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The truth of who we are

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The truth of who we are is more than the lies we tell ourselves. I think that is what I used to believe. A conviction that there was something intrinsically true at the core, buried under the tangle of half-truths, fables, lies, and stories we accumulate day to day. As if divers could explore the inky blackness of my ship-wrecked consciousness, sift the flotsam and jetsam, and eventually find a half buried treasure chest that would contain the actual essence of who I was. Even in metaphor I am submerged, hard to reach, broken apart, and believe that everything this is important, or true, is in the depths and not on the surface. I am not a reliable narrator of my own truth. I am not to be trusted.

There are things that I have believed to be true for a long time now, things that I thought served me well, maintained my self sufficient self. That is the first one. That there is value in self sufficiency and strength, whatever that actually means, and a wariness of others; an unwillingness to seek help that stems not from stubbornness but from not understanding how to ask, how to accept. I think that it can all be thought out. That all of the impulses and thoughts, emotions and reactions, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, can be rationalised. Considered, labelled, stitched together in systematic sequences, boxed off, and dealt with. An intellectual exercise to complete. I am already thinking ahead to the next paragraph to figure out how to make it appear clever as if that was ever the point of the endeavour. I am tired of thinking.

I think, on some level, that I thought I wasn’t really worth very much. Wasted a lot of energy in worrying about being found out, some kind of ritual unmasking that exposed a sensitivity to the world that I had cloaked in smarts and sarcasm, front and funny. People seem to like that projection and it’s not like it’s a complete deception; some of that stuff is true, it’s just that sometimes it isn’t and sometimes it’s exhausting on the days you’d rather listen to Bon Iver sing Re:Stacks and cry. There’s probably a whole shelf of self-help books that start from the you are enough premise and insist on being kind to yourself but reading the words and believing the words aren’t the same thing. Even writing the words and believing the words isn’t the same thing. In writing words I can be anything and, perhaps, that’s why I write them.

If the fundamental truths that I believed in turned out to be lies then what does that leave? They are hard wired now; brain chemistry isn’t fixed but it seeks the familiar patterns, the paths of least resistance, the worn-in grooves. Or worn-out grooves, like a record stuck on repeat, stuck on a scratch in the vinyl that you have to force the needle past or you’re just going to listen to the same refrain over and over again. Perhaps what should be left is to start with some new fundamentals, the ones that seem to bypass the exhausting over-thinking, second guessing, and the relentless, pointless, picky, destructive inner monologue. It’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me (Taylor’s version).

That leaves things that feel true. And maybe the point is that I can’t really explain them very well except to say that there’s an evocation, a revealing of something that I can’t otherwise articulate. It’s there in music most obviously, whether it’s Kurt’s howling catharsis or Margo Timmins’ hushed whisper, Neil Young’s raggedly glorious guitar tone or the weary resignation of Fake Plastic Trees, the joy in Move On Up and the despair in Skeleton Tree. It’s there in laughter and connection; there’s a particular kind of kindness, I think, in trying to bring laughter to bear in a way that let’s people know that it’s okay to smile, okay to let their guard down. I overplay that kindness in my work but it feels true and I am unlikely to stop now for the sake of another rung on the ladder. It’s there every Autumn when the leaves are polished gold, suspended before the fall into winter. It’s there on the nights when the light pollution from the city can’t disguise the scatter of stars across the infinite, ineffable blackness above. It’s there in Withnail delivering Hamlet’s soliloquy or Han bailing out Luke to take down the Death Star or in every la-di-da to pass Diane Keaton’s lips. It’s there in a myriad of things seen and heard and felt. Always felt. I can deconstruct all of these things but all the value is in the feeling.

And love feels true. Possibly unfashionable and possibly sentimental but true nonetheless. 

So the crux of the dilemma might be that all of the rational, intellectual, clever modes of thought in which I dwell are lies, or at least not the whole truth, and all of things I hold to be true are beyond my comprehension and expression. Love, art, beauty, laughter, sadness, joy. Quite the shopping list. If Amazon start dealing in truth then hopefully all available via one-click soon. Free to Prime members. I guess the commoditisation of those things is actually the underpin to the entire entertainment industry but that feels like a distraction for another day, a diversionary tactic deployed as we were sniffing around something more fragile. 

And it is fragile. Age was supposed to bring certainty and, on a good day, with a fair wind, some wisdom. It has, instead, yielded less certainty, more fear, and more anxiety. Where’s the belligerent sense of being right about everything that I was promised? Where’s that intrinsic sense of something true at my core that I believed in? I’ve been mining my own seams for so long now that I surely must have found it if it was there. Again, we are back believing in hidden depths of value. Like I said, I am not a reliable narrator and I am not to be trusted.

The truth of who we are is more than the lies we tell ourselves. I think that is probably right. As for the rest of it? I don’t know. I might need to learn how to ask for help.

I don’t know what this was in the end. I wanted to wrap back to the start of July’s writing (the lies we tell ourselves piece) but I’m not sure if this one survived the contrivance. Maybe some of it is salvageable from the shipwreck.

Anyway, that concludes 26,000 word for Great Ormond Street Hospital in July ’23. With a day to spare. I’m over the 26K and over my fundraising target but any donations welcome here. Hope you enjoyed it.

Embers

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Marylebone Platform Six: Arrival

Is it too late at forty one? It was the first question that Jane wanted to ask, impatiently thumbing a magazine in the waiting room. She had read the literature, seen the changes in risk profiles past certain ages, heard the opinions of friends, family, strangers in forums on the internet, and the consensus was that it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t, perhaps, ideal but it wasn’t too late. She wanted to hear it out loud from a professional. She wanted somebody with a medical certificate on their wall, preferably wearing a white coat, to spell it out to her.

The waiting room was the same as she remembered it from the only time she’d persuaded Paul to come. Curved, vertically slatted, wood panelled walls framed the space, a light wood that softened the room and retained the light. They’d talked about it when they’d sat here together, a distraction from the real reason they were there. He thought it looked like somebody’s idea of the future from the 1970s, she thought it was Scandinavian and designed to evoke a sense of calm. Now she wasn’t so sure, sat there alone. It wasn’t helping the knottiness in her stomach or her quick glances around the room each time a door opened or the receptionist shuffled a set of papers or the printer on her desk hummed to life or the telephone rang. She didn’t think Paul had been right either. If this was an imagined future then it was not one she would ever have imagined for herself.

There were six other people in the waiting area with her, all couples, all sat quietly, two of them holding hands, the other sat side by side, her with her head leant across his shoulder. Everyone had acknowledged each other every time somebody new arrived, usually a silent nod or smile, a tacit sign that whilst nobody knew the details of everyone’s story they did understand the gist of it, understood that they had all reached an inflection point where they were all looking for the same happy ending. Jane had found that smallest moment of connection oddly moving and had immediately bent over to rummage in her bag, pretending to look for something important, so that she could compose herself, hold back the tears that were threatening to run down her face.

Jane watched two of the couples, in turn, be called to another room ahead of her. In their absence she imagined the myriad of chance events that could have played out that led them here, the arbitrary sequences where biological collisions were missed or cellular reactions spluttered and faded or genetics were just wired, unknowingly, against the hopeful protagonists from the start. She tried to read their faces as they came back into the waiting area but everyone carried the same pensive, considered look that they had as they entered. Maybe they didn’t know anymore than they did before. Maybe everyone realised, out of respect, that this wasn’t the place to show more than cautious optimism. Not everyone would leave with the news they wanted. Jane had read enough of the statistics to understand that.

Her name was called and she was directed down a corridor towards the back of the waiting area, and then into a room, marked simply with the name of her fertility consultant and the assorted set of letters after his name. MBBS BSc MD DFFP MRCOG. She didn’t understand any of it beyond the BSc but was reassured in its impenetrability, in its length, in its blank capitalisation. She hesitated and then tentatively knocked. If Paul had been her she knew he’d have hung back, waited for her to make things happen. The thought galvanised her and she didn’t wait for a response, just pushed the door open and stepped through.

Doctor Jacobs – Andrew, please, call me Andrew – was the owner of the various initials on the door and Jane listened as he talked through the potential IVF pathways open to her, detailed the risk profile information that she had already exhaustively googled, and gave her an honest appraisal of her chances. It’s a physical and emotional commitment, Mrs Roberts, and there’s no guarantees but you’re healthy, all your indicators are as good as they can be, so it’s certainly not a situation where I’d be looking to dissuade you.

“I prefer Jane,” said Jane suddenly. “I’m just finalising some paper work but I don’t think of myself as Mrs Roberts anymore.”

Andrew tilted his head slightly to the side. “Your ex-husband. Of course. I am so sorry about his death, Jane.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We were actually divorced but there was some admin to finalise and then he died. It was all very unexpected.”

“He explained it to me,” said Andrew. “I really am so sorry, I was so caught up in explaining the processes and the details that I usually cover. I really should have started with that.”

“He explained it?”

Andrew opened a file on his desk and picked through the sheets of paper inside it, eventually finding what he was looking for, pulling it out and placing it in front of her. “He wanted you to have this. He wanted me to give you this.”

Jane stared at it for a few moments, caught between curiosity and a sense of deep apprehension. She’d sat on the train on her way in mentally preparing for what she thought was every possible permutation, every way in which this conversation might go, every choice she might be offered, but none of that preparation had included a letter from Paul. She’d consciously walked rapidly down the platform at Marylebone, fixated on nothing but the exit barriers and the passage way to the street, deliberating screening out all of the small reminders, all of the tiny emotional cues that the place prompted in her. She’d deliberately avoided the station since the disposal of his ashes and had wanted that to close it all off, to end their story in the same place it began.

Curiosity won. Jane read Paul’s letter.

Dear Jane,

I am not foolish enough to seek your forgiveness. I know you too well and, more importantly, have come to realise that what I did doesn’t deserve that you forgive me. I regret it all deeply and that is something that I have to carry.

Perhaps somewhere you can appreciate the irony in the formality of this letter, now that we’ve parted and will lead separate lives. Do you remember that we started with Pride & Prejudice and I misquoted Mr Darcy, a vain hope that I would not lose your good opinion lest it be lost forever. Clearly I have lost it forever and I have only myself to blame for that. Know that I am sorry. I know that will probably not mean much, after everything, but know that’s it true all the same.

