by Tom Ellen
She drops the tiny glass back onto the table and grimaces. ‘Well, thank God that’s over.’
‘What, the shot?’
She laughs. ‘No. The play.’
‘Oh, right. Didn’t you enjoy it?’
‘Yeah, no, I did. It’s just I’ve been so nervous about it for weeks. It’s nice to be able to finally stop worrying about it.’
Alice had a much bigger part in The Carol Revisited than I did – although to be fair, the same could be said for literally every other member of the cast. She was playing the second lead – Marie, Scrooge’s fiery moll – and as I recall, it required a ton of line-learning and late-night rehearsing.
‘You were great,’ I tell her.
She shrugs. ‘Thanks. It was pretty fun. But tonight’s what I’ve really been looking forward to.’ She smiles at me for a second before adding: ‘The cast party, I mean.’
I smile back and find myself wondering if she always imagined this would be our night too.
She picks up two shots from the tray in front of us and says: ‘Here, come on. Let’s get very, very pissed.’
I smile and nod, feeling exactly as torn as I did all those years ago; part of me enjoying the feeling of being flirted with by Alice, the other part desperate to see Daphne again.
We do another grimace-inducing sambuca shot each, and then Alice squeezes my arm and gets up to say hi to somebody else. And as I scan the room again, Daff is suddenly there, right on cue.
She’s standing at the bar with her best friend, Jamila, and a few of her other mates. She gives me a grin and a wave and then turns back to them.
Under the bar’s garish strip lighting, I can finally see her face properly, and my heart starts pulsing in my chest. It’s stating the blindingly obvious to say that she looks younger – a little bit redder and rounder in the cheeks – but the really big difference is in the way she carries herself. There’s this lightness to her that I remember being immediately struck by when I first met her – a goofy, playful silliness that I honestly haven’t seen in years.
Probably because I’ve managed to gradually grind it out of her.
She’s listening to Jamila tell some story, and as she nods along, she nibbles absent-mindedly at the rim of her plastic pint glass. That’s a trait I remember thinking was a cute little nervous tic, until I later learned it was a tactical ploy to hide her top lip.
Daff’s always had a weird thing about her top lip. She hates the little scattering of light brown freckles that run across it – which, to be honest, I’ve always thought were really cute. But some boy at her school once teased her about them in Year 8, and it’s stuck with her ever since.
And now here she comes, walking towards me, smiling awkwardly, and I have to pretend I don’t know any of that. I have to pretend I don’t know anything about her. That she’s some random girl I’ve just met.
How the hell am I supposed to do this?
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘Not-Naked Ben.’
‘Not-Naked Daphne. Hi.’
She pulls out Alice’s chair, and before I can tell her that it’s Alice’s chair, she’s plonked herself down in it. She raises her pint glass to me. ‘Congratulations again on your stellar performance.’
I hold my hands up and force a laugh. I’m still finding normal conversation with her too much to handle, to be honest. Plus, I’ve become so keenly aware of my tendency to stare that I’m now doing the exact opposite – making barely any eye contact at all. Which is probably just as weird.
‘I thought you’d headed off,’ I tell her left shoulder.
She shakes her head. ‘No, I was supposed to be meeting some friends off campus, but I brought them back here instead.’
‘Ah, right. Cool.’
Alice is now back at the table, holding a tray loaded with pints of snakebite and black. I see her glance pointedly at Daphne as she slides one towards me and then goes off to find a free chair next to Marek down the other end. I feel a twinge of guilt, as well as something else I can’t quite put my finger on. Regret, maybe? But there’s no time to dwell on it, because Daff is leaning back in.
‘So is this your thing, then?’ she asks. ‘Do you want to be an actor? Because I have to say, I’m not a hundred per cent sure you’re cut out for the hitman business.’
‘You’re right,’ I say, nodding. ‘The best hitmen do traditionally remember to kill their victims.’
‘Well, maybe you could be a sort of pacifist hitman,’ she suggests, her smile widening, ‘who’s trying to bring down the industry from within.’
‘A non-violent hitman. Yeah. I’m into it.’
‘The Gandhi of assassination.’
