All About Us: Escape with the bestselling, most gorgeously romantic debut love story of 2020!

by Tom Ellen

  It strikes me now, watching Harv bogle around the kitchen in post-coital bliss, that I never talked to him about any of this at the time. We fell slowly and cautiously back into friendship, but I never once properly checked whether he was OK. I never once offered anything beyond the cursory ‘Ah, buck up, mate, plenty more fish’ platitudes. I probably told myself this was because we were blokes, and blokes didn’t really talk about that stuff. But that’s bollocks, really. I was too wrapped up in myself, and my own problems.

  I think back suddenly to Christmas Eve 2020, in the pub, feeling that disconnect between us – that inability to ever talk about anything real, anything important. It all started here, really; this was the period when our friendship first began to unravel. Not just because he hooked up with a girl I couldn’t stand, but because I was too self-involved to be there for him when it all went to shit.

  Maybe that’s what today is all about, then. Maybe that’s why I’m back here, on this specific day. Am I supposed to tell him what will happen in the future? Surely he wouldn’t believe me even if I did?

  Harv interrupts my thought process by opening the fridge and asking, ‘Have you fed Ghostface and Raekwon?’

  I stare at him. ‘The … Oh, right, the goldfish?’

  ‘No, the Staten Island-based rap duo. Yes, the goldfish.’ He clicks his tongue. ‘What is wrong with you this morning, man?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just feeling a bit … off, I guess.’

  ‘So, is it a yes or a no to the feeding?’

  ‘It’s a no.’

  ‘Right.’ He takes the fish food out of the fridge and glances up at the clock. ‘Aren’t you going to work?’

  God. Shit. Maybe I am. I find myself just staring blankly at him again, with absolutely no idea what to say. Since I’ve no idea when exactly I am, I also have no idea what exactly it is I do.

  ‘It’s your office Christmas thing tonight, isn’t it?’ he reminds me. ‘Y’know: “Ain’t no party like a lads’ mag party”.’

  And then, finally, everything slots into place. I know exactly what day it is. And I’m not looking forward to reliving it one bit.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Within a few seconds of leaving the flat, my assumption is confirmed.

  A quick scan of the newspapers in the shop downstairs tells me that today’s date is 16 December 2010. I remember quite clearly what happened on this day, although I have no clue why I am being forced to go through it again. It was, in pretty much every respect, an absolute shit-show.

  It briefly crosses my mind that I don’t actually have to go through it again. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s forcing me to do anything. If I wanted, I could go full Ferris Bueller: ditch work completely and spend the whole day lip-synching to Beatles songs, or whatever it is Ferris does with his freedom.

  My heart stutters as I realise I could even go back and see Mum again. She’s still here, just a few Tube stops away, alive and well.

  But I keep coming back to what the watch-seller said at that chestnut stall. I must have landed on this particular date for a reason. And as much as I’m dreading what this day will bring, I’m also eager to find out if I’ll see something or hear something or remember something new. It happened in the maze, it happened at Mum’s house: will it happen again here? The best way to find out, I figure, is to live this day exactly as I did originally, and keep my eyes peeled for anything I might have missed.

  With that in mind, muscle memory kicks in efficiently and I find myself mechanically retracing the steps I walked every weekday for three years. They take me to the bus stop at the end of the street, where I wait a few minutes for the 243 to arrive. When it does, I find a seat on the top deck, and slump my head against the juddering window as we start to weave our way slowly south through Bethnal Green. Garish Christmas decorations adorn pretty much every tree and lamp post and shopfront we pass: constant reminders of what tonight will bring.

  I feel a buzz in my pocket, and take out the phone I didn’t even realise was in there. It’s an early iPhone, which to my 2020 eyes looks clunky and quite cute – like a kid’s toy. There’s a message glowing on the screen. It’s from Daphne.

  My stomach flips as I open it.