When you left me in 31 Below, that last time I saw you, you said that I owed you. I’ve thought a lot about that since and I think you’re right, I know you’re right. I’m due for my surgery in a couple of weeks and, after that, I will disappear. I don’t want to bounce around London anymore, bumping into the places that were ours, regretting what I let get away from me. I don’t know exactly what I will do but I’m going to move away, going to start again somewhere else, see if I can find a small village cricket team that will have me. But that’s all about me and not about you. And you were right, I do owe you.

The surgery will stop me ejaculating. I tried to think of a more poetic way to say it but drew a blank. No puns intended. Perhaps you realise how difficult this is for me and remember that we used to laugh at things like this? Used to laugh at so much. I’m sorry if it’s too late for that. How would Mr Darcy have put it? I guess Austen painted him as a study in quiet, simmering virility so I suppose it’s not a line she would ever need to have grappled with. What I’m trying to say is that after the surgery the one last thing that I might be able to do for you will be denied me.

I’ve donated my sperm to this clinic and arranged for it to be frozen. I finally made good on those conversations we had, those things I owed you. All the paperwork is taken care of. If you want to use them as a donor then they are yours – and only yours, this is something I should have helped us do together and it’s something I only want to help you do alone. If you choose to. I would completely understand if I am the last donor on earth that you would want to entertain.

This is no recompense for the damage I’ve done, Jane, but I hope it is, at least, something. I loved you. I didn’t honour that and, for that, I’m sorry but I did love you.

Yours, Paul.

Jane read Paul’s letter and stared at the paper, in silence, for several minutes. Andrew sat watching her, fingers pressed to lips, mindful to give her space. She looked up at him.

“This is not how I imagined this would all work, you know? I was so sure about everything, so certain in what I wanted, what I went after, what I got. Life was a series of things to achieve, things in my control that I could… I don’t know, that I could bend to my will. And I had a lot of will. And this… this is something that I can’t.”

“I wish that it were different,” replied Andrew.

She asked her question. “Is it too late at forty one, doctor? Sorry, Andrew. Is it too late?”

“There’s no guarantees but it’s not too late,” he said. 

“Am I crazy to do it alone?” It was the other question she had played over in her mind; the one for herself but which she asked quietly now, almost as if he wasn’t there.

“You can’t bend fertility to your will,” he said. “But if we succeed then I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that you can bend parenthood to it. It’s not crazy at all. It maybe takes a special kind of stubborn but it’s not crazy.”

Jane held his gaze. “Stubborn I can do. When can we start?”

Part six and the conclusion of the Marylebone stories. I am aware that the ending, technically, remains ambiguous so I may write a coda/epilogue for it at a later point. I know what I think happens to Jane but you are free to imprint your own version…

This continues my 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street in July ’23. Any and all donations to fundraiser very welcome on this link.

Sparks

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Marylebone Platform 3: Arrival

Over time their meeting was embellished and embroidered. The story was changed each time it was retold, contradicted by whomever was telling it, reshaped to suit the audience. Did it matter if the details weren’t true as long as the overall sense of it was? Did it matter if he thought she suggested the drink or that she insisted that he had? Whether they kissed? I’m pretty sure we kissed. No, we definitely didn’t kiss. That she had scrawled out her phone number on the back of a receipt with an eyeliner pencil or that he had run over to WH Smith to buy stationery just to make sure he could capture it. But didn’t you have phones? Did it matter if a little romantic license ran through the details of their first encounter? If the actual facts were correct? How it felt was the important part. What it signalled. What it started. Whether there was chemistry. Whether there were sparks.

This is how he tells it:

I think our eyes met across a crowded train. Obviously not that, I’m kidding. That stuff doesn’t really happen, just like all those ‘meet cutes’ you see in Rom Coms don’t really happen in real life. People bumping into each and spilling coffee, people rescuing other people from awkward situations by pretending that they know them, people agreeing, as total strangers, to car share across America. None of that stuff. Harry doesn’t meet Sally like that in real life and I didn’t meet Jane like that. She’s a lousy driver anyway so any hypothetical road trip we would have made would have ended in disaster. It’s hard to make witty small talk about the impossibility of platonic male-female friendships when you’re grabbing the wheel to swing the car out of the path of an oncoming truck. Even a hypothetical one.

It turned out, although I only found this out much later, that she really hated Meg Ryan in that movie. Thought she was a bit too much of a mess and a bit too ready to take Harry back at the end. She was right when she said he was just lonely. She should never have taken him back. I never would. This is not relevant to our meeting but is relevant to understanding Jane and why I liked her, eventually why I loved her. Not because she was right. She really wasn’t right – it’s a great movie and they’re clearly meant for each other – but because she had an opinion and she wasn’t budging. There was a certainty about her from the start that I was drawn to.

I didn’t have much choice but be drawn to her. Stuck behind her might be accurate. I was rushing to try and catch a train home and saw, unusually, that all the barriers to the platforms were fixed, all set with a red light indicating they weren’t in use. All except one where a woman, maybe late twenties, early thirties, with a shoulder length, black bob, pale green sweater, jeans, was arguing with a station official. He was blocking her path through the only working barrier and she, in turn, was now blocking mine. I’m not buying another ticket. I have bought a ticket, literally from that machine over there – wild gesture over her shoulder, her arm making contact with my chest – and you’re not ripping me off again. Brief pause as the contact registered. I’m sorry. This guy won’t let me through. She turned slightly to acknowledge me and apologise and I saw green eyes, some fairly heavily applied eye shadow, pale skin. A frown, lips pursed. And then she was back to berating the official as if I wasn’t there.

Jane is stubborn. As I said I found it attractive, then at least, and if she’d been less stubborn we never really would have met. I gently asked whether, maybe, I could just slip through as my train was right there and about to depart and the next one wasn’t for another hour. She either didn’t hear, didn’t care, or both, as she continued her lengthy and detailed explanation to her jobsworth train guy on how it was patently ridiculous that a ticket could change from off-peak to peak in the time it takes to walk from the machine that sold the ticket to the train. He dug in and just repeated that it was now peak travel time and her ticket wasn’t valid. I asked again. This time she did respond. Look, I’m sorry but it’s a principle now. I have a ticket and he has to let me through. I know it’s inconvenient but it just underlines how ridiculous he’s being and hopefully it will make him see sense. I didn’t entirely follow her logic but she had fully turned to face me this time and there was something compelling in the determination in her features, the way she opened her eyes slightly, nodded towards me, as if to pull me onto her side. I felt like I was being invited in to something. I picked a side. It wasn’t a fair fight: officious station man versus beautiful, intractable stranger. 

We didn’t win. I watched my train depart platform three, the hiss as it released its air brakes and a sudden, jarring blare from its horn temporarily drowning out the latest front in the argument which had now shifted to the inherent profiteering at the public expense by privately run rail networks. He had an RMT pin badge so perhaps she had thought this tactic might work, might eke out some solidarity, but, instead, he escalated things by radioing for security. 

I stuck around. I’m not sure if it was because I had a lot of time to kill now, wanted to see how it played out, or if I genuinely wanted to make sure security didn’t mess with her. It was probably a mixture of the three but I dial up the empathy and care angle now when I tell it. I needn’t have worried as something seemed to shift in her as a couple of guards wandered over, one muttering into an intercom on his lapel, the other smiling broadly as if he could defuse the whole thing through sheer optimism. And, weirdly, he did. Or something did. Jane backed up, offered a final, you know what, fuck this, and started to walk back across the concourse towards the tube barriers. She told me later that she had decided she’d rather not go at all than give them the satisfaction of buying another ticket.

Are you okay? I think that was what I said. It’s not a line Nora Ephron would have written for Billy Crystal, I’ll grant you, but we write our own scripts, in real time, and usually they’re pretty mundane. She stopped, turned, and looked at me for a moment. I think it was the first time she really saw me so if there were any eyes meeting across any crowds then it happened then. I’ve had better days. How about you? God, I’m sorry you missed your train, I get pretty, er, focussed when things go like that. 

It was impulse. I had a lot of time to kill and nothing to lose. Let me buy you a drink. I’m Paul. I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me about rail privatisation. That stuff was pretty interesting.

She tilted her head, folded her arms. I sense you are teasing me, Paul. One drink. And if you thought that was interesting then just wait until you hear about what they did to the coal industry…

This is how she tells it:

I don’t even remember the argument now, if I’m honest. I’m someone that stands their ground so things like that happened to me all the time, especially with men in supposed positions of authority. It was usually bullshit and I was usually happy to call them on it. I know Paul tells that part of the story like it was the most important bit and super revealing about my essential character but, for me, it was just another minor infraction in my ongoing battles with nonsense. He would say that I later referenced the patriarchy but I doubt I did. Obviously it is all the patriarchy but I’m not sure, back then, that it was a phrase I used. I was through my Camille Paglia phase and I think I was channeling more of a PJ Harvey thing for both my look and my brand of feminism. 

The important bits all started after that. I mean I didn’t really properly look at Paul until I caught up to him afterwards and asked if he was okay, apologised for making him miss his train. He didn’t seem to realise I was behind him and so I reached for his arm, just enough to make him stop so that I could say sorry. He was attractive. Not my usual type at that point in my life, a little straight compared to my recent dates, but undeniably good looking. I wasn’t sold on his hair. He was rocking, or presumably thought he was rocking, a fringe that kept threatening to part in the middle like his eyes were the play and his hair were an elaborate set of curtains ready to reveal the main act. His eyes were the main act, though. A watery blue, thick, quite feminine lashes. They softened him, took the edge off a square jaw, high cheek bones, a narrow, sharp nose. Quite classically good looking. As I say, not my usual type at all.

We spoke for a bit, I asked him when his next train was and then offered to buy him a coffee while he waited, by way of a proper apology. I know when he tells it that he says that we had some banter about public sector privatisation but none of that was true. I guess it might be possible to flirt over Arthur Scargill and the betrayal of the British working class but, if it is, then it’s beyond my skills. I think he likes his version of it now because it made us sound clever and quirky and I’m okay with that. We were both pretty clever. He always saw my stubbornness as one of those quirks whereas I thought of it as who I was. They’re only quirks if you see them in someone else but not yourself.

The actual flirting happened over coffee in the very romantic surrounds of Marylebone station, pigeons pecking at discarded sandwich crumbs on the floor, the station PA periodically telling us not to leave baggage unattended, and the regular ebb and flow of people in transit. I don’t remember any lines but I imagine my plan of attack involved sarcasm and undercutting any of his bravado. That was my style and it tended to sort out the men from the boys. I was pleasantly surprised that he rose to the challenge – I had sort of assumed he wouldn’t which was, to be fair, an entirely biased misjudgement based on him being good looking. Despite my protestations of cleverness I was guilty of assuming that his looks were going to be offset by his personality. Stubborn and judgemental. He says quirks. I say solid character traits.

