Wish You Were Here

by Mike Gayle

  ‘You woke me up,’ I replied cheerlessly.

  Andy fixed me with a hard stare. ‘I’ve just had a shower. Since when was that a crime?’

  ‘Since you started stealing my towel to do it,’ I said snatching the damp towel from Andy’s hands. ‘What are you doing up so early anyway? I didn’t expect to see you until tonight. That’s how it goes doesn’t it? Every twenty-four hours you check in with us just to make sure we’re still alive.’

  ‘I’m back because Nina and I agreed that we’re both knackered,’ said Andy, side-stepping my early morning fractiousness. ‘And my plan – if it’s actually any of your business – was to have a shower and then sleep until late in the afternoon but if you want me to go back to Nina’s I can do that just as easily.’

  ‘Well if you really want to go,’ I replied. ‘Be my guest.’

  There was a long silence. Andy stared at me as though trying to work something out. All of a sudden his face suggested he’d found the answer and he whispered knowingly, ‘I get it.’ He looked pointedly over at the kitchen door. ‘This isn’t about me at all is it? It’s about you having to spend all this quality time with Hans Christian Andersen, visiting villages, hiking up hills and talking about Jesus.’ He paused and laughed. ‘This is great. You’re finally as sick of it as—’

  ‘Just leave it, Andy,’ I threatened cautiously. ‘Today is most certainly not the day for you to be saying all this.’

  ‘Really? And why would that be? Tom’s never been my biggest fan and I’m certainly not his so what’s the point in pretending anything else? If you ask me he’s a—’

  ‘Look,’ I interrupted, ‘I’ve asked you once and now I mean it, drop it.’ I stepped towards Andy and pushed him in the chest as if to punctuate the point.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t just do that,’ said Andy as his face flushed with anger.

  ‘I did it,’ I replied, even though I could feel that the situation was beginning to get out of control, ‘and do you know what? I’ll do it again if you carry on talking about Tom like that.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Andy squaring right up to me as though he might actually throw a punch in my direction. ‘Yeah,’ I replied firmly, ‘that’s right.’

  I’d never stood up to Andy like this before. I don’t suppose I’d ever needed to. And I could see in his eyes that even though he was used to getting his own way, he actually wanted to back down as much as I did. Unfortunately I wasn’t sure Andy actually knew how to back down so the only way it was going to happen was if I did it first.

  ‘Look,’ I began. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed you like that, Okay? I’m just a little weirded out that’s all.’

  ‘Weirded out by what?’

  ‘By Tom,’ I replied. ‘Last night he told me that he thinks he might have cancer.’

  Andy’s face fell in shock. The tension between us immediately evaporated. The confrontation was finally over.

  ‘Cancer?’ said Andy barely able to get the words out. ‘How can Tom have cancer?’

  Walking over to the patio doors I opened them up and gestured for Andy to follow me on to the balcony. There I sucked in a deep breath of air and held it in my lungs and looked around me. It was odd being outdoors this early in the day. The morning air seemed fresher. The sun, though bright, had yet to reach its usual intensity. All the loungers beside the pool were empty. Everything familiar seemed as though it had been turned on its head.

  ‘Listen,’ I began, as I closed the patio doors behind Andy, ‘I’m not sure that I’m supposed to tell you about what Tom said. He didn’t say one way or the other. I suppose given how you’ve been on at him all holiday he didn’t think the occasion for a heart-to-heart would come up somehow.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Andy shamefacedly, ‘I have been a bit of an arsehole. But that’s not the point is it? The point is how can Tom have cancer? He looks fine to me.’ Andy sat down on one of the plastic chairs while I took the other and I told him the whole story, the same way Tom had told me.

  One morning about a month earlier Tom had been to the toilet before breakfast and noticed afterwards that the water in the bowl had a slightly pinkish tinge to it. He ignored it for a few days, hoping it would sort itself out, but it didn’t; it got worse and gradually became pinker by the day until one day he saw spirals of red. He made an appointment to see his doctor that same morning, without telling his wife and she immediately referred him to a specialist at his local hospital. The doctor checked him over and informed him that they’d have to run a whole batch of tests to rule out the worst-case scenario – cancer of the bladder.

