by Laura Tait
‘Or,’ says Ben, getting that look in his eye he gets when he’s about to suggest something rebellious, ‘we can give it a miss and go to The Old Monk?’
No one needs much convincing and when we get to the traditional boozer, we gather round a corner table and I order six whiskies off the top shelf.
We drink in silence.
‘Nice,’ says Russ eventually, nodding at his glass.
I attempt a smile. ‘It’s one Jamie recommended.’
‘He was very wise, wasn’t he?’ Danielle says. ‘Not just about drinks but about life. He just gave really good advice without ever being preachy or patronizing.’
‘I know!’ Jemma claps her hand together. ‘Let’s go round the circle and all say the most important lesson we learnt from Jamie.’ We all look at each other, silently agreeing. ‘We’ll call it . . .’ Jemma thinks for a second. ‘Lessons from Jamie. Ben, you start.’
Ben sweeps both hands through his hair, then holds them at the back of his head, looking thoughtful.
‘He taught me that we make our own happiness,’ he says eventually. ‘He never let the fact his parents didn’t support him stop him chasing his dreams. He wasn’t waiting around for a girl to show up and complete him. He just lived the life he wanted to live without hurting anyone to do it.’
Everyone nods.
Ben looks to his right. ‘Russ?’
Russ puts his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands while he thinks. ‘That nice guys don’t finish last,’ he says. ‘Jamie was proof that it’s not just the arseholes that get all the girls.’
‘So true.’ Ben laughs. ‘Jemma?’
‘To be yourself with the opposite sex,’ she says decisively. ‘I remember listening to him telling some girl in the bar he’d been to over twenty Chas ’n’ Dave gigs. I was thinking, Dude! Stop talking. You dinnae admit to that kind of shit. But then the girl’s knickers fell off, so I was clearly wrong.’
We all giggle.
‘What about you, Stefan?’ Jemma asks.
Stefan glances at me. ‘That it’s not just your family you can trust to take care of you.’ Looking around, he continues: ‘I was terrified when my little sister went off to uni. I always felt it was my duty to make sure she stayed out of harm’s way, even if she didn’t know I was doing it. Who’d keep her safe when she moved away? I barely slept the first few weeks she was gone. But as soon as I met Jamie, I knew she was OK. That other people cared about her like Dad and I do.’
A lump forms in my throat and I’m relieved it’s Danielle’s turn to talk, because I can’t.
‘Mine’s similar,’ she says softly, wrapping her hands around her glass and frowning into it. ‘Jamie taught me you can choose your own people. We don’t get to choose our families – and some are luckier than others when it comes to that – but we don’t have to be stuck with anyone. You can pick the people you like best, that you think you deserve and they deserve you, and make them your family.’
I’d never really thought about it like that, but she’s right. Everyone wanted to be Jamie’s friend – and he had loads – but for some reason he chose the three of us as his inner circle. No wonder he was always so keen for us to patch things up. To him it was like his family was falling apart. And the saddest thing is, as I sit here with Ben on one side and Danielle on the other, he’d only just got to see it happen when we lost him.
‘And Shane isn’t one of those people,’ adds Danielle, looking at me apologetically. ‘So I’m going to tell him never to contact me again.’
I glance at her and she cringes.
‘I know, I know – but I mean it this time. Anyway,’ she says, obviously keen to skip past it, ‘what did Jamie teach you?’
Now it’s my turn to look into my glass. I know the most important thing Jamie taught me but I need to pretend there aren’t five pairs of eyes on me if I’m going to be able to say it out loud.
‘That it’s OK to need people,’ I confess. ‘I know I can push people away.’ A tear plops into my whisky as I take a sip. ‘I guess I think I’m protecting myself. Like, if I don’t need them, I can’t get hurt if they’re ever not there any more. But I didn’t realize how much I needed Jamie. He was always there for me.’ I look from Danielle to Ben. ‘For all of us. But I don’t regret needing him.’
Even though he’s gone and it really fucking hurts, everything I got from his friendship is worth the pain.