We jousted for a bit over the usual topics. Work, spare time, a conversational detour down cinema, music and a brief dip into cricket. Brief as he clocked, quickly, that I had zero interest in it. I think he clocked it when I said it was interesting that the only time large groups of men got together and dressed entirely in white was in cricket and at Klan rallies. Like I say, my plan of attack at the time was largely to attack. In retrospect it’s clearly not a fair comparison. Institutionalised racism on the one hand and the Klan on the other. I’m joking. Obviously I’m joking. He didn’t look like he found it very funny but also changed the subject pretty quickly.

There were sparks. That’s what everyone always asks when they ask how we met. Were there sparks? I fought against it but I liked him. He was self-deprecating but confident, listened to my attack lines, defended them valiantly. He was funny but not in an attention grabbing way, more in how he responded to the things I said. And he had those eyes. If I’d been measuring the sparks at the time it was more like someone striking flints together rather than one of those industrial lathes you see where there are just molten rivulets of fire running from them. So there were sporadic sparks, ones that had to be worked at a bit, ones that were going to need some time to catch light. 

I thought they were the best kind. It felt like cheating if it came easier than that. I didn’t believe in any of that love at first sight stuff. I wanted to work at it, wanted to fall into it gradually, wanted to fight it a bit with every ounce of my stubborn soul. Wanted it to set ablaze but didn’t want to get burned in the process. All of that happened but that was all later. For a while, for quite a while, we were nurturing sparks.

Next Marylebone instalment which, for reasons that made sense in my head, I have elected to tell out of chronological order. Feel free to rearrange when I have finished, like you would with the Star Wars prequels.

Fundraising for Great Ormond Street continues here. I am close to half way through my target word count for July, aiming for 26,000 by the end.

Flame

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Marylebone Platform 2: Connection

Meet on the concourse beside the flower stall. Midday. He’d been very specific about it which was unusual; they typically met at Marylebone anyway and just found each other under the departure boards. Five dates now, six if you counted when they met, and the station was equally convenient for both of them. Bakerloo from Willesden for her, mainline from the Chilterns for him. Jane thought that he quite liked the romance of meeting at a station as well, the second time they had met there he’d enthused about its Edwardian architecture and would have possibly still been talking about Neo-Baroque features now if she hadn’t interrupted and suggested they get a drink. She hadn’t found it dull, she liked that he was passionate about something, but she had always found the people at stations more interesting than the buildings. In transit, intersecting briefly, thousands of stories to imagine.

Jane was slightly late and took the escalator two steps at a time, the posters on the adjoining walls passing in her periphery. Jersey Boys. Multivitamins. Clinique. The Mamma Mia movie. Mental note to not see that. eHarmony. Mamma Mia again. Her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans, it would be Paul wondering where she was. She slowed for the final few steps, partly to navigate the end of the escalator and partly as she didn’t want to arrive flushed and out of breath. Date five felt like it might be the time to be flushed and out of breath but at the end of it, not the start. They’d kissed last time, briefly, he’d been rushing for the last train, and it was evidently an audition they had both passed as here they were.

Paul stood, as arranged, in front of the flower stall. White shirt, blue jeans, he’d had a hair cut since last time and Jane was relieved that he’d abandoned the fringe that he’d kept running his fingers through for something closer cropped. He smiled as she approached.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. Tube was busy, seemed like everyone was trying to get out of Willesden today.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Paul replied with a smile. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve only just got here anyway.” He took a step towards her and leaned in to awkwardly kiss her on the cheek. “Hello, you”.

Jane looked up at him, saw that he hadn’t moved away. She wasn’t sure if it was in hope, expectation, or if he had committed to a pre-rehearsed greeting that hadn’t quite gone to plan and was now stuck in no-man’s-land, wanting the ground to swallow him up. She put him out of his misery.

“Hey, you. I think we’re a bit past that now, don’t you think?” She leaned up and kissed him on the mouth, closed her eyes and took in the scent of his aftershave. One of the CK ones, maybe One, she wasn’t sure and was having a hard time concentrating on anything other than keeping her balance as she was up on her tiptoes and whilst he seemed to be enjoying the kiss it hadn’t extended to him putting his arms around her. She sank back on to her heels and pulled away. “Hello. I should’ve worn heels.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. Just, next time, you are allowed to touch me. Even if it’s just to stop me falling on my face. It’s not a Jane Austen novel.”

“Makes sense and, er…,”  he tailed off. “I was going to say something clever about sense and sensibility but it got away from me.”

“Points for trying,” said Jane. “Pride and Prejudice is the one people usually know so I’m mildly impressed that you didn’t go for the obvious.”

“It was on TV earlier this year,” he said with a grin. “BBC. I watched the first episode but it wasn’t for me. Someone twisted an ankle, that seemed to be as dramatic as it got.”

“The drama is in the relationships. What’s said, what’s unsaid. It’s a delicate dance of manners and protocol. I should warn you that I really like that stuff so you might want to change the subject if you’re about to reveal that you thought Pride and Prejudice would be better if it was called Pride and Extreme Prejudice. Some action movie about a former Marine who did jobs for the downtrodden and wronged, killing his enemies with excessive force and pithy one liners.” 

“That sounds pretty good. Too similar to the A Team but Hollywood doesn’t have a problem with reusing old IP so you could be on to something.” He was laughing and raised his hands, palms up. “Don’t worry. I’m joking. Half joking at least. My cultural bandwidth takes in a range of frequencies. I am not a total meathead.” 

“Cultural bandwidth?”, said Jane, eyebrow raised. “Has someone been reading the Saturday Guardian supplements?”

“Perhaps I just have hidden depths,” replied Paul. “Still waters and all that. Anyway, now that you’re here and we’ve established your love of formal courtship rituals…”

“I didn’t quite say that…”

“Close enough. Now that we’ve established all that. What’s your favourite flower?” He gestured at the stall behind him, a blaze of colours popping like a firework display, frozen in place. “I don’t know anything at all about flowers so I thought I should consult you before I bought you something.”

Jane walked up to the stall and smiled at the woman behind the counter, gave a gentle shrug to acknowledge that she seemed to have heard most of their exchange. There was a large bank of peonies,  pinky white, in the middle of the stall surrounded by, variously, lilies, some red roses, burnt orange tulips, and several taller stems she didn’t recognise. Gladioli maybe. Had she been the heroine in an Austen novel then clearly she would have learned all of them after long afternoons flower arranging or practicing the piano whilst the gentlemen talked business and smoked cigars. She liked looking back at it but had no interest in being anyone’s accessory or adornment. 

“It’s a lovely thought, Paul, but let’s not get flowers now,” she said. “We’ll have to carry them round all day and they need to be in water. You know that much, right?”

“That’s about the extent of my knowledge,” he said. “You sure? This was my whole plan to impress you at the start.”

“I’m sure.” She saw him waiting for something else. “And, okay, I’m mildly impressed and noting that this is the second time on this date that I’ve been mildly impressed.”

“There’s got to be some kind of multiplier on it. Two lots of mildly impressed equals quite impressed?”

“Nope, just two lots of mildly impressed. Otherwise what incentive have you got to raise your game?”

“I see,” said Paul. “Okay then, we won’t get the flowers but for future reference, what would you have chosen?”

“Probably the tulips,” said Jane before pointing at them as she realised that he didn’t even seem to know which ones they were. “The orange ones. But, for future reference, they can come in many colours.”

“Confusing. I like the ones that are easy to remember. Sunflowers. Looks like the sun, is a flower. Easy.”

“Hidden depths, eh?,” laughed Jane.

They walked out of the station and made their way along towards the main road that cut right across the top of London, from the Westway through into the heart of the City. It was busy, cars concertinaed between traffic lights, stopping, starting; the occasional angry horn, electronic beeps from the pedestrian crossing. They crossed to the south side of the road and walked past some office buildings before Paul stopped them outside the Town Hall, by one of the stone lions, faced raised into the noon sunshine. A small group of people, dressed in suits or summer dresses, hats and fascinators, stood clustered on the stairs leading up to the entrance.

“Imagine getting married here,” said Paul. 

“It’s a little early for a proposal,” replied Jane. “You haven’t even bought me flowers yet. But I think you’re right about the venue, it’s great. Wonder what it’s like inside?”

“We could sneak in,” suggested Paul. “Join this wedding party and check it out.”

“I’m not really dressed for it,” said Jane. “I would definitely have worn heels if I’d known we were attending someone’s wedding. Come on, we should get out of their way.” Whilst they’d been talking a vintage double decker bus had pulled up and more guests, along with the groom and his immediate entourage, were alighting from the opening at the back. On the other side of the lights, further up the street, they could see a black cab adorned with ribbons. The guests had seen it too and quickly began to make their way into the hall.

“Last chance,” said Paul. “I’m sure I’ve read that they can’t legally stop you attending services in public spaces.”

“Legally, no,” said Jane. “But I’m not about to crash someone’s special day just to see what it’s like where Paul McCartney got married.”

“Really? Did he? Which time?”

“To Linda. He was local I think at the time although I’m not quite sure. He was definitely living with Jane Asher round here before that so I guess he must have stayed after they split up. It’s not that far to Abbey Road.”

“Paul and Jane,” said Paul. “What are the chances?”

“Given they’re pretty common names I’d say the chances are quite high,” said Jane. “Besides it didn’t end that well for Paul and Jane, you need to be looking out for your Linda if you’re after the love of your life.”

“I’d never be able to give up bacon,” said Paul.

“That wasn’t really my point,” said Jane, smiling. “Speaking of bacon we should get some food.”

They ate lunch in a small cafe on Marylebone High Street, chatting idly about work and plans for the rest of the summer. They stepped around it lightly, each of them hinting that there was enough space for the other in those plans but neither presuming that it would play out like that. After lunch she dragged him into Daunt Books, it was her favourite shop in London and she wanted to show him. Maybe she wanted to stress test those hidden depths a little too. She watched as he browsed the sports section, picking up various cricket biographies of people she didn’t know. Ian Botham. He sounded familiar. Otherwise she was stumped. She lost sight of him as she flicked through the latest Kate Atkinson which had been stacked on a table towards the front of the shop, a handwritten note of recommendation from one of the booksellers detailing its virtues. 

