Our Wedding Night
She’d be sitting at the bar in that house we had in Hong Kong, cradling a martini while Lottie and I watched, in our matching pink dressing gowns flown out from England.
After she’d gone out, we would intone the phrase to each other like some kind of religion. I thought it was a general toast like “Down the hatch,” and shocked a school friend many years later, at a family lunch, by raising my glass and saying, “Well, drown the pain, everyone.”
Now we use it as a shorthand for “getting totally trashed in an embarrassing manner.”
“I will not be drowning the pain, thank you,” retorts Lottie, sounding
offended. “And, anyway, you should talk, Fliss.”
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