It took us ages to get our breath back, partly because we were still laughing. I’d forgotten what this was like. Ending up in a ridiculous drama of our own making had been our forte. I straightened up, feeling oddly thrilled by the experience.
I was ready to carry on, but Joel was still wheezing away.
“I see your cross-country days are obviously behind you, then,” I said, but the joke died in my mouth as I realized how hard he was breathing, almost like he was hyperventilating. I started talking about using the cows in the show somehow, hoping Joel would recover soon, because the longer he took, the more uneasy I felt. Just at the moment I thought I’d have to ask him if everything was okay, he straightened up.
“Good idea,” he said, breathing heavily still. “About putting the cows in. Anyway, shall we?”
He strode off and I followed, taking surreptitious glances at him as we went. A minute or two later he started talking in earnest about the show again, acting as if nothing had happened. But he wasn’t fooling me.
Something wasn’t right.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joel
I was focusing hard on the tower of St. Sampson’s Church, which poked above the trees in the distance into the sky, its turrets like fingers rigid with rigor mortis. The closer it came, the closer we were to stopping for the day, and I needed that to be soon. My feet felt so swollen and heavy in my boots, it was like I was sloshing through water. The unexpected sprinting earlier might have exacerbated things, but I didn’t think I’d be feeling quite this bad so early on. I hoped I’d just about managed to distract Theo when I couldn’t catch my breath by rambling on with my thoughts on the show. But if I didn’t get to stop and rest soon, then I was going to be in real trouble.
I could have kissed Theo when he suggested we stay at the first pub we came to in Cricklade, a tired-looking place called the Red Lion. As we shut the door behind us we were met by the very specific sort of silence that descends in this kind of pub when someone not born within twenty yards of the place walks in.
The Red Lion’s proprietor—a flat-faced, entirely expressionless, sentient trowel of a man—led us up the creaking stairs to a twin room. I tried to keep my breathing in check as I navigated the steep staircase.
“My room’s over there, just so you know,” said the owner, nodding his head toward the door marked “Private,” a thick peacoat hanging from the door handle.
“Right you are,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to tell us this.
He looked us both up and down, looking distinctively unimpressed, like a tradesman appraising a poorly constructed wall. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep the noise down to a minimum after eleven. And please don’t push the beds together. The carpet’s not up to it.”
Ah, so that explained it.
Theo and I exchanged a look and, without saying anything, moved together so that our shoulders were touching.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Theo said. “We’ll be as quiet as we can.”
The man took a step backward, as if we might be radioactive.
“Absolutely,” I added. “Well, we’ll do our best. Anyway . . .”
But the owner was already scurrying away down the stairs, muttering something about having to change a barrel.
The room seemed to be both damp and airless. I tried to crack a window, but it was stuck fast.
“Pleased to be out of metropolitan liberal London?” Theo asked me.
“Hmm, I am feeling a bit anxious that I’ve not seen an Uber for a while,” I said. But just as I reached the word “Uber,” I felt a surge of fatigue and had to brace myself on the doorframe, trying to pass it off as a casual lean.
“I’ll bet,” said Theo, but he was looking at me askance. It wasn’t exactly concern on his face, but he seemed to have realized that something was up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, deciding to brazen it out.
“Nothing,” Theo said. “I just . . . Actually, never mind.”
We unpacked in something of an uncomfortable silence at first, but then Theo started joking about what had happened with the landlord just now, and things began to feel a bit more normal again. The moments like that today, where we’d slipped into our old routines, had been such a tonic. I hoped that was a sign of things to come.
“I’m starving,” Theo said. I watched him yawn and scratch at his shaggy curls. “Shall we grab some dinner somewhere that’s not here and then get cracking with the first script? I reckon we came up with loads of stuff today already.”
There was such eagerness in his voice. It reminded me just how much was riding on Jane Green getting back to me with good news. A more immediate issue was that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it down the stairs again. The doctor had warned me that the fatigue would come and go, and that my legs would swell and ache with buildups of fluid, but I hadn’t expected it to be this bad so soon.
“Shall we head out?” Theo asked.
“Absolutely,” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Just need a shower and to make a quick call.”
Theo grabbed his wallet. “Righto. In that case, I reckon I’ll go and get a pint downstairs and put Kylie on the jukebox just to annoy the landlord.”
As he started off clumsily down the stairs with his usual lack of coordination, like a newborn foal taking his first steps, I got the impression that he was enjoying himself so far, and the thought made me happy—until I had to run to the bathroom down the hall, where I vomited noisily into the toilet.
I’d just made it back to the bedroom, where I planned to rest for a few minutes, when Amber called.
I nearly didn’t answer it. But as much as that might have been the sensible thing to do, I was feeling scared at what had just happened, and I really needed to hear her voice.
“I was just thinking about you and then you called,” I said, forcing brightness into my voice. “It was like I’d summoned a genie.”
“Ha. I like that,” Amber said. “And your three wishes would be . . . ?”
“Hmm. Cure world famine.”
“Borrring. Next.”
“Okay. Power of flight.”