  ‘So they don’t know for sure what he’s got?’ asked Andy.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t know whether you know this, but cancer of the bladder is what Tom’s dad died of . . . and he was only fifty-two.’

  Neither of us spoke for a few moments.

  ‘When do his results come back?’

  ‘The morning we land back at Gatwick.’

  Andy thought for a moment. ‘That’s why he agreed to come on the holiday with us, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘He told me he thought he’d be better off being distracted by the two of us than moping around at home waiting for the results.’

  Andy stood up and went back inside the bedroom, re appearing with his cigarettes and a lighter. He lit a cigarette and handed it to me, then lit one for himself. As the balcony briefly filled with a pale blue haze of smoke we sat looking out at the misty horizon in front of us.

  ‘My nan died of cancer,’ said Andy quietly. ‘It was in her liver. Saddest fucking day of my life.’

  ‘You lived with her, didn’t you?’

  ‘From about seven, when my dad left and my mum lost the plot, to when I left to go to college. Honestly, Charlie, my whole life she was such a strong woman – a real tower of strength – nothing ever fazed her. Not raising my brother and me. Not working two jobs. Not my granddad dying. She took everything in her stride. She used to bang on about God all the time and about how he would look after her because he always had done in the past. But he didn’t. As she gradually got sicker she was like a different person. She wasn’t my gran any more. She was a frail old lady. I’d never thought of my nan like that – as being an old lady. But the first time I saw her in hospital after her first round of treatment that’s what she was.

  ‘She’d always been this woman who wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. I remember this one time her house got burgled – they nicked a video recorder and some cash that had been sitting on the fireplace – and she had a pretty good idea which one of the kids in our close had done it, because my nan had lived there all her life and knew everyone’s business. She must have been pushing seventy at the time but that didn’t stop her from walking round to this kid’s house and banging on his front door until his parents opened up. Right there on the door step she threatened to batter the mum, the dad and the kid black and blue unless the video and the money were returned to her by the end of the day, along with a bit extra to cover the cost of a pane of glass that had been smashed. And do you know what? She got it too. That was my nan, a force of nature.’ Andy paused to flick the long stem of ash from his cigarette and then took a long drag. ‘But you wouldn’t have recognised her in hospital. You really wouldn’t. And every time she had a treatment she looked worse not better. And then one day a few months in, I’d been to visit her and it just dawned on me that despite all the talk she was never actually going to get better. And after that I never went back. My brother did. He was with her at the very end. But me?’ Andy shook his head. ‘I just couldn’t stand to watch her go like that.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d known bits about Andy’s background. The stuff about being raised by his gran (although he’d never mentioned anything at all about his parents before) and just how much his gran had meant to him, although that was mainly through the way he reacted after her death. It knocked him sideways. It really did. He stopped eating. He drank to excess. And was
so obnoxious to pretty much everyone in his life that along with losing his job, he lost nearly every friend that he had made in the last decade with the exception of me and Lisa. It was nearly a year before he was able to get himself together, and only because Lisa threatened to leave him. And while it had long since occurred to me that there had to be a reason why Andy was so anti-religion, and anti-Tom especially, now that I knew, or at least could guess his reasoning, I couldn’t say that I felt any wiser. He had his reasons and I’m sure they felt justified to him but that didn’t make him right.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ said Andy, stubbing out his cigarette on the balcony railing.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘How old are his kids again?’

  ‘I think one’s four and the other is three.’

  ‘And he still believes in God?’ said Andy shaking his head in disgust. His response was posed as a question but also as a statement of fact. But whatever it was I chose not to respond.

  ‘You think I’m being an idiot cheating on Lisa, don’t you?’ he asked.

  I left a gap of a few moments before replying in the hope of convincing Andy that I was wavering between two options. ‘Yeah,’ I replied eventually. ‘I think you are.’