‘To Jamie,’ I add, raising my glass.
‘To Jamie,’ everyone repeats, clinking their glasses with mine.
‘That’s why I like comics,’ says Russ. ‘Heroes don’t die in comics. Or if they do, they’re always resurrected at some point.’
‘Yes!’ Jemma exclaims, leaning over to pat Russ’s arm. ‘Good for you.’
‘Why?’ Russ looks confused.
‘Admitting shit like that and not caring what we all think of you.’
We all laugh, but it doesn’t last long and a silence falls across the group, everyone lost in their own thoughts.
Chapter Thirty-seven
BEN
Monday, 9 March
I still feel numb as I set off for my first day of freelancing since the funeral. I wait on the platform, eyes set on the concrete glazed with frost. I hear the train before I see it. It whistles to a stop, and in the quiet that ensues I can hear my heart beating. I lift my eyes to the open carriage door but suddenly I can’t do it.
I unlock my phone and call the office. I’m not sure they’ll be hiring me again but how could I? How could I spend the day filtering job applications to make sure we’re being socially inclusive? How could I make small talk with people I barely know and who barely know me? Even though I’ve got rent to pay, and I’m back to square one with finding a permanent job now that going into business with Jamie is off the table, how could I waste another heartbeat on this shit, after everything that’s happened?
I find a vacant bench on the platform and light a cigarette, holding the first intake in my lungs for as long as I can before letting go. The cold metal soon warms under my weight and I flick through the photos on my phone, wanting to feel, to not be numb. I linger on a photo of Jamie and me. It was the first night I cooked at the bar. He grabbed my phone to take it, saying it was important to capture the moment when something significant happened. When I asked what he was on about he just rolled his eyes.
Staring at the photo, I am no longer on the platform; I am there with him, hearing him ring his makeshift bell before joining me for a drink at the end of the bar, and the only way I’m aware of the present is the thick lump in my throat.
I swipe back, my finger accelerating because, just for a moment, it feels like I can turn back time. I’m seeing photos of me and Rebecca, the two of us outside the Colosseum. With fresh eyes I notice something in my smile, a stiffness, and I recall the hour or two before the photo was taken. We’d bickered because I’d forgotten to book online, so we had to queue in a line that snaked around the circumference of the ruined stadium. I realize now that my smile is forced.
When we broke up I kidded myself that Rebecca and I had a perfect relationship, but ever since our argument on the night Jamie collapsed I’ve begun to appreciate that we didn’t.
Needing more than pixels, something real, I walk from the platform and wait for a bus, and before long I’m standing outside Jamie’s apartment block. He never asked for his key back.
His parents are coming to clear the place at the weekend before the landlord puts it back up for rent. For now, though, the apartment remains as he left it.
I wander through the open-plan space, half expecting to hear his key in the door, or to see his head protrude from the bathroom to deliver some sarcastic comment.
I study the room, tears streaming down my face. The foosball table, the old liquor adverts, the Chas ’n’ Dave disc, the chalkboard with the rules he never rubbed off. I wonder what his parents will do with it all.
I always wanted to do something where I’d be remembe
red, but it doesn’t happen. Not for most of us, anyway. What happens is that our lives become recycled. Our homes, our possessions, even the way people think of us. History isn’t written as things happen, but after something has finished, so people don’t remember who we were but how it all ended.
Everyone kept saying the same thing at the funeral. It’s such a tragedy. That was the word they used. But Jamie’s life was not a tragedy. He squeezed more life into his twenty-eight years than most people experience in seventy. It’s their lives – our lives – that are the tragedy.
Rebecca texts at about eight o’clock. We’ve been messaging quite a lot since the funeral. Just about Jamie, really. I’ve been apprehensive about mentioning anything else, but I know I can’t put it off for ever. We should probably talk about what happened in those minutes before Danielle called.
I miss him so much.
The brevity of her text, the lack of explanation and kiss, the utter Rebeccaness of it, somehow brings a smile to my face.