I snort a laugh at this, and it draws another glance from Alice.
Harv materialises behind us, clutching another fresh crop of sambuca shots. He sinks one himself and then thumps another down in front of me. ‘I didn’t get you one,’ he tells Daphne, ‘because I don’t know who you are.’ He sticks his hand out. ‘Let’s remedy that right now. I’m Harvey.’
‘Daphne,’ she laughs, shaking his hand.
‘OK. Daphne. Now that we’re old mates, I’ll go and get you a shot.’
She’s still shaking his hand and laughing. ‘No, no, honestly, I’m fine. Thanks.’
‘You sure? Final answer? All right. Nice to meet you, anyway. This is the longest handshake ever.’ He breaks off and slumps down into a free seat at the other end of the table.
I really can’t face this latest shot. I’m feeling extremely light-headed as it is, and I suspect that inexplicably travelling into the past is a bit like operating heavy machinery: you probably shouldn’t be pissed when you do it.
‘Do you want this?’ I whisper, nudging the sticky glass towards Daff. ‘Because I definitely don’t.’
She grimaces and slides it back. ‘Ugh. No way. Can’t stand sambuca. It was the first drink I ever got sick on. Bad memories.’
‘That’s so true,’ I say. ‘The first drink you get sick on will always be undrinkable. Mine was peach schnapps. Still can’t go anywhere near it.’
She laughs, wrinkling her nose. ‘Peach schnapps. You must have been a classy kid.’
‘Oh yeah, big time. We were about fourteen, I think, down the park one Friday night, and Ross Kennett turned up with a bottle of it that he’d nicked out of his mum’s cabinet.’
‘Classic Kennett,’ she says.
‘Exactly. Textbook Kennett. I think I only had three shots, but even now, just the smell of it makes me feel sick. I must’ve thrown up underneath that slide for about fifteen minutes straight.’
‘Well, that’s a lovely image, Not-Naked Ben. I’ll keep it with me always.’ She takes a sip of her pint. ‘So, hey, you never answered my question before – is acting actually what you want to do?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ I say. ‘I just did this for a bit of a laugh, really.’
When she asked me this question first time round, I vaguely recall launching into a long, boring spiel about how what I really wanted to be was a writer. I think I trotted out the standard monologue I’d memorised for when trying to impress attractive girls, which was full of painfully crowbarred references to Franz Kafka.
This time, though, I decide against trying to conjure up some non-existent self-belief, and ask her a question instead.
‘What about you?’ I say. ‘Do you want to get into theatre stuff?’
She shrugs. ‘Well, I was only helping out tonight as a favour, really. But yeah, I do enjoy it. I don’t know, though … I’m definitely not an actor, and I don’t think I’d be much of a writer or director, either.’
‘Gun-handler?’ I suggest. ‘Last-minute script-finder?’
She laughs. ‘Yeah, exactly. Or maybe … I don’t know. Maybe producer? I like the idea of being someone who helps to make good stuff happen, you know?’
I nod, and the difference between us at this age suddenly seems staggeringly clear. I was a pretentious knobhead, full of unrealistic dreams and unfounded co
nfidence; Daff was modest, humble and obviously bound for success.
She shoots me another one of her wide, bright, amazing smiles – the kind I see so rarely in 2020. I don’t know if this is the exact same discussion we had first time round – probably not – but the general feeling I’m getting is the same. That fluttering excitement at the knowledge that I’d definitely met someone special – someone I’d still be thinking about long after this conversation finished. But also, a strange sense of ease and comfort – like I’d known this person for years, and conversation just flowed effortlessly between us.
She says something else, which I don’t quite catch, because as I glance over at the bar, I see a face I recognise.
A scraggly rust-coloured beard above a tie covered with cartoon reindeer. Two twinkling blue eyes that meet mine as he shoots me a wink …
I launch up from my chair, nearly spilling every drink on the table.
‘Are you OK?’ Daphne laughs.
I’m craning my neck to see through the mass of people surrounding the bar. But he’s not there. I must have imagined it. After all, I’ve just come back fifteen years: why would he look exactly the same and be wearing the exact same tie?
I must be losing it.
