My Kicking-the-Bucket List
I looked at the space below. I’m used to having to confront a blank page in my day job. It’s the worst of enemies. Sometimes it wins and I’m forced to admit defeat, shutting my laptop and going out on what Amber calls one of my “big, serious walks.” Well, I didn’t have that luxury now. The oven clock ticked over. Another minute gone. I knew at least what I wasn’t going to write. I had no interest in an Internet-assembled list of adrenaline highs, so there’d be no skydiving or bungee jumping. All that really mattered to me was the people who’d stuck by me, even though I’d done my best at times to drive everyone away. It seemed like doing anything other than trying to bring these people as much happiness as I could was time wasted. And there was only one place to start.
Amber
The act of writing down her name set off an avalanche of memories, but one in particular stood out, from nearly a decade ago. Amber was fresh out of drama school, and she’d asked me to run some lines with her before an audition. It was the first time I’d seen the script, so I didn’t know what was coming. I was playing the part of her husband. I was woodenly intoning the lines, while Amber, in character, was breezy and distracted, pretending to fold clothes. And then I got to a line where my character revealed some bad news. I’d looked up from the script to see Amber’s face contorted with grief and shock—and I remember just staring at her, like my heart might have stopped, as if I had only seconds before I’d topple to the ground . . . and then her face had suddenly snapped back to looking confused.
“What, did I miss a line or something?” She wiped the tears away with her sleeves and took the script out of my hands.
I pretended I’d forgotten I had a work call. I went to the bedroom and shut the door, sitting on the edge of the bed, where I waited for god knows how long until I’d shaken the moment off.
As I looked down at her name on the paper, I knew there was no way I could tell her. The day would come when she had to learn the truth, but I would keep that pain and sadness and shock away from her as long as I physically could. That day could wait. For now, I’d keep everything as normal and unchanged as possible. I was going to do my best to stop time.
Mum
Mum was the only person I’d told about my diagnosis. I felt immediately guilty at doing so, because it had sent her into a spiral where she was spending all her time browsing these mad websites that claimed you could cure cancer with things from your spice rack. What I needed to do was get her far away from all that. And that was when I’d remembered the holiday I had been promising to take her on for years. It was Lisbon she’d always wanted to go to. Her dad—my granddad—had spent time out there as a young man, and had been particularly taken with the locals and their fado music. When Mum was feeling blue for some reason, Granddad would put some fado on, especially in the winter, to help let in the sunshine. Well, now was the time for her to see the real thing up close. A no-expense-spared holiday of a lifetime. A chance for us to spend time with each other in a way we’d never been able to before. A moment when we could step out of the shadows of our past and feel the sun on our faces, finally banishing what the two of us had been through together.
Theo
I stared at the name I’d just written down. It was as if I’d done it subconsciously. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Hardly a day went by when I didn’t think about him. The idea of him resenting me for the rest of his life, even if I wasn’t going to be around for much more of it, just felt unbearable. I longed to recapture the spirit of one of those glorious lost summers, when it felt like we were the luckiest pair of idiots in the whole world. That was the moment I remembered the Thames Path, and the promise we’d made. How wonderful it would be to find a new ending for our friendship—one that recalled when we were happiest instead. This was my final chance to make up for everything, to have my best friend alongside me again, to recover what was lost. Under the circumstances, the Thames Path was daunting. But I was determined to make it before my condition deteriorated. If I had Theo at my side from where the river started as a hesitant trickle in that muddy field in Kemble to where it became the impatient, slate-gray mass weaving through London, I was sure that I could fix things.
As I listened to an owl hooting softly outside, I pushed away the doubts creeping in which told me I was already too weak for the journey. I might have to dig deeper than I’d ever done before, but I wasn’t going to give up without a fight. I wanted one last glorious adventure with my oldest friend instead.
The question was, did Theo?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Theo
I’d finished the emergency wine and was on to the emergency gin. It was safe to say that, by the letter of the law, I was, to some extent, drunk. As I’d tried to make sense of Joel’s appearance, it was like a trapdoor to the past had been opened, and I was sliding hopelessly toward it. And as so often happened when I’d hit a certain level of drunkenness, and nostalgia appeared on the scene, I found myself thinking about the night Babs and I had met for the very first time.
* * *
Everywhere I looked, people were starting to form groups, striking up conversations and taking photos with disposable cameras. How could all these people possibly be so comfortable in their own skin on the first night of uni? At one end of the student union bar, the more gregarious freshers were taking things even further. A boat-race drinking game was in progress. Two people were kissing up against the wall. It was barely six o’clock! What was this, the last days of Rome?!
I saw Rex, a boy from my corridor. He was talking to a girl, and even with her back to me, I could tell she was bored. With nobody else to talk to, I didn’t have much choice but to go over.
“Hey,” I said.
