Will R and I ever enjoy a party again?

'This is so different. Just after 11pm (so early! So alien!) we look at each other. R is smiling sweetly, and together we are like a couple on our first date.'

We are at a friend's party. It is a balmy evening, and hot bodies are huddled together in the kitchen when we arrive. People are animatedly chatting away and I am upbeat. It is good to see so many familiar faces in one place.

"Drink?" the host is quick to welcome us.

"Happy birthday! A beer please," I reply, kissing her on the cheek. I gave up drinking around R for months because I thought it was tempting and unfair, but then he had a major relapse anyway so my abstinence seemed irrelevant.

"I haven't seen you for ages. How are things?" The host looks at my husband. She is one of my oldest friends and is so straightforward and kind.

"OK, thanks," R replies cheerfully.

"Drink? I've got juice or sparkling mineral water …"

"Water's lovely, thanks," he replies.

We mingle. I'm capable of small talk but the warm-up conversation we have with a couple who we barely know (we're making an effort) is stunted and full of slightly clunky anecdotes. I console myself with the fact that the beginning of parties are usually always like this. But as we chat, I realise how enjoyable the beer is.

With each sip, I feel better, looser, less self-conscious. At times like this, the first drink marks the transition from day to night: from structure and responsibility to fun and frivolity.

And there is R, beside me, almost definitely sober. I am very much aware right now of how hard it must be. I stroke his arm. I have a sudden desire to squeeze his arse and kiss him hard on the lips in a passionate but slightly lunatic attempt to tell him that it's OK: we are together and things won't always be so difficult. Then I wonder if we'll ever really be able to enjoy going to parties as a couple again.

I can only compare this situation with periods when I've been pregnant: I barely touched alcohol at parties, and after a while, I found them boring. Especially when I had to muster the energy to engage with more well-oiled guests than myself. But that was confined to just three periods of just a few months, and I didn't have to think about a sober life for ever: there would be more wine eventually.

Before, at parties, R would usually take a big drink into the garden and smoke. Then he'd find a quiet corner inside and talk to a couple of other wallflowers; but within a relatively short time and a couple more glasses of something spirity and strong, his eyes would begin to betray him: one would swerve in one direction, and the other would attempt to home in on something or someone. When I spotted him in the room, I'd think, "Ah, that's him gone for the rest of the evening."

This speedy transition from sober to pissed would baffle me. "How can a couple of drinks do that to him?" Then I realised he'd probably had a few on the sly before the party. By evening he was simply topping up.

He'd want to stay until he couldn't speak coherently and I'd desperately want to leave and take him with me, embarrassed by his behaviour. He would knock over drinks, fall asleep on sofas and try to drink more. Was this fun? Not my idea of a good evening out. "IS THIS FUCKING FUN?" I would ask him angrily, as I guided him into a taxi.

This is so different. Just after 11pm (so early! So alien!) we look at each other. R is smiling sweetly, and together we are like a couple on our first date. We want to please each other, say the right thing.

"Honestly, we can stay if you want," R says, indicating that deep down he'd prefer to go. I totally understand.

People have taken to the dancefloor, and I am not drunk enough to throw my arms in the air and sidestep enthusiastically in a style that my daughter calls my "crazy old bag" dancing.

"No, let's go. Agata gets expensive after midnight."

I think, "Oh, R, I'd just love it if you could have a drink. Just one, or two. Just to take the edge off things, like the average person does when they need to loosen up." What would he think if I voiced my thoughts out loud? That I was crazy? Selfish? Delusional?

At home, I pay Agata.

"The children were gorgeous. Nice time drinking and dancing?" she asks us. R and I laugh nervously.

"Not much of either tonight. It was good though, thanks."

I close the door and turn to R, who is at the foot of the stairs ready to go to bed. "You know you always ask me why I find it so hard to quit drink?" R says.

"Yes," I reply.

"It's because I really, really love it."

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Lucy Mangan: Dad's leaving on a jet plane, don't know if Mum'll be the same again…

Lucy Mangan: 'Packing for Dad is like watching an exceptionally boring episode of The Krypton Factor. “Tickets? Passport? Headache pills? Heart pills? Emergency bottle of dandelion and burdock? Pac-a-mac?" ' Photograph: Jules Frazier/Getty

Dad is going on a month-long working holiday in Cape Cod. I know. How some people suffer. The family has assembled to prepare for the journey.