  Hey, hope this eve is OK! I’m sure it’ll be fine – will be thinking of you. Just see it as a field trip. It’s research: you’re like David Attenborough, observing the LAD in his natural environment. David Lad-enborough? Doesn’t quite work. Anyway, see you later maybe, love you xx

  I slide the phone back in my pocket and watch my breath fug and unfug the grimy bus window. It’s so weird, thinking back to a time when Daff and I didn’t live together. When I didn’t see her every single day. Back then, the idea that I’d be meeting her after work, or getting to wake up with her, seemed like light at the end of the tunnel: a reward for getting through a tough day.

  After uni finished, we both decided it was too soon – or maybe too boringly grown-up – to live together straight away. So I moved in with Harv, and Daff found a place in Balham with Jamila and some other mates. But about a year from now – at the end of 2011 – we will finally pool our meagre earnings and rent our first flat together: a poky little fifth-floor apartment in Shepherd’s Bush.

  As the bus winds its way down through Barbican, it all comes rushing back to me: the giddy thrill we felt picking up the keys from the estate agent; how amazing our first night there was. We sat giggling on the floor, surrounded by cardboard boxes, like kids playing at being adults. Which, to some extent, I guess we were. We watched Dazed and Confused on my laptop, and ate takeaway curry with plastic forks because neither of us owned any actual cutlery. It strikes me now that that night was probably one of my happiest ever. Back then, it felt like we could do anything together. Like we had it all ahead of us.

  I scrub the fugged-up bus window with my sleeve and peer up at the towering brutalist buildings above me.

  Yes, at this point in my life – the tail end of 2010 – everything still felt just about possible. For a start, I was finally writing for a living. Well, sort of. After months of desperately emailing and cold-calling magazine editors all over the country, and hearing nothing back, I’d spotted an advert for a newly launched lads’ mag that was on the lookout for ‘young ’n’ hungry’ staff. The magazine was called Thump – and from the brief description of it in the ad, it was clear that it was to be the kind of publication built predominantly around topless women, Jason Statham films and pictures of botched tattoos. But I was pretty desperate by now – and sick to death of pub shifts and office temping – so I’d applied for a fortnight’s work experience. I got it, and when it ended – to my immense surprise – I was offered the job of editorial assistant.

  There was a fair amount of photocopying and note-taking and tea-making to be done, but I was also getting to do the odd bit of writing, as well. Mostly, though, my three years at Thump were spent trying desperately to ignore the near-constant stream of casually sexist and homophobic ‘bants’ that washed back and forth between the other staff members. A stream that tonight, at the Christmas party, will be in full flow.

  Still, none of that really has anything to do with why today ended up being so terrible. No, the real terribleness was all down to that email. I try to remember now: what time did I receive it? It must have been late afternoon, I reckon. I spoke to Daphne just after it landed in my inbox, and everything just spiralled downwards from there. The idea of experiencing it all over again makes my stomach clench with dread.

  The bus is approaching my stop now, and as I stand, I examine the ghost of my reflection in the window. I’m still insanely young-looking compared to my thirty-four-year-old self, but the four years I’ve just skipped over have definitely left their mark. There are the beginnings of two sharp lines at the edges of my mouth, and the skin around my eyes seems a little darker and looser than it was ‘yesterday’ in 2006.

  I hop out at Holborn station and make my way through the back streets towards Covent Garden, past the theatr
es all decked out in festive red and gold. I find I can still perfectly recall the short walk to the office: a grubby, iMac-filled basement in a huge grey nondescript tower block.

  I’m the first to arrive – it’s 9.15, still early in media terms – and I sit down at my desk and switch on my computer. I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to be working on, and suddenly, the idea of muddling through a whole day in this office seems laughably impossible. I found it difficult enough to fit in at this job when I wasn’t inexplicably travelling through time, so God knows how I’m supposed to interact with my colleagues with any degree of normality now. I resolve to just do exactly what I used to do: shut up and keep my head down.

  There are a few documents scattered across my computer desktop, so I click on one at random. The headline screams: FRANKENSTEIN’S WAG!