Me too. You ok? X
A minute passes.
Come over. Got booze. Nice to talk to someone who gets it x
Rebecca opens the door and I can tell from her panda eyes that she hasn’t been sleeping. She imitates a smile.
‘I brought you Scotch,’ I say, but when she leads me into the living room I see that her thirty-year-old Glenfiddich is open on the coffee table. She fetches another glass and pours me a large measure.
We sit on the couch, Rebecca at one end with hunched knees, me in the other corner with one leg lifted so that I’m half facing her.
Rebecca stares at the space between us. The radio is playing Abba.
‘Bjorn wrote this about his break-up with Agnetha,’ I tell Rebecca, ‘then gave it to her to sing.’
‘Who was the winner that took it all?’
‘Both of them, probably, after the money started rolling in.’
‘We should have thought of that,’ says Rebecca. ‘Jamie and Danielle could have been Benny and . . . what was the other one called?’
‘Frida?’
‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘Danielle could have been Frida.’
‘No, no, no, no.’
We laugh into our drinks, forgetting who we are and what brought me round here for a few seconds.
‘How’s your mum?’ says Rebecca. ‘Does she still call you every Monday night?’
I nod. ‘She’s taking redundancy. I helped her get what she was owed after they changed her role.’
‘They’re making her redundant? She’s been there, like, thirty-five years or something, hasn’t she?’ Rebecca titters to herself. ‘Which is strange when you think about it – you can’t stick at anything for more than thirty-five minutes.’
‘I stuck at you for longer than that.’
I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth, but thankfully Rebecca doesn’t follow up on it, concentrating instead on pouring herself another drink. Her touch is too heavy so that a splash of whisky lands on the acacia surface.
‘I’d give anything to be able to share a glass of this with him.’
‘I’d give anything to sit at the end of the bar with him one last time.’
Rebecca stares fondly at the bottle. ‘Are we doing that thing that everyone does when someone they know dies? Romanticizing them?’ She grins, to show me she doesn’t believe a word of it.
I emulate her expression. ‘You’re right. Jamie – what a prick.’
‘I mean, no matter how much we loved him,’ she continues, ‘we could never compare to the one true love of his life.’
‘His reflection?’
We laugh again.
‘He was so vain,’ I say.
I can tell from the way Rebecca swooshes her hand in the direction of the radio that she is drunk now. ‘He probably thought all these songs were about him.’
I just about manage to retain the whisky in my mouth, and by the time I’ve composed myself I recognize the song that is playing. It’s ‘Cannonball’ by Damien Rice. I picture Jamie turning it off.
‘What are you grinning at?’ asks Rebecca.
I try to straighten my face but it’s not easy. ‘Nothing,’ I tell her, and she inspects me for a few seconds before conceding defeat.
‘How things change.’ She smirks to herself. ‘I’ve been sitting here bawling like a baby all day and you’re keeping everything locked up.’
I try not to look surprised that she’s been crying.
‘We’ve come full circle,’ I say.
Rebecca kinks her head thoughtfully, but doesn’t say anything. I survey the room, feeling nostalgic, and when I look back at Rebecca her eyes are closed.
I sit and watch her, her feet sliding involuntarily down the couch, the rise and fall of her chest becoming slower, deepening, until I am sure she is asleep.
I carry her to bed, clearing the duvet with my foot, and placing her on to sheets I’ve slept in hundreds of times. She doesn’t stir as I tuck her in, the light from the living room illuminating her face.
I step towards the door and when I turn my head I see her eyes jerk, but they do not open.
I take another step back, and that is when I hear her say . . .
‘Don’t go, Ben.’
There is no weirder feeling than everything being both exactly and nothing as it should be.
In the tiny pocket of time where the confusion of sleep and the awareness of consciousness collide, the last four and a half months never happened. The rain hammers heavily on the window, the girl I love is cocooned in my arms, and somewhere out there Jamie is alive.
If I could freeze that feeling I would, because I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling this happy.