"Are you sure you've got everything, Dad?" my sister asks, as she begins the task of fitting the pile of his possessions on the spare bed into his suitcase. It's like watching an exceptionally slow episode of The Krypton Factor. "Tickets? Passport? Headache pills? Heart pills? Emergency bottle of dandelion and burdock? Pac-a-mac?"

"I've changed to elderflower cordial," he says. "I thought it was about time I embraced my feminine side. It's been a long time since I?embraced anything feminine."

"What's that?" Mum says, as she comes in carrying her grandson, three cups of tea, a can of paint, because she's going to touch up the guest room skirting boards while she's there, and a bottle of sunscreen, which she adds to the pile. It's factor 50 – basically, a cardigan in a bottle. Mangans burn within minutes of being in the sun. It's?because, for the first few hundred generations, we lived in turf huts under Ireland's grey mizzle. "Melanin's for Protestants," my grandma used to say, then push her kids out of the back door in their T-shirts for a taste of what hellfire would feel like if they didn't behave. "We puckered and shrivelled like bacon in a?hot pan," Dad recalls fondly. "Your Uncle Declan took a bite out of?his?own leg once. Well, it hadn't been his?turn for breakfast that morning. Happy?days."

While my sister packs (helped by?her nephew: "Drop! I drop it! No, not have it now"), the rest of us go downstairs to check that Mum is ready for Dad's departure, too. "Now this," Dad says as we enter, "is The Kitchen. It?is where food is prepared and cooked. This is the oven. This is the hob. This – above all – is the microwave."

Mum's interest is piqued. "But where's the food?" she asks.

"Here, in this white thing," Dad says, leading her to the fridge. "In here," he says, opening the top door, "is fresh food. Behold: tomatoes, eggs, ham, mayonnaise, cheese and assorted other comestibles, which can be laid between two pieces of bread in various tasty groupings to form the Lunchtime Sandwich."

"I'm not dirtying a knife for mayonnaise," Mum says.

"Condiments aren't compulsory," Dad says. "After all, I do not want life to become too joyful without me. You might change the locks again."

"Will I have to slice those tomato things?" Mum asks. "And cheese?"

"Yes."

"I'll probably just have coffee." "For your evening meals," Dad says, opening the bottom door, "I have filled this – the 'freezer' – with portions of home-cooked bolognese sauce, fish pie, shepherd's pie and lasagne, to which you will need only to add pasta or peas to create a delicious and nutritious dinner."

"I'll probably just have wine."

"As you wish, light of my life."

My sister comes downstairs, nephew in one hand, suitcase in the other. "All done," she says. "Except for the padlock. What combination do you want this time, Dad? Tom Finney's birthday? Alma Cogan's vital statistics? Or the first six Mersenne primes?"

He decides on Tom Finney. He puts on his coat and sits on his suitcase in?the porch. He has to leave in eight hours and doesn't like to be rushed.

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R is drinking again

I learn of the relapse at two minutes past midnight. Four months of sobriety over, just like that. My husband's work phone – the one he left behind – rings loudly and I find it at the foot of the bed. I see the time beside the name: Pete. Usually when someone calls so late it's a mistake or an emergency.

This is strange because R is meant to be in Cornwall with Pete – a friend he hasn't seen for years – on a climbing holiday. He left on a train yesterday morning.

I answer in a whisper, careful not to wake the children in the adjoining bedrooms. "Hello, Pete." I don't know him that well and I am conscious that my greeting is stiff: how should I sound? Concerned? Or breezy and upbeat, as though I'm talking over the fence to my neighbour. Under the circumstances, I think it's all right to appear a little bemused.

"Sorry. You've answered, so R's obviously left this phone at home." Pete stops. I presume he is worried that he'll say something that will land his friend in trouble, or cause me to feel troubled, which is touching. I immediately want to put him at ease, so I talk.

"So he's not picking up his other phone, right?"

"Yeah. It's just going straight to voicemail. He went out this morning to get coffee and I haven't heard from him since," says Pete.

R is drunk. I could give him the benefit of the doubt, but when he goes on a binge he often turns off his phone and disappears.

Pete continues. "He arrived on the train yesterday afternoon. He was so pissed he could barely talk, so I took him back to mine and put him to bed."

It transpires that R arrived two days earlier than the climbing holiday was due to start. "I told him I had to work, but he said he wanted to explore the area," Pete says.

I begin to piece together R's cunning plan: he had convinced me that the holiday was a week rather than five days, so that he could have two days spare to get wasted.