She saw him again paying for something at the counter and walked over to join him.

“I got you something,” he said, handing over a book, freshly placed in a canvas tote bag, emblazoned with the shop’s logo. She took it from him, said thank you, and slid the book out. It was a copy of Pride And Prejudice, a Penguin classics edition. “I was going to write something inside but you caught me too soon.”

“Tell me instead,” she said. “What were you going to write?”

“I hope not to lose your good opinion, for I suspect it would be lost forever,” he replied, smiling.

“How very Darcy of you,” she said, gently bowing her head in what she hoped was a mock approximation of Elizabethan courtesy and courtship. “You haven’t lost it yet.”

They mooched around Marylebone for the rest of the afternoon, she hooked her arm around his   and they wandered with no fixed destination in mind. He wanted to find John Lennon’s blue plaque but neither of them knew where it was and so they speculated, instead, on where he might have lived, where Paul and Jane lived, in some imagined, heady, swinging sixties version of the streets they were walking now. They stumbled into hidden mews, small, brown bricked Georgian houses, tightly packed in the midst of the city. A film crew had set up in one of them and they peered over barricades trying to catch a glimpse of someone famous, looked for hints of what they might be making. It’ll be something like Notting Hill, something that makes the rest of the world think that all of London is like this. As they were discussing the perspective that the rest of the world may or may not have on the capital city she pulled in a little closer to him.

“Maybe I should show you something a bit more real, then. Would you like to see Willesden?” In her head it had sounded more flirtatious, more casual. Out loud it was difficult to imbue Willesden with much by way of sexual intrigue or mystery. 

“I never thought I would say this but I would really love to see Willesden,” he said. “We’d better get a move on though, I don’t know what time all the trains back run.” It hung there a moment.

“You won’t be needing the trains back,” said Jane. “Not tonight at least.”

Next instalment in the series nobody is calling The Marylebone Six (as there are six platforms). Happier times for Paul and Jane. Apologies to Willesden but I did used to live there so it’s meant with a certain degree of affection…

This is another in the series to write 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street Hospital in July ’23. All donations, however small, welcome here.

Ashes

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Marylebone Platform 1: Arrival & Departure

The train slowed and stopped. Jane closed her eyes, hand resting on the bag on the seat next to her, listening as the driver announced that they were being held outside the station for a few minutes whilst he waited for a platform to clear. She had promised that she would do this for him. She had promised and she would fulfil that promise despite how it had all turned out. Despite the divorce, despite the deceit, despite the drift and damage of their separation. It was more than he deserved but she had long since concluded that she had been more than he deserved. She ran her hand across the top of the bag that contained the ashes of her dead ex-husband.

Paul had always loved cricket. Promise me, if I go first, promise me that you’ll scatter my ashes at Lord’s. That had been this thing she’d signed up to. All their other promises to each other had been peeled away over the years, exposed as empty, but she could still hold true to this one. She had never really understood the appeal, if she was honest. She’d even misunderstood when he’d first asked her, assuming he was looking for some kind of salvation and wanted to go to Lourdes. He’d laughed at her and asked why she thought he’d believe in all that musty old religious nonsense. She’d silently weighed pointing out that the MCC seemed to have more than its share of musty nonsense in its own rituals and uniforms and adherence to baffling, unwritten codes and principle, but had decided the resulting argument wasn’t worth it. He took all of that stuff very seriously and didn’t appreciate it when she poked fun at it. He hadn’t spoken to her for several hours that time he tried to explain field positions to her and she kept referring to silly point as what’s-the-point and suggested that it’d be more fun if the positions were more literal. People in the slips would have to wear slips, people at gully would have to be in a gully. She was about to explain how deep extra cover would work when he stormed out of the room shouting that she wasn’t taking it seriously.

She felt now that’d she’d indulged it more than she should. If she’d known how it would play out – which, in cricketing terms, was very much a rain-stopped-play conclusion – then she would’ve said no to more things. When they got married he’d arranged for wickets to be placed at either end of the aisle and all of the ushers were dressed in their best whites. She had half expected to arrive to see him waiting, padded up, bat in hand, as if she was going to send down a yorker, try to sneak one under him for a surprise dismissal. All the surprises were to come though. And they were all to come from him.

He had saved the rest of the cricket references for his speech. The importance of a long partnership at the crease, how she was a great catch, how he’d been bowled over, hit for six, that kind of thing. At the time she had enjoyed it, laughing along with the rest of their family and friends. It was genuine. He had loved her, she was sure that part was real. The opening partnership was strong and secure but it had been a shock how quickly their middle order had collapsed. 

The train moved forwards again, its initial lurch prompting Jane to open her eyes. She watched a departing train pass on the adjacent track, saw her face, translucent, appear momentarily in the glass as a reflection. She glanced at her phone, checked how she looked using the camera as a makeshift mirror. There were a couple of strands of grey hair that she made a mental note to sort out but, save some fine lines across her forehead, she thought time had been kind. Smiling she wondered if she’d left one of the filters on the camera and she was kidding herself but, after checking, was reassured that the face staring back at her wasn’t subject to any technological support or softening. Could pass for thirty two. Okay, maybe thirty five. Her real age didn’t bother her other than the sense that biology was going to eventually time her out of the thing that she’d always wanted from Paul; the thing that he had stubbornly resisted. Is it too late at forty one?

She left the train and strode, almost marched, down platform one as if she wanted to dispense with this final promise as quickly as possible. There were too many memories around Marylebone and she didn’t want to be blindsided by nostalgia, didn’t want to be reminded of the better parts of him, of them together. She was done with regret and just wanted it to be done. Lift a finger in the air, declare him out. It was busy on the station, there was a crowd milling around the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations and a steady ebb and flow from the mainline concourse through to the tube barriers. She didn’t pause. Paul had always loved this station; he’d stand and stare at the vaulted roof, sunlight streaming through the glass panels picking out the cherry red pillars until she’d pull at his arm, impatiently, and encourage him to move. They had met here but thinking about that served no purpose now. 

Outside the station it was quieter and she walked up past the small park in Dorset Square. She vaguely remembered that there might be a shorter route the other way, picking through backstreets, but she didn’t properly remember it and decided to take the main road. Wandering aimlessly around these streets was another thing they had done together. Back then she could afford to get lost with him, now she was on her own and knew exactly where she wanted to go. The traffic noise rose from a low, intermittent thrum to a constant pulse as she turned left onto Gloucester Place. Black cabs passed on both sides of the street and she momentarily considered flagging one down to save time. She checked her phone again. It was half one and her guided tour was booked for two so she’d just be waiting around at the ground if she didn’t walk.

The tour was something Paul had always wanted them to do together but she had always refused, it had seemed a waste of money on something that held no interest for her. Well, now we are going to take the tour. Sit in the dressing rooms. See the Ashes urn. Walk through the Long Room. Step on to the outfield. She hadn’t really thought through how she would manage the scattering. How or where. The place he would have liked, she assumed, would have been on the pitch itself but she didn’t imagine that she’d be allowed to just pull out her own makeshift ashes urn and start sprinkling powdery remains everywhere. Even powdery remains that really, really liked cricket. So where? The closer she got to the ground the more it bothered her. Perhaps this whole idea, like so many of his ideas, was ridiculous and she should have just discretely scattered him at the local cricket club. There was a large oak tree by the boundary rope that would have been perfect if you overlooked the fact that it was also quite a popular spot for dog’s to relieve themselves. Actually that makes it even more perfect.

Perhaps it would be enough for him to be close to the ground? Within the vicinity of cricket’s spiritual home, if not entirely inside it. She was at the entrance now, wrought iron gates between stone pillars. She paused to read an inscription next to the gate: “To the memory of William Gilbert Grace. The great cricketer. 1848-1915. These gates were erected: The MCC and other friends and admirers.” She composed a brief accompanying eulogy to Paul in her head: “To the memory of Paul James Roberts. The great deceiver. 1982-2023. There’ll be no gates for you, no admirers, and we’re no longer friends.” It was longer than he deserved. “Paul. Goodbye you unfaithful bastard.” Better.

Jane took the tour. She had paid for it and decided that it might be interesting. They hadn’t come here together so there was no danger of any fond, residual memories spinning her emotional compass away from its set position of resenting him and their time together. She knew, in reality, it was more complicated than that but, for today, just wanted the surety in casting him as the villain. She hadn’t been surprised that there was a bag check, she’d had enough savvy to predict that and prepare. Paul had been decanted into a thermos flask for his final journey. The security guard had seemed happy enough to give it a brief shake and wave her through. 

She didn’t enjoy it. She was out numbered by middle aged men, all of whom had decided to wear chunky cricket jumpers over an assorted assemblage of pastel shaded polo shirts. Most of them had a lot to say about the ground, the current state of English cricket, the current state of the country, and all spent too much time laughing at their own jokes. She kept quiet and stayed towards the back of the group, looking for an opportunity to leave Paul to his final resting place. The tour had paused and the guide was gesturing up at the roof of one of the stands. Jane looked up to where he was pointing and saw a weather vane, it appeared to be a depiction of Father Time or, to Jane’s eyes, Death, removing a bail from some cricket stumps. The sun glinted off the tip of his scythe. 

Is it too late at forty one? She stared at the weather vane for a few moments, felt her heart beat quicken, a sick feeling in her stomach. She closed her eyes, felt the breeze on her face and focussed on her pulse, the chatter of the rest of the ground fading out of her hearing as she thought about her breath rising and falling in her chest. She felt still. She didn’t know the answer to her own question but she resolved to stop asking it and find out.

Jane left the tour group and, on her way out of the ground, left her bag, and Paul, behind in the toilets. He hadn’t said where at Lord’s he wanted to be and whilst she knew that an unattended bag would possibly end up being destroyed she also realised that she didn’t care anymore. She had fulfilled the last promise she would ever make him.

She checked the time. They wouldn’t see her today but she could make an appointment. She knew she could call but something in her wanted to see it again, wanted to check that it was still there. If she hurried she might be able to reach the clinic before it closed.

Next piece for July’s GOSH fundraiser – details here. I have sketched out an overall six part story for this, of which this is part one, so will see how it pans out over the next week.

Apologies to any cricket fans for abuse of terminology…

Lockdown: Cora

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The second day was always the hardest. There were too many memories bound up in day two, too many things had happened, too fast, that each time she was locked down now Cora knew she would relive them. This time almost too slowly to bear. Day two was the last day she’d spoken to Rob.

