels like a test: the countdown to the new year is a countdown to relapse. He nods in the pauses between her sentences, words he doesn't hear or doesn't listen to, and he knows that she knows he's somewhere else. Alone together, they used to call it -- not often to his face, though frequently enough for Andy to understand the meaning: his body present but mind elsewhere, another planet, another reality. She slides over as he washes his hands, passing him their glasses to hold when she replaces him at the toilet. He emptied her glass into his own as he exits, leaving Kate's for her to take when she goes.

Ian is stood on the coffee table when he returns, tapping a fork against his glass as the room goes silent for the first time that evening. "We're a bit late, but we wanted everyone to be here," he says, raising his arm. He reaches into the collar of his shirt, fumbling for something attached to a black cord around his neck. "And then we argued over which of us would say something. Alan knows him the longest, but Marc's his second wife." He can feel the word intervention on the tip of his friend's tongue, but the room erupts into knowing laughter as the second wife interjects, claiming to be number one. "But I thought it'd sound best from me -- the non-believer. The sceptic. We were gonna wait until next month, but five is important too," something silver shines near his fingers as he holds it into the light, "because it's easy to have to start over, and we want to celebrate for us as well. It's our soberversary too."