I have the urge to apologise to Pete. Immediately I feel as if I'm speaking to one of my daughter's new teachers: they sometimes call to inform me that she is misbehaving in class. They are usually kind, but often reticent about disclosing all the details, for fear that I might be upset. But I am familiar with most of her ways and I don't want to sound ungrateful by informing them that anything they are telling me is stuff I've probably witnessed firsthand before.

But R is an adult. I sometimes forget this and I want to cover up the bad things with a blanket of my own "fix-this-mess" remorse. He often doesn't appear to feel any, though deep down I?know this is not the case.

In all our years together, the things R does when he drinks – which at best cause others mild inconvenience and at worst seem dangerous and disrespectful – are the things he is usually too drunk to notice. When he is sober again, he is either too ashamed to conjure up any memory of his behaviour, or was too far gone at the time to have any recollection of what he said or did.

I am a born apologist and have said sorry for R more times than is healthy. "I'm so sorry. R is a nightmare when he drinks." I genuinely feel sympathy for Pete, if only because their climbing holiday probably won't happen.

In this strange, reveal-all conversation, Pete admits that he knew nothing of R's problem. "He drank loads when we worked together, but I thought, with a family, he'd slowed down."

Again, R has failed to communicate anything to anyone.

The frustration with R is bigger than my worry for his safety. Yes, I can visualise a ditch, and him in it, but then I remember that R's usual style is to park himself in the nearest pub and stay there. He is a static drunk, and though he has travelled all the way to Cornwall to take up booze again, I am sure that he is around the corner from Pete's flat, gurning into his pint.

Of course, my anxiety surrounding R's desire to lose himself so completely has not died: I care for him and I want him to be all right. I still feel sick and uneasy every time he retreats from the world – but I have to stay in control.

"He doesn't have keys," says Pete.

"Shut the door and go to bed," I say, without hesitation. I am shocked at how cold I sound.

"Really?" says Pete.

"It's your call, but R doesn't know himself at all when he's drunk."

I apologise some more. And despite my togetherness, when the call ends I?burst into tears. R is drinking again after a relatively long period of some hope and there is something so sad and hopeless and desperate about all?of this.

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The Moment I Knew I'd Never See Her Again

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"I opened the door for her, and then something happened." 

There comes a moment in every relationship, however brief, when you realize that things are destined for failure. Sometimes it’s something you do, sometimes it’s something she does, and often it’s nobody’s fault. Either way, these moments ?remain with us, seared into our memories, as testaments to our deeply personal journeys through romantic life. This is one man’s attempt to share some deeply personal moments of his own. This is the third in a series of five we'll be running in the coming days.?

As any right-minded person should be, I’m always skeptical when my mother or one of her friends tries to set me up with someone. The girl in question is inevitably “gorgeous” and “brilliant,” ready for love, but destined not to be my type. I’m just too picky for these sorts of arrangements to work out. Years into my dating life I can count on less than half of one hand the number of times I’ve willingly met a suggested “match.”

One of the few times I’ve given it a shot was about a year ago. Just like a certain population of New Yorkers who migrate to the Hamptons for the holidays, or Bostonians to Cape Cod, my family belongs to a fairly tight-knit community of Montrealers who migrate to Florida for a week or two every winter. In any case, I was in Florida with my family, facing the specter of a planless New Year’s Eve, when my mother’s friend told me that her daughter was going out with some people, including a “gorgeous” and “brilliant” girl that I should most definitely meet. Any plan is better than no plan, especially on New Year’s Eve, when I would have felt guilty doing nothing, so I hastened to the bar to meet up with the group. The “match” turned out to be rather attractive, in fact, and pretty cool, too, so I was glad I went. We had a fun night in a loud bar, exchanged details, and when I got back home to Montreal a week later, I gave her a call and we arranged to meet for dinner.

When I picked her up at her house, she was dolled up and pretty. We had a nice chat on the way to the restaurant, and must have discussed the weather, because I remember driving through a lot of snow that night. She was wearing some awkwardly high heels, which made navigating the space between car and restaurant rather precarious, so my chivalrous instincts were activated. As we approached the restaurant, I opened the door for her, and then something happened: “Thenk yew,” she said, in a nasal, high-pitched, snooty voice that’s typical of girls from the community in which I grew up. The familiarity of it stopped me in my tracks, and although my body carried on into the restaurant, my spirit and enthusiasm were left back at the door. No matter how many nice things I discovered about her that night, I had already learned everything I needed to know at the doorway: that home is sometimes not where the heart is.

Check our When Things Fall Apart Part 1 and Part 2.?

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