“Again, not the most original, but I shall grant it nonetheless. And the third . . .”
I paused.
“That I didn’t have to stay home instead of coming out to be with you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Amber said briskly. “I’d sort of prepared myself for that being the case. Your mum still struggling?”
“She’s . . . having a tough time of it, yeah.” I was starting to wish I’d come up with something that didn’t mean using Mum like this.
“Don’t worry, m’love, there’ll be other holidays. You’re where you need to be. Besides, I am actually having fun with Charlotte.”
“Great!” I said. “Is she still—”
“Oh, completely insane, yeah. Her sex life is just . . . extraordinary.” She lowered her voice. “Joel, the other week she did it with someone in a helicopter—some viscount or baron or other. And, yes, obviously I asked her if he had a big chopper, and, yes, obviously she didn’t get it.”
I laughed hard at this. It was one of my favorite things, to hear Amber scandalized. I’d christened this side of her “Pauline-from-next-door,” because it was like talking to a gossipy neighbor over the garden fence who’s been keeping tabs on the new couple a few doors down—particularly the way she mouthed, rather than spoke, words like “threesome” or “orgy” or, in this case, “chopper.”
As she carried on with the story, my thoughts turned against my will to how many more times I’d get to see this side of her. But just as it all got too much, I remembered the promise I’d made to keep Amber happy at all costs. And so I listened as she told me about Charlotte’s ridiculous exploits, and the script she’d been sent for some Scandi-noir drama—and then about the bakery i
n the next village that didn’t look like much from the outside but made the most amazing bread, with rosemary and olive oil, which we had to have when we came back here together, and all the while I did whatever it took to keep the sadness from my voice as Amber described a future I knew we’d never see.
* * *
When I found the strength to go down to Theo later, there were three empty pint glasses at his table. Only a few years ago, the sight would have left me hungry with longing, but now I didn’t feel a thing.
“Sorry, got distracted,” I said. “Food, then?”
“Sure,” Theo said, wearing the telltale sleepy eyes of someone three beers down on an empty stomach.
As he stood up, he glanced outside and then back at me, looking a little uneasy.
“Something up?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing—it’s just . . . Are you not wearing your jacket? It’s actually quite cold out, now the sun’s gone.”
Theo’s cheeks reddened just a touch. My natural inclination was to make fun of him for being so mumsy, but I was glad I managed to stop myself. I’m sure Theo was a very long way off calling me his friend again, but I’d take mild concern about me getting a bit chilly any day.
“Good point, actually,” I said. “I’ll go and grab my jacket.” But when I got up to our room, I couldn’t find it anywhere, and I realized with a stab of frustration that I must have left it in the field when we’d escaped from the cows.
I’d resigned myself to bracing against the evening chill without protection when I passed the owner’s room and did a double take.
It’s funny how your sense of morality can change when you’re on borrowed time. One day you’re feeling guilty for eating biscuits when it’s nearly time for lunch, the next you’re calmly unhooking the coat of a pub landlord from his bedroom door handle and wrapping it around your shoulders, a wanton criminal in a wanker’s jacket.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Theo
Cricklade was a generic if pretty market town—the sort of place where insurance companies and banks sat in disguise in among charming Cotswold stone houses. As we made our way down the high street, I couldn’t help but notice how knackered Joel looked, and in the pub earlier I’d heard the unmistakable sound of someone throwing up coming from upstairs.
“Something a bit odd happened earlier,” I said as we stepped aside to let a man on a mobility scooter sweep past.
“Oh, yeah?” Joel replied.
“Yeah. I heard someone upstairs having a terrible time of it—like they were trying to throw their feet up through their face. That wasn’t you, was it?”
“Me?” Joel said. “Nah. Must’ve been someone in another room. Now, where do you fancy eating? Our options appear to be run-down gastropub or run-down gastropub.”
“Up to you.”
I was ninety percent sure Joel was lying. But why? It was only when we walked past an off-license that something clicked. Those rumors I’d read in the papers about Joel’s personal life must have carried more weight than I’d thought. Coupled with the waxy skin, the wheezing, the retching . . . was it all down to withdrawal symptoms?
Maybe it was none of my business. I was the one who’d insisted we keep anything serious off the table. Besides, I knew Joel well enough to know he wasn’t likely to give me the whole story anyway. An image came to me of him as a teenager looking at me with a kind of desperate longing in his eyes as he told me never to ask him if he was okay ever again.
Eventually we decided to eat in a restaurant called Jack’s, the only place that seemed half-busy.
“Think I’ll stick to water now,” I said, keeping my eyes down on the menu. “Still a bit dehydrated from the walk.”
“Yeah, me too,” Joel said, and I was certain there was relief in his voice. It was going to be hard not to keep doing this—pinning more evidence to a corkboard to confirm my theory.
Our waiter took our decision less well, especially when I chose tap rather than still or sparkling.
“And please might I have a knife and fork when you get a moment?” I asked, strangely stiff and polite. I was embarrassingly out of practice at even an interaction as normal as this.
