[[CW: mention of substance abuse]]

It was evening and Tristan sat in the drawing room, reading a book he wasn't very interested in. This morning he had held office hour and then in the afternoon he had paid a house visit. Slowly he was getting more patients, but the life in Whitby was still harder than he had imagined. When he did have patients, he felt alright, though the work was hardly as engaging as his work in the asylum had been. But it was the moments of leisure that he dreaded. Apart from Tobias, he still had no friends in town, and he found that outside the context of university or work, it was a lot harder to meet people. 

He had asked Pippa to bring up a bottle of wine, deciding to make the long evening more bearable. He couldn't find as much pleasure in his studies as before, and so he had decided to opt for another way to lift his spirits. Surely he could be excused if it was just one evening of drinking? He knew all to well that some of his colleagues turned to their supply of opium. So a few glasses of wine were really quite innocent.