Rex looked annoyed that I’d interrupted him. The girl, who was a little shorter than me, wearing dungarees and scuffed white trainers, seemed relieved to have someone else to talk to.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Babs.”
As she smiled politely and I realized how pretty she was, I predictably lost the ability to form sentences.
“Were you named after Babs in Acorn Antiques?” I managed at last, immediately regretting the question, along with a lot of other choices I’d made in my life—my personality being the main one.
“What’s Acorn Antiques?” Rex asked.
“It’s a spoof soap opera that Victoria Wood wrote,” Babs said.
Ah, I thought. This . . . is a dream. This has to be a dream. She knew about Acorn Antiques, for god’s sake! Nobody ever knew about Acorn Antiques.
I was struck by the vibrant hue of her eyes, which were a rich, dark brown, with a faint hint of gold. The combination of colors reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Just then, a girl in a sparkly top walked past. Like a horrible little magpie distracted by something shiny, Rex darted after her.
“Well, I’m devastated,” Babs said. “I thought he only had eyes for me.”
She lit a cigarette and offered me one, which I took, willing myself not to cough. I was acutely aware of how much cooler than me she seemed. Even the way she exhaled smoke, head tilted back slightly, was impossibly glamorous—like a rock star who’d just cut the finest take of a record they knew was going to go platinum.
I searched for something to say.
“So . . . what are you studying?”
“Philosophy,” Babs said, sounding a bit bored by such a classic go-to student question. “You?”
“English.”
“Well, aren’t we going to be useful to society in a couple of years?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re always hearing someone coming over a loudspeaker and saying, ‘Is there someone who can quote Larkin in the house?’ aren’t you?”
A smile spread out slowly on Babs’s face. It was a smile that said, Maybe this person isn’t qu
ite as dull as I’d initially thought.
We watched Rex talking to the girl he’d pursued. She was already eyeing an escape route.
“I wonder if he’s trying the same line on her as he did on me,” Babs said.
“Which was?”
“ ‘I’ll cook you dinner if you cook me breakfast.’ ”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, I took him completely at face value and agreed. I could see him panicking about how he was going to make dinner without a kitchen.”
I laughed.
“Do lines like that ever work?” Babs asked.
“Not in my experience,” I said.
Babs raised her eyebrows.
“That came out wrong,” I blustered. “I meant that I’ve never actually tried one, not that I’ve tried it loads and it’s never worked. I’m not sure where I’d start. What is it again? ‘You look all . . . tired . . . because you’ve been running around in my mind all night’?”
“My word,” Babs said, grabbing my arm. “Take me now!”
I smiled stupidly, looking down at where she’d just touched me.
People were starting to head off for new adventures, which meant Babs and I managed to secure a table. Even though I realized my early impression of her as “pretty” was a ludicrous understatement, I just about managed to hold myself together as we talked. That was until the barman went to take my glass away and I jammed my hand on it to stop him depriving me of the tiny mouthful left. Babs found this hilarious, and her subsequent laughter turned—gloriously—into a snort.
She sighed. “My one weakness. The snort. I’m quite impressed, actually. Usually only people I’ve known for a very long time can make me do that.”
I made a mental note to mention this at our golden wedding anniversary. Then I added a footnote telling myself to CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
At a natural break in conversation, we kept eye contact. It was only for a fleeting moment, but I could feel my heart begin to hammer in my chest. Babs smiled, and I noticed the laugh lines on either side of her mouth, like two perfect crescent moons. I thought how they suited her. And that I’d give rather a lot to spend more evenings like this, trying to make those lines even more prominent.
We left the bar, both a little wobbly, and made our way back to our halls. We paused at the staircase where we were to go to our separate corridors. This, I realized, was very clearly the moment when I was supposed to ask Babs for her number or whether she wanted to meet up again—or at least say something rather than standing silently with a stupid grin on my face. Thankfully, Babs came to my rescue.
Nodding at something behind me, she said, “I’m auditioning for that. Basically the only reason I’m here.”
I turned to see a poster for the Sheffield comedy revue.
My thoughts turned again to the very real possibility that I was either dreaming or perhaps in a padded cell somewhere, talking to a finger puppet I’d made out of a toilet roll.
“Um, are you okay?” Babs said, frowning. “I only ever made it to one session of first-aid training, but it does look a little bit like you’re having a heart attack.”
“Yeah, sure . . . no, I’m fine,” I said. I pointed my thumb back at the poster. “I’m auditioning, too.”
I couldn’t tell if Babs believed me, but now wasn’t the moment for the entire potted history of my life’s obsession.
“Well, I’m very glad to hear that,” Babs said. This time we held eye contact for a full second. Then Babs took a step toward me. “This is a bit awkward, but I realized I never actually asked your name . . .”
I was still finding it very hard to process what had just happened. Babs knew about Acorn Antiques. The ONLY REASON she was here was because of the revue.