  Ah, yes. I remember this masterpiece quite clearly. A photomontage feature in which the best body parts of the UK’s top WAGs were cut-and-pasted together to create a Mary Shelley-inspired hybrid monster that would represent the Ultimate Footballer’s Wife. Hallowe’en was a good six weeks ago, but our editor, Graham, hadn’t let that stand in the way of such an outstanding and ground-breaking idea.

  My job, I remember as I scan the Word document, was to write fifty words apiece for each selected body part. Half a dozen short, exclamation-mark-heavy odes to Cheryl Cole’s lips, Danielle Lloyd’s breasts, Louise Redknapp’s legs, Abbey Clancy’s buttocks, and so on.

  I wince at the sentences in front of me, and close the file. Next to it on the desktop, though, is another one that makes me wince even harder.

  There it is. My novel. Well, actually, ‘novel’ is probably being slightly too kind: it’s more of a grotesquely bloated short story. There are forty-thousand-odd words in that document, and yet if you asked me what the actual plot was, I would struggle to tell you. I’d spent the last two years chipping away miserably at this pretentious, rambling mess, giving up countless nights and weekends when I could have been out having fun with Daphne or Harv.

  Then, a couple of weeks prior to today, I finally got the nerve up to send it out to an agent. And later this afternoon, I will hear back from her.

  I’m wondering if my stomach is strong enough to try reading a bit of it when a deep voice booms out behind me.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, you’re in early, mate. Or did you sleep here?’

  Jonno – the features editor of Thump, the creative genius behind Frankenstein’s WAG – stomps into the office, removing an expensive-looking pair of Oakleys, despite the fact that the sun is a no-show outside. Jonno is in his mid-thirties, with a shaved head and a permanently self-satisfied smirk. He’s wearing combat trousers, a black parka jacket and a bright red Kasabian T-shirt.

  ‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I say. ‘How are you doing?’

  He nods. ‘Yeah, chipper as fuck, mate. Chipper. As. Fuck.’

  I’m guessing I’ve been in this job about six weeks at this point, but I’m still not entirely sure that Jonno knows my name yet. If I remember rightly, he tended to address me exclusively as ‘mate’, ‘buddy’ or, on special occasions, ‘fella’.

  He plonks himself down at his desk and starts removing various cables and wires and headphones from his rucksack. ‘Had an early one last night in preparation for tonight’s shenanigans,’ he says, adopting a wonky Irish brogue on ‘shenanigans’. Jonno speaks as if he’s constantly hosting the Radio 1 Breakfast Show: loud and brash and irritatingly chirpy, with a strong Cockney inflexion despite originally hailing from Chichester.

  ‘You’re out with us tonight, right, buddy?’ he asks me. ‘Christmas piss-up?’

  ‘Yeah, think so.’

  ‘Oh, mate …’ He runs a hand over his stubbly head. ‘It’s going to get messy. Trust me. Honestly, the girls at Archie’s are absolute filth. Mingers, mostly, but they’re up for anything.’

  ‘Oh. Right. OK …’

  Throughout my entire three years at Thump, I was never quite sure how to respond to comments like this. Obviously I didn’t want to start spouting a load of sexist cobblers right back, but I also knew that saying I found these conversations at best mildly distasteful and at worst aggressively hateful would just result in being told: ‘Chill out, mate, it’s just a bit of banter!’

  So for the most part I just used to stay quiet.

  Jonno starts making himself a cup of tea, while launching into a long, powerfully depressing monologue about an unattractive stripper he’d encountered on a recent stag do. I’m guessing that when this story unfolded first time around, I just sat here laughing along and feeling like shit inside. But right now, I honestly can’t deal with it. I used to tell myself that if I wasn’t actively contributing to the belittlement of women or gay people or everyone who wasn’t straight and male, then I could still consider myself a decent person. But in hindsight, you know you’ve got problems when you’re employing the same case for the defence as a World War II collaborator. The truth is: I left this job in 2013 with a fair chunk of my self-confidence missing. And it was all because I didn’t have the guts to stand up to a load of idiots.