‘That’s some cosy looking isolation, wish I could join you’. That first morning he’d called her from the ICU in Inverness, pretty much as soon as he’d cleared the decontamination process and been admitted. They’d talked. They’d both kept it light. People went into isolation all the time, people came out all the time. Cora hadn’t seen inside one of the units before and so Rob gave her a mock tour of the room, flipping the camera from front to back on the tablet they’d given him and walking it round. From some angles you might have thought he’d moved to some new student digs, was settling into a one of those small halls-of-residence bedrooms, maybe ten square feet, bare walls waiting to be covered in posters, single bed, a chair, a desk. The details gave it away though. If you saw the bottom of the bed you could see the metal frame and the hydraulics that would lift and move its mattress; you’d see the wheels locked by brakes; you’d see pristine sheets tucked tight under the corners with a precision that didn’t belong to a first year undergraduate. If you saw the floors you’d see them flow up and into the walls, all nooks and crevices that might host dust or debris sculpted away in the design. If you were shown the tiny wet room adjoining, separated by a hanging, plasticky curtain, then you’d see the pull cord next to the toilet marked emergency, and you’d see the fold out shower chair attached to the wall. Most of all, as the camera swung around, Cora saw the medical monitor, a black LCD screen criss crossed with lines and numbers she didn’t understand. 

Cora had some old video on her phone of the day they’d gone up to Fort George. It was the footage she always came back to when she missed him; she liked to see him move, it was how she remembered him, full of energy and life. It was just a couple of sequences of them goofing around: Rob marching across the wooden slatted bridge at the Fort entrance and swapping salutes with a party of young kids being shepherded out by their teacher; Rob sitting astride one of the cannons overlooking the battlements out to the sea, her calling ‘if only’ and then the film shaking, briefly flipping to a view of the sky, as he jumped down and ran across to lift her in a hug. The video stopped but the memory ran on in her mind.

All through that first day they’d been in contact. There were times that he’d have to dial off, the hiss of the door decompressing signalling the arrival of a masked nurse or doctor. She never saw what they did, never really saw them at all, not properly at least. All she could see was just a pair of eyes behind protective goggles. In those gaps whilst they couldn’t speak she imagined their lives, sketched out a fictional version of these people that she had never met, these people that were looking after Rob. She gave them names and friends, lovers, family. She sent them on holiday, stripped them out of their scrubs and put them in swimming trunks and bikinis, let them splash in a hotel pool or swim some stretch of deserted shoreline. Somewhere hot. She made them endless cups of tea. She stole into their houses on Christmas Eve, after they went to bed, and padded out the pile of presents under their trees. She knitted them scarves, gave money to their favourite charities, watched them cheer on their football team (she always made it Caley), listened to their dreams, and whispered hope in their ears when they got scared. The first couple of times it was the same nurse. Cora had managed to blurt out her thanks before he’d made Rob switch off the camera, he’d waved to her briefly and said sorry that he had to cut them off. The others never had time to acknowledge her but that was okay. She understood. She was the one with all this useless time and so she imagined them all, talked to them all, thanked them all.

However many lockdowns she’d been through Cora knew that they’d all, always, be about that first one. When they’d taken her to soft isolation – no symptoms, all screening clear, just a precaution – she’d been so numb that she could barely process what was happening. There was someone inside of her screaming, scorched in agony, but she had hidden her away. She wasn’t for anyone else to see. Nobody could help her anyway. Everyone said the same thing, that it would take time, that it would get better with time, give it time, take your time, time heals. She didn’t believe it then and, now, she knew that time didn’t change how you felt about what happened: you just learned to carry the pain better.

The second day they only spoke once, early in the morning. Contact was restricted during the night so that patients could rest. Cora hadn’t really slept, impatient for the time that they were allowed to restore their link. She was tired from her restless night and from keeping up the face they’d both, undiscussed, agreed on as their way to see this through. When her phone started to vibrate she almost dropped it in her eagerness to answer. She slid the ‘call accept’ button on the screen and Rob’s face appeared. All her pent up anticipation melted into anxiety. He looked pale, stubble on his cheeks standing out in contrast to his grey-white pallor. He was coughing almost as soon as the call started and seemed to need a few moments after each sentence to catch his breath. She told him to rest, to not speak, just lay down and listen to her voice. She stumbled over repeated reassurances that everything would be okay, that he was in the best place, that he was young and healthy and there was nothing to worry about. It’s just a bad strain, this one, everyone’s saying it. Just a bad one but we’ll get through it. Just lie down and rest. She didn’t know whether she was saying it all for him or for herself. They spent a few minutes in silence. Rob had rolled on to his side on the bed and had propped up the screen against the wall, facing him. It seemed to help his coughing and she watched his chest settle into a steady rise and fall. They stayed like that until she heard the door open in his room and a gloved hand reached over to switch off the screen. 

She’d never told him that she loved him. That was what she remembered in lockdown now. That second day, in those few moments on that call, she hadn’t told him. She knew that he’d known, he must have known, but she hadn’t told him. On the days that she was kinder to herself she knew it wasn’t anybody’s fault, that neither of them could have known that they wouldn’t speak again, but she didn’t always have days when she was kind to herself. And she never had them during lockdowns.

Cora Forever

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Cora liked to walk the beach in winter. She usually waited for the flag to be changed over to red and she could hear it being slapped by the wind; if it was flapping out its warning then it kept most people away. Most of the newcomers anyway. The tide was going out, waves rising, breaking and leaving behind swirling, foaming eddies as the water receded. She always felt like the sea was breathing and the change to low tide was her favourite, those deep inhalations as water pulled away from the shore. If she closed her eyes she could feel her own breath align with the tide.

They’d arranged to meet in their usual place. It was half a mile down from the town but worth the walk to miss anyone not already put off by the weather. It was still dry but the clouds over the Firth were dark and she’d lived here long enough to know that they probably had an hour before the rain came in. She quickened her step and picked her way across the low dunes, grasses snaking around her ankles, down to the harder sand near the tideline. Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. It was Rob. Two words: they’re here. Cora broke into a run.

He was standing close to the water looking through binoculars across towards the Black Isles. He turned back to look at her as she approached, grinning, and gesturing towards the sea.

“I thought you were going to miss them.” He handed her the binoculars and pointed her in the right direction, guiding her gaze by holding her from behind and leaning his head in close to hers. “Have you got them?”

Cora took a moment to adjust to the focus, the sea magnified in the lenses, the small undulations of the waves exaggerated to vast, heaving swells. The sky was becoming progressively overcast and it was difficult to pick out much detail between the blue-grey of the sea and the encroaching clouds.

“I don’t see anything,” she said, almost lowering the binoculars but she felt his grip on her arm tighten slightly, a silent encouragement to give it a little longer. And then, in a line, breaking surface, three dolphins stencilled on the horizon. She held her breath, steadied her hands, and tracked them as they leapt, skimming the waves with an ease and grace that made her want to laugh or shout or scream. “I see them,” she said. “I see them.”

When the dolphins disappeared Cora twisted round, letting Rob pull her into an embrace, resting her head on his chest. Neither of them spoke and all she could hear was an asynchronous call and response between the ebbing tide in one ear and his heartbeat in her other. Gradually his pulse quietened, slowed, and she pulled her head up and kissed him.

“Your heart beats faster for the dolphins than it does for me,” she said.

“Does not,” he said. He bent to kiss her back but she wriggled free of his arms, laughing.

“Prove it!” she shouted. “Prove it or it’s just dolphins you’ll be kissing for the rest of the winter.”

Rob made a half hearted attempt to catch her but she was too quick. He watched her bouncing on the spot on the sand, ready to spring away from him: he’d spent the last two years chasing her and didn’t think he would ever tire of it. Chasing is good but being caught is better. That was what she’d said that night at McKendrick’s party just before she’d kissed him the first time. He could still remember the taste of her that first time, cherry brandy that she’d regretted the next day. No other regrets, though. He still had that text in his phone.

He found a stick back in the dunes and broke off the end; it was sharp enough to serve as a makeshift pencil in the sand. Cora watched, bemused, as he attempted to draw the shape of a large dolphin, bending over to make incisions in the beach.

“It looks like a shark,” she called.

“Does not,” he said. Pointedly he drew a large cross over his drawing and next to it etched out CORA FOREVER in large capitals, surrounding it with a roughly sketched love heart.

“It’s a bit cheesy,” she said.

“I give up,” he said, standing up and breaking into a sudden fit of coughing. Cora ran back to him, concerned, and rubbed his back until the coughs passed. “It’s nothing,” he said, noting the worry on her face.

“You sure? I heard one of the new families that came up from London had a case, the daughter maybe. She’s isolated now. It’s not right. We had nothing here until they started to come to get away from the towns.” She looked out across the water, the wind had picked up now and was whipping the waves, white-capped, spray rising into the air.

“It’s nothing,” he said again. “I was tested last week. Next one’s in a few days.”

“Just be careful, alright?” she said. She grabbed his hand and pulled him back towards the road at the top of the beach. “Come on, weather’s coming in.” They retreated up the beach as the rain started to fall, leaving behind CORA FOREVER as the only marker that they’d been there that day. The tide turned, inexorably, inevitably, in the night, the sea bit higher up the beach and washed it away.

The way young lovers do

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I let you pick our first dance. Van Morrison. The Way Young Lovers Do. At the time I thought it was perfect for us, light as air, breezy passion, giddy words that rang in astonished awe at the rush of falling in love. It was terrible to dance to though. All that jazz inflected triple time signature, bass bounding around like a badly behaved puppy, untamed. My feet followed the drums, snare skittering out that three four time, whilst yours followed the melody, all straightforward until Van, spirit moving him, starts scatting and be-bopping, channeling something outside of the reach of words. We both, independently at first and then progressively in synch with each other, started to punctuate our dance in time with the horns: you punching the air, me playing air trombone. I don’t even know if there’s a trombone on it but it seemed the easiest brass instrument to mime. After a couple of minutes, when the bass runs finally defeated our hips, gamely searching for a groove to slide into, you pulled me close and kissed me. Then, laughing, we beckoned everyone else on to the floor. 

Later on you’d always talk about that dance and that song in particular – it was one of your signature anecdotes – and tell people that none of the individual elements made sense on their own but together – together – they created something perfect and pure. People usually got it. Sometimes you felt the need to underline the metaphor, either implicitly through smiling across at me or taking my hand; other times you really hammered it home – “we were those young lovers, weren’t we?”. I would return your smile. Agree in the times you were making the point more pointedly.

