One of the side effects of being a sober companion had been a lack of alcohol. Not a complete absence, of course...she would still very occasionally go out to bars and restaurants with her friends and have a beer or a glass of wine. And it wasn't like she drank a lot before becoming a sober companion. But while she was with a client she couldn't have alcohol where she lived and couldn't drink in front of them, which, considering she would usually be with them 24/7, meant not at all. Becoming Sherlock's partner and housemate meant that there was very little of her life that did not directly involve him, so there was even less opportunity to drink.
Here in Dunwich, she's found herself drinking with fair frequency. She doesn't think she has a problem, per se, but she does recognize a tendency to turn to alcohol to dull the sharp edges of life in this bizarre place that defies her desire for rationality. Tonight she's in Mind and Motion, watching the bartender pour her a scotch. When he slides it to her she thanks him and picks it up, takes a sip...
...and catches a flicker of motion in the mirror behind the bar, just on the edge of her vision.
It's not the first time. In fact, this past month she's been experiencing that sort of thing more than usual, even in Dunwich. She has had anew the grim speculation that the apparitions she's seeing might be the hallucinations that herald the sort of dementia her mother has.
She tips her glass toward the now-gone apparition, a wordless and joyless cheers, then turns away from the mirror entirely, scanning the bar as she sips her whiskey.