‘Sorry. Just thought I saw someone I knew.’ I slump back down, but Daphne’s attention is focused on the other end of the table. Marek is now aggressively drunk and sounding off so loudly that everyone is forced to turn and listen.
‘I’m honestly glad that people walked out,’ he shouts. ‘The truth is, you can’t produce a truly great work of art that is also commercially successful. It cannot be done. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.’
Everyone around him nods in solemn agreement, and I suddenly remember exactly how this bit goes.
Daphne puts down her glass, clears her throat and then asks him, quite earnestly: ‘Do you think that’s definitely true?’ Fifteen heads turn to look at her.
Marek is used to holding court without any interruptions whatsoever, so he’s now staring at Daphne like she’s just poured her pint over him.
‘Er, yeah,’ he snaps. ‘I do.’
‘Oh, OK then. Fair enough.’ She nods and says nothing more. Marek clearly feels the need to reassert himself, though. ‘You don’t think it’s true, then, I’m guessing?’ he says.
‘Well, no.’ She shrugs, apologetically. ‘I think there are lots of good writers who are also commercially successful.’
‘Go on, then,’ Marek smirks. ‘Would you care to enlighten us with some examples?’ Daff opens her mouth to speak, but he shouts over her before she can get a word out: ‘Because, to be honest, I’m not sure I’d even want to be commercially successful anyway.’ She tries again, but Marek is way too loud for her. ‘Anything of any real artistic merit has always been scorned or ignored by the masses,’ he proclaims. ‘Like, look at the Dada movement, right …’ – and at this point, I stop listening and focus on watching Daphne.
She doesn’t seem particularly cross at being interrupted; she just sits there looking at Marek with one eyebrow raised, and it hits me again that I haven’t seen this playful, feisty spark in her in years. If we hadn’t got together – got married – maybe she’d still have it.
‘But isn’t that the ultimate dream?’ she says, when Marek finally breaks off for a swig of snakebite. ‘To make something really good that also resonates with lots of people?’
Marek slaps his glass down. ‘Not achievable, I’m afraid, because most people are idiots. I mean, seriously: can you name one decent writer – in any genre – who’s also commercially successful?’
Daff takes a deep breath and starts counting them off on her fingers. ‘Nora Ephron, Stephen King, Sue Townsend, Armando Iannucci …’ She puffs her cheeks out. ‘That’s four, for a start.’
There’s a beat of embarrassed silence while we all watch Marek consider arguing that these good and successful writers are not good and successful. In the end, he gives up and reaches for a Big Lebowski quote: ‘Well, that’s just like … your opinion, man,’ he drawls.
Daphne holds up a fifth finger. ‘Ah, yeah, and the Coen brothers. Thanks. That’s five. Or six, if we’re counting both of them.’
There are a few laughs at this, and Marek takes out his phone and starts jabbing at it to indicate that the conversation is over.
‘Sorry about that,’ Daphne murmurs to me, not looking in the least bit sorry. ‘I hope I didn’t upset your friend.’
‘He’s not really our friend,’ Harv whispers, leaning across. ‘He’s more a bell-end that happens to live on our corridor.’ Daphne laughs hard at this, and Harv stands up to address the whole table. ‘Right, I’m getting more shots. Who’s in?’
‘Fuck shots,’ says Marek, snapping his phone shut and assuming leadership once again. ‘Let’s play Sardines!’
Chapter Ten
A dozen chairs scrape backwards noisily, and the cries of ‘Yes!’ and ‘Let’s do it!’ instantly drown out the Kaiser Chiefs’ riot predictions on the stereo.
I can feel beads of sweat starting to prickle on my brow, so I excuse myself and barge through the last-orders throng at the bar, towards the bathroom.
I slip into a cubicle and slump down on top of the toilet lid, my heart pounding in my chest. Playing Sardines in the campus maze was an end-of-term Drama Soc tradition, one that Marek had always insisted we should keep up tonight. But this evening’s game represents something way more significant than a bit of random boozy fun: it was the first time Daphne and I ever kissed.