What you didn’t talk about, and maybe I only put it together later, was that Van never recreated that song. Or that performance, at least. It was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment in time, musicians letting fly, nailing the heady euphoria of love in three minutes flat. Nothing written down, no chords, no notation, all navigated in nods and looks and instinct and feel. A one take deal. When I listen to it now it sounds like it could just as easily fall apart at any moment as make it to the end. The song’s preserved forever as recorded but love doesn’t really work like that: you can’t sustain it based on a distantly remembered moment in time.

It’s not the most important thing but I hate that you ruined Astral Weeks for me. Ruined all of Van for me. You’d insist on playing “our” song  so often that eventually I got curious about the rest of the album and discovered something I could escape into, disappear inside its meandering, meditative musings. That all went after we split: all I could hear was you. For a while I made myself a playlist that consisted of the album without “Young Lovers…” but I couldn’t fool myself. The songs would skip from Cyprus Avenue straight to Madame George and all I’d hear was the absence of you. Van would be lost in his loves to love to love to loves to love reverie and when I should have been mesmerised, lifted out of the mundane, spinning in the ether, instead I was earthbound, thinking about your indiscretions. Your indiscretions don’t deserve polite poetry. Your fucking around. Your betrayals. Your others-that-weren’t-me. 

Loves to love to love to loves to love other people but not me. 

Union

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Reunion

Your lips wear the same smile but your eyes look like they long tired of trying it on. There are creases at their corners. The lines around your eyes, the lines traced across your forehead, outnumber the ones at the turn of your mouth, on your cheeks. You look like you have cried more than you have laughed. There’s a hint of grey in your roots that the highlights don’t quite disguise. The fringe you used to look out from under has gone. Those rare glances, that flash, that spark. Back when you gave yourself up in glimpses. Back when you had something to give up. Now you meet my gaze openly, laid bare and empty. All given up.

It’s been what ? Eight years. Nine ? Ten ? We joke about the passing of time as a way to pass the time. What else should we say ? Hey, we were wrong. There won’t be someone else, someone better.

You wanted someone to travel the world with, someone you could curl up with under blankets reading the Sunday papers, someone who’d tag along round another visit to the Tate, someone who liked jazz and dancing and singing along to big power ballads after too much vodka. What should we say ? I hated airports, not the travel particularly, but airports specifically. That was a problem. I liked to kick back the covers, glance at the sports section, and then go search out more coffee. Tate, schmate. I don’t know if it’s art but I know what I like. And, yes, I can belt out “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” with the best of them. But jazz ? You know I drew the line at jazz.

I wanted someone who liked clubs where sweat dripped from the ceiling, someone who’d share a sneaky joint before catching a matinee re-run of Bladerunner at The Gate, someone who’d idle away the summer in the pub, someone who liked punk and bars with more beer pumps than seats and shouting the words to “God Save The Queen” in a late night taxi up The Mall. There’s nothing to say. You hated the smell of my kind of clubs in your hair in the morning. Like washing your hair in cigarette infused beer you said. It always smelled like being young to me. You wouldn’t smoke in public and preferred the original cut of Bladerunner with the voiceover. No-one prefers the version with the voiceover. And you said summer was too short to waste in the pub and that bars were for sitting and talking and that it was disrespectful to sing the Sex Pistols that close to the Palace. I think you were joking about the Pistols. And you were right about summer.

It’s been what ? Eight years. Nine. Ten. It’s been too long and not long enough. We joke about all the ways in which we just didn’t fit, just didn’t work, as a way of distracting ourselves from all the ways in which we did. What else should we say ? Hey, we were wrong. Turns out there wasn’t someone else, someone better.

My lips don’t smile quite as much as they used to and my eyes don’t even pretend to. There’s not so much creases at their corners as cracks, chiselled in place over years of screwing themselves closed. Shutting out the light and embracing the dark. I haven’t cried but I haven’t really laughed either. Just some numb state in between. There’s grey scattered across my hair that the tightly cropped cut doesn’t quite disguise. I used to stare at you, brazen in my attention. I couldn’t help it. My desire was an open secret back when I had something to offer. Something for you to take. Now I can’t meet your gaze, don’t want to see any trace flicker behind your eyes fade and fail. All burned out.

 

Union (him)

“We’re going on to Sally’s.”

It’s noisy in the club. Some band I didn’t catch the name of are hacking their way through The Jam’s “Start!” and our group, gathered loosely at the bar, are shouting to be heard over them. It’s noisy but I heard you clearly. I pretend I didn’t, exaggerate a cupped ear, point towards the band, and shrug. I just wanted to feel you lean in closer, feel your breath on my ear, smell the faint trace of perfume mixed with lemon vodka. You take a step in towards me and lightly rest your fingers on my arm. As you rise slightly on the balls of your feet to close the gap I catch a flash of green eyes hidden somewhere under layers of fringe and mascara. You smile.

“We’re going on to Sally’s. After this. If you wanted to come along then that’d be cool.”

It’s noisy in the cab. I don’t remember who flagged it down but I guess maybe Sally or Mike had sorted it out whilst we were talking on the pavement. You were telling me about backpacking through South America and wanting to learn the Argentine tango. I’d hooked my leg round the back of a lamp-post and thrown my head back with a triumphant “ole”. You’d laughed and pulled me into a dance hold – “not like that, like this” – and I felt your heel slide up the back of my thigh. I stared at you until you broke eye contact, shook your head laughing, and said: “Ole is Flamenco, twinkle toes.” The cab’s running through the main arteries of the city, taking us away from its heart. As the pulse of the night dims the more I become aware of my own. The windows fog up and I sketch a smiley before wiping it clean so I can try to see your reflection in the glass. You’re on the pull down seat opposite listening to Sally talk about the time she met Sister Bliss from Faithless. I’ve heard it before. The cabbie’s got the radio on and “God Save The Queen” rattles out of the speakers just as we turn up The Mall, circling the Palace. Me and Mike join in with a loud rendition as the girls try and drown us out with the national anthem. Fascist regime. Send her victorious. We mean it man. Long to reign o’er us. No future, no future, no future.

It’s quiet at Sally’s. Her and Mike have disappeared, apparently so she can show him some book he’d been asking her about. I’ve known Mike a long time and he’s not much of a reader. Me and you are sitting on a blue futon. I’m picking the label off my beer bottle and you’re idly swirling an ice cube around the inside of your tumbler.

“Sally hasn’t got that book,” you say.

I look at you. You’re tilting your head, hand behind your neck. Your hair has fallen away from your face and I trace the line of your jaw. Your lips twitch in a smile and there’s that flash of green again as you catch my eye. This time you don’t look away.

“Mike’s never heard of it anyway,” I reply. You laugh and I put a finger to my lips. Shh!

“Well I’m not going to sit here quietly and listen to them shagging,” you protest loudly. There’s a pause and then Sally calls from the next room: “we’re not shagging”. Another pause: “not yet anyway.” And then laughter followed by a few mock gasps and groans.

It’s quiet when we kiss. I was always bad at reading the signs. If you’d left it to me we’d have still been sat there arguing playfully about why jazz sounded like something musicians do before they start playing the song or swapping war stories of terrible first dates or how you couldn’t talk in pubs anymore or… You moved across the futon quickly, whispered “enough talking now, twinkle toes” and kissed me. Later you swear I said “ole”. It sounds like something I’d say but, honestly, I don’t remember anything after that kiss.

 

Union (her)

We had met before. I thought so anyway although you didn’t seem so sure. It had been at some mutual acquaintance’s house party just after I touched back down in London. I guess I might have come off as a little moody, everything had just seemed smaller somehow – narrower – than the possibilities of travel. I think Sally had introduced us and she probably didn’t help. She knew you from the crowd at the pub and presumably at some point you’d had a conversation about books as she pointed at you, declared that you were reading Kerouac’s “On The Road”, and then pointed at me and said “just back from travelling” before leaving us to work it out. (I’d known Sally a long time and talking to men about books was pretty much her default chat up approach: a shortcut to gauge taste, intelligence, and sensitivity quickly according to her although that didn’t quite square with the number of blokes she seemed to end up in bed with who hadn’t made it beyond Andy McNab and Dan Brown. I assumed either Kerouac or you hadn’t done it for her). Anyway we awkwardly shook hands – you had soft hands – and I said some stuff about Bolivia that always sounded better in my head and you said some stuff about Sal Paradise which I nodded at, not wanting to admit that I’d never made it past the first twenty pages of “On The Road”. Sparks didn’t fly. I wasn’t surprised you couldn’t place me. I remembered your hands. I didn’t feel that would be the right thing to say now.

There were a few of us catching up in some bar in Soho. I was enjoying it. It was quiet enough to talk but occasionally a snatch of “Sketches Of Spain” would float across the room from a hidden speaker. If I looked over my shoulder, back to the bar, I could see us reflected in the mirror between the optics. Maybe it was the drink but in reflected candlelight, filtered through stacked glasses and half empty spirit bottles, we looked kind of glamorous: a snapshot of how I always imagined living in London in my 20s would be. I teased my fringe, tried to find the right balance between hiding my eyes and being able to see, and it was then that I saw you looking at me. I don’t think you realised I knew. You were watching me directly, I could see you in the mirror. You were smiling. You had a soft smile.

I didn’t really enjoy the club and if I hadn’t have been staying at Sally’s I probably would have cried off. It was too loud, some crappy three chord wannabes were on stage and I missed being able to hear you. We’d talked in the bar. Not chatted; talked. I guess it had started as small talk, getting all that “have we met ? yes I think we’ve met. are you sure ? I think I would have remembered” stuff out of the way before settling into conversation. You were serious but there was a lightness to it, you always skewered yourself when you thought you were getting pretentious. And you were funny. Not that overbearing blokey version of funny where everything has to be banter, just, I don’t know, just dry and self deprecating and funny. I knew I was laughing enough and running my fingers through my hair enough that Sally would notice. She didn’t disappoint, chasing me into the toilets for an interrogation before making several indelicate comments about what she was planning to do with Mike later. I hadn’t met him yet. She chastised me: “that’s because you’ve been talking to the same guy all night”. And then: “want me to invite him back with us ?”