  ‘You think she deserves better.’

  ‘I think if you don’t want to be with her, fine, end the relationship and move on. But if you have any respect for her at all then you’ll stop this thing with Nina now.’

  ‘Or . . . ?’

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘You make it sound like you’re going to do something about it if I don’t,’ he said.

  ‘What could I possibly do?’ I replied. ‘It’s not like I’m in any position to force anyone to do anything.’

  ‘Lisa is what I want,’ said Andy calmly. ‘And I know that we’ll have kids and all the rest of it.’

  ‘But?’

  Andy smiled ruefully. ‘There’s always a but isn’t there? And for me it’s the routine. I can’t stand it. Mondays: work and the gym. Tuesdays: work and then TV in the evenings. Wednesdays: work and one of her mates will come over for dinner. Thursdays: work and she goes out with her mates and I’ll go for a drink with you. Fridays: work and then a takeaway in front of the TV; Saturdays: gym, shopping, and if we can be bothered we might go out in the evening; Sundays . . . who knows what happens to Sundays? Every day just melts away into nothingness because before you know what’s happened it’s Monday again and you’re right back where you started. Who wouldn’t want a holiday after that?’

  ‘Is that what Nina is? A holiday?’

  ‘It’s as good a word as any,’ replied Andy. ‘She is a holiday . . . from real life . . . from routine and yeah, even from Lisa. Everybody needs a holiday, mate. Even you.’ He paused, picked up his cigarettes and stood up. ‘I’ll see you, later, maybe?’

  ‘Are you going to bed?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I’m going back to Nina’s.’

  I ♥ Malaysia

  It was ten o’clock and I was back on the balcony, lying in the sun, with my nose stuck between the pages of the The Da Vinci Code. Tom had long since set out on his trip to the Samaria Gorge leaving me alone for the day.

  Things had been awkward between the two of us to say the least. I didn’t know how to behave around someone who’d just told me they might have cancer. I was so confused by the situation that I ended up alternating between being overly concerned about his well-being and acting like his personal court jester in order to lift his spirits. By the time he left the apartment (having turned down a constant barrage of offers from me to come to keep him company) he must have been over the moon to see the back of me.

  With a full day alone ahead of me and no one to distract me from indulging in thoughts of Sarah, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before she took up her usual residency in my thoughts. So, resting my book on the table at my side, I decided that if thinking about Sarah was inevitable then the best thing I could do would be to get it out of the way. Without any further ado I settled back in my chair and commenced thinking.

  I never told this to anyone but on the day Sarah left me I actually went out to book a holiday. It had been a day full of arguing and shouting and crying (on both our parts) and then she had delivered the final blow with the words: ‘I don’t think I love you any more.’ I knew straight away she wasn’t bluffing. It was just like when I was a kid and I’d been up to no good, deliberately doing something that I knew would get me in trouble. My dad would catch me in the act and he’d say something like, ‘Right, that’s it,’ and from the tone of his voice I’d know straight away that this wasn’t an empty threat. Within seconds I’d feel the effect of my dad’s open palm connecting with the bare flesh of my upper legs long before I’d hear the sonic boom of the slap. And that’s exactly what it was like hearing Sarah tell me she no longer loved me. It was a blow to the heart followed by a sonic boom. A slap so hard that I thought it would never stop stinging. My head was reeling, my heart was racing and my life was lying shattered in tiny shards at my feet.

  As Sarah slammed the door at her exit I remember feeling strangely calm. People who have nearly died on operating tables in hospitals sometimes say, as they’re lying there with doctors and nurses screaming all around them trying to bring them back to life, that they can feel themselves leaving their bodies and floating up above the scene of what they think are their last moments. Well that was me. I was floating out of my own body watching myself slumped lifeless on a chair at the dining-room table only there was no one trying to bring me back to life. There was just me, an empty flat, and too many memories. And in that state I heard myself saying the words, ‘You’ve got to do something,’ over and over again and I couldn’t work out whether I meant I’d got to do something to get Sarah back or that I should just stop sitting there and take some action. And while I sat there trying to work out exactly what I meant, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a holiday brochure in a magazine rack by the TV. It was called something like Luxury Holidays Plus, and was filled with expensive five-star breaks to places like Barbados, the Seychelles and the Maldives – holidays that we could never have considered under normal circumstances. That was when I realised that Sarah hadn’t picked up the brochure with the two of us in mind at all. Within seconds of this bombshell dropping, I’d put on my shoes, grabbed my coat and was heading into town.