I take a deep breath and try again to make some sense of the situation. I’ve spent the past half-hour being reminded of how brilliantly Daff and I once got on; how right we once seemed for each other. But while I may not have a clue why this is all happening, one thing I do have is hindsight. And that means I now know exactly how we’ll end up. How far we’ll eventually drift from our hopeful, happy, seemingly perfect-for-one-another teenage selves.
Fifteen years ago, it was just a random quirk of fate that Daphne found me first in the maze. And that quirk has gone on to define the rest of our lives. So maybe this time … will it be Alice who finds me first instead? The idea makes my heartbeat instantly double its speed. Will I get to see what my life would look like if she and I had got together tonight?
There was always something between us, and over the years, it’s like fate has constantly found ways to bring us back together. There was Paris, then Marek’s wedding, and now this drink we’ve arranged back in 2020. Maybe this – tonight – is where it was all supposed to start? But instead, Daphne found me first during the game of Sardines, and all three of our lives were sent spiralling off in the wrong direction …
I must be breathing pretty heavily as these thoughts ricochet around my head because the bloke in the next cubicle thumps the wall and shouts, ‘You all right in there, mate? Tactical chunder?’
I unlock the door and splash some cold water on my face. As I walk out, still dripping and borderline hyperventilating, I bump straight into Alice on her way to the ladies’.
‘Bloody hell,’ she laughs. ‘You look like you’ve just done fifty lengths. You all right?’
I nod.
‘Oh-kay.’ She tilts her head at me. ‘Hardly chatted to you all night, Benjamin. Impossible to tear you away from the sexy props girl … who clearly fancies you, by the way.’
Telling me that random girls clearly fancied me was something Alice did quite a lot over this first term. I would estimate that ninety-eight per cent of the time it was utter bollocks, but still, it always made me feel pretty good. Probably because, even at nineteen, I realised that ‘so-and-so clearly fancies you’ can usually be translated as ‘I clearly fancy you’.
‘I’m not sure about that,’ I tell her.
‘Soooo modest.’ She rolls her eyes, mock dramatically, and gives me a coy smile. For a second, it’s like I’m right back at that wedding with her, feeling the words WHAT IF? burn themselves onto my brain.
; ‘What’s her name again, the props girl?’ Alice asks, fiddling with her fringe. ‘Daisy?’
‘Daphne.’
‘Daphne, right.’ Getting Daphne’s name wrong was something Alice did quite a lot from this night onwards. ‘Well, anyway, if you can tear yourself away from Daphne, maybe me and you can hang out a bit later?’ She grins and nudges my trainer with hers. ‘I feel like I’ve hardly seen you recently, what with having to rehearse all the time. And tomorrow it’s the holidays, so I won’t see you for, like, three weeks, you know?’
I nod, dumbly. It’s odd to think now, but throughout this whole first term, Alice was probably the person I hung out with most. More than Harv, even. We were next-door neighbours in halls, and since we were both doing artsy degrees, with precious few contact hours, our daytimes would mostly be spent cooking sausage sandwiches in the shared kitchen and then retreating to the bar to play pool and talk bollocks. We were pretty much inseparable for those first ten weeks. And now – just like in Paris, just like at the wedding – I’m starting to remember why. She was funny and clever and I liked who I was when I was with her. And as the term wore on, I have to admit I enjoyed the heady sensation of knowing something might happen between us, but not knowing exactly when.
‘Hanging out later sounds great,’ I tell her. It briefly crosses my mind to suggest that we sack off Sardines altogether, and head straight back to the corridor, just the two of us. But before I can weigh this idea up properly, Alice says, ‘Cool, see you out there,’ and slips past me into the loos.
When I step out of the bar, everyone is huddled up in coats and scarves, their breath billowing out in smoky speech bubbles. Harv slides an arm around my shoulder and starts gabbling about something or other, but I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying. Everything is zoning in and out of focus, feeling real and unreal at the same time.
Alice comes out and loops her arm straight through mine. I’m not sure if Daphne sees this, because she’s at the front of the pack, chatting to someone else. Marek shouts, ‘Let’s go!’ and starts to lead our chattering, giggling group down the walkway and over the bridge behind the English blocks, where the campus maze looms out at us through the darkness.