I didn’t get much say in it in the end. Sally did what she figured was best and next thing I knew we were spilling out of the warmth of the club, static hiss buzzing in our ears, and on to the street. I felt that fresh air head rush, an oxygen and vodka kick, and turned to see you wrapping yourself around a lamp-post. I thought you were propping yourself up but eventually clocked that you were showing me what you thought was an Argentine tango. I grabbed you and showed you the basic step, felt you tighten as my foot found the back of your leg. Felt your soft hands. Watched your soft smile. I think we might have kissed then if Sally hadn’t yelled that we needed to get our dancing asses into the cab.

Back at the flat Sally had long since pulled her literature to lover trick and was subjecting Mike to all of the things she’d described to me earlier. As far as we could tell Mike seemed okay with it. We talked and I realised that nothing would happen unless I moved first. I think that was one of the reasons I felt myself fall for you a little that night. There was never any presumption. You seemed serious again, vulnerable even. There was a tension between us now, when it had been so easy before, that would only be broken if that soft smile from those soft lips relinquished themselves in a soft kiss. I moved towards you. Eyes closed, hands touched, it started.

 

Communion

We all fall in love sometimes.

“Why’d you ask me back that night ?” He was playing with her hair, she was lying back across their sofa, head in his lap.

“I didn’t ask you back. Sally did. She’s always doing stuff like that. Just trying to speed things up, that’s what she usually calls it.”

“That’s not how I remember it. In the club, you asked me. I made you repeat it because I wanted you to lean in closer to me. I thought maybe you were just looking out for Sally, didn’t want her to have to go back with Mike on her own or maybe…” He played out a length of hair between finger and thumb, let it fall back across her cheek.

“Really ? Before the street tango ?” She shifted, pushing up onto an elbow, twisted her head to look up at him.

“Yeah, before I taught you to dance…”

“As if, twinkletoes. And, yeah, maybe I wanted to keep talking.” She paused, rolled her eyes up to look at the ceiling, slumped back into his lap. “Really ? I asked you ?”

Time doesn’t pass as a constant. It stretches and slows in the heady rush of the fall, snaps back to speed when reality intrudes. They’d been stretched out in their own little bubble of time for what felt like weeks, months, years. Enough time to open up the deep seams in the mines of each other’s hearts. Enough time to compress what they found and shared there into something precious: they surfaced something hard and pure and unbreakable from their core. That’s how it felt inside the bubble. Like they were perpetually on London Underground time: next train in two minutes but no train ever arrived. Always two minutes. If you could have watched the bubble, timed them on that imaginary platform of artificial time, you’d have only been there ten days. They’d spent every one of those ten together. Time’s not constant. They believed, in the bubble, that love was.

We all fall in love sometimes.

“What do you want to do ?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him, pushing her fringe out of her eyes.

“What now ? This afternoon ? They’re showing Bladerunner at The Gate. I’d be up for catching that if you fancy it.”

“No, I didn’t mean today,” she said. “What do you want to do about us ?”

“What do I want do about us ? I didn’t realise I got to decide all of that…” he said, smiling.

“Well, okay, I see what you mean. I didn’t phrase it very well. I mean…”

“How do I feel about you ?” he interrupted gently.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I guess that’s what I was asking.”

Silence isn’t always empty. It has shape and weight when felt by two people connected by the terror of sharing their deepest vulnerability, and that weight changes and lifts as relief replaces the terror. The recognition that the prickly, discomforting swell of feeling in your guts is matched by its source. Butterflies seem to dance effortlessly except when they’re in your stomach. They’d both figured it out within a day of meeting, maybe even that first night, but neither would commit to giving it a name, giving it voice. Even inside the bubble.

“I… God, it feels so soon and I didn’t want to scare you but…” He tips his head back and picks out shapes in the cracks in the ceiling. Like the lines astronomers draw to show constellations but without the stars. A route map through the heavens. He measures each word carefully in his head. There’s Pegasus. That could be Orion. Just say it. If that’s Orion then the North Star would be just there. Say the words. My North Star. “I’m falling in love with you.”

She smiles and sits up. Leans over to kiss him on the cheek. Puts her arms around him. “Good. Because I’m falling in love with you too and I don’t want to do it on my own.”

The silence that settled now, as they embraced, holding each other fiercely, wasn’t empty. It carried the weight of the words spoken out loud, the sound long gone but the meaning, the implications, lingering, and it carried the weight of all their hopes, their fears, and their dreams. Silence isn’t empty. And they believed that love wasn’t either.

We all fall in love sometimes.

 

Disunion (him)

I wasn’t sure if you were pissed off because I didn’t want to come with you to Prague or pissed off that I didn’t want to look at throws in Ikea. Or it could have been the sheets again: you hated it when the smell of my Saturday night seeped its way into your Sunday morning. Lately, after a big night, I’d been crashing at Mike and Sally’s. You said you didn’t mind; I don’t remember when you stopped coming out with us. We tried to mix it up a bit, early on. Did things you were into. Ronnie Scott’s and piano bars and films on the South Bank, earnest discussions about the transient nature of things after we saw “Remains of The Day” with groups of men in roll neck sweaters and goatees and women styled exclusively in black: black hair, black nails, black clothes. (I was dying for the BFI to put on “Spinal Tap” just to see if the usual crowd showed up. I would have had a field day). Mono no aware. I got it. I just didn’t want to watch an entire festival of Japanese anime or another Ishiguro adaptation to reflect on it further. There’s only so much cherry blossom I need in my life. I wanted to stop standing around talking about how melancholy we all were, all are, and to get out there and live a little.

I’m guessing it was Prague. There was some piece you’d read in the Guardian on one of those long Sunday mornings with the supplements that listed the ten best jazz clubs in Europe. You’d seemed quite excited about it, started telling me about this place called Reduta, and how we should go. I think I made a vague noise to signal that I was listening which must’ve been lost in translation as next thing I know you’re checking flights on Skyscanner. The row didn’t start until you were asking me for my passport number. I tried to explain my whole thing with airports again – the apprehension, the stress, the people – but I’m not sure you believed me. I guess it does sound a bit weak, a bit like someone just making some shit up to avoid your European city break. It was true though. I couldn’t really handle airports. I’m an okay flier, it’s not that. It’s the anticipation of it. There’s just something funny that happens in my head when I have to queue up with hundreds of people to check that none of us are going to blow each other up. You said it was bullshit and went with some old friend instead.

I like London. I don’t really need anywhere else and I couldn’t understand your need to explore. To be honest it was even narrower than that. I liked specific bits of London. Three or four dirty clubs, usually down some half hidden set of stairs off a street in Soho and usually the sort of place you didn’t worry too much about why your feet stuck to the floor. A couple of pubs. Proud Mary’s for coffee and an unfussy breakfast. And The Gate serviced all of my re-run cinema needs. That was pretty much it and it was enough for me. I could live a little in my little corner of London. But it wasn’t enough for you. At first we at least shared The Gate together and you’d tagged along on my semi regular afternoon excursions, laughing as I puffed a hurried joint as we walked into Notting Hill. It was cheaper to go the The Gate and chemically enhance the experience than mess about with a Multiplex. You always declined when I offered you the roll up although we used to share a smoke sometimes curled up in bed late at night listening to Jeff Buckley. I think that was as close as we got musically. Enough blue notes for you and enough distortion for me. That was when we seemed happiest though, watching tendrils of smoke curl to the ceiling before you’d nudge your head into my neck and ask if I wanted to dance. That was your code for sex. You always thought it sounded more romantic and I guess it did. We’d dance whilst Jeff crooned “Hallelujah” and, on a good night, “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” as our soundtrack in the background, our rising sighs eventually eclipsing his.

I had this idea of us when we started out. The idea us would catch a tube up to Queensway, walk through Hyde Park, dodge the tourists visiting Diana’s memorial. We’d pull our coat collars up against the cold, you’d slip your hand into mine inside my pocket and drag me down to the gallery at the Serpentine. You’d try not to laugh as I gave my considered judgements on whatever exhibition was running. I’d try to pretend I wasn’t impressed, moved even, by your reflections on the art. You understood that stuff but you wore it lightly; it was all bluff with me. Then we’d walk past the lake, if it was really cold there’d be fog rising where the water touched the bank and we’d head down towards it. I liked to imagine us as two translucent figures disappearing from view, suspended in the magical mist. Mono no aware. I guess I’m not immune after all. As the afternoon faded we’d mooch over towards Mayfair, waltz into one of the big hotels like we belonged and settle in for the early evening; drinking cocktails we couldn’t really afford. Like we were just about to pass “go” and the two hundred pounds was coming. Then we’d find a quiet restaurant up on the outskirts of Soho, talk into the night, before heading home on the tube. We’d put on Jeff, share a smoke, and then dance ourselves to sleep. That was the idea of us and, for the longest time, that was the reality of us.

You used to say that love was like the bit in the middle of one of those circle pictures we used to do in maths. What do you call them ? Venn diagrams. The middle was the bit where we overlap. We don’t spend so much time in each other’s circle anymore.

 

Disunion (her)

I was aware it was happening but I didn’t know what to do about it. I hesitate to use an analogy from jazz – because I know you don’t like jazz – but there’s sometimes a moment in an extended piece, in an improvisation, when the players realise that they’ve lost the spark of what they were doing. They’re still producing notes, occasionally riffing back on refrains that previously worked, but something has changed and the music has gone stale. I’m finding myself reaching for sequences that have always served me well before. I can be your art loving, free spirited traveller if that’s what you want me to be. I can be your serious talker; setting the world to rights, musing on the impermanence of things, and arguing the toss over the voice over in Bladerunner. I still can’t believe you thought I was serious about that. Give me some credit: nobody thinks it needs the voice over. Maybe if things were different we could have a real discussion about that unicorn dream sequence though. Is that the trouble now ? I used to be all of those things but I used to be funny as well. And I used to be just me. Not a version of me that was for you but just me. In fact, I was never more me than those first few months that I was with you.

So I knew something had shifted. If we’d have been having dates at the beginning like we were having dates now then we’d have never made it this far. There was something there still between us but it wasn’t enough. We were waiting for someone to telegraph a concluding descending scale so that we could clumsily end our improvisation. A cue for the song to finish. There would be no polite applause. Who am I kidding ? Impromptu musical jams might end like that but relationships don’t. It would be more likely that one of us would hurl our instrument to the floor and exit stage right leaving a squall of feedback in our wake, the other left alone on stage blinking in the spotlight. Part of me wishes that one of us would. It’d be better than this drawn out decline.