  Without offering any explanation, I get up and walk out to the corridor. I’m suddenly hot with anger, and I have the worrying urge to boot the wall as hard as I can. The truth is, I was miserable here. Totally miserable. And my misery was compounded every day by the fact that I wasn’t brave enough to quit. I suppose I was too scared of being broke again, back doing pub shifts and spending my nights endlessly trawling the Guardian Jobs website. I also thought – deep down – that this job might eventually lead to something more interesting if I stuck with it. It never did.

  I take a deep breath and reach instinctively for the phone in my pocket. I think about calling Daphne, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to speak to her yet. I scroll through my contacts until I get to Harv, and before I can think what I might say to him, I’m dialling. He answers after one ring.

  ‘Yo. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. Just … Sorry. Just calling to say hi, I guess.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Calling to say hi is not something Harv or I have ever done in fifteen years of friendship.

  ‘So … what are you up to?’ I ask.

  ‘Playing FIFA. Still reeling from last night.’

  ‘Is Liv still there?’

  ‘No, she’s gone into the office, but I’ve got the day off. What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m just …’ I breathe out heavily and rub my eyes with the heel of my hand. ‘I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here, to be honest.’

  ‘I thought you said the job was going all right?’

  Had I said that? Probably. It’s not like Harv and I were having any particularly deep or honest conversations at this point. I answer his question by outlining the basic premise of Frankenstein’s WAG.

  He snorts down the phone. ‘Yeah. OK. Well, you’re unlikely to win a Pulitzer for that. How detailed is this feature, though? Are we talking internal organs as well? Like, Victoria Beckham’s small intestine?’

  I laugh. ‘Coleen Rooney’s gall bladder.’

  ‘Good name for a punk band.’ I hear him shuffling about on the sofa. ‘Look, honestly, man, don’t worry about it. Obviously they’re not your kind of people, but you’re not gonna be there forever, are you? And we’re twenty-four years old, for fuck’s sake. We’re not supposed to be sorted yet. Who’s sorted at twenty-four?’

  This strikes me as a pretty good point; one I wish I could’ve grasped properly at the time. But it stings a little when I remember that I will be even less sorted at thirty-four.

  Still, though, this is the deepest conversation I’ve had with Harv in a long, long time. And it definitely didn’t happen on this day originally. I feel a sudden rush of affection for him – my best mate, my future best man – and I wonder if I can actually change what’s about to happen to him.

  ‘Hey, so, Harv,’ I say. ‘You know Liv?’

  ‘I’m aware of her work.’

>   ‘Well, I just … I dunno. This sounds a bit weird, but I wanted to say that I think you two should, sort of … take things a bit slowly.’

  There’s a long pause, and then the phone is flooded with laughter. ‘Mate, what are you on about?’

  ‘No, nothing, I just … She might not be as perfect as you think she is, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘Yes, obviously she’s very hot. But I’m just saying, maybe …’

  I kick at the carpet in frustration. I can’t think of any way to do this without telling him the truth, which would obviously make me sound like an utter lunatic. I’m about to try another tack when he grunts and says, ‘Look, I’ve got to go anyway, man. My toast’s burning. But have fun tonight.’

  The phone line rustles, and before he hangs up, he adds, ‘Say hi to the naked ladies for me.’

  Chapter Twenty

  If there is a more depressing sight than a Christmas tree in a strip club, then I’ve yet to see it.

  It sits there forlornly in the corner of the dark mirrored room, beside a stage on which a pneumatically breasted woman is grinding listlessly against a greasy pole. I’m not sure what it is about the tree’s presence here that’s so jarringly awful. Possibly the fact that everything Christmas is supposed to represent – family, love, kindness, joy – seems totally alien in a place like this, where blokes are essentially paying large sums of money to forget those concepts exist.

  I’ve whiled away most of the day sitting silently at my desk, either moving exclamation marks around at random on Frankenstein’s WAG or checking my phone to see if the agent’s email has arrived (it hasn’t). But now it’s 4 p.m., and I am walking into Archie’s Strip Club in Shoreditch with the ten other members of the all-male Thump team.