She wants to know your name, a more urgent voice in my head reminded me. So you should say it. Quickly, say it. Okay, she’s starting to look very confused now. Say it, you idiot. Say it!
“It’s Theo!” I said, in a volume more appropriate for warning someone they were in the path of a runaway train.
“Right,” Babs said, understandably taken aback. Though not quite as much as I was when she’d regained her composure enough to lean in and kiss me softly on the mouth. “Night, then, Theo,” she said. “I’m really glad we met tonight.”
As we parted ways and I turned, punch-drunk, to go to my room, I became aware of three things. One, that I’d realized what it was that Babs’s eyes—the brown and the tinge of gold—reminded me of, and that it was Jaffa Cakes. Two, that I had come horribly close to telling her this. And three, that there was a very real chance that she already had a piece of my heart and that I was never getting it back.
* * *
Lying in the dark of the shed, I pondered how on earth I’d managed to let things go so badly wrong. It had been two years now since we’d broken up, but I still wasn’t over her. Part of that was because my brain had filtered out any of the bad memories. Not for the first time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we could be happy together again. And as soon as I had that thought, I realized that I was about to do something that was incontrovertibly, one hundred percent definitely, a good idea and had nothing to do with me being drunk.
It took a good degree of scrolling and jabbing at my phone until I found the right contact.
“Hello?”
“Babs! It’s me. It’s Theo.”
“Yeah, I saw your name come up. Phones are very modern these days.”
There was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like she was in a bar.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Edinburgh.”
As if to confirm this, I heard a man with a Scottish accent say, “Babs, another pint, yeah?”
My brain immediately got to work. He was a new boyfriend. Edinburgh—of course. She’d always had a thing for Scots. He’d be a redhead, but one of those men who properly pulls it off, with a beard that takes him about five minutes to grow. What else? He was an accomplished painter who’d turned down the chance to sell his work for millions of dollars at a New York auction house because that wasn’t really why he painted. By night, he taught himself law and defended the rights of the destitute, pro bono, restless until justice was carried out. Babs had met him at yoga, where he had achieved the impossible by being the only solo male yoga class member in history without making it creepy. He cooked things in slow cookers—seasoned with herbs from his herb garden, paired with wines you had to serve at exactly the right temperature or you lost the notes of seagull tears and brake fluid and spoiled its inquisitive finish. He could put up shelves and didn’t own a smartphone. He was spontaneous. The kind of person to make you breathe a sigh of relief when you saw their name on an invite list. He made people feel at ease. When they talked, he listened, rather than just waiting for his turn to speak. He was happy. He was an optimist. He took genuine joy in making others happy. In short, the guy was the absolute fucking worst.
“Theo?”
Panic and despair tussled over who got to consume me first. This was quite clearly the stupidest idea I’d ever had. Alice was going to kill me with that spatula when she found out.
“Yeah, I’m here, I was just calling to say hello.” I hiccupped, like a cartoon drunk.
“Right. Are you maybe ever so slightly hammered?” She sounded wary, but I plowed on.
“No. Well, maybe. A bit. But it’s only because I’ve actually got some news. It’s . . .” I faltered. What news did I have, exactly? I’d hoped a reason for the call would present itself, but I’d got nothing. I really should just hang up. That was so clearly what I should do.
“Um, Theo, can you maybe get to the point. Bit busy. It being Saturday night and all.”
Oh god.
“Theo?”
“Okay, yes, right. So, drumroll . .
. I’m . . . going to have a TV show!”
There was silence for a moment from the other end of the line.
“Oh. Right. Well, thanks for letting me know,” Babs said. “Is that it, or . . . ?”
“No, no, like—this is proper. I mean BBC. Prime-time.”
Everything went muffled for a moment, then the line cleared and I could hear traffic.
“I missed that last bit,” Babs said. “What were you saying?”
Why wasn’t I hanging up? There was still time to end this with a tiny shred of dignity intact. But then suddenly I was back with Babs in the student union bar, caught in the split-second where we’d held eye contact, where everything had felt alive with possibility . . . and I just couldn’t.
“I . . . Well, it’s nothing, really, but I had this good news about this show, and . . . it . . . didn’t seem right you not being the first person I told.”
“Oh. Okay.” There was just enough softness in the way she said this, as if it might have meant something to her, that it made me barrel on.
“All those days in London after the Sky thing didn’t work out and I just pissed everything up the wall.”
“Theo—”
“I can’t believe what an idiot I was—how much I took you for granted. But I’ve been thinking about the old days, too, and how happy we were. Remember that first night where we met? There was that awful guy Rex and—”
“Theo, please just let me talk.”
I winced. That didn’t sound good.
“I think you’ve maybe had a few too many drinks. It’s late, and I’m with my friends. If you really want to have a proper discussion about what happened, then this really is about the worst way you could have approached it.”
“I know, I know—I’m sorry. But it’s just . . .”
When We Were Young Page 6