You’re out again. I think you were meeting up with Mike and Sally and I guess you’ll end up treading your familiar route from The Adelaide into the West End. Recently you’ve been trying to persuade me to come to some 90s night at the Borderline so maybe you’re there. I didn’t really fall for Britpop the first time round so I’m not sure that nostalgia is going to lend it anything emotionally for me this time round. You were babbling about how you’d had a drunken moment of clarity the week before during “Live Forever”. We see things they’ll never see. That’s us, you declared. Me and Mike and Sally. I wasn’t sure which “me” you’d meant. I didn’t see those things that they, apparently, will never see so I wasn’t convinced it was me you meant in your boozey epiphany. But I did remember when we – just me and you – did see things that no-one else saw. When we were so in tune that we could sit in a group, noise and chatter flying about us, and we’d exchange a glance, the slightest look, and each other instantly knew what the other thought.

You’re out and I’m home and I’m mainlining power ballads like some Bridget Jones cliche. I’m a lousy drinker when I’m on my own but I’ve made an effort with a makeshift cosmopolitan. There’s no triple sec so, technically, it’s vodka and cranberry juice but that just seems slightly pitiful. Sitting home alone drinking vodka cranberry is for losers but sitting home alone making cosmoplitans  is a different thing entirely. I’ve even got one of those little umbrellas. I can toast our demise with a degree of class. And various love lorn anthems. I’m giving a full throated if slightly off pitch rendition of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” when upstairs bang on their floor in irritation and I have my own moment of clarity: I’m through half a bottle of vodka, enough cranberry juice to permanently cure all cystitis in West London, and murdering Bonnie Tyler. I crawl to bed.

You’re not there, not even in traces, the usual faint residual scent of you absent on your pillow. I washed the sheets and now I wished that I hadn’t. I miss you.

 

Reunion (reprise)

You look surprised to see me and maybe even a little embarrassed. Perhaps she hadn’t told you that I might be coming. Most of all you look older. I know that’s a stupid thing to say after nine years but it’s what strikes me the most; you’ve hastened your hair’s natural retreat by cropping it back and it’s fading to grey. You’re carrying more weight now. Not a tummy exactly but everything’s a little looser, I have to work at making out the line of your jaw. I suppose that if we’d seen each other more often – or at all – then the change wouldn’t be so marked. I can see how the increments would have accumulated over time, I just get to see all of them unfolded at once. It’s enough to send me to the toilets so that I can find a mirror, try to see what the impact of nine years has had on my own face. I can’t judge. I’m too used to seeing it every day and it’s been a long time since I was the person that you knew who peeked up and out from under a fringe. I think I used to hide behind it in the hope of being found. I don’t hide anymore and I’m not looking to be found.

When we talk it’s less awkward than I’d expected. There’s a moment as we meet when the slightest inclination of your head suggests that, maybe on auto-pilot, you’re thinking of greeting me with one of those cheek brushes that seems to have become the standard in our 30s. The older we get the less contact we seem to want. In our 20s it was all hugs and embraces. And, for me and you, the tango of course but it’s a long time since I did any dancing. I shift backwards slightly and offer my hand. Less contact. We touch and I remember the softness of your skin.

When you meet back up with someone after a long absence there’s only really two places the conversation can go. What are you up to now or do you remember when…? We start with the now and keep it light; you’re working up in Harrow, a tech start up that I didn’t catch the name of, and I’m dividing my time between travelling and freelancing, sometimes combining the two. Writing about jazz clubs ? You offer it with a tentative smile, a cautious prod at the thin ice covering the deep waters that are our former lives together. You were always good at that. Finding ways to get me to open up, unlocking the private chambers of my heart, leavening and lightening my seriousness without belittling it. You wouldn’t have let ‘private chambers’ pass without a gag either. I catch myself missing that. Missing the fun we had, even when it was innuendo and bad puns. Writing about jazz clubs. You know me too well. I haven’t really changed. And he nods, sadly, and says: no, no you haven’t. 

We’re saved from our small talk by the arrival of the cake. Mike’s carrying it in, thirty five candles flickering and illuminating Sally’s name spelled out in icing. I knew that there’d been a similarly large celebration at her 30th but I’d been out of the country, it was the summer I spent in New Orleans. She’d never been one to pass up a party and this gathering had been billed as the warm up event for her 40th. It wasn’t clear if her and Mike were planning to do this every year but I already knew this’d be the last time I saw them. I didn’t know how I’d feel when I saw her again. Watching her about to blow out the candles, the flames dancing under her easy smile, I could see why it had happened. She’d been a pretty girl and now she was an attractive woman, lively and confident and larger-than-life. The size of her personality was still in inverse proportion to her dress size. I don’t know whether she’d ever told Mike but something about the way they are together, the way he still tracks her movements around the room, rests his hand lightly around her waist when they’re close, makes me think that she never did. Maybe she never thought it was a big deal. Better to hide the truth to stop people from getting hurt; it was just a drunken mistake.

I can clearly remember when you told me. That morning in the kitchen in the flat. Things hadn’t been great for a while but the connection between us held fast. A little frayed but it held. I don’t think either of us really knew how we were going to resurrect what we’d had at the beginning but if you’d asked us then I think we’d have said we wanted to. We were incandescent falling in love but didn’t know what to do when the boil settled to a simmer. Maybe we’d have found the right ways and the right moments to turn the heat back up if we’d had more time. I slept with Sally. Four words that took three seconds to say between two people and to break one heart. I slept with… You were half way through saying it again, tears forming in your eyes, but I didn’t hear it. I was shaking my head, trying to dislodge the words. You stepped towards me extending your arms, saying you were sorry over and over and over again, but for each step you took forwards I took one away until my back bumped against the front door. It was our last tango. I held onto my tears until I’d slipped out the door and fled to the street.

I wound up on Shepherd’s Bush Green sobbing on a bench until some homeless guy offered me a swig from his last Special Brew. Looking back there was something blackly funny about it I suppose. Perhaps I should have invited him to sit down, maybe we could have gotten drunk and duetted on some power ballads, howling incoherently at the early risers and late finishers making their way across the park. He looked a bit like Meatloaf and I had enough mascara smudged around my eyes that I could’ve passed as that witchy woman he sometimes sings with. Anything for love but we won’t do that. Instead I smile at him, decline the proffered can, and ask if he’s okay. We chat for a bit and I give him some change for a coffee or something. I’ve seen enough bad movies that I was half expecting him to turn out to be a philosophy lecturer down on his luck offering up wisdom for the lost, or an angel testing people to see if they’re worth saving, or a lonely multi millionaire in disguise, waiting for the right person to bestow his fortune on. The best he offers is “people aren’t reliable, you can’t trust them” before he shuffles off across the Green towards the Off License.

Sally leans forwards and chases the flickering flames across the cake with the most extravagant exhale she can muster. She gets them all bar two. Thirty three candles marked now by a smudge of black smoke slowly rising into the air and two that stubbornly still burn. I look up and you’re staring at me. I hold your gaze as Sally swoops on the final pair, snuffing them out with another quick puff of air. Each reduces to a glow, like an echo of the fire they once were, and are then extinguished.

All My Friends: Jon

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I’d spent too much time stuck talking to Neil. He’d cornered me as I’d gone over to the laptop – Jo’s I think – that was acting as jukebox for the evening. The screen was cycling through a bunch of old photos, all of us back in the day; a ragbag assortment of early 90s band tee-shirts, ill advised fringes, over sized graduation gowns, that weekend we went camping in the Peak District and tried to find magic mushrooms, out of focus shots of the inside of pubs, young blurred faces refracted through half full pint glasses and bottles of Diamond White. It was strange seeing us like that, all digital. Pictures had never formed part of our moments back then, they were something you dug out and looked at weeks after the event. I was surprised she’d kept them and gone to the trouble of scanning them all in. I’d long since discarded all but a handful of mine and I think I preferred our youth when it was analogue and disposable.

Me and Neil had been pretty close for a while. I’d been a bit surprised that he’d been invited as I knew the others had been happy to lose touch after we’d all drifted off after college. He’d single handedly got me through the stats modules on our course and I was grateful for that. He was lousy at reading people for someone that had a degree in psychology though, and all of the reasons why our friendship had waned over the years came back to me as he picked apart every song choice I made trying to liven things up after dinner had been cleared away. The Wonderstuff. Like a watered down Waterboys, they sounded old back then, let alone now. Okay then, The Waterboys. Celtic music for people that have never been to Scotland or Ireland, roots music for people with no roots. Nirvana. Pixies with a poster boy but without Kim Deal. Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Two words. Slap. Bass. And on and on. Eventually I put on LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” and left him mid sentence (New Order moved to New York, hired a publicist and started self referring constantly…) to cajole the others into dancing.

We were all pretty drunk and the effects of the alcohol, as well as some kind of nostalgia muscle memory, pulled everyone into place in the room as if we were all back, 19, 20 years old, as if nothing had happened to any of us since. I slipped back into my patented head down indie-shuffle, only now without my hair dropping across my face. What was it Lizzie used to say to me? Something about eyes being the windows on the soul so why did I cover mine with a pair of curtains? She was up and dancing too, as unrestrained and enthusiastic as she always had been. She still sang along loudly, seemingly untroubled by actually knowing the words although, by the end, she’d picked up the “where are your friends tonight?” refrain which she embellished with an expansive sweep of her arms which seemed to signify that said friends were right here. It was a bit literal. Clare was dragging Richard on to our make-shift dance floor. We’d all seen this before and knew how it ended. I watched her flick her hair, tilt her head to one side, saw her beckon to him with an out-stretched finger. He took his time, all casual disinterest, eventually  acquiescing with a hands-up gesture of mock surrender and then they were circling each other, orbiting closer and closer until he leant in, whispered something in her ear and they both laughed. I remembered too many nights and too many mornings picking up the pieces and forced myself to look away. Clare was as beautiful, as out of reach, as stupid as I remembered. But I think I still loved her and so I guess I was just as stupid too.

Later, as everyone started to drift off to bed, I put on Van Morrison, a gentle serenade for sleep. It was the record playing that one time we made love. You teased me about it for the longest time afterwards – it was just a drunken shag, Jon – but I know what it really was. To me at least. Another night that had started dealing with the fall out from another of your run ins with Richard but had ended with your mouth on mine, nails dug into my back. The way young lovers do. Sweet thing. Slim slow slider. Van was singing those sensuous songs just for us, the melodies swirling like tendrils of smoke around us as we entwined.

Now he was just singing them for me and my memory of you. Through the ceiling, from somewhere upstairs, I heard laughter and then, steadily, the rhythmic knocking of a headboard. I turned the music up and poured another glass of wine.