But it’s not real, I realize with a heavy heart as I stretch myself awake.
Jamie isn’t alive. And I’m not in love.
I’m not in love. The realization has been fermenting ever since the night I stormed around to the flat, but only now can I see everything clearly.
It was pride that took me around there, not love, and I no longer feel angry, or hurt, or frustrated. I’m none of those things now. And I care about her so much. But I’m not in love with her any more.
It’s chilly in here, so when Rebecca kicks the duvet off herself I pull it back up over the parts of me that have become exposed.
‘Sorry,’ she whispers. ‘Too hot.’
When she wakes up properly she looks confused. She sits up and rubs the sleep out of her eyes.
‘Morning,’ I say, looking up at her.
‘Morning, yourself,’ she says gently, closing her eyes again.
I feel my shoulders tense. What if she thinks this is us getting back together? What if her asking me to stay for the night was actually her asking me to stay for good? What if that’s why we didn’t do anything: because she thinks we’ve got all the time in the world to do it.
‘You OK?’ she asks.
‘Yeah,’ I reply, feigning tiredness even though I’m wide awake. ‘You?’
‘Mmmm.’
We remain still for a while longer, until Rebecca’s stomach rumbles.
‘Hungry?’ I ask.
‘Starving,’ she says.
‘Me too. I’ll get up and make us breakfast, shall I?’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘You’d be amazed what I can muster up with very few ingredients.’
I jump out of bed but two minutes later I’m back.
‘OK, I’m good but I’m not a magician.’
Rebecca has covered herself with the duvet now, but remains on her side of the bed. I look at the empty space I’ve left and decide against filling it for fear of giving her the wrong impression.
‘Shall we go out for breakfast?’ I suggest, not adding that we need to talk. ‘Frank’s?’
‘But that’s yours and Jamie’s place.’
‘I don’t mind if you don’t?’
A few seconds later she whips off the duvet. ‘Frank’s it is.’
&
nbsp; Frank does a double-take when we walk in.
‘Ben!’
He opens his arms like he’s going to hug me but instead just pats me on the back. Because I’m with a girl he immediately leads us to his ‘best’ table – the only one with a view of the street outside.
‘I was so sorry to hear about young Jamie,’ he says, slinging a tea towel over his shoulder and lowering his head. ‘He was a special soul.’
I straighten the knife and fork wrapped in a napkin on the table, not wanting to get emotional.
‘He was,’ I hear Rebecca say.
I look at her gratefully and compose myself with a deep breath. ‘Frank, this is Rebecca.’
He offers a hand for her to shake then folds his arms and smiles admiringly. ‘Both of them used to talk about you a lot,’ he tells her. ‘And now I see why.’
‘What did they used to say?’ quizzes Rebecca.
Frank shrugs and winks at me, then pulls the menus from the rack on the table and passes them to us.
‘I’ll have a full English, please, Frank,’ Rebecca looks up to say. ‘And a black coffee.’
‘I’ll have the same, please, but with a pot of tea,’ I add.
‘Excellent choice,’ Frank says.
Once he’s gone I watch Rebecca stare at the salt pot.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ I say.
‘Jesus, Ben – you’d literally sponsor anything. Also – a penny? That’s a lot of thoughts I’m going to have to share before I can afford breakfast.’
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘that phrase has been around since the sixteenth century, when a penny was worth loads of money. I guess now it would be A million quid for your thoughts or something.’
‘Now we’re talking.’
Frank comes back with our plates, piled high. We begin eating in silence. I steal a glance at Rebecca and catch her doing the same, making us both laugh nervously.
‘About last night,’ I say, at the same time she says: ‘Can we talk?’
‘Sorry,’ I tell her. ‘You go first.’
‘No – you go.’
I want to insist she speaks first but it wouldn’t be fair. What if she’s about to ask if I want to try again?
‘About last night,’ I repeat. ‘Thank you for asking me to stay. Talking about Jamie really helped, and it was lovely falling asleep next to you, but—’