“Of course,” the waiter replied, with a look on his face like I’d just asked him to sculpt a willy-perfect version of Michelangelo’s David out of baba ghanoush.
I caught Joel’s eye and he smirked. There followed an awkward silence while the waiter took an age to collect up our wineglasses, and I felt myself dangerously close to sniggering. Needing a distraction, I plucked the menu from the table, managing in the process to poke myself in the eye with it. The waiter finally left and I clutched my face.
“You all right?” Joel said, looking a bit confused as I prodded my eye. And then a memory came to me which made me temporarily forget the pain.
* * *
It took until the fifth time Joel sat next to me in the form room and greeted me with “All right?”—to which I responded in kind—before I finally began to trust that we were actually friends. I’d worried at first that him rescuing me in the music block would be our only interaction, but it seemed, miraculously, that he actually liked me. I quietly ditched the Bertie Wooster getup. Now I’d had a taste of being normal, I wasn’t going back . . . which is why my body choosing that moment to betray me made everything so much worse.
At a routine checkup, the doctor told me and Mum that if my lazy eye was going to have fixed itself, it would have done so by now, and so treatment was needed. She called in a nurse, who presented me with a little box. I held it in my lap while everyone looked at me, and for a brief moment I actually wondered whether the nurse had just handed me a box of glass eyes. What was in there instead wasn’t exactly a whole lot better: eyepatches. Even Alice’s drawing of me as a swashbuckling pirate couldn’t cheer me up.
As I had expected, Darren was barely able to contain himself when he saw me with the patch on the next morning. It seemed there were so many taunts and insults available to him that they’d short-circuited his system. Dumbstruck, he pointed at me, his arm wavering like a divining rod locating water. “P-p . . . patch prick!” he managed at last. It wasn’t his best, but the class erupted in laughter anyway. I shuffled to my desk, head down, cheeks burning, trying to ignore the jeers. Unusually, Joel had arrived before me that day, and was sitting there with headphones on, ignoring everyone—and being ignored, Darren and his goons seeming wary of someone who’d stood up to them so effortlessly. I prayed that he’d say something consoling—tell me not to worry about those idiots—but he just looked at me for a few seconds and then went back to his music.
The following morning I knew Darren would be lying in wait, and sure enough he and his crew surrounded me as I came in, chanting “Patch prick!” and shoving me as I made my way miserably to my desk. The idea of this being my life from now on made me want to run out of the school and not stop running until my lungs and legs gave out.
Joel was in before me again. He had his head down on his arms and was apparently asleep despite all the noise. I sat down next to him and stared straight ahead, face hot from shame. I just hoped he’d get the Sorry, I can’t be your friend speech out of the way sooner rather than later.
“All right?” he said, his voice muffled.
I kept looking ahead. Maybe I’d get in there first and say that I’d decided we couldn’t be mates, actually, and that he needed somewhere else to sit. But then he sat up, and the class suddenly went quiet. I turned to look at him properly, and that’s when I saw that he was wearing a black eyepatch nearly identical to mine.
“All right,” I said, trying not to grin too madly.
I glanced over at Darren. He was scowling at me with real menace, but for the first time I felt brave enough to hold his gaze until he looked away first. He never bothered me again after that.
* * *
Joel was still looking at me askance across
the table. I hadn’t thought about that moment in the classroom in years.
“Do you remember . . . ,” I started, before trailing off.
“Remember what?” Joel asked.
“Never mind,” I said, deciding to avoid the turnoff to memory lane. “Right, then—let’s get writing. Oh, have you not got your laptop?”
“Sorry,” Joel said, “I left it in the room. But never mind, we can just scribble on napkins for now if we keep it to big-picture stuff. Got a pen?”
I found one in my inside coat pocket and handed it over. As Joel smoothed out his paper napkin and began to write something down, I saw his tongue poke out of the corner of his mouth, and then another memory came to me, as if ignited by the embers of the previous one.
* * *
One chilly November lunchtime a few weeks after Joel’s eyepatch solidarity, I felt confident enough in our friendship that I decided to let him in on my comedy obsession. It was one of my more daring moments, trying to impress a twelve-year-old boy with a 1967 episode of Radio 4’s Round the Horne while all the others were passing around an FHM someone had snuck in or playing football. I knew the episode off by heart, so I watched Joel’s face closely, eagerly anticipating his reactions to certain lines. At first, his expression was as neutral as ever, but after a while he started to smile. I’d never felt more relieved in my life.
For his part, Joel introduced me to the music he liked, and while Green Day’s goofy rebelliousness didn’t strike as much of a chord with me as the theme from The Good Life, there was something about it that resonated all the same.
One evening, I dropped into conversation with Mum that I might have my friend Joel over one Saturday, if that was okay. Mum was so surprised and flustered that I noticed the standard-issue Dorothy Perkins Mum Range sweater she was in the process of putting on was now the wrong way round and inside out. For some reason this was the funniest thing Alice and I had ever seen, and we couldn’t stop laughing. Even Mum joined in after a while.
When We Were Young Page 8
