Jed and I went to Imogen’s today, it was a bit of a shock, her dad who had seemed as if he was getting better and getting over the trauma of his wife behaved like a nutter. First of all, he was really excitable and kept talking to us in a bizarre type of high-pitched stressed out voice, it was very annoying. Imogen tried to whisk us upstairs and out of his clutches, but he insisted that we stayed downstairs and had a drink with him. He tried to give us whiskey – it was eleven in the morning, we said no thanks, but he didn’t take any notice and poured us all one anyway. He was just babbling on about how nice it was to see us and Imogen was lucky to have such good friends, all this sort of stuff that people say when they get really emotional. We kept trying to make a getaway; Imogen was furious and kept saying, “Right we’ve got to go out Dad.†She even went and got her jacket and put it on, but it was really difficult as Jed and I thought it would be too rude to just get up while he was talking to us and leave the house. We ended up sitting with him for about an hour and a half, while Imogen got madder and he got drunker. Then he started getting really mournful and talking about Imogen’s mum and how it was so difficult when she wasn’t there and lonely. The tears started coursing down his face, Imogen made one last attempt to get us out of the house, but when we didn’t move (how could we). She just said, “Right, well I’m going now.†And left the house. It was terrible, I told Jed to hang on while I went after her. I managed to catch her up as she was marching up the street, but she was in a real temper and asked me why the hell we hadn’t done as she’d said and got out of there before he got into such a state. I said that I didn’t think it was right to leave him, but this really infuriated her and she started going on and on about how he should pull himself together, it was her mum that had died and she knew that she just had to get on with life and he was an adult so why couldn’t he and why should she have to look after him when he couldn’t be bothered to look after himself. I said I was surprised that he was worse again because he had seemed so much better, but apparently he has been like this for a while and it was triggered because he lost his job. Although they had been very good about the fact that he was bereaved he kept taking time off work and had turned up drunk too many times. I couldn’t believe that Imogen hadn’t said anything to us, but she said that it was because she knew I would have said that he should get some help and that the help he had got hadn’t worked and anyway, she had too much to do with her exams and stuff. The whole thing was a real nightmare, I wanted to support her, but it was obvious that her Dad needed more help than her and I was worried about poor old Jed who’d just been left to deal with him all on his own. I told Imogen that I knew what she meant, but if she looked at it practically, if her Dad got more help it would be very good for her too as she wouldn’t have to deal with him. But she said she didn’t want to think about it now and just wanted to go out and have some lunch somewhere and have a nice time. Then Jed came and found us and said that her Dad had fallen asleep so he came to see where we were. We went to a café and had a greasy spoon lunch, but all the time I was worried that Mr Martin might choke on his vomit or something – what am I Florence Nightingale?? Imogen asked if she could stay over at mine tonight and I said fine, but then spent ages trying to get her Aunt Sarah’s number from her so we could phone her and see if she could do anything. Luckily enough she said that she would drive over and meet us there at four, which she did and said that she would stay over and see if she could talk to him when he sobered up. She seemed a really nice and helpful woman, but Imogen hardly spoke to her and refused to say any more about her Dad but just said she’d thought enough about him today and that was that. After all that stuff I couldn’t very well bring up the small business of going out for a drink with Matt tomorrow, and now I feel as if I’ve sort of lied by omission.