  The travel agent’s I went to were called Holidays Now. Above the door to the shop was a sign that said: ‘The home of holidays’, and stuck to the windows with Blu-Tack were dozens of marker-pen-inscribed cards featuring late-booking offers. My eyes lit up as I reviewed the offers in the window: fourteen nights in Costa Rica, ten nights in Ibiza, seven nights in Gran Canaria, a fortnight in Portugal and eight days in Malta but there was a problem with every single one of them. All the discount prices were offered on the basis of two people sharing. And yet here I was, just one person, looking for a way to escape.

  The moment I entered the travel agent’s I felt as if all eyes were on me. It was as if I’d tripped some sort of infrared alarm. The three of the female sales agents had looked up and flashed me their whitest, toothiest, shiniest smiles. For a few moments I genuinely felt loved, and then I realised that they were not so much smiling as responding to some sort of Pavlovian trigger they had been taught on one of those long-distant training schemes at the beginning of their careers. They reminded me of the androids in Blade Runner. Human, but not quite human enough.

  A deftly manicured finger pointed me in the direction of their waiting area – a space in the centre of the store somewhat bizarrely made up to look like a beach-style café bar. There were three aluminium café-style tables with chairs and sunshades and in the middle of them was a pile of sand, a bucket and spade, a beach towel and a Jackie Collins novel.

  Unsure whether this was an art installation or a genuine waiting area, I looked enquiringly back at the saleswoman and she gave me
a hearty smile and a wink. Taking a deep breath I crossed the floor and sat down at one of the tables, feeling peculiarly self-conscious. Here I was, a now single, thirty-five-year-old man, sitting alone at a fake outdoor café, next to a fake beach, in a travel agency in the middle of a busy Brighton shopping centre on a wet July afternoon.

  As I poured myself a cup of water from a dispenser I tried to work out which one of the sales girls would serve me first. My guess was the one nearest the entrance, as there was something ridiculously efficient about her manner that told me she was probably the store’s top sales person. But as I looked around the room I noticed that the assistant sitting at the desk at the rear of the shop was actually quite pretty. She had dark brown hair, caramel-coloured skin and a killer smile. Even in her work uniform of purple polyester skirt and red checked blouse she looked amazing.

  The pretty sales assistant must have sensed she was being watched because for no reason at all she looked up and caught my eye. Our eyes met for a few moments and then instinctively I looked away, which only served to make me look guilty. To balance things out I looked at her again but then incorporated this look into a whole batch of long stares around the room to make me look less suspect. I stared at the large banner above her head, featuring soft focus families walking across an idyllic palm-tree-strewn beach; I stared at three men in the queue at the Bureau de Change (one of whom was carrying a large carrier bag emblazoned with the slogan: I ♥ Malaysia); and I stared at the Jackie Collins novel in the display.

  Having sufficiently distanced myself from any deviant-seeming behaviour, I hedged a glance back at the pretty saleswoman. She was still deep in conversation with a young couple she was serving and didn’t look in my direction once in the three seconds I spent imagining what it might be like to kiss her. And so with the heat off I took a long sip of my water and studied the rows of brochures on the rack behind me. Just as I was about to pluck out one about skiing holidays (even though I didn’t ski and hated the idea of skiing) I stopped. A young couple, laden with fashionable shopping bags and dressed as if they were going out on a Saturday night, sat down at the table next to mine. Our eyes met, and I was temporarily frozen in embarrassment until a female voice entered my consciousness.